Thanksgiving

This year Nicole made the turkey for our Thanksgiving feast, and I have to say, I believe it was the best turkey I have ever had.  She brined it (using Alton Brown's recipe).  I think we have a new holiday tradition.  Yum!!

Bekah became Abby's new best friend during our time in St. George, and Dave, Jake, and Rob worked on perfecting their motocross skills (the Play Station version).

We also celebrated Megan's 2nd birthday while we were together.  Bekah noted a funny moment when, after opening one of her presents, which was a doll that crawls, Mega was trying to get Abby's attention.  She was feeding her baby with a toy bottle that Bekah had given her, and she kept saying "Abby babo baba", (babo = baby, and "baba" = bottle) over and over.  Try repeating that tongue-twister fast ten times! (Abby was still successful at ignoring her, however!)

I know that Thanksgiving is past, but I just want to say how grateful I am for all of the blessings that I enjoy, and especially for the opportunity to reflect on those blessings during this season of the year.

I am so thankful to have been born to "goodly parents".  Thanks, Mom and Dad for being such great examples for me, and for making gospel living such a priority in your lives and in our home as you raised your children.  Thank you for your sacrifices in my behalf.  I love you!

Thanks to my brothers and sisters for their love, friendship, support and example.

Thanks to Dave for being a supportive and loyal husband, friend, and teacher, and to his parents for their stalwart examples and efforts in raising their family in the gospel.

Thanks to all of my children for living the gospel, loving me, and bringing such great happiness into my life.  And thank you (to those who are married) for choosing such beautiful, strong, and faithful spouses.  I love you all!

And thanks to my four sweet little grandchildren for the opportunity to be a grandma!  I love watching them grow and being a part of their lives.

And most importantly, thanks to my Heavenly Father for giving me all of the above blessings!  I'm so grateful to have the gospel in my life and to have a knowledge of the atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ.  I love Him and hope to grow closer to Him each day.  I am so grateful to have the blessings of the temple in my life, and I thank my Heavenly Father for blessing me so abundantly.

A day at the races

As a preface to this post - Dave, Rebekah, and I took a quick trip to New York last weekend to see Dave's parents.  It was fun to spend time with them, and they look wonderful!  Rachel, Jeff, and Forrest traveled from Iowa to spend the weekend in NY as well, so it was a great time.  We loved being together!  The only glitch was that we didn't have our camera.  I'm very sad about that, but I'll have to rely on Rebekah to give me her photos.  I know she got some great pictures.  So Rebekah - post your pictures from New York soon, okay?!

In other news,  Jake had a race yesterday in Manti, possibly the last one he'll do this season.  So we invited Rob, Mindy, and the girls to go, and we had a great day.  Jake did great,  finishing 3rd.  The pictures of Jake were taken by Rob, who is a very talented photographer!

Spooky Treats

Last time Bekah was home for the weekend, she wanted to make some Halloween cupcakes.  The ones in the picture she showed me were really cute.  Our interpretation of them was not quite so perfect, but still pretty darn cute!

As luck would have it, we were babysitting Preston that night, so he helped us out, and even decorated his own cupcake.

And Preston's fine work deserves a closeup:

The newest addition

I spent this past week in Iowa with Rachel and Jeff and little Forrest. It was so fun to get to cuddle and hold Forrest, and equally nice to spend time with Rachel and Jeff. They make a very cute little family!  Dave joined us on Friday, and was happy to be able to participate in Forrest's blessing.  Here's the happy family on their way to church for the blessing.  (See how happy Forrest is to be going to church?  He's smiling in his sleep just thinking about it!)

Forrest and mama.

 Smiling it up for mama.

What a cutie!

I am so grateful for all of my children and grandchildren.  They have brought, and continue to bring so much joy and fulfillment to my life.  How very blessed I am!

Baby Forrest

Rachel and Jeff's baby was born on Tuesday - Forrest Jeffry Brown entered the world at 4:09 p.m. We are so happy for Rachel and Jeff, and we can't wait to go out to Iowa to meet little Forrest in person!

Birthdays and other celebrations

We celebrated Rebekah's birthday on Saturday with a dinner at our house. She's a big 19 years old now - my how time flies! Happy Birthday Bekah!

And a short 3 days later it was Rob's birthday - Happy Birthday to you too, Rob!

(Not exactly a recent picture!)

And while everyone was up here in Heber, we decided to take in the ever so exciting

Fair Days parade.

Preston spotting something VERY interesting - probably a motorcycle.

They gave out lots of free food - here's Abby with her freeze-pop.

Megan retrieving some goodies thrown from a float.

All-in-all, it was a good day!

I think I'm crazy

I haven't posted anything forever, so I thought I'd update anyone who may still actually check this thing!

My latest time-consuming venture is getting ready to open up a craft boutique next to my existing store on Main Street in Heber. We're calling it "Bungalow Boutique", and we hope to open up by the middle of August.



So I've been busy contacting crafters, overseeing the build-out of the booths, ordering signage, paper bags, display cases, and on, and on, and on.....

If you know of any Utah crafters who you think might be interested in being in a cute little boutique, give me a holler!

Other than that, things have been moving along as usual. We had a fun trip down to St. George over the 4th of July. I know - WRONG time to go to St. George, but it was fun nevertheless. We are looking forward to a riding/camping trip up in the mountains later this summer. We're also excited for grandbaby #4 (thanks, Rachel!!!) and will make a trek to Iowa when he arrives.

Look at what we found!

We took a spur-of-the-moment trip down to St. George last weekend to escape Heber's 30 degrees-and-snow forecast. It was lovely down there, of course - about 78 degrees and sunny. Rob and Mindy and the girls ended up coming too. Dave went shooting with Evan and Rob while us girls went to the playground, where Abby and Megan conquered the stegosaurus riding toy.

When we got home, this is what we found in the window well of our basement:

And no, we don't own a cat.

Anybody want a kitty?

Our day.....will come...

Remember this pretty picture? (How can you not? It's just right there below - mocking me!)

This is what we see every morning when we wake up and look hopefully out the window -

I want to know what happened to spring in Heber?!?

I know spring has sprung in other places, because every time I tell someone what the temperature is here, they respond with "Really?! It's ___ (fill in the blank with any temperature above 65) here and sunny today!"

The locals tell me not to get too discouraged just yet - they all guarantee me that it'll snow at least once in June. Sigh.

Happy May Day!

I'm not exactly Bakerella

This is a picture of the cupcake pops that Amy and Rebekah helped me make for our recent Ladies' Night Out at the store. Pretty cute, huh?

Heavenly.

Any of you who know me very well know that I LOVE homemade mashed potatoes. (That was always my birthday-dinner request.)

I found THE BEST mashed potato recipe recently. It's so good that we have had them on multiple occasions in the week or two since I found the recipe. (Hmm, that could explain why Dave and I are looking a little chubby lately...)

No, this is DEFINITELY not a low-fat, healthy version. But they are just plain yummy.

Try them. You won't be sorry.

Delicious, creamy mashed potatoes

Wishful thinking

Sigh.

Doesn't that look wonderful?

I can't wait for spring.

Sew, very old one! Sew like the wind!

I decided that I'm going to get back into sewing - a hobby I enjoyed a long time ago.


I haven't really sewn (except for an occasional item here or there) for quite a few years.
And since most of the subjects that I want to sew for aren't living in my house anymore, I decided that a dress form would be helpful. But the ones you can buy in the fabric stores or online seem really expensive, so after some encouragement from Rachel, I made my own! (Rachel had seen some instructions for making your own dress forms on a couple different sewing blogs).


A roll of brown packing tape and about half an hour later, this is what I ended up with.







Yep, that's Bekah's figure right there. She had fun pretending she was being mummified, and I ended up with a dress form that will hopefully be helpful as I sew for her while she's at school.

So far in my new sewing venture, I've made a dress each for Abby and Megan (no picture), and I've made this shirt for Megan (I've got another one for Abby in process).





Here are a few of my upcoming projects.







In addition to the dress I've started for Bekah, I'm going to sew a dress for Rachel (she's going to pick out the fabric when she's here in a couple of weeks), and one for myself. Then I want to make some curtains and pillows for the house.



That should keep me going for a few weeks.

And it only took me 25 years

I've been making whole wheat bread for... oh, about 25 years. Sometimes it has turned out pretty well, and many more times not so good.

But thanks to Bekah's roommate's family recipe (which I also saw almost an exact replica of today on another blog), I have finally made a light, soft, fluffy, DELICIOUS loaf of whole wheat bread! Yay!!!

Here's a picture in case you don't believe me.

I guess the secret is adding wheat gluten and dough enhancer. Who knew? (Apparently everybody but me!)

Here's a link to the recipe http://hubpages.com/hub/Perfect-Homemade-Bread

2 posts in 2 days?! Crazy, I know!

I just wanted to add a little postscript to my earlier post about Christmas. There were two things I wanted to share but didn't there because my post was getting too long, and also because I was too lazy to continue.

First, Bekah's friend Evan came for a visit from Kentucky the week before Christmas. It was fun to have him here and to get to know him better. We went bowling with them, and I'll have to say, we were all pleasantly surprised at our bowling scores! Maybe NOT practicing is the way to go?! Rebekah and Evan did a lot of other fun things too, and had a great time.

Here's a picture of Evan and Bekah (most of the pictures are on Bekah's camera, so she'll have to make her own post to share those):





Second, this video is one Bekah took on Christmas night when the kids and grandkids were here. Even though there were new toys to be played with, Bekah's old doll stroller was the hit of the night. Preston figured out that he fit in the stroller, and Abby figured out that she had a real-live doll to push around. Needless to say, it was very entertaining!

Christmas 2009 - gone already?!

It's hard to believe that Christmas has already come and gone! It was fun to have our kids and grandkids around. Little children and Christmas are a great combination!

We really missed having Rachel and Jeff here, but it was fun to be able to Skype with them and feel like they were almost here.