Family, Fun, and Food

Sariah and her girls came down from Vancouver, WA for  a week. Hung out with the sisters, visited friends. The guys and I were able to join them all some evenings.

David and Teresa relocated to Sacramento from San Luis Obispo. As yet, they are mostly trying to get themselves sorted out and settled in at Debi's house and the evening hanging out.

Saturday Debi put on a delightful baby shower for Ruth (and Naomi).  With a little help from her sisters, Debi put on quite a spread.  Debi was definitely the chef. She made strawberry cupcakes, strawberry and spinach salad, strawberry pretzel salad, and little bacon sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches, and pepper sandwiches.  And strawberry lemonade with fruit floating in it.  And bowls of fresh strawberries with almond fruit dip and another dip I forgot.  Beautiful and tasty.  Instead of playing some of the games typical of a shower – like you cannot say certain words or names,  what in Cub Scouts is Kim’s game -you look at a tray of certain items for a short amount of time and then try to remember them,  Word scrambles,  Make words from the letters of words, Baby changing races (usually with a handicap).  Et cetera.   Instead of any of them, Debi had lots of white bibs and onsies (in different sizes) and fabric makers.  Everyone decorated a onsie and/or bib.  I thought it would be fun, but I wondered how well they would turn out.  Charming! They are really cute and fun. People enjoyed visiting and decorating the onsies.  Then they enjoyed the food and enjoyed seeing Ruth open her (Naomi’s) presents.  Comfortable, fun, relaxed.  It was great.

Later Joseph brought the Wii and the Boom Blocks game over to Ruth's and people had a good time knocking each other's blocks off.

I got the much awaited call from my Pioneer Trekker.  Benjamin had been on a 3 Day Pioneer Trek somewhere in the Sierra Nevadas with the other youth from our Stake. I had worried about him getting sunburned as he chose a stylin' newsboy cap rather than a broad-brimmed hat.  He only sunburned lightly.  I also pictured him pushing at the back of the handcart on a hard steep hill, the people in front losing their grip, and the cart rolling back and crushing him. That did not happen.  One of our ward girls did get run over by a hand cart on the last day and broke her foot, though. 

When I picked him up, he talked and talked.  Sounds like he had quite a time.  Some of it was hard, of course, but he expected that and even relished it to a point. I was glad to see him alive, in one piece, and only slightly sunburned.  He was disappointed not to have more of a mark, sore, scar, indentation or SOMETHING from pulling the handcart with a rope over his shoulder.  Everyone in the ‘family’ helped – a couple of them pushing on the bar in the front, a couple of them pulling with ropes, some trying to help by pushing at the sides (which sounds awkward), and I think some pushing. He said that the Mormon Battalion marching was a bit hard.  They had to march in formation carrying their buckets and being in formation could not switch which hand was holding the bucket.  He most liked the family talk time.

Sunday we got together for Acadia’s birthday dinner.  Although, the only thing special was that Acadia got to choose what we had.  I have got to get my act together about doing special things.  We had Hawaiian Haystacks – yummy.  Unfortunately, my slow cooker was a wee bit full of chicken mix and slightly less full when we got to Ruth’s.  I really need to deep clean my car, probably more than once, before we go to Yosemite next year.  It’s bear bait!