I Belong to the Church of Jesus Christ....(Updated)

...of Latter Day Saints.

I got an e mail this week about that Big Love series on HBO. There is a picture and an article in T.V guide that I found offensive, and I was appalled. I forwarded that e mail to all my Mormon friends and family so that they could be appalled too;)

A friend in my ward e mailed me back saying that basically all publicity is good publicity. And that people who know Mormons personally may ask their Mormon friends and get the truth from them. Basically, any discussion is good. And grudgingly, I guess she is right.

I need to struggle with my temper and deal with misconceptions with patience and grace. There are people around the Internet who do this.

There are many LDS bloggers out there that handle these issues wonderfully. I like to read this blog a lot,(her button is on my side bar) and she mentions her faith often without pushing it down anybody's throat. I really enjoyed her post today, and the video she has of a young LDS girl at Harvard who handles a lot of grilling with poise and dignity. She is wise beyond her years. The video is worth a look. (It is about 20 minutes long, though, so keep that in mind)

Anyone who wants to learn more can go here or here.



This quote by M Russell Ballard that is on my side bar bares repeating: " Most of you already know that if you have access to the Internet you can start a blog in minutes and begin sharing what you know to be true.We are living in a world saturated with all kinds of voices. Perhaps now, more than ever, we have a major responsibility as Latter-day Saints to define ourselves, instead of letting others define us. "
**UPDATE***
Danielle sent me this link from the church news about all of this Big Love nonsense. It is helpful

BBC's List of 100 Books

A little while ago I ran across this list on my old friend Jeanna's blog.(No, Jeanna's not old. She is my age. But I have known her since 6th grade. That makes her my old friend;)

One of the radio stations was talking about the BBC's top 100 list of books to read. I thought it was interesting. The "BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here". I think that is pretty crazy. My official number is 37. But many of them are series of books, and I think should count as more;)

My favorites were:
All Jane Austen books
Jane Eyre
All Harry Potter books (what?)

It is fun to look back on these books and reflect on when it was that I read them. Many have been read while I was on bedrest with one of my babies. Many others were read on the computer while nursing my little ones. Many of the classics are online in their entirety, so I can rock and nurse my babies in front of the computer and read some of the classics.

Here is the list. Tell me how many you have read, I am curious. I'll make a note of when and where I read many of them:


** Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (Computer nursing Brenley)
** The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (all of them. Should count as 3)
**Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (bedrest with Brenley)
** Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (first 3 or 4 on bedrest with Mitchell)
** To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (High School English class)
The Bible
**Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (Bedrest with Abigail)
** Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (When I was 19. Just because)
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
** Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
** Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (read after watching the movie)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
** Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (read on a beach trip.Rachael borrowed it;)



Complete Works of Shakespeare
** Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (bedrest with Abigail)
** The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (bedrest with Mitchell)
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
** Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (preg with Abigail)
The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch - George Eliot
** Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell(bedrest with Kindyl, who was almost named Scarlett;)
**The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (Humanities class at ASU)
** Bleak House - Charles Dickens (just for fun after watching it on BBC)
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
** Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (was curious after finding out author was a druggie;)
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
** David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (After watching it on BBC)
** Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (once as a child, once after I had children.)
** Emma - Jane Austen (Nursing Brenley)
** Persuasion - Jane Austen (nursing Brenley)
** The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Animal Farm - George Orwell
** The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown(just for fun, when it was all the rage. I admit it.)
** One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (on my cruise for our anniversary)
** A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (because Jimmy Eat World wrote a song about it.)
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
** Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (Once as a child, again when I had children)
Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Atonement - Ian McEwan
** Life of Pi - Yann Martel(When I flew alone to Utah for Clark's wedding)
Dune - Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
** Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (Nursing Brenley)
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
** A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
** Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
** Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas(While preg with Abigail)
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
** Dracula - Bram Stoker (While nursing Abigail)
**The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (As a child)
Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Germinal - Emile Zola
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession - AS Byatt
** A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
** Charlotte’s Web - EB White (once as a child, once after I had children)
The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Watership Down - Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
**Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl(once as a child, and once after I had children)
** Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (While nursing Brenley)

There are a few I think I may have read, but I don't remember for sure. I didn't count those. I know a disproportionate number were read while nursing Brenley. She was spoiled, and didn't take a pacifier, what can I say;) I was going through a classics phase. Some on the list I would like to read, some I have been meaning to.

Some I have read many times, like the Harry Potter books (every time a new movie or new book comes out. I am kind of a nerd like that) and all of the Jane Austen books. And Jane Eyre. etc.

Some I have loved. Some, not so much. But I love looking back on the time in my life that these books remind me of.

I love to read. These books are a part of my life. Don't worry, I will try not to neglect my children;)

The Opera

Last weekend (Feb 27th) my husband took me to the opera. We saw Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Right now you are thinking one of two things:

a. Wendell is Husband of the year
b. The company he works for must have sponsored the evening.

I will let you decide on your own which of those is true;)

We were invited beforehand to attend a reception featuring "heavy hors d'oeuvres and drinks" which ended up being delightful. The food was absolutely fabulous, although I wasn't quite brave enough to try the clams.( I don't really believe one should eat clams in a land locked state. Just my humble opinion) I think I ate two days worth of Weight Watchers points (thus the "heavy" in the "heavy hors d'oeuvres";)

I had never been to the opera before and did my research on this particular one beforehand. It was touted as one of the best operas ever written. I was inclined to like it because Mozart was the composer. I read a synopsis online, and even saw a couple of scenes on Youtube. I wanted to be prepared because it was all in Italian. I needed to know what was going on. Luckily there were subtitles , so I shouldn't have worried.


I have to admit, I was surprised by how risque it was for 1787. These people were not prude. It was like a modern day soap opera. Only a little more humorous.

I have to say I enjoyed it. The subtitles were sparse, and sometimes a whole song was accompanied by one line. But you got the gist. Really it was better that way, because it is easier to enjoy a play when you are not trying to read the top the whole time. But it would have been better if I understood Italian.

Parts of it were very clever and I found myself wondering, "was that a true translation? did they really write that in the 1700s?" I think some subjects, and some humor, are timeless.

Needless to say, Abigail was not invited. Jannalee was kind enough to keep her for us. But by the second half of the opera, the baby was having her revenge on me for not being included. I was so UNCOMFORTABLE! (warning:TMI ahead)I hadn't realized I need to bring a breast pump to the opera. I can't even describe the pain that 7 hours away from your baby can inflict. I didn't think it would be that bad, because when I left her with Joy for three days I was able to sleep through the night with just mild discomfort. Apparently the baby eats more in the evening than she does in the middle of the night. Who knew? (by the way, Abigail refused to eat the whole time we were gone. Not even breast milk from a bottle. Stubborn little stinker.)


Overall, I really enjoyed it. There was one character that was really overdramatic. I thought if she cried about how she was "going to die" of grief(literally) again somebody might slap her. But that may have been exacerbated because of how uncomfortable I was at the time.

I'll never know. Because I am pretty sure Wendell will never take me to the opera again. At least until next year;)

Abigail- Finally in her crib!

...Because Brenley FINALLY gave it up! My kids love their cribs. They all have. I remember being told that it is time to move your baby into a big kid bed when they start climbing out of their crib. None of my kids ever did that. They have all been attached to their crib. Almost all of them only got booted when the next kid came around.

Bren was no exception. The child is 31/2 and just agreed to move to a big girl bed.

I am not sure it was for love of the crib as much as dislike for any sort of change. Brenley is the one that notices any type of change in the house. I remember we bought a new lamp for our bedroom and it took her a full day to get over it. She kept telling me that the old one had to go back. She would describe the old one and kept saying, "remember? remember mom? go get it back!"



I am pretty sure 3 year olds just don't like change. She had to see a picture of her (younger) cousin Zanya in a big girl bed before she warmed up to the idea. Then a few short months later...Voila!;)

(yes, Abigail will only sleep on her belly. But don't talk to me about SIDS. Because she sleeps with a fan on AND a pacifier, which both reduce the risk of SIDS. And she is breast fed. So it all evens out...)

Three Month Supply- Canning Meat

Otherwise known as: Why I have been neglecting my blog. And my book. Warning: May contain gross pictures. We are talking about canning meat here, people. Yuck!

My sister gave me the head's up. There were a lot of good deals on meat, and she would teach me how to use her pressure cooker. A few weeks ago she gave me a jar of beef that she had canned and it was delicious. So I have been wanting to give it a try ever since.




Now, Jannalee is not the type to make an idle offer. You know what I mean. Some people offer to help you, but you are hesitant to take them up on it. Jannalee tells me to come over at this and such time and she will teach me. This is not the first time, either. She taught me how to make homemade wheat bread a couple of weeks ago. I will post pictures when I have the guts to actually make some by myself;) This week, I promise!

Tuesday when the Ginge came over I ran around to 4 different stores and got some major deals on pork loin, 93% fat free ground beef, beef roast, and chicken breast. Then I swung by Jannalee's house to pick up the pressure cooker. Which I would have been too intimidated to use if she hadn't actually shown me how. I started browning the ground beef, because I needed some for that night's dinner anyway. I decided to just brown it all while I was at it.



Ground beef is really the only thing you have to cook before canning. The rest of it goes into the jars raw. So then I got started with the gross stuff. My kids were appalled.


I am running the pork through Italian dressing mix. Jannalee said that it tastes great that way. You can open a jar, heat it up, throw it on rice and you've got a meal. The rest I made up myself. I used a Costco meat rub that we love on burgers in a jar of beef. Then onion soup mix and garlic in another jar of beef. taco seasoning on beef. Ranch dressing mix on chicken. Soy sauce and garlic pepper on chicken (Which is how I cook it usually) and a few other things. I got a little creative.

The first night I was up with it until 1:30 because I underestimated the time required. It takes 90 minutes for quarts to cook in the pressure cooker, so I was figuring an hour and a half. I wasn't counting on the time it took for it to get to boiling, then to pressurize, then to depressurize afterward. One of the drawbacks to canning in the middle of the night is not being able to call your sister with little questions. Oh well. You live and learn.

(my quarts in the cooker)


(my pints, after they are done cooking)

No, they don't look pretty. But they taste good. I hope. Jannalee's tasted good, we'll have to see about mine. I am trying to resist the temptation to use them for dinner next week just to see how they taste! C'mon, wouldn't you be curious?

It's Ten O'Clock....

...And I am sitting on the computer. Wendell is laying on the bed watching the news. I hear him call to Brenley and tell me she just walked past our door into the family room. So I got up to check it out. This is what I find:



Keep in mind that I got right up to check on her. I remember noticing at bedtime that Mitchell had already crashed on the couch. I remember thinking, "I'll have Wendell move him later"

Brenley decided to make herself cozy and snuggle up with him and promptly fall asleep.

I think this may have been a case of sleep walking. It has happened in our family before. But I think it is funny that even in her sleep, she thinks it would be nicer to snuggle up with her brother than to find a seat by herself:)

Blushing Buttercream Pettiskirt Giveaway

Go here to see these cute skirts. There is even a link on how to make them, if you are the seamstress type. I am not. And I want one. Wish me luck!