Cooking and stuff

This is probably good proof that my life isn't very exciting. This morning I baked a peach pie, two loaves of wheat bread, and a pan of caramel oatmeal bars. In the crock-pot is a turkey roast, carrots and potatoes. At least we'll eat this weekend.

In the background is my ironing board and some clothes that I'm going to put back in the closet soon. I'm just taking a little break first.

These are tomato plants and Zuchinni plants. They're actually growing in the front yard. I'm currently in favor or the edible landscaping idea. I've already gotten two big Zuchinni and used them in bread. There are two more that are coming along and loads of green tomatoes. I'll have a good tomato harvest when they mature.


So, that's as good as my posts get these days. My kids are grown and my husband no longer travels for his work; which means I don't go anywhere either.

Mirror Lake

We found one more thing to do with our holiday weekend. Yesterday Joe and I hiked, then today two of our kids joined us for a drive to Mirror Lake. It's out past Kamas.
We spent about three hours there and didn't catch a thing, but we really didn't expect too. At least we were together and it got us talking about past camping trips. The rest of the conversation seemed to be about computers and technology. I somewhat tune out to that stuff, but they're all really into it.


Before leaving, we strolled around the perimeter of the lake.





Sometimes the fishing just gives me something to do while I'm taking in the scenery.




Sarah can really cast a line way out there. I think she's starting to like the fishing too. Plus, she's a good sport even when the mosquitoes are attacking her.



Aaron used my pole for a little while. He's the one who taught me how to cast when I first started this hobby.

Everyone seems to want to do this again and I know we will. We'll just keep trying out new places until we catch 'The Big One'.
Although at times like these we sort of miss my oldest daughter. Her brother made a good point when he said it was a good thing she wasn't there because her mosquito bites always swell up.

Lake Mary

What does a person do on the 24th of July in Utah? Well, if you're like us, you go hiking.



This is Lake Mary, a man made lake above Brighton:








We took a little side trip along the way. By just going a few yards off the main trail we got to see a marshy basin:

No hike is complete without pausing to appreciate the flowers this time of year. The lower trail had some nice fields around it.


These long holiday weekends are nice. We may try to go fishing tomorrow with two of our grown children. To avoid the crowds, we'll probably have to go outside the Salt Lake valley. We've got some ideas.

Doylestown reunion

This evening Joe and I went to a Doylestown reunion. It gives me the opportunity to think about that period of our lives and get some of that history recorded.
Joe and I were married in 1981 here in Salt Lake City, Utah. At the time Joe had a job that was in Pennsylvania. I moved back to that area with him for awhile.
Our first home was an apartment in Hatfield, Pa. We went to the Jarrettown ward.
Susan was born in 1982.
In 1983 we moved to Quakertown, where we had a cute townhouse. We were in the Doylestown Branch which later became the Doylestown Ward.
Our son Aaron was born in 1985. Then in 1987 we move to Utah.
Sarah was our only child born in Utah. That was in 1989 (she's our youngest)


Here the party was breaking up and we had started to put chairs and tables away:
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On the right is Ken Knight and on the left is Kelly Clark. I like this picture because we bumped into Kelly and Lisa at the Clark family reunion in Farmington recently. I didn't know until then that we are distant cousins. We both come from Ezra T. Clark and Mary Stevenson Clark. He comes through Joseph Smith Clark (what a name) and I come through Mary Elizabeth (the only daughter).
If you want to see more on the Clark reunion, I've got that on my blog just a few posts back.

It's interesting to see people after 22 years. I noticed a lot of gray hair. In other cases the hair was just gone. Back then our children were just toddlers (or not born yet). Now many of those children have finished college. Some of them are making more money than we are!

Enough about that; I'm starting to make myself feel old.
I should have taken a picture of the food table. There was so much food! Tomorrow at lunch time I'll be wishing I could have some of it!

Rainbow Trout!

I would like to announce to the world that I caught my first rainbow trout today! I not only caught one fish, but three of them!
My daughter was there, and can witness that I really did catch them myself. There was a young dad at the lake with his son, who kindly helped me remove the hook from the first two, but I did the third one myself.
The lake was recently stocked, so they were all pulled out in the first hour. During the last half hour my line got pulled really hard three different times and it was exciting, but those fish got loose.


This is me sitting in front of a dinner of rice, broccoli, rainbow trout and lemonade:




Here's Joe and my daughter getting ready to dig in. Sarah cooked the rice and prepared the fish with herbs. Then she wrapped them in foil and grilled them for us.


This is what they looked like after I cleaned them (kind of gross I know):


They weren't big but we all agreed that they had a good amount of meat on them. This is them, just before I cleaned them. They were a little creepy to look at until they were 'processed'. After that they were just 'meat' and Sarah had no problem cooking them up for us.



I've got the fishing bug now that I've caught something. I'll be going back again! Hooray for the 'great white hunter' Hee Hee.

Farmington Canyon

I could just as easily call this post 'The flower show'. Today I went with mom and dad to see the wild flowers at the top of Farmington Canyon. We've planned on doing this since the mountains were full of snow. We just had to wait for summer to go up there.
We drove up a narrow and steep dirt road. Near the top of the mountains we began to see fields of flowers.

This is looking West. I was surprised to see a little town down there:

Me standing in front of a patch of snow that has made it to the middle of July:

My Dad:


This is looking East. We are so high up! I understand that my brother (Brad) has gone off this cliff with his hang glider. That sounds so amazing and fun (also a little frightening!).


I had to get some close up pictures of these pretty flowers. I'll go back and look at them this winter when I'm a shut in.



Mom taught me the names of some of the flowers. If I got it right; the purple ones are Lupine, the big yellow ones are Marsh mallow, and there were some little yellow flowers called Snow and Summer. I hope I got that right.

After our nice drive, Dad took us to Quans for lunch. That's a Chinese food place in Salt Lake City. I'd say this was a good summer day. It's the way summer should be spent. I felt sorry for everyone that was at work while I got to go see flowers.

Birthday 2009

The years keep rolling by and I've had another birthday. I guess it beats the alternative.
My birthday is really on July 2nd, which was Thursday, but it's not a party unless my kids are here. I was born in 1953 (you do the math).
My son came home last night to spend some time with me. He lives in Provo, where he goes to school and has a job.

Today (Sunday) Aaron cooked a home made pizza for me, he actually rolled out the dough:



Sarah baked me a moist chocolate cake. She also made a chocolate sauce that we poured over the cake:


This is something that still amazes me and my amazement makes my kids laugh. They think I'm being so old fashioned.
My son got me using a program called 'skype' so we can see Susan when we talk to her. She and her little family live in the Phoenix area.
Thanks to this technology, she sang 'Happy Birthday' to me, along with her brother, sister and dad. She had to watch us eat cake, but we did cut her a slice so she could pretend to eat with us.




Me blowing out my candles:



Later, we moved to my little office upstairs where Aaron hooked up my new Quickcam 3000. It was a gift from Sarah who also bought me new RAM for my slow computer. It faster now.



I was also given a new watch band, and a fishing pole that I was allowed to have earlier in the summer. My parents took me to dinner on Friday.They gave me a new blouse and bucket of food storage. They know me well.
I've had some special attention; Joe fixed me breakfast on Thursday. My grand daughters colored pictures for me and my children have been so nice.

My last comment is about how the rest of our 4th of July went. As you'll see on my previous post, Sarah and I went fishing in the morning.
Later she joined her dad and me on a walk in the Dimple Dell park area. In the middle of the day this is a hot and rugged gulch. It has some horse trails and a stream that runs through it. Usually we go there in the evening when it's cooler. I've never attempted it in the afternoon before and I think I never will again. Our walk was a bigger workout than I'd anticipated and it felt like a hundred degrees down there.
Sarah and her dad were getting ahead of me once in awhile and would have to wait for me to catch up. I may be a little slow, but I do keep going.



We all stayed up late and had fun cooking and visiting in the kitchen.
That's it for now.

4th of July

Happy 4th of July. Sarah and I left the house at about 10:00 a.m. to go fishing while her dad stayed home to fix a hose (his choice). By about 10:45 we were out on the dock.
We should have known better than to go to such a local spot on the 4th. There was a mob of people up there because of a HUGE church party. We also got caught in their parade later when we tried to leave. There's a narrow one way road that loops around at the end of the road and that's where the parade was happening; I have to say it was stressful for those of us not involved because it's the only way out. There were dozens of other cars in the same predicament. So much for trying to relax!

Anyway, back to the beginning of this exciting story; when we got to our dock, Sarah pulled her book out. Once I saw fish swimming out from under the dock, she got interested and gave the fishing a try.



The people on the other side of this mountain pond where pulling out lots of fish. It got rather annoying to hear the frequent shouts, cheers and laughter with every success. We would have gone over there, but that dock was full up with happy anglers.
Our dock was undoubtedly cursed. Either that, or it may have been all of the cute but very noisy children surrounding us.


There were lots of people and small children. Then it turned cold when the sun went behind some clouds. With all of this we didn't stay very long and determined to come back on Wednesday or Thursday morning when we will have the place more or less to ourselves.





We did get to watch a hawk dive for fish. He caught two! There are always ducks around there and we had the added bonus of seeing a deer on the way home. Sometimes we've seen moose in the area but with all the people in the hills today I'm sure most of the animals were hiding.



I don't know what the rest of the day will bring. I may go for a walk since fishing doesn't give me any exercise. It just gets me out of the house.
For good measure, here's the baking I did yesterday. I've been making all of our bread for awhile now. On average I make 6 loaves of bread each week and maybe some cookies or pie besides that.

I hope everyone is having a nice weekend. I try to focus on the things about our country that I'm grateful for. To think to hard about some of the questionable things going on in our government I'd just get sad.