All is Well!

I know I just posted yesterday. But, I've been thinking about this for the last week, and yesterday's post was already getting too long. Today is Pioneer Day, a holiday in Utah, and celebrated by Mormon's all over the place. It's the anniversary of the day in 1847, when, after walking 1300 miles, the first Mormon wagon company reached the Great Salt Lake Valley and Brigham Young said, “This is the place!”. Between that date and the day the transcontinental railroad was completed, about 70,000 people crossed the great plains in either covered wagons, or handcarts.

I had ancestors in several of those companies, at least two several-times-great grandmothers who died on the journey. One buried “somewhere on the plains of Iowa”, another in Nebraska. I am proud of my pioneer heritage, and that my ancestors were not afraid to embrace the gospel when they heard it. Even though it meant being chased out of their homes time and again. And, finally,  journeying by foot and wagon to a place where they hoped they could live in peace and build the Kingdom of God.

I don't, however, believe that my pioneer heritage makes me better than any other member of the church.  Everyone has some “pioneer” in him. My friend who joined the church as a teenager and escaped a pretty rotten childhood to become an amazing mom is a pioneer in her family. My Jordanian friend who actually got thrown in jail for joining “that American church” is a pioneer. As is my Pakistani friend, who finally had to escape Pakistan with his family, as their lives were threatened.

President Uchtdorf, an Apostle, said “For many members of the Church, these words bring to mind valiant pioneers who abandoned the comfort of their homes and traveled by wagon and on foot until they reached the valley of the Great Salt Lake. I love and honor the faith and courage of those early pioneers of the Church. My own ancestors were living an ocean away at the time. None were among those who lived in Nauvoo or Winter Quarters, and none made the journey across the plains. But as a member of the Church, Iclaim with gratitude and pride this pioneer legacy as my own.

With the same joy, I claim the legacies of today’s modern-day Church pioneers who live in every nation and whose own stories of perseverance, faith, and sacrifice add glorious new verses to the great chorus of the latter-day anthem of the kingdom of God.”

The anthem he's referring to, is “Come, Come, Ye Saints”, which was written by William Clayton in 1846, somewhere in Iowa, as the Saints struggled through mud for several months to travel the 300 miles to Winter Quarters, where they would spend the winter. I played it Sunday for Sacrament Meeting, I love cranking the organ up for that song! And the lyrics are as appropriate today, as they were then:

Come, come ye Saints
No toil nor labor fear,
But with joy wend your way.
Though hard to you the journey may appear,
Grace shall be as your day.
Tis better far for us to strive
Our useless cares from us to drive.
Do this, and joy your heart will swell,
All is well, all is well.


Why should be mourn,
Or think our lot is hard?
Tis not so, all is right.
Why should we think to earn a great reward
if we now shun the fight?
Gird up your loins,
Fresh courage take,
Our God will never us forsake.
And soon we'll have this tale to tell:
All is well, all is well!

My pioneer heritage is a reminder to me that we CAN do hard things, with the Lord's help. We probably won't have to walk 1300 miles with a covered wagon or handcart, but the times we live in make many things more difficult than they were 150 years ago. It's a different kind of “hard thing” we are called to do, to stand up for truth and virtue when it's not popular. To raise children who love God in a culture that sees the things of God as nothing and the Bible as a mythology. But, with faith in God, we can do all things.

This is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing "Come, Come Ye Saints". I picked this particular video, because I like this arrangement of the song, and because I like that the lyrics are there for someone who doesn't know them

Berries, berries, berries, plums...

There's a lot going on here these days, none of it particularly interesting. Sue and I made a boatload of olallieberry jam. If you've never had ollalies, you've missed out. They are a cross between a blackberry, a loganberry and some other berry that I can't remember...maybe raspberry. They are almost as big as blackberries, but with a lot fewer seeds. The juice is reddish-purple, but stains everything blue (go figure...pomegranates do the same thing). Anyway, here is the “before” pic of our lovely berries. No, we did not pick them ourselves, we are much too busy for that (ha!). Actually, they are thorny, stickery bushes and you only save $1/lb that way. We bought 10 lbs: for $10, I'll let someone else get stuck, thankyouverymuch.  This pic makes them look like they have little white spots..it's just the reflection of the flash or something.

Here is the “after” picture. Lots of lovely bottles of jam, and two quart bottles of syrup that were still cooking when I took the picture.

No, we don't eat that much jam. However, since very few people even get to taste olallies (they only grow here and I think in Oregon/Washington....and they are never in the stores), we give a lot away as gifts so that people who don't live here can enjoy them, and maybe want to come visit during berry season. The syrup will be gone quickly...Sue has a “thing” for coconut pancakes with berry syrup.

Someone at work gave Ryan a huge bag of plums. They are already ripe and sometime today will probably be close to the edge of what a good Mormon girl can eat/drink....soooo....more jam is in the forecast for today. Fun. At least it isn't hot here. I remember canning stuff in the summer in Arizona with my mom. We would go out and pick grapes, or plums, or apricots, or whatever, then come home and steam up our house canning, because the 115F that it was outside just wasn't hot enough. In San Jose, I set up a big propane burner on the porch and canned my zillion quarts of tomatoes outside. It was nice because that burner could boil my big canner in about 3 minutes, and it wasn't heating up my already-hot kitchen. Here, in the morning, it's actually kind of chilly, and a big steaming pot of something is no big deal.

Even though canning/preserving is a lot of work, I get a certain satisfaction from knowing exactly what is in my jar of tomatoes, pickles, salsa etc. I especially like it when I preserve what we grow ourselves. Makes me feel like pioneer woman or something, I guess. A throwback to my Arizona/Utah pioneer ancestors. When we were building this house, and had so much room to grow things I was pretty excited. We planted several fruit trees and anticipated the garden we would have.

But, we didn't plant a garden this year. We need to get a better handle on how to keep the “neighbors” (gophers, rabbits, squirrels, deer, snails) out of it, without resorting to poisoning anything. Too many little people around here for that. We put chicken wire under the raised beds for the gophers, put a fence around it for the deer, but the snails, the rabbits and the squirrels ate the last garden to the ground in a week. Everything was growing nicely, we left for a week and came back to nothing. Very discouraging. I love all of God's creatures, but they should leave my zucchini alone. OK, they can have SOME zucchini, but NO PEAS. Or beans. Or corn. Or tomatoes.....

This picture is just because we had a lovely day at the beach last week, and Normie and Zerin got to fly kites.  ;0)

4th of July Celebrations

Sam loves taking kids out to the tidepools in Davenport.  So, even though we'd just been there, when Salah wanted to take his family, Sam offered to take them the morning of the 4th.  Unfortunately, low tide on the 4th was at 5:30 am.  Davenport is about an hour up the coast, so we met at 5:00 am (ugh) and headed up there.  Meg, Ry and Sue opted to stay home and sleep.  Party poopers.

It was foggy and overcast, but not too cold and we saw all kinds of critters.  I've decided that when it's overcast, it's better to see all the beautiful anemones because they seem to close up when the sun comes out.  These were very big, about 6 inches across.

Here is Laith, poking at some little ones.  He got a kick out of poking them and making them close.

This is Zaid.  He still wasn't walking, so Erin just plopped him down next to a little tidepool and let him play.  He looked like he was having a great time.  Such a cutie pie!

Sam tried to do some family pics while we were there, but it's hard to get two toddlers to cooperate at the same time.  I like this one, anyway.  

After a couple of hours, we decided to head home, by way of the bakery in Davenport.  We had croissants for breakfast, then headed home.  Sam, Meg and Ryan went to a movie, then managed to disappear for several hours.  Susan and I made the food for the party at The Compound, and then headed over to prepare for the real festivities.

We had the Compound families there, plus two more families, so it was a pretty big crowd.  We had enough food to feed the whole town of Marina, though.  We had tri tip, hot dogs, smoked pork, hamburgers, chicken schwerma, about 10 salads, and Erin made the hugest, most beautiful flag cake with strawberries, blueberries and raspberry and pudding filling.  It was awesome.  We cranked up our sound system, had a family dance, an original song performed by the girls (Meg, Isabel, Phoebe, Tenny, Anya and Normie), and just sat around a visited.  Six yr old Normandy learned to ride her first 2-wheeler, courtesy of Shaunna's twins, who brought their bikes with them.  Fourteen month old Zaid took his first steps late in the afternoon to much cheering.  

At dusk, we turned the sound system to patriotic music and started our fireworks.  This year, instead of each family bringing a few (usually small) things, we pooled our money and bought much better stuff.  I think it was our best fireworks show since lame Monterey cancelled the city show.  It didn't hurt that there were all kinds of illegal sky rockets going up in the neighborhoods around us.  My nephew Tanner was very excited, because he'd never seen any fireworks, except on television.  First we went through about 200 sparklers:  here's Heather, handing them out.

Here's Susan, dancing with her sparklers with Zoe.

Then, we had Meg and Isabel draw a "Line of Death" in chalk to keep the kids back, and the guys set off the  other fireworks.  

It was a pretty awesome show for home fireworks.  I enjoyed it, the kids seemed to love it.  I miss the big show over the Bay that the city used to do, but this was fun, too.  Sam got a few really cool pics...I really like this one.

Happy Birthday, USA!  I love my country, even as I wonder what our future is now, with the current political polarization.  I"m grateful for the freedoms we have and for the sacrifices our predecessors made to secure those freedoms.  I have ancestors that came over on the Mayflower to escape religious persecution, and ancestors who walked across the American plains for the same reason.  I have family members who have served in the military.  I have many, many friends who serve in the military now all over the world.  I am grateful to them for the personal sacrifices they make to live the military lifestyle, who send their spouses where they are needed while they hold down the fort at home.  I've seen some of the struggles and worries and I know that it's not easy.  They are always in my prayers. 

God bless America!