Seattle & Portland

I (Pat) made a quick trip to Seattle and Portland to attend the wedding of my niece, Janet Bell. Flew in on Friday, and went down to Alki to a great/famous fish & chips place on Alki Beach, Spud's. It sits right on Puget Sound, and the view is incredible. Needless to say, it makes one wonder how they could possibly leave all that green and water and move to the desert, but... I drove down to Portland with Rich and Sharon on Saturday, met up with my brother, Paul and friend Cherie, Maile and Cannon, Barb and Keith. We helped at the wedding with the food (what else!!) and had a great time. I didn't get photos of the wedding, but Maile promised to share hers. The wedding was held at the Columbia Arts Center which is an old church with beautiful stained glass windows. Janet was a gorgeous bride, and it was so much fun getting reacquainted with Phil and Karen's kids! Here are photos of one of my favorite things--a Washington State ferry, and my view from the window of my hotel, the Downtown Portland Marriott which sits on the Wilamette River!

Thanksgiving in Indiana

Yup, that's the plan for this year. Here is a picture of Pat booking our flight. It is all reserved and everything. Can't wait to have Goulish, Potatoes with Green Beans and all that other good stuff G'ma Ray makes. (of course we will all help fix it).

You'd Think I'd Learn - Tomatoes Galore

In the Spring, those little tiny tomato plants look so small, I just can't bear planting 3 plants. After all, they come in a 6 pack. So, I plant the scrawny little plants and pamper them, and low and behold, one day, they are HUGE. They are producing more tomatoes than we can use. A new bunch ripens every day!

Anyone have a good Salsa recipe? Or other recipes to use up lots of tomatoes.

By the way, tomato sandwiches are great. Toast the bread, spread with lots of peanut butter and slap big slices of tomatoes on the bread. YUMMY

Ward Campout

Well, we survived another Ward Campout. Just barely. Phew, lots of work! We still need to clean all the coolers and deliver back to their owners yet, but we ran out of steam.

We didn't have as many people there this year as last, but it was a nice turn out. We finished up dinner, had our "no-talent talent show" (where I tore a phone book in half), then gathered around the campfire for singing. Just got the fire going good when a big lightning and thunder crash resounded through the mountains. About 3 minutes later it was pouring rain. Needless to say, that ended the evening. We sat in our tent with some friends (Debbie Sutter and Paul Shumsky). I work with Debbie at VZWireless. Even though they are not members, they fit right in and had a wonderful time. Paul even played his guitar and sang during the talent show.

Breakfast was French Toast with Ham. It was very tasty!

Then we cleaned up and came home.

Too much work for an overnight event.

We had scones for Friday night's dinner. We had LOTS of scone dough left over, we we came home and made two BIG batches of Cinnamon Rolls. Hence the picture. Looks good huh...

The other picture is of me making 15 gallons of rootbeer. That was a big hit!

PS. The canned chili was "OK", not as good as the origional batch. Because we didn't have as many people as anticipated, guess what we are having next year.... Yup, canned chili!!

The Chili Saga - Update !

Ok, so what do you do with 20 + gallons of chili??? We put it in big pots and gallon zip lock bags, then put it in the down stairs fridge. I must say the fridge was full of very warm chili. Luckly, yesterday I went down to the fridge to see how things were and I tasted it. YUCK! I guess it had taken too long to cool down and it went sour.

So we smiled, and went to Costco and bought chili in cans (at our own expense of course). Couldn't have the ward pay for chili twice.

Didn't know what to do with the 20+ gallons of yucky chili, so we ended up putting in down the garbage disposal. I can only image what the little man at the Sewage Treatment Plant thought as he saw all that ground up brown stuff that didn't smell so good come shooting out into the holding pond. I'll bet he thought some poor fellow has really got an issue!

Delene, we will take your advise and assign people to do the chili next year. That is if they still allow us to be the ward activities chairpersons.

That's all I have to say about that!

Suprise Project

Pat's is madly working on a project so she can get it finished in time !!!!!!!!???????

Chili for 250

Next weekend is our Ward Campout, and Pat and I are the Activities Chairpersons, so we went shopping at Costco today and got stuff to make Chili. Boy did I ever have fun. I got this huge pot from downstairs and mixed up all the stuff, and it wasn't big enough so we had to use the roaster too. I thought I was all done, then found 24 more cans of beans I had forgot to put in.

I had to stand on a stool so I could reach down into the pot to stir it.

Check out all the cans I had to open. We don't have an electric can opener so I had to do it all by hand... wah wah wah!

Now we have it all made, not sure what we are going to do with it until next Saturday. Anyone have any freezer space???

Can you only imagine what that campsite will smell like after all this Chili? I am just thankful Mike and Curtis will not be there. Phew!!!

Albq. NM

I survived a week in New Mexico. It wasn't that hot which was good. It rained one day very heavy which cooled things down. I can't say I had fun, but we did get a lot of staffing done. Most everyone I was working with lived there, so at night, they went home and I didn't have anyone to play with.... Poor me.

I ate at a cool Italian restraunt (It felt wierd eating out all by yourself). The food was VERY good. I had chicken over pasta with artichoke hearts, mushrooms, and capers. It was covered with a creamy lemon sauce. It was so good, I went back there the next night and had exactly the same thing!

The hotel I stayed in wasn't that great. The carpet was black and brown, the drapes and cover on the bed was dark brown suide material. There were two lamps in the room with low wattage bulbs. The decor of the room just seemed to absorb all the light, and the room stayed dark.

The bed was good, but the sheets kept coming off the bed corners, so by morning, the bed was a real mess.

The room was not cleaned very good each day. For example, the soap in the dish in the tub did not drain the water away, so water stayed in it. The maid did not take the soap out of there, so when I got home, the soap had been soaking all day, and was just like jello. Yucki.

Also, the tub did not drain well. You would take a shower and you would have shower water up to your ankles. One night I came home after work and the maid had not cleaned the tub out. There was still scum from my shampoo in the tub.

And, the maid made a phone call on my room phone, and they tried to charge me .75 for the local call. I told them I did not make the call as I was at work. They did not charge me for the .75

I did not leave a tip.

That was my trip to Alb. I didn't even take a picture even though I had my camera.