A miraculous blessing

I am now a temple volunteer gardener! Just typing that makes me want to pinch myself. It happened in the most normal way possible. Our ward was asked to provide 3 sisters to help one random Tuesday this month. I quickly signed up. After that day was over the head gardener could see how excited I was to be there and asked if I would be coming again. So, I've been going ever since. It's combining two of my greatest loves - gardening and the temple. This past week I must have "passed the newbie test" because I received an official gardening volunteer t-shirt. I don't think I deserve it, but I am beyond thrilled to have it.

On my first time I learned about the styrofoam they have beneath all the flower beds at the temple. I found that out because I found a lot of it in one of the beds and asked. The next week I found a miniature Daniel Tiger on the south west lawn. They are going to make him a mascot and attach him to the 4 wheeler mule they have. LOL. 

This past Tuesday I just found a whole lot of cigarette butts and a Mountain Dew bottle. I am very vigilant about picking up anything that shouldn't belong on the temple grounds while I am there. I am shocked at how many little pieces of plastic find their way in. It's weird. Anyway.....here are a few fun pictures I've taken over the past three weeks. 

Also, this past week the Linden trees were blooming and they smelled so, so good. I also got to do the thing I've always wanted to do at the gardens - deadhead the peony's and roses. Wahoo! I can't wait to see what I'll be doing next week. I'm really hoping I can work in the north east plaza (every garden bed has a name). I also went underneath the temple to the gardening office. SO COOL!!! They have a giant map of the temple grounds with all the flowers/bushes/trees and sprinklers marked. It's an organized persons dream. I totally felt like a VIP while I was there. I so don't deserve this blessing.

Great Grandma Ramona

Recently, I've been working on a lot of projects related to my maternal great-grandmother. I think I feel an deep connection to her because I knew her, and loved her deeply. She was a great lover of flowers and I think part of the reason I love flowers so much is because of her. A few months ago my great-aunt allowed me to borrow Great-Grandmas recipes. I used my scanner to scan them into my computer. I then uploaded them into FamilySearch so my entire extended family can appreciate and enjoy them. It was such an amazing project to work on. 

I have slowly been trying to making her recipes. It's been a lot of fun. Sometimes steps are skipped or the recipe name is missing. It's always a great adventure to try and figure out if I'm making the recipe correctly. This month I made one, of the many, bread recipes she had. It is such a yummy recipe! I've never known a bread recipe to include molasses, but my neighbor said it's a pretty common ingredient. I guess I'm just ignorant. Anyway, here is the recipe and the finished product. I only wish Great-Gma was here so she could tell me if I made it the right way.

Orderville

I've been working on some family history stuff the past couple of months. My great-aunt let me borrow a bunch of recipes from my Great-Gma Chamberlain. It has been a very sacred experience scanning all of them into the computer and uploading them into familysearch. Before getting the recipes I worked on digitizing audio tapes Great-Gma and Great-Gpa had recorded and also uploading them to familysearch. 

While I was doing these projects I heard some much about the town of Orderville. It's where Great-Gpa was born and raised and where he and Gma raised their kids. In my heart I just knew I needed to go down and visit. It's a 4 hour trip so I made a weekend out of it. Going to this city filled up my heart in a very intense way. It was also delightful to go to the cemetery and visit so many of my Chamberlain ancestors (there are 45 buried here). The funny thing is I also have ancestors here from the Heaton side of the family too. It is a very beautiful tiny town (about 500 people). Next time I would like to visit for even longer. I think Great-Gma must have been smiling and laughing at me while I was there. She was such a wonderful lady that loved genealogy work. 

They have this tiny grocery store there, so I picked up picnic food at ate in the back of my car. It was so much fun.

 

Random May things

 

Luke and I went to visit my Great-Aunt Sherrie. Luke and Uncle John hit it off so well. They were just chatting up a storm while Aunt Sherrie and I were talking. It was so cute to look over there and see them both relaxing in the chairs. 

Baby girl isn't a baby much anymore. She turned 2 years old last week!!! She loves playing with this Lego car. she really enjoys putting the Lego puppies (she loves puppies) and the soccer ball in the car together and zooming around. 

This is why I should clean out the air filter in my lawn mower every year. It was pretty gross.

Caterpillar circles

I will always remember the first part of 2023 as the year of the caterpillar circles. My neighbor is a kindergarten teacher and she needed help with these. For the past 12 weeks I've cut them out. It's been a whole lot of work. I hope the cute kids liked them.

Lagoon~

I decided to take advantage of the discount tickets that My Tech High had for a Lagoon trip. Thankfully the weather cooperated and we had an amazing time there. Because boys are boys I don't have many pictures. However, I did get this one of me and Luke, plus a video of the boys with Papa. I am super glad that we decided to go. 

We all got our hands stamped when going into Lagoon. The next day Luke was excited to see that his was still visible. Luke's favorite ride was the space scrambler. Mine was the Colossus. Peter's said he doesn't know that his favorite ride was. Actually, I don't know is the answer he gives me for most questions. He is such a teenager. 

School's Out!!!

 It has been a hard, hard year. We are all thankful summer vacation is finally here:

Trip to the cemetery in Payson

I've been doing various family history projects - one of which is grandma's recipes. I've discovered a few of my ancestors that are buried in Payson city cemetery. It's amazing to know that Alex has a lot of company down there. Yesterday, I took a map of people that I wanted to find. It's thrilling standing near the headstone of these ancestors that I've read about.

While I was there I also found some of the family friends that were a treasured part of my childhood. I miss them and treasure all the good things they shared with me.

Visiting cemetery's is one of my favorite things to do. I found some really interesting headstones. 

 

Great-grandma's project

I recently made a visit to my great-aunt Sherrie. She decided I was trustworthy enough to borrow all of Great-Grandma Chamberlains recipes. I have spent a lot of time the past two weeks scanning the recipes into my computer. I'm hoping to be able to upload them to grandma's memory page on family search before the month is over. There are so many fun recipes! I especially love to see Grandma's handwriting. I feel such a special connection to Grandma while doing this project. She was an amazing lady, whom I looked up to. I hope she is happy that I'm doing this project. I think the rest of the family will be pretty excited about getting them. 

  

DNA extraction

We did a pretty cool experiment in school yesterday. It seems like the boys hate everything related to school right now, so I'm really glad they tolerated this. We ground up slip peas, then added isopropyl alcohol and a bit of contact solution. The DNA "strands" reminded me of fluffy white clouds. It was pretty great.

The school district we live in has spring break this week. We already took our spring break a month ago, but Luke will be spending loads of time with his BFF Quin. They are so funny together. They love to play on their VR headsets. Luke will play upstairs and Quin down (and vice versa). It's so funny to hear them talking/playing with each other. They also like to play like this - Quin in the rocking chair and Luke on his computer. The winds of change appear to be coming for Quin. I'm trying to hold onto all the time they are able to spend together.