The Get-Away! April 27th- April 28th.

April 27 - Had a problem getting away.  In bending over to find something in his suitcase, Ed pulled a muscle in his right hip.  It was so painful, he couldn’t sit at all.  He found if he lay down on the left side, he felt more comfortable.  I massaged the area with some Arbonne icy hot stuff and it relieved it.  When Mike Burrows came to take us to the airport, he gave Ed a blessing.  The pain finally subsided and we were on our way.  We got away about a half hour later than planned, but everything went pretty uneventful other than we waited about an extra 30 minutes on the runway. Soon we were on our way to Chicago.

We arrived at the Chicago airport about 15 minutes late, with only about an hour to make our connecting flight to Vienna.  We had to take a tram from one part to another.  The next part was a long walk to the terminal.  Fortunately, the Lord sent an angel to aid us in the form of a man in an electric cart.  He offered to take us to the terminal, which we gratefully accepted.  Had he not offered, we would most certainly have missed our flight.  

Most people had boarded when we got there.  Our seat assignments had not been given.  Another couple we had met on our previous flight were waiting for seats when we got there.  We waited 20-30 minutes until the ticket lady called us to come and get our boarding passes and enter the plane.  We walked down the gangplank and turned into the plane.  We were told to go down different aisles.  We turned another corner and then we entered “The Enchanted Forest.”   We were assigned the last row of First Class.  We could not believe it.  We had twice the space of economy, our own private 17 inch TV screen, headsets would have rivaled Bosemans, and seats that went flat complete with sheets, a comforter and a soft miniature sized pillow.  Dinner was a seven course affair.  For the main course I chose steamed cod heaped with sautéed vegetables and a tasty red tomato sauce with veggies.   Ed had prime beef and asparagus.  We lost ourselves in the all the comforts of first class.  It was a mini vacation all itself.  

I had followed Kim’s suggestion and asked the stewardess if they did anything special for birthdays.  She said “No,” but said, “What would you suggest?”  I countered with “What is there.  What would you suggest?”  She said, “I could speak to the pilot and see if your husband could come and sit in the cockpit with him.”  My eyes widened and I said, “That would be wonderful?”  She then indicated that she would talk to the pilot and let us know.

April 28 - At about 1:00 a.m. (having crossed the time zone, it was not April 28) she came back to our seats and told us that the pilot had invited us to come back.  Most of the airplane was asleep.  And so, on Ed’s 69th birthday, we were ushered into the cockpit of a B767.  We spent the next  20 minutes sitting in the jump seats and visiting with the copilot and pilot, both Austrians.  It was delightful.  Below, we could see the ice flows off the coast of New Foundland.  

On the Northern horizon, the sky glowed red against the clouds, where  the sky never totally goes dark.  For Ed, it was pure delight and a great memory.  Shortly before our nine hour flight ended, the beautiful long blond ponytailed stewardess came back and gave him a photocopy of the flight plan that we had been shown in the cockpit.  On the back he was wished a Happy Birthday and the entire crew had signed it.  

After breakfast, we picked up our things and left “The Enchanted Forest.”  We had just landed in Austria.  Our flight into Amman went smoothly and uneventful (arriving about 4:30 p.m.) until we went to the baggage claim area.  Ed got his suitcase and everyone else on our tour got theirs.  Mine was missing.  I imagined spending the rest of the trip with only the change of clothing that I had brought with me in my carryon.  I decided not to worry about it.  It was all a part of the adventure.  If i had to spend my time in Jordan and Israel with only two changes of clothing, I would make do.  The only thing I would miss would be my swimming suit and swimming in the Dead Sea.  

We arrived at our hotel around 6:00 p.m.  Dinner at the hotel (served at 7:00 p.m.) was absolutely delicious, with three meat choices and delicious cooked vegetables.  We were a little leary of eating raw vegetables in Jordan.  We also got to meet a few more couples who had joined our trip.   Ed's hip was starting to act up again.  Probably because he could not get totally comfortable aboard the plane during the night's sleep.  I put Ed's birthday card on his pillow during an unsuspecting moment.  When he opened it, it was a tender moment.

The bed was a little hard.  I thought it would be okay, but Ed complained from the get-go.  Soon the muscle pain was back in his hip.  Neither of us slept much that night.  Ed was in a lot of distress.  In the middle of the night, i massaged his hip and we folded the comforter and put under it, hoping the padding would help.  By morning things were pretty bad.  We ate breakfast and checked out of our room.

Preparations for our Visit to Israel. We leave April 27, 2014.

Our Visit to Israel:

Our Visit Began with Preparation!

March 7, 2014:  Dead Sea Scrolls!
 After booking our trip, we began to look for opportunities to learn about Israel.   We began to read books about Israel and the Bible, and then a special exhibit came to Salt Lake City.  This was exciting.  We heard guest lecturers,  Kelly Ogden and Jack Welch speak.  They have directed studies in the Holy Land.  It was an edifying evening.  After the lecture, we walked through artifacts of the Middle East and viewed fragments of the scrolls.

We booked our tour through "Cruise Lady."  They offered some lectures.  We attended three:

April 8, 2014:  "Israel:  a Spiritual Journey" by Eric Huntsman.  This was a beautiful slide presentation and lecture of Jerusalem where he lived with his wife and children for a couple of years.

April 10, 2014:  "Behind the Headlines of the Middle East" by Daniel Peterson, who lived for four years in Egypt and several years in Israel.  He has contacts in those countries and keeps in contact with them daily to keep abreast on what is happening there.

April 17, 2014: "Jerusalem:  The City of War & Peace," also by Daniel Peterson.  He took us through the entire political history of Jerusalem.  It was informative and interesting.

April 21, 2014:  We attended the IMAX show of "Jerusalem."  This was well worth it!  Beautiful photography and glimpse in life in The Middle East of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

In addition, we watched Truman Madsen's DVD series, "The Eternal Christ."  They were probably some of the best preparations we did.  These DVD's and his spirituality conveyed through them totally got us in the right frame of mind.  We also thought it was timely that our trip has coincided with Easter and General Conference and all the wonderful messages that were given during this time of year about Christ.  A highlight for Cyndy was being asked to sing "I Walked Today Where Jesus Walked" in Relief Society on Easter Sunday.  Both of us hope to find a place where we can sing this as a duet together while in the Holy Land.

What we had for dinner - April 18 & 19, 2012

Last Week I decided to use up an old package of Boston Butt chops I found in the freezer. There were two very large chops, and of course they have a lot of fat on them. I cut off the fat (shown in the corner of the plate, which I discarded) leaving two very nice chops and about 1/2 pound of little meat pieces.

My mother used to bread and fry Boston Butt and every now and then when I find it goes on sale, I have the butcher cut it into 1/2 inch slices and I follow her recipe. They are always delicious. They provided one meal, served with rice and stir-fry veggies.

Inspired by Kate's recipe for stuffed peppers, I decided to grind the little pieces of meat left after I cut off the fat, with my old hand-held meat grinder. Mother had a similar grinder and used to grind up left-over roast beef and make sandwiches. I didn't particularly like them, but I have used my grinder to grind up left-over hotdogs for sandwiches.

I assembled all the ingredients, including the left-over rice from the previous meal. (Notice my laptop to the right with the recipe I am following.)

First step was to fry the ground pork, onion, and garlic together.

Next, I made the tomato sauce. I didn't have heavy cream, so I substituted 1/2 almond milk and half sour cream.

I heated up the sauce...

I had a few marinated jalapeno peppers I had saved from a neat little Texas cafe we ate at, and I thought they would add a little zest to the meat mixture, which they did.

The peppers were stuffed, covered with fresh parmesan cheese, and placed in the oven.

The finished dinner was delicious!

Working on our Rental Yard, March/April 2012

Since we came back from Texas, we have had to attend to business, some of which is landscaping our latest rental.

Because of a sewer backup in December, the first thing we did was have a giant silver maple removed.

Then we hired someone to come and remove the roots and level out the ground.

We had some major leveling work in the backyard where there was a big dip in the yard where a hole had been dug for a trampoline many years ago and the dirt piled onto the garden area. (the fence blew down during our hurricane windstorm in December, so the backyard neighbors, who owned the fence, are putting in a new one.)

Besides the tree area in the backyard, there were other places that needed some backhoe work.

This Friday, a crew of 4 men will come and finish by hand, what the machinery could not do. The following week a new sprinkling system will be instll.

One year later...

Haven't posted in ages. My kid's blogs have inspired me to at least say something. During the past year, we bought two rentals and re-habbed them. A lot of work and time. We went to Texas for our grand-daughter's graduation and brought Brayden, 7, home for three weeks in Utah. We visited Amber in Portland, and our boys in Colorado on our way to Texas where we are spending the winter (or most of it.) We have loved it here and half of our heart will always be in Texas.

In two and half weeks we will go back to the cold Utah winter and many tasks that await us there.

THE BIG SNOW WHITEOUT!!!!!!

Sunday after church we drove to Bear Lake to stay in our condo for a couple of days. On Monday we had some business to take care of Montipelier, but a phone call took care of it so we were able to enjoy the entire day at our home there. We ate a delicious brisket lunch at the next door restaurant which is now run and operated by the son of one of Ed's UPS associates. I spent a good part of the day reading this month's book club selection, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. It's a historical novel about Mississippi during Civil Rights years. It's really good. I recommend it. Just as the day was ending, and as the wind was picking up (unfortunately we waited too long and the little bit of sunshine we had enjoyed had turned to gray skies), we took a trek down to the lake. The water never froze this year and the water was lapping at the shore and coming up under some crusty banks that had grown out over the water. The wind was blowing, but we didn't mind. How we do love the lake!!!

We also had business in Preston and Providence and so headed back Tuesday morning, leaving Garden City at 9:15 a.m. Fifteen minutes into our drive, and as we approached the summit, we hit a blinding, whiteout snowstorm. Ed couldn't see a thing. We passed a car that had already pulled off the road. Ed drove a few feet and then decided that he, too,had better pull over. He ended up driving off the road and getting us stuck in a snowbank.

Snowplows were getting through, and helping other stranded motorists, and one went by leading the car out that had pulled over behind us and in the process plowed more snow along the left side of the truck, hemming us in for good. He stopped and promised to send another snowplow back to pull us out. I thought about the Little House on the Prarie books and pioneer stories where I'd read about these sort of blizzards, and wondered if we'd spend the rest of the day (and night) in the canyon. We couldn't help thinking about our warm, comfortable condo just a few miles behind us. This snowstorm was the first one that Ed has ever been in that was a total whiteout to the point that he didn't dare move forward or backward. And, one must remember, that Ed's job with UPS took him all over the state and into Idaho in all kinds of stormy weather.

A few cars, mostly trucks, and some semi's were succesful in getting through the canyon by following behind snowplows. As we watched them pass, we wished that we were one of them. After about an hour of waiting, another snowplow did come along and pulled us out. We followed him a short distance and then he encountered a wrecked cadillac up ahead blocking the road and a semi-trailer/truck behind that car.

Eventually, he helped everything get untangled, and we were able to follow him down into the canyon, away from the summit, where all the blowing snow was going on.

(I might insert here, that in the middle of all this I experienced the joy of being a woman when nature calls and you are not in a convenient place. Exiting a warm vehicle into a freezing snowstorm is not any fun! I hoped the open door would afford a little privacy, and shield me a bit from the blowing wind. I finished just before the snowplow guy walked back and I hurridly jumped into the truck, barely getting my pants pulled back up.)

Following the snowplow, the wind gusts reminded us of what we had just left behind. Ice forms on the windshield. (In this photo, you can barely see the road in front of us. Back up on the summit, nothing was visible, what-so-ever. It was that bad! I didn't get our camera out until after we were through the worst of it!)

The Snow begins to clear. We can see the road that is being plowed in front of us.

In spite of water droplets on the window, the canyon reveals her beauty.

Up ahead, a police car stops motorists coming from Logan from proceeding further into the canyon.

We pass the snowman we saw a couple of months ago and who appeared on an earlier blog. He is still there, though drooping sadly.

The snowfall has stopped; the road is clear. The flocked trees are lovely.

With the ride through the canyon behind us, we drive to Preston and on the way back stop to visit my sister, Deanna's gravesite in Whitney, Idaho.

One of our church presidents is buried in this cemetary

It is a very small, peaceful one. Deanna's grave is in back of the pole on the lower left.

Next, we drive to Providence to transfer 4 gravesites that Ed's parents bought, probably 65 years ago, into Ed's name and his sister's name. We have decided that they will be our final resting place.

Last stop, we visit with Cliff , Deanna's husband, before heading home.

THINGS I SPEND MY TIME ON....

Time is wheeling past rapidly. Lately I've been busy with editing old photos in Photoshop Elements as I sluggishly push my way through my life history. Wish all the old photos had been cared for better over the years.

Original

After two hours of editing:

I volunteered to sew a quilt top for a Humanitarian Project. It sat for about three weeks on my desk. On Saturday, I decided it was time to sew it up! Here is the finished project which I handed in on Sunday.