Indian Night Out

"Made in India" is one of Mike Spendlove's favorite cookbooks.  On January 28, 2018, Mike and Heidi entertained the family with "made in America" Indian favorites.  Some recipes were from the internet, some from "Made in India," and a few from the cooking class Mike and Heidi took in Jodhpur, India, this fall.  Jono Ebert is our most recent visitor to India, along with Mike and Heidi.  Jono will put in his LDS mission papers on February 21, 2018, and who knows?  He may get sent to the Delhi, India Mission.  His mom, Camille, will miss Jono's hugs.

Mike and Heidi's table was beautiful.  It was covered with the hand-embroidered tablecloth they bought on their India trip.

 Mike was in his element, chopping, sauteeing, and baking as his guests swirled around him.  Heidi was the invisible genie, seizing each dish as Mike put it down and swishing it into the dishwasher.  "There are clean cooks and dirty cooks," Heidi says.  We know which we are!

Spendlove dinners are interactive affairs.  Naomi helped Michael cook the beans.  Naomi has just found the Bulgarian recipes from her mission, and she has promised to share them with me.

 Kirsten was another sous-chef.  She is a sophomore at BYU, majoring in microbiology.

Spencer is as efficient in the kitchen as he is with his schoolwork.  He is getting a degree in chemical engineering but wants to have a job where business meets technology.  He has been lining up interviews with McKinsey and Goldman Sachs.

 The Ebert kids fit in a quick foos ball game while letting the crush of cooks in the kitchen subside.

 Mia loves sports, from gymnastics to foos ball.

 Ezra could sense victory on the foos ball table.

Ezra had a worthy opponent in big brother Jono.

 And Annie, at 15, is getting prettier and prettier, as well as improving her foos ball game.

 After foos ball, it was back to Mike's kitchen, to await the curried chicken, dal, and spicy beans.

 The chef introduced his creations.

And it was very good.

Robin at 70

Robin and Bill Kimball lived next door to our family for more than 35 years.   On January 25, we celebrated Robin Kimball's 70th birthday at a dinner party for old friends of the Kimballs at Pam and Wynn Johnson's home.  Robyn was best friends with everyone in our neighborhood, and she darted back and forth across Northland Drive, every day, in her cotton "duster".  Marilyn McSweeney bought Robin a new duster as a birthday gift!

We took turns telling stories about Robin.  My story was about how we tease Jonny that he got his great people skills from spending so much time with the charming, very social Kimballs.  Bill Kimball came into his kitchen one afternoon to find Jonny sitting there alone, eating a bowl of cereal.  "Who are you visiting?" Bill asked.  Jonny wasn't visiting anyone.  He was just making himself comfortable in his second home!  Dave told about the time I was critically ill in the hospital.  He came home to find that a team of neighbor ladies had cleaned our house, including Robin swabbing out the toilets!

 It was wonderful to spend an evening with old friends, with whom we have shared so many good and hard times.  Lee and Pam McCullough were at the party from St. George (above, with the Kimballs).  Left to right, Tracy Cannon, Marilyn and Russ McSweeney with granddaughter Grace, Julie Monson, Stormy Skidmore, and Pam Johnson (standing).

Pam has been a heroine of mine every since we moved into the Ensign Fifth Ward in 1978.  She has enormous energy, style, and determination to do good.  When my mother died, she planted daffodils in my front yard that still appear every spring.  She is assigned as visiting teacher to whomever is struggling in the ward, and she cares for her charges like a relative.  It was so like Pam to host a birthday party for Robin!

My Eyring Cousins

My mother told me, before she died, to stay close to my Eyring cousins, and particularly to get to know Aunt Maurine's daughter, Kay (fourth from left).  My cousin, Catherine Poelman, set up a quarterly cousin's luncheon two or three years ago, with daughters of both Grandma and Aunt Emma (polygamous wives of Grandpa Eyring).  The group has grown, and on January 15, 2018, we met for lunch at the home of Jan Eyring, Uncle Joe's daughter (front right), who has recently moved to Highland, Utah, after a lifetime in California.  Catherine Poelman is now in Borneo on a mission with her new husband, Harold Weight.  She would be proud of her handiwork.  A special treat, for me, was Little Camilla Smith joining the group from San Francisco (fifth from left).  She is delightful--she is infinitely curious, she travels the world with delight, and she has the quick wit and deep laugh that take me back 50 years to the days when Camilla's mother, my Aunt Caroline, visited my mother. Aunt Caroline told stories and laughed and laughed.  It was impossible not to laugh with her.  Oh, to see both Aunt Caroline and my mother again, and to laugh with them about all the absurd things that have happened in my life and my world!  My other cousins were also delightful.  From left--Rosemary (Aunt Caroline's daughter, named 50% for my mother), Jill and Mary Sue (daughter and daughter-in-law of Aunt Emma's daughter Isabelle), Kay (daughter of Aunt Emma's daughter Maurine, who was six months older than Mother and went through school in the same grade), Little Camilla, me, Jan (Aunt Isabelle's daughter), Midge (Aunt Catherine's daughter whose son teaches at the University of Chicago and knows Jonny), and Jan (Uncle Joe's daughter).  May we ever be so close and so fond.

A little Thai, a little Michael Jackson, and a Shopping Spree

The first time Dave and I visited Las Vegas together, in 1970, we stopped at the tourist information booth on our way into town and asked what people who didn't drink or gamble could do in Vegas.  The clerk looked at us doubtfully and said, "Nothing."  How times have changed!  We spent Saturday, January 13, 2018, in Vegas, shopping at the fabulous Williams Sonoma outlet nearby, eating at one of the best Thai restaurants ever, and then attending a world-class Cirque de Soleil show, featuring the music of Michael Jackson.

The acrobatics and special effects of the Michael Jackson show were stunning.  The music was sometimes too loud for us and some scenes too chaotic, but to the younger crowd they were no doubt just right!

 The ushers were dressed in Michael Jackson suits.

Earlier in the day we stopped at Primm, 30 minutes south of Vegas, to buy gifts for next year's Christmas table.  We found a top-of-the-line Cuisinart food processor and a six quart Dutch oven at bargain prices, as well as other treats.

Dave and I are trying to shed our excess holiday weight, and so we avoided Vegas' trademark buffets.  Instead, we ate at Arawan Thai, the most highly rated Thai restaurant in the city.  It was located in a nondescript strip mall.

 Inside, the decor was elegant and the food luscious.

Our favorite dish was the signature dessert, with scoops of coconut and mango ice creams, sticky rice, a bit of chocolate, and whipped cream on top.  Authentic?  Probably not, but after the very authentic pad thai and musselman curry, we deserved a fantasy.

 As we waited in Vegas for the Michael Jackson show to start, I wandered up and down the Strip, taking pictures.

As I passed the medieval towers of Excalibur, I remembered taking Mike and Jonny to a joust there, when they were little boys.  They wanted to come and live in that hotel!

Red Rock with the Eberts

"Southern Utah is so much a part of our life, and it wouldn't be without the St. George house," Camille commented, as we spent Martin Luther King day weekend, January 12 to 15, 2018, in St. George with the Eberts.  Jono was in Cancun with friends and Emilie is on her mission, but the rest of the gang was all there.  It was actually a surprise to be together, since the Eberts decided to come to St. George at the last minute, after Dave and I had planned our trip.

The Eberts love board games and party games, so we whiled away the time with new games from Christmas.  One evening we played a charade game, and we laughed and laughed as each team tried to pantomine words for its teammates to guess.

Camille and Steve also love the out-of-doors, so we took three hikes during our weekend.

The first hike, on Friday afternoon, was a short trail through Snow Canyon to a panel of names, scratched by Mormon pioneers in the rock during the 1800s.  Dave had to wait for a TV installation team at the house, so I went alone with the Eberts.

No one can resist an eroded portrait hole in the red rock.

Moss growing on red rock is a striking sight.

"They sometimes grumble about going on a hike," Camille said of her children, "but as long as they can climb up, through, and onto things, they think the hike is great."


Sure enough, the Ebert kids made like mountain goats, scaling the slick rock to reach the panel of pioneer names.

Our family is developing good photographers.  Camille is excellent, as are Annie and Mike, on SLRs, and Jonny on Instagram.

The Ebert kids climbed another huge boulder and did yoga poses on top.

The next hike wound through lava-strewn paths in Snow Canyon to a lava tunnel, through which hikers could climb.

Camille and I were talking, took a wrong turn, and lost the rest of the family.  Camille's phone, with its flashlight, was nearly dead when we reached the tunnel, so we climbed into it, took a quick look around, and then trekked back to the parking lot, where Steve and the children awaited us.

Next stop was Pizza Factory for dinner,

Ezra loved the breadsticks.

 We met Dave for a movie about P.T. Barnum, "The Greatest Showman."  "This is a grandma and grandpa movie," Annelise assured us, and we loved the bittersweet, romantic story as much as Annelise did.

Saturday night, while Dave and I were in Vegas, the Eberts saw, "Jumaji."  "That was not a grandma and grandpa movie," Annelise decided, and so Dave and I will avoid it!

On Sunday afternoon, after Church and a festive, home-cooked dinner, we took our third hike, to a waterfall north of our home at Coral Canyon.

It was nearly twilight as we began walking, a magical time for pictures.

Mia and Ezra crawled into the "head" of a tree trunk shaped like an elephant's head, with the trunk extending down the front.

Annie has a smile and happy personality that radiates to everyone around her.  With Emilie already on a mission and Jono leaving on his mission this summer, Annie will be Chief Child, in charge of the littler kids when Steve and Camille are away.

Ezra is lots of fun.  He climbed up a cliff above us and pretended he was a mountain lion ready to pounce.

Annelise and Sophia sat on a log and dangled their legs over the stream rushing below them.

Finally, we were there---to the first of several rushing, green pools, so welcome in the desert.

On the way back to the car, I couldn't resist climbing through the elephant's head myself!