Valentine's

I had to put out my decorations for zone leader council.  It makes

everything more fun, at least for me.

I definitely will go through my things when I get back home.

I really need to cut back.  I have plenty of things up here and boxes

and boxes of more back home.  Time to downsize and classy things up.

I do love my aprons, those I will keep.

Can you see anything different in the above two pictures?

Look closely.

I had a little mischievous hobgoblin, that kept turning my sign upside

down, any idea who that might be, Chris?  I'd fix it, then in a day or

two, it would be upside down again, so funny.

I found the cute ruffled cookie cutter this year and had to buy it.

I must have really liked it because I found two just like it when I

unpacked my decorations this year, oops!

This is my new purchase this year, isn't he cute,

it just screams, Bee Mine!

Fridge magnets, makes me want to write poetry.

I purchased these darling red plates last year, so cute.  

Haven't even unwrapped them yet.

Ahhh, isn't love grand!s

District Meeting

Happy Valentine's Day.   We spent the morning at a district

meeting, with a few of our elders.

They even remembered on the board.

It was a great meeting, very organized and with a lot of participation.

I learned how to play Book of Mormon baseball.  Pitch, swing, hit.

And of course, I brought donuts, valentine donuts, kind of.  See the 

heart ones on the left, that's all they had available when we drove 

through the Tim Horton's drive though on the way to the meeting.

After the meeting, Chris took me to lunch for Valentine's, we went to

Red Robin, trying to be careful where we eat.  We both got the Baja chicken

 platter, very good on calories, comparatively.  It comes with two seasoned 

chicken breasts and a salad, I could only eat half, so I'll save 

the other half for tomorrow and only have to count half the calories. Yeah!

Really?

Read this, and then I will explain.

This was posted on the outside of the door of our assistants room,

at the mission office.  Yes, it is truly week 6 and they are training a new

assistant and they want to avoid rumors and speculation, so they keep

all the visiting missionaries at bay.  We were there to sign papers

and they were keeping the new assistant behind the door.  So funny!

Only missionaries will appreciate the real humor in this.

A Visit With Grandma

Brad has class on Thursday evenings, so Heather will occasionally

stop in and visit with Grandma on her way home from work.

Heather took a picture of the new shelf Bart built for Mom

for Christmas, he put it up and everything.  The pictures

fit very nicely.

They talked for more than 4 hours.  Mom had frozen dough

thawing out for supper, she kind of missed supper because

of their visit.  The dough had thawed and started to raise.

Heather said Mom found this very funny.  She laughed and laughed.

I'm very grateful when the kids take the time to go and visit my mom.

The Yukon

On my way to South Edmonton Common today, I came across

this car with a license plate from the Yukon.  They are a long way 

from home.  The Yukon is what's known as the "real" great white north.

Cool huh?

Temple Day

I love mission temple days.  We get four a year and I look

forward to each one.  It's a special day to spend the morning

in a session with our missionaries.   The temple opens just 

for us for a special 8:00 AM endowment session.  The room

is filled with elders and sisters only.  We had one senior couple,

ten sisters and the rest of the room was full of elders, about 36 of them.

I like to take pictures between the 8:00 session and the 11:00 one.

Elder Mann and Elder Coe

Our Sherwood Park elders,  Elder Groskreutz, Elder Ganley, 

Elder Taylor, Elder Jones and Elder Boatman

This is the first group that left the temple.

And this is the next group waiting to go in.

I wanted to show how cold it was, you could see your breath, so

I told them to blow, they look like they're blowing out a fire.

Then I explained what I was doing, they did it a little more carefully,

but you still can't see the breath, oh well.

Some of our sweet sisters,

Sister Nash, Sister Siu, Sister Kuroki and Sister Holyoak.

Elder Scarlett tried to sneak in on the sisters picture.  See his

thumbs up and his pretty bag.

The sisters, without Elder Scarlett,

Sister Bunker, Sister Atkinson, Sister West and Sister Williams.

I enjoy going to the 8:00 session with President and then I stick

around and go through the second session at 11:00 with the rest

of our missionaries.  They don't have enough room for all of the city 

missionaries in one session, so they let the rest of them come and attend

the 11:00 session.  Being here, makes my day.

Happy Birthday, AP's

We are heading into another transfer next week, and while the assistants

were here for the last meeting to finalize transfers, I checked on their

profiles to see when their birthdays are.  I'm so glad I did, Elder Fitzgerald's

is on Friday and Elder Paulson's just happens to be one week later.

I like to fix them dinner if their birthdays happen to be while they are

serving as assistants.  This worked out so perfectly.  They have an opening

in their dinner calendar, Monday night, tonight.  Works for me.

They had to decide on the dinner menu together.  They didn't hesitate

very long, they both agreed on Mexican food.  So I fixed enchiladas,

beef and pork, with green enchilada sauce, my favorite.

It was easy to put sides with it, chips and salsa, guacamole, jalapenos,

 chopped tomatoes, fresh lime and cilantro.

The table looked very nice.

I even made orange julius' with orange slices as decorations.

I did let them each choose their own dessert.  Elder Paulson 

requested my homemade Oreos, he loves my Oreos.

That makes me sooo happy.

Elder Fitzgerald loves cheesecake, so I got brave and made a real

live homemade Cheesecake Factory cheesecake.  It turned out 

beautifully, taste wise anyway, wasn't perfect looking, but not bad.

I would definitely make this one again.  It's a keeper.

I think they enjoyed their dinner.  Then we lit the candles, sang 

 "Happy Birthday", they blew out the candles and we all had dessert.  Yum!