Canada Trip

Well I guess it's about time I write about my fabulous trip to Canada. The fun started when I walked in the front door. Literally. I walked in the front door and went straight into the laundry room to help my mom's dog deliver puppies.

I spent the afternoon helping my dad figure out how to work his iPad, and then spent over an hour that evening climbing through trees to get the chickens out and into their coups. Apparently the rooster who sleeps outside in the trees convinced some of the hens that it's really not so bad outside at night. Cue mink attack...


Originally I was going to help my mom plant her garden as a Christmas present, but our trip to Europe just happened to be at the same time (I promise it wasn't planned).  So instead I helped out with odd jobs that needed to get done. These included using the excavator to load up the truck with manure and then spreading it on the flower gardens, spreading gravel all over the driveway, cleaning out the greenhouse (and disposing of all the dead mice/rats), cleaning the house, weed whacking the turkey pen, cutting down trees to make a fence, and rototilling the garden. There's no place like home :)


 

The garden before rototilling 

(I forgot to take a picture of the whole garden beforehand)

After rototilling

We had to go through three cycles of about 15-20 passes up and down each row

Clearing rocks and brush so my mom could plant wildflowers

Apparently I've become really soft living in the city because I kept getting hurt. My foot was a big target; first I had a sharp stick go right through my shoe while I was weedwhacking the turkey pen, and then when we were cutting down trees to make a fence, I stepped on a nail that went right into the bottom of my foot. I had several finger pinchings and squishings throughout the trip as well.


But despite the work (which I loved - it was so great to be outside in nature again) and the pain (which I could have done without), there were a lot of other great things that happened during my stay.

I got to feed little lambs

I went hiking with my parents and my sister Jessica

My mom had an Easter egg hunt for Marvin and me



I won :)



What could be a better hiding place for an egg...


I went to start a fire and found a bird in the fireplace



I gave my dog Kita a bath and then had to cover her with paste to help her skin



I learned how to change the oil and filter in the car



My parents took me to see "The Hunger Games" after I read all of the books in three days




I had fabulous family get-togethers with all different sides of my family. I spent Easter with the Avis side, and my brother and I did some bunny jousting.

Naturally, I'm the better jouster.

 My bunny

Nick's bunny.

I spent my birthday with my siblings and relatives on the Orth side. Nick, Kirk, and I introduced a couple of our Aunts to the game BANG.

I went to dinner at my Aunt Kathy's and got to play with my cousin Jackie's ridiculously cute kids.

Baby Rose
Photo courtesy of thefamilykeyes.blogspot.com



Will
Photo courtesy of thefamilykeyes.blogspot.com

I visited my grandma Stockli and her adorable cat Jack

Sooo cute!

I got to spend a day with my best friend Rosie. 

We went for a hike





...and climbed on trees

My mom made some delicious home made chocolate ice cream (the best home-made ice cream I have ever tasted...way to go mom!) It tasted like soft-serve fudgsicles.

AND I GOT TO RIDE A HORSE!

Not that jerk horse my parents used to have. A nice sweet little mare my mom is going to get.

We went to a horse auction a riding school was having because the owners were retiring. It was a neat experience but took way too long, so we had to leave before the horses were auctioned off. Luckily though, one of the horses was purchased by a lady that had owned her previously and who had only bought her so she could make sure she would go to a good home. Well, that good home just happened to be my parents. A little gallop on her, and now I am back into riding again. In fact, my mom got me riding lessons as a graduation present. I AM SO EXCITED!

It was a great trip, and I was sad to leave. I can't wait to go back again.

Yonanas

So I have this issue where I can't eat a banana after it becomes spotted. A few spots are passable, as long as the banana is to be used in cereal or something else where the ripened taste is somewhat masked. To me, the perfect banana is one that has only just turned yellow and still has a slight tinge of green. Yum. Sadly, this stage in the banana life cycle only lasts maybe a day or two, so what do I do with all the rejects? I do what my mother always taught me: put them in the freezer to be used for banana bread. Although for some reason they never seem to make it to the banana bread stage and so now I just have this:

(there were over 20 bananas) 

One day we were at Craig and Marilyn's place and Michael told them of my embarrassing habit. So what did I find for my birthday when I came home from our Utah trip?

It's "ice cream" made from frozen bananas. How awesome is that!

I was so surprised at how well it worked. All I added were frozen bananas and raspberries and it turned out to be delicious. I was surprised how much like ice cream/frozen yogurt the texture was. I recommend it.

In case that didn't sell you, here is a pretty awesome add. Our favorite was the ending.

Baptism

(Michael) - I had the great privilege of being a witness for my namesake nephew last week.  It was a wonderful event and reminded me of the fun one-on-one time I got to spend with him picking blueberries at our New York family reunion many years ago.  Maybe this is one of the reasons I'm so fond of our blueberry bushes....

Belated Christmas Present

For Christmas Michael got me a trip to Los Angeles to see the Iris Cirque du Soleil.

 Let me just say that I was so excited! I have been wanting to see a Cirque performance for a long long time (and not just because my middle name is Soleil). We had originally scheduled the trip for the end of January, but of course the day after we purchased the tickets Michael got called away to Taiwan. So here we are three months later - yay for extended Christmas.  

We knew traffic would be bad in L.A. on a Friday evening so we attempted to leave early (1pm) in order to avoid it... apparently we didn't leave early enough as it still took us four hours to get to the hotel. No worries though, we grabbed a quick bite to eat and then headed to the Kodak Theater.

It was super fancy

The show was even better than what the preview made it seem like. Our favorite part was when they would film some of the performers as they were moving and have it show up on a screen behind them with a lag so that it looked like there were a dozen people doing the same thing only each a second after one another. I also really enjoyed when they would fly out over the audience. The whole show just leaves you in awe at what some people can do.

On the way home we were walking along looking at all the stars on the sidewalk when we came across this one...

Michael loathes Nicolas Cage more than anyone, so naturally we had to take a picture of them together.

We tried using the timer to get a shot of us together, but it just wasn't working out so we had to resort to the usual arm reach.

It was a great weekend!

In other news, we woke up Sunday morning to a tragedy.  

One of our beloved blueberry bushes had fallen off the ledge. Imagine our surprise when we looked at our balcony and only saw two bushes.

Luckily the bush (and the majority of blueberries) survived and only the pot was cracked. 

Michael was devastated.

Naturally, Lily was our first suspect. Michael often cares more about the welfare of the blueberries than Lily and so the tragedy may have been a result of jealousy. For example, during the last storm Michael was worried about the blueberries either falling over the side or "getting too cold" and so he tenderly brought them into our bathtub for the night. Meanwhile, he threw Lily outside to "see what she would do." 

Lily handled our questions well and pretended not to know about the incident, but we'll be keeping a better eye out from now on...

Done!

A little more than a year and a half, 15 classes, an internship, and 8 surprise credits later and I am finally finished my undergraduate degree. Hooray!

Whew

Might I advise everyone to avoid independent study at all costs; unless, of course, you have abnormal amounts of self-discipline.  I'm sure the question many of you will ask next time I see you is, "now what?"

Well, first I am going to Canada to fulfill my duties as an indentured servant, after which I will be travelling to Utah for the graduation ceremony and to visit friends. Next Michael and I will be travelling to Europe to spend a few weeks taunting the Queen's Guards, traversing the castles of Ireland, and exploring the McPhie roots on the island of Colonsay in Scotland. And after that, well, you'll just have to keep following our blog posts :)

In other graduation news... 

Lily no longer wakes us up in the middle of the night after we have visitors. We are so proud .

Oh and look at this cute gift Alan and Allison got me for graduating.

Adorable, I know. 

Well my parents came for another visit - which means we definitely have some stories :)

The first of them being that it took my parents over a week to travel what should have taken two days. The transmission in their RV broke down and by the time they made it down to San Diego they had spent 10 hours to travel from LA to our apartment. But they eventually made it and they didn't blow up, so that was good news. 

Michael and I were both really busy with school so my parents spent a lot of time doing their own thing (the good thing about owning an RV and having a daughter and son-in-law with an extra vehicle I suppose). When they were around though, they taught us several valuable lessons.

Lesson 1: How to fix your garburator (or garbage disposal for those of you who don't speak Canadian). 

Our garburator had stopped working a day or two before they showed up and of course rather than calling maintenance my dad said he would fix it. Several globs of black goo, a repulsive smell, and a few wrench turns later and voila, our garburator was fixed. Apparently a sharp blade had somehow gotten into the system.... 

Lesson 2: If your dryer doesn't work, check the lint filter.

 

We bought our washer and dryer off craigslist for $150 and of course we were expecting a few quirks (hence the timer-run dryer), but for some reason it would take FOREVER for our clothes to dry; I am talking like an hour and a half to two hours. I told this to my mother when she went to do a load of their laundry and within one minute she had found the problem: we had never thought to check the filter and remove the lint from the previous loads. Sadly the picture above is after we had thrown away the two inch thing of lint that coated the filter, because it was a sight to see. 

Disclaimer: Just so I don't come off as completely lacking in common sense, I had known about cleaning the filter in the dryer after every load but on all previous dryers I've dealt with the filter was inside the door and for some reason it just didn't click for me with this dryer. It could be the fact that I had expected something like this from a craigslist dryer and so thought the problem would be more complicated. 

Lesson 3: Lots of plants go dormant in the winter - they aren't dead and you don't need new ones.

Apparently I didn't pay very good attention as a child. Our strawberries weren't looking too good and I figured they had died because we hadn't been taking care of them. A few moments with my mom and they were cleaned up and had a fresh layer of soil on top. Not only did she fix the strawberries, but she went through each of the plants in our little deck garden and afterwards they all looked much happier. You saw the blueberries; talk about a green thumb.

On top of all this they fixed the giant chip in our sink, helped cook dinner, did the dishes, cleaned, and helped with countless other little things on our to-do list including taking our Honda in for a re-call. Oh the joy of having parents around, and the wisdom that comes with age...or common sense. 

I want to give a special shout out to my mom for helping in the kitchen. It is so nice to make a meal and then have the mess disappearing as you're going along. The end result is much more satisfying when there isn't a pile of dishes waiting for you attention. Can I hire you permanently? I'll let you sleep with Lily in the living room!

Other highlights from their trip:

-We had a good time with Michael's parents at Souplantation

-We had the missionaries over for dinner on Sunday and topped our record for most people in our apartment at one time (7). I don't think we will be doing that again anytime soon. 

-We went to Costco and part of the store didn't have power and so we missed out on 4 samples

- We helped my dad purchase an iPad 2 from craigslist and fixed his computer (see, it's a symbiotic relationship; they help us with hands-on problems and we help them with technological issues).

-my mom went to the pool thinking I was going to do homework (which I was), but my dad and I ended up watching a movie. Mom if you're reading this I was still doing homework while watching the movie and I did well on my exam the next day :)

All in all another fun trip. It's always a joy to see one's family, especially when they live so far away. Thanks for the great visit guys!

In other news.....

For Valentine's day Michael and I went out to eat (we actually went several days before since we had cub scouts on the real Valentine's Day). We decided to go to Outback Steakhouse because we really like their mushrooms and garlic mashed potatoes. 

We also love the hot bread and butter which was gone before we could take a picture.

And despite telling ourselves several times that we were not allowed to start eating before we took a picture of our food we still somehow managed to forget, so this is all we have:

Valentine's day this year was much more of a success this year as we didn't spend the majority of the evening apart. My wonderful husband got me a beautiful mini bush of azaleas which is better than a bouquet of flowers because it keeps on living! He also got me a package of hot links; the man sure knows the key to my heart.

Oh, and he also made me these delicious chocolate covered cheesecake strawberries. YUM.