Back from Beantown

I'll apologize in advance--this may be long.

What a fun time we had in Boston!  We're so glad we could go visit the kiddos, big and little, and see Hull and the area.  Here's a quick synopsis in pictures of our trip.

The beach--since Hull is a peninsula, one is never far from water.  We walked down to the "beach" near the Franzen's home, but it's mostly rocks and the tide was high.  We also went to the beach at the very point of the peninsula.  Everyone but me threw rocks.  We looked at the Boston skyline across the bay.  Preston found me a live periwinkle in its shell.  He wanted me to take it home, cook, and eat it, but I declined. 

 

 

There is an area of Hull near the nice beachy beach that used to be an amusement park that rivaled Coney Island.  All that is left now is this awesome old carousel.  All of us plus Auntie Gail went and rode it.  The Easter Bunny was also there for pictures, but none of us wanted to do that.

We drove south to Plymouth.  The Mayflower is put away for the winter, but we saw Plymouth Rock.  I was expecting something on the order of Independence Rock, but this is what we saw.

 

 

 

 

Easter--lovely time to be together, attend church where Lauren sang with the Primary in sacrament meeting and to have a lovely meal afterwards.  Beautiful kids, beautiful family. 

 

I love this picture of me and Andrew.  It looks like he's thinking, "Who is this crazy person and what is she doing with me?"

Rene went back to Chicago on Sunday evening.  The rest of the week consisted of normal family activities.  We took Lauren to Backyard Bunch.  We went to the park.  We shopped, cooked, mended, played with kids.

Thursday, my plane left late in the day, so we took advantage of going to Boston to walk about half of the Freedom Trail.  We saw Paul Revere's grave, old churchs, Boston Commons, Fanueil Hall, Paul Revere's home and the Old North Church.  We stopped in a little bakery and bought some authentic Boston pastries.

 

 

It was interesting to see and feel a place so different from our own midwestern sensibilities.  We enjoyed our trip and are thankful we could go.  We're most thankful and proud of our kids and grandkids.  They are dealing with the challenges of grown-up life in wonderful and happy ways.

And happy birthday, Andrew!

Whirlwind weeks

Wow, it's been a quick and whirlwind month.  Here's what's been going on:

Janet and Jacob came to visit!  The 7 months since we saw them at their reception in Delta had been the longest we'd ever gone without seeing Janet.  Needless to say, we were happy to have them here.  While they were here we went to the art museum, played lots of games, the boys had some male bonding time, and celebrated my birthday.

 

 

Joanna and Ben came over to visit while Janet and Jacob were here.  Ben was only here a day, but Joanna and Russell stayed for a week.  Then Ben came back and picked them up.  It was great to have company and Russell was pretty entertaining.

 

 

Shortly after they went home, Rene left for a long business trip to Malaysia, Thailand and China.  During this same time, Brian was gone for eight days on a business trip to Las Vegas.  Sarah and I pooled our resources and I went out to Utah to spend that time.  Even though I had some days when I didn't feel good, it was nice to have someone to talk to.  I enjoyed seeing Camille every day and I think she got used to me.  Janet and Jacob were also around often and that, of course, was fun.

 

 

Jacob brought us some beautiful flowers from the lab he teaches.
















Springville Art Museum

Now I'm home.  Rene is back from his trip and will be home this weekend.  But he'll have to go back to Chicago, of course.  But we just have two more weeks to get through, then we'll be going to Boston to visit the Franzens.  Yippee!

My funny valentines...

From some of my little sweetie pies.

It's birthday season around here.

We were a few candles short.  Didn't think anyone would notice, but Ben had to go count.  And I don't know why Macey is so blurry.

Cookie-ku

 

Valentine cookies

Tradition replete with love

Rich pink hearts, so sweet.

 

(for those who may not know, our family has a long tradition of both Valentine cookies and haikus.)

A merry Christmas

Joanna and Ben arrived on Saturday, Dec. 22.  That was our candymaking day.  Rene and Joanna made divinity and fudge.  I had made another batch of fruitcake and some cookies earlier and Joanna and I made our caramels that day.

Sunday, we had a very nice Christmas program at church.  There were quite a few visitors, mostly young people who had grown up here and were now visiting their parents with their own little families.  We enjoyed visiting briefly with Casie and Joseph.

Ben and Shannon and Co. came over for dinner that evening.  Since Sadie was sitting in the high chair, Russell sat on Grandpa's lap.  Grandpa did sneak him some bites of food, but he's still pretty little to eat much.

On Monday, we started on the dinner preparations.  Joanna made two pies, cherry and pumpkin.  We also had sweet potato casserole, turkey and stuffing, potatoes and gravy, a relish plate, rolls, cranberry sauce and our traditional grape drink.  Most of it was homemade, including some of the pickles Rene made this summer. 

Here's the table.  The beautiful centerpiece was sent by Preston's mom, Brenda Franzen.  We have had "crackers" (the English version) for several years now.  One year, we had friends over for dinner and the mom, who is from England, brought crackers and taught us how to use them.  Now they are part of our celebration.

After dinner, we had our traditional FHE, although it was short this year due to the attention spans of a three year old, a one year old and an 8 month old.  After FHE, Shannon gave Sadie and Macey each a present and said they could open it.  (It was their Christmas pj's.)  Sadie cracked us all up by opening hers entirely with her teeth.  The three little ones changed into their Christmas jammies, we took a few pictures and B&S took their girlies home to bed.

 

On Christmas, we got up (not very early) and enjoyed a few gifts.  We skyped with the Franzens and the Manassas Scoresbys.  Then we packed up and went to Stevens Point, where we opened more gifts and enjoyed the day.  We played games several times over the week, sometimes with cheating and sometimes without.

Ben and Shannon came up again on Friday night for dinner.  We enjoyed being together.  Macey watched TV and read books.  Sadie denuded the Christmas tree of candy canes and enjoyed them.

On Saturday morning, Ben and Joanna packed up and went home, despite some snow.  We are so glad they could be here.  Christmas is always better when kids and grandkids are involved.

This December, we have tried two new recipes we'd like to share.  I made some of this soup to take to a new family in the ward and some for us to eat at home:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Creamy-Chicken-and-Wild-Rice-Soup

I read the comments and did add diced celery, carrots, onion and mushrooms to the butter before making the white sauce.  I also used part skim milk instead of all cream.  I also used a rotisserie chicken; one chicken was enough for a double batch of soup and enough for a meal for Rene and I, too.  It was filling and yummy.

Most of you know that I don't make candy.  That's Rene's forte.  But this year, Sarah told me about this awesome microwave caramel recipe.  So Joanna and I made it.  It turned out perfectly, although we did have some issues with sticking to the waxed paper, but that was our fault, not the recipe's.  Here's the recipe:

http://www.food.com/recipe/microwave-caramels-367414

Yum!

I'll post more later with pictures of our Christmas activities.  But let me say that we are profoundly grateful to be part of wonderful families and to have the best family in the world as our own!