Trantulas and Tid-Bits

 I hope this week's post doesn't bore you too much!

Becca has been coming hiking with me more. Though I don't think they are indigenous to this area and I've never seen one on a hike before, we spotted this big hairy fellow this past Monday. Becca was already able to hike for longer on Friday than she was on Monday. 

Fall is my favorite season here in Utah Valley.

We took our new friends/neighbors, the Somsons, out on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, where we often hike. Shortly after this picture was taken, the factory below that makes clay pigeons let out a shot. This spooked the Somsons' dog, the black lab above, who ran like a bullet back the way we came. We figured that he'd come looking for us after a few minutes but he didn't. We then spent the next two hours looking for him all over the mountain and in the neighborhood below. Someone found him and, the next day, called the number of the veterinarian who had given him his last round of shots. 

Our lives are full of other little tid-bits: I finished Hugh Nibely's second book "Enoch the Prophet" today; Becca got to milk a cow for the first time; I was called as a choir director at church and will be having a lot of fun with that; Becca tried to color her hair orange/red with carrots and cranberries; I've been more active in the BYU Management Society and got to hear a speech from the guy who first helped promote Stephen R. Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People;" Becca has been looking all over for the right fabric to make Mariah's baptismal dress. Such is our life.

Weight-Loss, Autumn Leaves and Concord Grape Juice

This is Becca's second Sunday helping a friend at a farm. She's holding a four-day-old calf in this picture. Becca really loves interacting with the animals. She also gets to bring home milk fresh from the cow.

She's also really enjoyed responding to adds on the internet from people trying to give away excess produce. This is an enormous banana squash that she came home with the other day. So far she's used an eighth of it to make six loaves of banana squash bread. We've already given a couple of loaves away.

Becca has also picked lots of pears and grapes. She borrowed a big juicer from a friend at church and has made many jars of apple and grape juice. She also made pear sauce, which is a lot like apple sauce. I'm not sure why the apple juice came out in different colors.

I hiked to the peak of Provo Mountain again. It was my third time since we moved here in late March. As you can see, I brought Lucy along. I was a little concerned about taking a chihuahua/pug mutt on such a long hike but she did great.

We took four short breaks and did the whole hike in about three hours. I remember the first time taking about four hours and the second taking longer. I looked up the length of the hike on Google: 3.2 miles one way. That's much shorter than what I had originally calculated but it's still a good hike and I'm glad I was able to do it in a shorter time.

One of the things I like about living in Utah Valley is the four distinct seasons. These pictures are all from my hike on Saturday.

In addition to a hundred lizards and grasshoppers I saw two deer on this hike. They took off before I could get a picture.

When Garit and I did the hike in May this mountain you see here was covered in snow.

I've been stuck in my weight-loss. I'm still about ten pounds away from my goal. Becca was going through some old pictures and found two that she put side by side in a single image for me. One is from a month or two ago and the other was taken at Garit and Lorena's wedding, about a year ago. I don't know if I will put this picture on Facebook but I am proud of the progress I have made. Now I need to hunker down and lose those last ten pounds to hit my goal!

Starting Out Fall On the Right Foot

I opened one of my basement office windows to let some air in. The window opens up into the backyard, where the kitten was. She climbed from the window into the space between the broken ceiling tiles and the ground floor. Luckily for me it wasn't hard to get her out of there.

Grandma and Grandpa Boothe went to Grandma's high school reunion and came down to Utah county to see us.

Garit's carrying a bag of tomatoes. We've had a million this year! I'm actually starting to get tired of eating salsa. There's one for my journal! I must say though, I've just made a very tasty batch today that I'll be taking over to Dad and Penny's.

Penny made some great chicken enchiladas and Becca made a wonderful apple pie, with apples from our tree of course. We also had fun playing Apples to Apples; Grandma Leota won quite handily.

Garit and Lorena left a little early to go to Lorena's office party. She was hoping to win a dessert contest with a cheese cake she made. I'll have to ask her about that. We were happy that my cousin Shauna was able to come down and visit us and share some dessert.

Our new neighbor, Juliana, moved from Brazil to our culdesac only a week ago. Becca has been a very good neighbor, making her Brazilian cheese bread and passion fruit pudding. In this picture, she's taught Juliana how to make a classic American apple pie. Juliana has made us a tasty soup and has promised to teach Becca to make a special pineapple pastry.
 

If you squint really hard you can see Dad and Penny's condo in the background. We went hiking on Friday and it was very nice.

Another highlight from this week was getting together with a few of Becca's old massage school classmates. Jesse, in the middle, came out from Oregon to visit so we all got together for an evening. It's fun to reunite with family and friends.

Cakes, Tomatoes and Salt Lake

I hope you are all feeling rested after your three day weekend.

Becca and I invited Dad, Garit and Lorena over to our house for dessert on Sunday night. Becca made the cake you see above just for this occasion. It was delicious! So were the cookies that Dad brought over. We've been making lots of food lately and giving a lot of it away to family and friends. Becca has made TONS of apple sauce and several apple crisps.

I go out and pick tomatoes every morning while I water them. Since the bugs tend to get them once they ripen, I have begun to pick them when they are just about ripe. I take them in the house and pile them underneath the ripe ones that I use for making salsas and picos de gallo.

This last batch that I made here will burn your mouth off. I've been having fun experimenting with different chilli peppers. I've used arbol, huajillo, California and morita chillis. This last batch was with morita chillis. Moritas give a great smokey taste but they are spicy and didn't need much help from the six arbol chillis I stuck in as well.

Becca and I wanted a change of scenery yesterday so we decided to spend Labor Day in Salt Lake. We walked around the mall and the gardens on and around Temple Square.

We realized that we had mentioned taking a tour of the Conference Center several times but we had never done it. I've attended several conference sessions and Christmas and Easter programs in the Conference Center since 2004 but I was always in a rush to get to my seat and never had much time to look around. We decided to take a tour.

The general assembly hall looks big with 20,000+ people in it but it looks even bigger when it's empty.  It's the only assembly hall of its kind in the world with amazing acoustics, two stories underground and no support beams obstructing people's view. The organ has thousands of individual pieces. I learned that, when they use the hall for cultural and other religious events, they take out the stands and chairs in front and cover the organ with a screen. The pulpit is hydraulically lowered under the stage.

The most significant part of the tour for me was seeing so many original paintings. I didn't take very many good pictures of them, sadly but this one, above, came out okay. I have been moved by the story of Abinadi ever since about 2001 when I realized how significant he became in Nephite history, despite the fact that he died without any indication of success. I think that he is a shining example of integrity and submission to God.

Both the painting of Abinadi and the one of George Washington were done by Arnold Friberg. What I learned on the tour was that there was not much art work done depicting scenes from the Book of Mormon so the General Primary President of the Church commissioned Arnold Friberg to make paintings of Book of Mormon scenes for $1,000 a painting. She paid for them out of pocket but died before they were completed. These paintings teach and inspire people all over the world and I am grateful to that sister for making such a sacrifice.

I have seen hundreds of reproductions of this painting and had no idea that it was originally a mural!

Latter-Day Saints love this painting and use it often. Many assume it was done by an LDS painter (like most of the art work we use) but it was actually made by the Seventh-Day Adventist painter Harry Anderson. Again, I've seen this painting reproduced hundreds of times and it was really cool to see the original.

This was one of my lousy shots but I decided to include it anyway. The inscription says, And this Gospel shall be preached unto every nation, and kindred, and tongue and people. I love the universality of Christianity. I love belonging to a world-wide church. I truly believe that Christ's teachings are for everyone.