Birthday Girl

I know I'm getting old when I have to search through two years of photographs to find an image of myself which I like--and then it includes a laundry basket!  I turned 67 on March 17, 2017.

"You're number 13," I teased Michael, when he called me late in the evening of March 17.  That's a family joke from the time I called my mom to wish her happy birthday, when she was in her 90s, and she responded, not entirely in jest, "You're number 13."  I so appreciated my four adored and adorable children remembering me with calls and emails, as did David, my brother Scott, Darrell Moench (who has a special talent for remembering birthdays), and a whole host of Facebook friends.

 I even got texts from the grandchildren!

And Heidi decorated a cake for me--her specialty moist chocolate cake covered with pink flowers. The trickiest part--figuring out how to turn on the electric lighter for the candles.  That was a lot of cake!  Heidi grew up in an "eat the leftovers" family, an achievement I sought with little success. I imagine Michael had chocolate cake in many a lunch bag!

Mardi Gras!

Masks, beads, and helium-filled purple, yellow and green balloons--we had it all!  The Spendloves celebrated Mardi Gras on March 5, 2017.  The cute girls behind the masks are Camille, Emilie, Sophia, and Mia.

Spencer made the all-important roux for the gumbo--flour and butter cooked to a dark brown, before the "holy trinity" of onions, peppers, and celery was stirred in, the broth added, and the shrimp and crab tossed into the pot.  Heidi was the heroine who was not too squeamish to shell the shrimp!

Liquor flows freely at the real Mardi Gras, but the closest anyone got at Grandma's house was "mocktails".  Naomi mixed acai juice with blueberries in the blender, spiked the mixture with Sprite, and added marachino cherries.

Kirsten brought her roommate from BYU--we love meeting our grandchildren's friends.  All the girls in Kirsten's apartment are majoring in different sciences--a talented group.  Emilie is finishing her first year at the U, as an Eccles scholar, and preparing to leave on a mission in June.

 Alan joins us for Sunday dinner often, always pleasant despite being served the strangest food!

 We feel lucky when (almost) all the Eberts can come, including Annie and Sophia.

Naomi and Spencer will spend six months in Madison, Wisconsin, this summer and fall, where Spencer has an internship.

Heidi is assembling a cute collection of hats, available to make any event a fancy one.  It was a great party--good food, lots of laughing, and a fun event to drape the festivities around.

Luck 'o' the Irish

My Ancestry.com DNA test identifies me as more than 30% Irish (I assume that includes the Scottish and Welsh mixed in).  We celebrated St. Patrick's Day with a corned beef and cabbage dinner on Sunday, March 12, 2017.  I felt very, very lucky to be surrounded with family and good friends, eating good Irish food and celebrating my heritage.

I never take for granted the luxury of having Mike and Heidi as neighbors and frequent visitors.  My former assistant, Katie Peterson, also joined us with her husband.  Katie is now "Dr. Davis," with a Ph.D in nursing from the U of U.  She is a nurse practitioner at a clinic in West Valley, where she specializes in the treatment of diabetes.  Katie's husband, Rhett Davis, is a former investment banker with J.P. Morgan who now manages his real estate investments, and wanted to meet Mike, a kindred spirit.  Katie is expecting baby Grace in June.  I was delighted to remember, once again, how very fond I am of Katie, and how proud I am of all she has done with her life.

Other guests were the missionaries from our stake.  They were an eclectic group--one elder from Jakarta, Indonesia, one elder from Wichita, Kansas, and the third elder an Australian who is awaiting his Indonesian visa so he can begin serving in that predominantly Muslim country.  We shared good food with the elders, but they shared something more precious--faith, goodness, and optimism.

 I decorated the table with shamrock plants, covered with three-leaf clovers.  I also bought green carnations, which reminded me of the green carnations my dad often bought me for my birthday.  He also wore green socks on St. Patrick's Day in my honor.

The entree was corned beef and cabbage, served with "champ," a Northern Ireland dish of mashed potatoes, butter, and green onions.

 Of course, we had Irish soda bread.

Dessert was a British raspberry trifle, with homemade pound cake, whipped cream, cream cheese, and lots of frozen raspberries.  I will definitely make it again!

Vegas

Dave had a conference in Las Vegas on post-traumatic stress disorders during the last week of February.  I joined him on Thursday, March 2.  Besides posing with the omnipresent slot machines, we squeezed into a packed Coliseum at Caesar's Palace for a concert of Reba McEntire and Brooks & Dunn.

I loved the country music.  I was also fascinated with the culture represented by the singers and their audience.  It was rural, southern, and patriotic. Reba told about her childhood growing up on a ranch in Oklahoma with a father who was a rodeo star.  She sang a ballad about a Tennessee girl who went to New York City and came back home to marry.  The girl caroused in a bar the night before her marriage and ran off with a guy she met there.  "You can take the girl out of the honky-tonk but you can't take the honky-tonk out of the girl."  During the final song, flags waved, red/white/blue confetti fell from the ceiling, and military vets marched onto the stage.

Country music tells stories, mostly about love and loss.  I thought of the Eyring ballad, "Aragon gypsy girl," passed down through generations from England.  It tells the same sort of "love and loss" tale as the country ballads.  They both have British folk tunes in their DNA--the Scots-Irish settled Appalachia, and the hill billy music of Appalachia morphed into "country".  

Dave's and my seats were so high that we couldn't see the videos projected above the stage!  It was like the night we came late to a Deer Valley outdoor concert and sat at the top of the hill next to the garbage cans, but this time we paid $250 for two tickets. It was still worth it.  Maybe we finally found where all those Trump voters came from.

Dave and I spent one evening at the Coliseum and the other in the Spring Valley Hospital emergency room.  I had a pain in my upper leg which Dave was afraid was a blood clot.  I assured him it was nothing more than one too many "pain in the butt" experiences at work...  The doctors agreed.

A Soak and a Steak

We have a hot tub on our porch, but that wouldn't do.  We were off to Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, on February 25, 2017, to soak in the real deal--a huge pool filled with mineral water from hot springs.

Half the fun was stopping at Maddox for dinner on the way home.  Maddox, near Brigham City, holds so many memories.  Dave and his high school girlfriend, Diane Smith, routinely stopped there for dinner on their drives to Diane's parents' cabin at Bear Lake.  Over the years, Dave and I have eaten at Maddox many times, virtually always choosing steak (or prime rib) and pie.

 Maddox is always crowded, but the wait is worth it.

 The rolls with raspberry butter are nearly as good as the steak.

 After two or three rolls apiece, we had to use doggie bags for the steaks!

Seattle with the Flindts II

"Let's go to Friday Harbor," Dave suggested, as we thought through how to spend our precious Saturday in Seattle.  Taking the ferry to the San Juan Islands is an iconic Northwest adventure.

Before we left, we attended Bryce's Young Men basketball game.  Several experienced members of Bryce's team were gone, so Bryce's team really needed him.  He made several baskets.

Bryce's coach was amazing.  He yelled encouragement to each boy and stayed upbeat and optimistic all through the game, even as the other team pulled ahead.  Bryce's team included one very short boy who was an aggressive and excellent player.

 It was an overcast day, but that made the ferry trip from Anacortes to Friday Harbor all the more atmospheric.  We sailed past dozens of fog-shrouded islands.

 Friday Harbor was filled with yachts--the San Juans are a favorite boating trip from Seattle.  The sun came out just long enough to get a bright picture of Dave and me.

We drove around the island and then ate supper at a cozy inn near the harbor.  The fish and chips were fabulous.

While we waited for the ferry back to Anacortes, north of Seattle, Dave snoozed in the car while Lisa, Bryce, Alyssa, and I wandered the nearly deserted, off-season streets.  We settled into a booth at Vic's Drive-in for a root beer float.  Pure Americana.