The Haggard Herald

Since I haven't blogged much the past few months, here is a photo post to make up for it.  Included are pictures from Halloween weekend when Mom and Dad came to visit, our trip to Manti for Thanksgiving with Grandma Carbine, our trip to Florida for Gramma Meyers' birthday, putting up the Christmas village, and Christmas day.  I wish I had taken more pictures when Mom and Dad were here.  We drove the Nebo scenic loop with them and also took them to the sand dunes.  That was a fun day. Here is our Christmas village.   Road trip to Manti.   This was at Gramma Meyers' birthday party in Florida.    What a great face!  I accidentally backed out of the garage a little too fast one day.  It was a terrible day all around and by the late afternoon everything was funny.  Matt helped me laugh about this one in particular.  And he fixed it for me himself for $50.   When we...

To whomever is up for a good challenge: I need a picture of a bunch of fruit in the foreground and then some delicious kind of dessert in the background (I'm thinking maybe a slice of chocolate cake or something similar to it).  I need it for an art project.  The look I am going for is "fruits and vegetables before sweets."  It's for Matt, so shhh!!!

...can I still print them and send them?  Sometimes my great intentions and plans don't fully come to fruition in the time that I want them too... Click here to see one version of it.

It's a love/hate relationship I have with dinnertime.  I love to cook but don't always love coming up with something that sounds good to eat and that I can make in time.  I've tried planning out meals for a week or even just several days at a time.   The last time I planned meals, I planned to make scalloped potatoes with ham and pineapple the next day.  After putting it off for a week and coming home wanting to cook something fast, I ended up heating the ham in the broiler and mashing the pototoes instead of scalloping them and letting them bake  for 90 minutes.   Tonight, I am thinking one of the following:  http://yumbb.com/?p=402  or  htt p://yumbb.com/?p=389 .   Hopefully Matt is alright with soup.  :) 

One of Matt's fond holiday memories is coming home from school and being greeted by the sweet smell of his mom's (Grandma Haggard recipe) wassail.  So I asked Melory for the recipe last week and Matt and I made it yesterday.  It is delicious! It was particularly welcome since I've had a cold all week.  I have a new appreciation for warm drinks. Here you go: 2 cups pineapple juice 12 oz apricot juice (nectar) 4 cups apple juice or cider 1 cup orange juice 1 six inch whole cinnamon stick 1 teaspon whole cloves 1/4 teaspoon cardamon seeds (I forgot to buy these and so ours yesterday didn't have it) Combine in pan.  Heat to boiling.  Reduce to simmer for 15 minutes.  Strain.  Garnish with orange and cloves (whole). OR Put it in a crockpot on high for about 30 minutes and then turn down to warm.  (This is what I did yesterday and what Matt remembers his mom doing.  We drank it all day.)

Matt and I made several goals of things we wanted to change around the house.  Among them were getting the fireplace in usable condition (having it cleaned and inspected, getting a chimney cap that we didn't know we needed, and having the gas line sealed off) and replacing the carpet in the second spare bedroom/study.  We had the carpet cleaned twice and that room still smells like Rio, the little doggy that previously lived here. So, the chimney has been cleaned and inspected but we still  need to get the gas line checked out.  But yesterday Matt and I went to a local carpet retailer and finally picked out new carpet for the "stincky" room, as we've begun calling it.  It will be installed Thursday morning, just in time for visitors!  Actually, Mom will already be here, but Dad doesn't arrive until Friday afternoon. So last night Matt and I started ripping out the existing carpet and pad so that we can clean and/or seal the floor before the new carpet i...

General Conference is a two-day conference that is broadcast from the conference center at Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Utah.  It takes place twice a year and the purpose is to listen to the messages of the prophet and apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.   The most recent conference was a few weeks ago.   A video of highlights is available here (16 minutes long).    These messages were meaningful and instructive for me.  One talk was about studying the scriptures; here is an excerpt from the full talk .  It was given by one of the apostles (Richard G. Scott):   " The scriptures provide the strength of authority to our declarations when they are cited correctly. They can become stalwart friends that are not limited by geography or calendar. They are always available when needed. Their use provides a foundation of truth that can be awakened by the Holy Ghost. Learning, pondering, searching, and memorizi...

I was reading the Book of Mormon today and felt a renewed assurance that this book was written by prophets of God and that its focus is to bring people closer to Jesus Christ.  I was reading in 2 Nephi 26 , specifically I was thinking more about the last 15 verses or so and how the gospel of Christ teaches people to be humble and not put themselves above or below other people and also to trust first in God more than anyone else.   I thought back to high school because I remember one of my peers saying that his minister had passed out pamphlets about Mormons (which I assume was mostly negative).  Between the brief exchange of words and the look on my peer's face I could tell he thought something to the effect of: I know all about what you believe and its crazy and bad and how can you go to that church?   I think if I were to have a second chance at that conversation, I would have asked that boy a few questions.  (1) Does your minister teach you to seek f...

I haven't thought of much to blog about recently because I can't think of very much that is out of the ordinary lately. So here are a few thoughts or insights I've had that, although are sort of run-of-the-mill, will perhaps be enjoyable to read. 1. I was walking to a young women's planning meeting Sunday morning a few weeks ago. I was wearing my favorite swishy Adidas pants and a BYU sweatshirt along with little white ankle socks and my favorite brown mary-jane shoes. Needless to say I didn't match very well but I was comfortable and happy. It was about 60 degrees outside and sunny. Well, the meeting was canceled and so I walked back home, but I had this strange sensation that it was Christmas time. And I realized that for the majority of my life, Christmas to me means 60 degrees and sunny, wearing your comfy cloths. What added to the "Christmas time" delight was that I stopped by a house on my way home and the aroma of bacon and french toast, o...

I was playing around with my camera a couple of weeks ago trying to get some cool stock photos. Matt was playing the piano Sunday morning and I could see the reflection of the trees on the white keys while I was watching him. That's how it all got started. He started playing around with the camera too. Here's some of our best from that day.

We have really, really nice neighbors. We were given almost all of these fruits and vegetables over the weekend (all except the potatoes and bananas that I had bought). The huge zucchini is from our great next door neighbor. She's lived here for 50 years (in the house next to ours). She's an immigrant from Switzerland. She's so pleasant and is a genuinely happy old person. I admire her a lot. I think her zucchini's a little too big to be enjoyed with dinner, but I think it'll still make good zucchini bread. The cucumbers, yellow squash, and green chilis are from our neighbors just behind us. They'll chat with us while we do yard work and they like sharing vegetables with us from their garden. The other squash, zucchini, (some) tomatoes, corn, peaches, and nectarines are from our neighbors across the busy street (not the Schmidts). We don't see them very often because they're in a different ward; but we got to talking several times because Ma...

...has been cut. This is what it looked like before. Oh, by the way, we measured it at the top and it was 5 inches long! It's shaggy but it didn't look 5 inches shaggy. Anyways, here are a couple of before pictures. ...and after pictures... This was taken the next morning after, when he'd showered and made it look nice. He normally gets a two on the sides when he goes to a barber shop, so that's what I did too. But he said that they usually leave it a little bit longer on top. (It was the longest setting I could get with clippers.) Next time I'm going to try using scissors to do the top. Also we talked afterwards about how to blend when you scissor cut the top. It'll probably be six months before I'm aloud to try again, but I'm already looking forward to it.

So, I periodically watch some of the short videos I find on the church website . Today I found this one. It reminds me of Christmas for some reason, maybe its the bells in the background. This might be the most "G" rated music video I've ever seen, and I like it. It's a little funny. I think you'll like it too:

Last Friday, the day I flew back to Utah, Matt and I drove to Manti. I landed at noon and we were on the road again for Manti a few hours later. On our way into town we stopped at the cemetery where Grandpa Carbine and Annie are buried. Matt's Aunt Mimi recently got married and so there was a little reception for her Friday evening. Eli, Matt's 11-year-old cousin, came from southern California (he is the youngest of Jenny's children). The three of us went to dinner Friday night after we'd been at the party for a while. Then on Saturday we went up to "the cabin." Melory's cousin Russ took us up in his Jeep because normal cars can't get up there. It started out as a fun, sort-of-steep dirt road. Then the rocks started showing up, and then ditches that were 5-6 feet wide and 2-3 feet deep (from the water run-off). It was a bumpy ride to say the least, but it was so much fun. Matt, me, Eli, and Mimi sat in the back on the top edge of the sea...

There was exciting news from Matt's family right after I got back from Florida. Can you guess? Yes. A baby. :) While I watched my niece and nephew I thought I'd take a few pictures so that we can remember how big they were when #3 was born.

I wish I had taken pictures more often while I was in Florida, but at least I have a few. It was fun to be together, if only Matt had more vacation time and could have come too. I'm glad I went though, and got to be with Sadie and Jax and Alicia. And I'm glad Alicia got a few long naps while I was there. And I'm glad the J familia and Mike, Sarah, and co. were around to visit with. And I'm really glad I got to help dad clean out my closet and get a great start on cleaning out the third bedroom upstairs. That was fun, Dad. There's something really satisfying about sorting through, cleaning out, and organizing a place that needs all of the above. Hope you enjoy the few pictures I have. I think Kimmy will appreciate them. (Sadie and I got the chalk out one afternoon. We wrote a message for Kimmy, but we didn't take pictures of it until later on when the whole caboodle was there. Hense, we got to have Joseph in our pictures with us. Sadie and Joseph wa...

Did you know Matt has a blog? Some of you do, but I think some may not... here is a link to his most recent post: Matt's blog.

We went on our first camping trip together to the sand dunes, a couple hours southwest of here. I decided not to bring my camera (since we were going to be surrounded by sand). Matt was okay bringing his though. "It's old," he said. But when we tried to use it, the battery was dead. Alas. I was surprised that there were indeed real, legitimate sand dunes so close. You know, the ones that look like this (thanks to David Gilbert Photography). They went on and on quite a ways and then stopped just like this one at the edge of a mountain. Some of the dunes butted right up next to open fields with shrubbery. Why the shrubs stay on one side and the sand pretty much stays on the other, I don't know. But I'd like to find out. We mosied around the dunes after dinner and watched the sunset. We also brought one of our little fabric frisbees and played with that. We returned at night to see the stars and then we went in one more time in the morning before we lef...

...it indeed arrived.