One great big party.

My sister was reading my blog last week and asked, "Is your life just one big party?" I answered, "No. It is not." And I realized, I was doing it. In my desire to write my feelings of gratitude I was leaving out the more common, less appealing, and frankly not very funny elements of my life. So a quick update on those: I did 7 loads of laundry last week.  6 lights went out in our house. My husband's still looking for work. Our garage door code does not work in the winter weather and last week contained 4 days of winter weather, so lots of walking to the front door and opening the garage from inside. I'm still working on my tone with the people I love who live in my house. I'm trying to make my lectures shorter and scan the horizon for things to be grateful for. My husband asked me if I knew where his shoes were and I answered impatiently "I'm not in charge of your shoes." and then quickly realized that a few days ago I had put them in a pretty well hidden place in his closet. My bad, again. And my jeans aren't comfortable. They accentuate my decidedly middle-aged figure and don't stay up very well, but it's too cold to wear my go-to skirts that get me through the summer. Is that enough mundane reality? There's more of course, but I'll save that for later or never.

On the other hand there were some delightful moments. Andrew had to take a security test at Delta so flew home for a couple of days in the middle of the week.  He's fun to have.  he usually has nice things to say about dinner and takes time to play with Gabe and beat Paul at ping pong.  Since we celebrated his birthday while he was here,  Andrew and Gabe played a forbidden-on-school-nights game of "Mario Strikers."

Thursday, my sister Carrie and her cute family stopped by on their way to Connecticut.  We got the playhouse out for her 4 year old daughter to play with. That made my living room look very happy: Grandma and Grandpa sleeping on the playhouse roof, horsies hanging from the playhouse porch lights, playhouse loveseat and chairs placed around the playhouse yard.  Good stuff.

Saturday, Rebecca called from orchestra rehearsal saying she was going to bring her viola friend home for dinner. I love my kids to have company and I already planned to make "Cheesy Chips and Quidditch" for dinner.  Quidditch is nowhere to be found in this recipe, but we concocted it during our 6-year  Harry Potter obsession, so hence the name. The recipe calls for cream of chicken soup and sour cream mixed with cheese and salsa.  Well, upon my attempt to gather my ingredients I discovered that I had no sour cream nor cream of chicken soup. "When the hour of performance is here, the hour of preparation is past." So it was time to be creative. I did have mayonnaise so I mixed that with salsa and chicken and cheese.  It seemed a little runny so I added a couple of new layers to the required chips, sauce and cheese layers. I threw on some black beans and corn, repeated the layers, topped it with extra queso cheese and green onion and heated it through. Bless Rebecca's sweet little friend. She said, "This is delicious. It tastes magical." She is always invited in. And there you have my food contribution. Modified Cheesy Chips and Quidditch.

And then Sunday we went to some really great church. The speakers were inspiring, but I was so lifted by my conversation with a gentleman who was just baptized a couple of months ago. He said, "I love to come here. Something wonderful always happens. I try to explain to my friends what I feel. Being at church is like being under a big warm blanket.  I am learning so much as I read the scriptures. I can read the same page and each time it means something different and something more." He's right of course. Thank you for reminding me.

And Sunday night our family went to choir practice and the music was beautiful and the Savior lives and God loves us and we can be filled with this love and share it in our homes and with our friends and all the people God puts us in contact with.

On second thought, yes, my life is one great big party.