Staples and Sledding!

I occasionally prepare personnel files for scanning when I'm at work. This is something any of my grandchildren could do with ease.........including Calvin. The biggest barrier to achieving professional fulfillment while performing this task is removing staples. (Don't you think this picture I took of the stapler and staple-remover make them look like carnivores)? Sometimes I find two thin, fragile pieces of paper that have been stapled together three times with industrial-strength, square staples spit from an electronic stapler; not your the meek, charitable, mild black Swingline stapler. I have caught myself musing, "Hmmmm, does this W-4 from 1987 REALLY need to be included in Joe Schmo's scanned file? I mean, come on......" But then I remain the good soldier and buckle down and spend 3 minutes gently persuading the staples to unhinge themselves.

Luckily, I'm paid by the hour.

Usually I end up tearing a big hole in the paper as I do my staple-ectomies. This then reminds me of grade school, when I would have to erase my arithmetic answers (using a big pink eraser of course), and gasp, would erase a hole in the paper. Pink eraser crumbs all over tarnation, the once beautiful, blank, beckoning  softly milled paper reduced to quivering masses of pulp, because of ME! The reckless giant 3rd-grader with a massive pink eraser in her paw. Oh the trauma of it all. It felt so irrepairable!..irreparable... .....irreparible? (Come to think of it, maybe it was the spelling papers, not the math papers that I made mistakes on :-).
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Yesterday we went down to Tony's house and spent the day with them. So much fun!! We went tubing up Hobble Creek canyon and Calvin and Cindy built this snowman. They used a donut for the nose.

Here are the girls and Eli. They took some wild rides!!

And finally, Dennis was amazed at Vivi. He said she tubed down the hill countless times, trudging back up pulling her tube up all by herself. She also knew how to chill with some hot chocolate using the tube for a seat!

Then we all went back to their beautiful new house and enjoyed having an extra early birthday celebration for Calvin (since we'll be driving down to join Amy and Dave at Disneyland on his birthday!). And speaking of birthdays, HAPPY 7th BIRTHDAY today WYATT!!!

It's so fun to watch their house become a home, as paintings get hung, and bedrooms get decorated and personalized and inhabited and painted, and events take place. (Check out dad in the background of this second photo chilling with his Kindle? I taught piano lessons too, so he came prepared :-).

I Love You all to smithereens! Mom

My Dinner With Richard and Shirley

Grandma and Grandpa Hiatt came over today and we had lunch together. It was a wonderful day! Don't they look dashing and beautiful? The slices of bread are on a pink glass plate that belonged to Grandmother Nan. Mom thought it was fun to think of Grandmother using it long ago, and now it was being enjoyed on our table today 50 or 60 years later. When mom saw the braided bread she said "that's so pretty we should take a picture" and so I did. My counselor Anne taught me how to make it. I'm so proud of myself. I've never been able to make bread. This is a honey bread so it's not quite the same as making a loaf of bread, but there is yeast, and kneading and and punching down involved.

My friend Debbie gave me this hand-stitched decoration for Christmas. I love it. It's of the four seasons, and as part of the process after stitching it, she painted a wash of tea onto the fabric (de-caf).

After enjoying our lunch of broccoli soup, bread, muffins and carrots cut on the bias (j/k), we finished off with Tillamook blackberry ice cream, and headed down to watch "Life of Pi" in the theater room.

Last night Dennis give me a tutorial on how to run the projector. It takes three remotes. Here are my copious notes. It worked like a charm! After learning to manage Amy and Dave's set-up, I can tackle anything.

We snuggled down under blankets, hugged our heated corn bags, turned down the lights, turned on the sub-titles, and the 20th Century opening music blared through the room "duh duh duh duh.....da-da-da-da-da.....duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh....da da...duh duh duh duh!"  announcing that we were being transported to movieland, dad said "no talking for the next two hours!" - and 2 of the 3 of us promptly fell sound asleep. The 3rd person said he may have dozed a little at one point. It would have been really funny if Dennis would have stopped by to check on us and found us all snoozing away while Richard Parker and Pi were crashing around in the ocean.

After the movie, we were all standing in the kitchen and grandpa said "look out the window!" and he stole a chocolate out of my candy dish and they were on their way home. Fun afternoon. I still can't believe they live here!
XO
Mom

A penny for my thoughts...........

Children, you remember the penny drawer! It's the little half drawer in the chest of drawers where I kept, um, fine jewelry, thread, and pennies, and it hasn't changed a bit in 30 years... see? I JUST NOW TOOK A PHOTO WITHOUT MOVING OR CHANGING A THING AND THERE"S STILL THREAD IN IT, and you can see pennies in there too (under the photo of Angie and Forrest holding new baby Ethan); also Andrew's #40 football pin from about 30 years ago; and above it on the shelf, the framed photo of me and my beloved; my prized collection of Anne Tyler novels; a jar of polished rocks (look closely - I've also turned that into a jewelry/bracelet repository). My point in starting out like this is to say this will be a jumbled post with a few tangled musings! But that was kind of a fun photo. 

#1: I AM IN POIGNANT HOG HEAVEN:

I am in hog heaven watching poignant documentaries on Netflix . The other night I fell asleep watching one called "Young @ Heart" about senior citizens who have a fabulous singing group and tour the world. And now Netflix has generously recommended 25 MORE gems to me about aging performers simply because I watched the first movie. These are movies that are so unknown and obscure that I would have had to trek to Park City and fight the Sundance crowd in sub-zero Minnesota-like temperatures if I wanted to watch them in years gone by. AND I can also watch Netflix on our new ipad..... Really? All this for Netflix's monthly charge of $8.99/month? I'll never forget Angie introducing me to Netflix when we were in Minnesota for Thanksgiving, and we watched a tad of "Babies" and then Andrew being here to help us get it hooked up, and we hooked it up to the little t.v. in the basement and Andrew and I lay on the floor and watched "Over the Top" about the world of arm-wrestling!! I keep waiting for a bill from Netflix to arrive in the mail marked "Important, open immediately" that says "To Barbara and Dennis Sweat: Please be advised that this has all been a ruse, and if you would have read the small print more carefully you would have realized that it really costs $800/month and you now owe us $8,000. You should have known better. Did you REALLY think you could get 1,000's of movies for almost nothing?" And part of me would think, "no foolin! I was wondering when the other shoe would drop!" WHAT A WORLD!!

#2 - RANQUIST/SWEAT CHRISTMAS PARTY!

This year we held it down in Mapleton at Karla and Richard's church - the day Tony and Cindy were MOVING - but fortunately, they were moving into a house that was only 10 minutes away from the church, but still, bless their hearts for coming to the party in the midst of it all. Whenever I make shrimp soup I think of how much Angie loves it and get nostalgic for the original Ranquist Christmas party. It was so exciting to go to their beautiful condo,high above the Eagle Gate in downtown Salt Lake City, and park in the lot across the street to the North and then get into the elevator that took us up to their home - and know that President Hinckley and President Faust lived right above them and they might even drop by unannounced! And have catered food, with ribbon sandwiches that I don't think anyone liked but me, and see the $100 bills tucked into the Christmas tree for each couple. And have the talent show (and bless Angie's heart for singing solos for Grandma Ranquist even after Dolores and her 6 teen-aged sons joined the family!).

Speaking of Grandma Ranquist, I almost felt like she was with us a couple of times when I'd glance over at Karla out of the corner of my eye! In the photo below, Karla is holding Abby's little boy Hunter, and Jessica Ranquist whose married name escapes me, what is it?... I'll think of it...anyway, Jessica is holding her 3-month-old baby Grant. He and Hunter are only 9 days apart. Her last name means something besides just being a last name........but still not coming to me....

Jessica and Tyler - Walker! That's their last name! The Walkers! I knew it was appropriate for them because they're not only are they Walkers, they're Dancers! Anyway, Jessica and Tyler "tried" to teach us the polka for our entertainment! Amy and Dave, we needed you there to add to the dancing!! It was a little too comprehensive for us, but everyone had fun moving their bodies, and even Nate caught the vision (even if he is partner-less in this first photo below!). We had a baked potato bar and chili and salads and desserts. YUM!  The bottom photos are of Calvin and Vivi on their way to the party. It was lights out the minute Dennis picked them up from Grandma and Grandpa Bohman's house where they'd stayed over night because of the move. When Calvin woke up in our car, he looked around at us, and was so confused. He kept saying "what?" He had gone to bed at the cabin one night, in his new house the next night, grandma Bohman's the next night, and now he was in grandma and grandpa Sweat's car!

And here is Megan's little girl Avery who wasn't going to smile for me, but then she changed her mind. Cute!

#3 - AND I SAY TO MYSELF, WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD!

Here's how pretty it was yesterday when I went out first thing in the morning to get the Sunday paper. It's so gorgeous to see the Wasatch mountains and the blue skies when the smog leaves after a week of the dreaded inversion. If only they could punch a couple of holes in those mountains so the bad air could escape!!

#4 CHRISTMAS IS DOWN - AND VALENTINES DAY IS UP!

I was going to post more, but......................................yikes! the time is getting away from me (blogging takes longer than I thought it would!). I am so grateful for all the years of scrumptious blog posts and emails from you kids. It means more than money can buy!!

The reason I must be done for tonight....is because........it's Downton Abbey Season 4 time! It is set to start in 10 minutes.And Dennis, who I converted to it last year forGOT it was on tonight, after I reminded him this morning! I asked him how he could possibly forget? I asked him if he would forget, say,  Jazz game #37 of 82, the Jazz vs. the pesky Minnesota Timberwolves? and he said "OF COURSE NOT!" However, he brewed us up some hot chocolate, and is now downstairs turning on the big screen. Watching "Downton Abbey" on Sunday nights will not be quite as poignant this year as it has been for the last two years, because I'm not Stake RS President and I don't have grueling Sundays that I need to unwind from. And there's nothing that makes me unwind better than hearing the pulsing Downton Abbey theme song and watching the backside of that portly yellow lab sway in rhythm as he heads toward the mansion. Love you all - cheers!

XO

Mom

Merry post-Christmas 2013!

The photo above is the kick-off to celebrating Christmas Eve - with Tony's family coming to share our traditional Christmas Eve candle light dinner. Such a happy sight! Calvin got his first haircut so it seemed only fitting that he be upgraded to sit at the kid table instead of in the high chair. We had Dennis's red Jello and my funeral potatoes (I made funeral food!) with grape juice and 7-up, just like my Grandmother Nan used to make for us, and of course the traditional macaroni and cheese in honor of the Sweat family tradition - just makes me smile! I bought shrimp for an appetizer and Harmon's also had little single crab claws for 58 cents EACH! Oh my goodness. So I bought six. Reagan even tried one (she's not a fan). The first photo below was taken BEFORE everyone arrived to fill the table with life; the second is a shot of the beautiful blue sky day that we had and you can see the Santa plate that has a cookie with each of the grandkid's names on it that Angie gave us a couple of years ago: and the third photo is a selfy I took just for the blog because I wanted to convey "Hey - a newlywed should be stuffing this celery - not me!"

The photo below is a wistful glimpse of the two place settings that were set aside and we didn't get to use that night because my mom had a scare and hurt her ankle and they ended up at Alta View hospital having it checked out for Christmas Eve (thankfully she's doing fine) but boo on that, and we surely missed them! (and the shrimp and crab missed being enjoyed by Grandpa Hiatt!).

When Tony and Cindy and the kids arrived,  we told them we were starting late because Dennis was helping my mom and dad get situated, so  they hurried to Walmart (2.5 minutes away and YES it is sweet to have it so close) and bought their live Christmas tree at half price to put in their new house so Santa could find them that night. (they camped out on the floor of the new house - nothing but sleeping bags and a live tree tied with a rope to the ceiling vent to hold it up).  The kids and I munched on snacks and watched part of "Elf" and knew that soon the festivities would begin! Calvin entertained us and dressed up as potato head Santa.

We had the nativity - and Lauren bless her heart even dressed up in an angel costume. The photo of Reagan wearing a black nose makes me laugh. I hadn't noticed it until I uploaded it for the blog. Jane has traditionally been a sheep every year and she has a white woolly lamb's coat and wears a black nose that we save from year to year. This year she graciously accepted the invitation to play the part of Mary because at the last minute Calvin wanted to be a sheep. However, at some point he reconsidered and changed his mind and wanted to be the shepherd (could it have been that the staff looked inviting?) so Reagan switched from shepherd to black-nosed sheep. I hadn't even notice that she wore a nose!

Calvin spent his short time as a shepherd wielding his staff in unrighteous dominion, so we had to make that part of the program short and sweet!

 

My favorite part of the evening came next, when the girls played their violins. The house was squeezed tight with warmth and the night outside was crisp and cold, so we opened the front door and the beautiful music spilled joyfully out into the empty Christmas Eve street. It felt to me just like a little choir of angels. Because we believe! The little kids shook jingle bells and we sang everything from "Silent Night" to "I'm Gettin' Nuthin' For Christmas" at the tops of our lungs. Loved it.

And then the fun of watching excited hands tearing into presents, sweet faces of grandchildren opening presents. We had a wonderful night. 

We love you all and although we have an ache inside missing each of you who live so far away, especially at this time of year, the joy of being a family and loving each other with all our hearts,that's what really matters.

Now I'm off to make tacos for dinner. I hope we never OD on tacos or spaghetti - or we'll be in dire straits.


Love, Mom