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!

Summer adventures...at home.

I was trying to post at least once a week, but I'm already failing that resolution.

So, since we got home, my nieces Jenny Bailey and Amber Waite came with Amber's adorable kids to see us. We had a lot of fun. We went to the aquarium one day, and the next morning we went tidepooling in Davenport. It was so fun to see them all, we haven't seen Amber and the kids in almost a year, and it's been longer for Jenny.  

A few pics:  First, the Aquarium's Open Sea exhibit.

Davenport tide pools, north of Santa Cruz.  Sam probably got cool pics of the critters we found, but who knows when I'll see them.  So, if you wanna see, check out this entry  a couple of years ago and you'll see what we saw.  Same place, different day.

Sam and Penelope were buddies from the start.  He is pretty "squishy", lol.

Evelyn and Preston at the aquarium.

Jenny with Penelope.

Amber and Penelope.  

  

On the afternoon before they left, we went to a local berry ranch and bought ollalieberries and Amber learned how to make jam.  We had a great time and I hope they come again soon.  

Ryan and Susan are here now, after their adventures in Santiago in June.  Ry has an internship at the Monterey County Legal Counsel office for the summer, so they'll be here until August.  Yay!  It's always fun to have them here.  Except we cook too much, eat too much and get too fat.  We're trying to be careful, with varying degrees of success.  Susan is, as I type, teaching Meghan to make chocolate mousse.

So, our big adventure this week was the Lobster.  My sister Julie called and wanted to send Dad a Maine Lobster for Father's Day, because Dad loves lobster and Mom hates seafood, so she never cooks it.  Also, growing up in the middle of the desert, live lobsters are rare, you know?  Anyway, she called to see if I was brave enough to cook the thing.  I wasn't sure, so I asked my other sister, Kate, who is next door at mom's this week.  She was waffling, so I called Sam and figured "he's a man", but really he gets home from work kind of late.  Finally Susan volunteered, so I told Julie to go ahead and send it.  But that was after I told her I could buy a live lobster down the street, it seemed silly to send it from Maine.  And, if she just sent me $100, I'd take Dad to Red Lobster for lunch.  She sent the lobster, Dad brought it over and Sue was the designated executioner.

And on that note, I'll wrap this post up.  I have to write a talk for church tomorrow.  As do Sam and Meghan.  It's the Bailey Show at church tomorrow.  I'll write more later.

The rest of the story....

So....the next day we drove to Boise, where we stayed with my niece, Amy and her family.  That day we had a big picnic that the Waite girls organized at an amazing park, where there was a giant waterslide.  The kids loved the slide, it was fun to visit with everyone, the weather was perfect and the park was beautiful.  I apparently took no pictures there, and I don't have time to go through Sam's pics, so oh well.

Sunday, after church, Sam, Meg and I went for a drive to find a waterfall that he'd heard of called Jump Creek Falls.  It was much further than we'd anticipated, but we got to pass an entire field of mint (which smelled heavenly) and Chicken Dinner Rd.  The waterfall was in this canyon:

 

I was still suffering from allergen overload from the Cottonwood trees at the park the day before.  So, I sent Sam and Meg to investigate.  They were still in church clothes, so Meg was wearing her spikes. Silly girl, amazing she didn't break her leg.  They found it. 

We went back to Emily's for dinner, but were so late, everyone else had already eaten.  They obviously know Sam and didn't wait for him.  (I wouldn't!)   We sat around and visited for quite awhile.  Meg got some of the 17 kids to play Sardines with her, which they apparently had a great time at, as there was much giggling and squealing.  When the adults were sitting around visiting, Nyah came in to chat.  She was very funny, trying to guess everyone's age (she guessed Grandma Bailey at 20).  Her English is amazingly good for only a few months here, and she's very outgoing, funny and loving.  We didn't get to visit with Nate much, because he's a five year old boy - he never stops moving.

When we left, Meg was sad to leave Kennedy, who is her favorite cousin.  Hopefully, now that they live closer, we'll see them more often.

The next morning, we left early to head home, via Lassen Volcanic National Park in Northern California.  We drove through Eastern Oregon, which we expected would be Nevada like but turned out to be a lovely drive.  Lots of rolling hills, some of them forested, some not.  

We saw a couple of pretty lakes.  This (below) is lake Abert, an alkaline lake....sort of like the Great Salt Lake.  It was raining off and on, but otherwise a pretty day.

We passed this sign somewhere in Oregon.  Sam says he'll skip Poverty Basin and go directly to Bacon Camp.

Eventually, we got into the piney forest of the Sierra Nevadas in Northern California.  But, it was raining harder now.  This was taken from a moving car, through a wet windshield, but you get the idea.

Our last stop before our hotel in Fall River Mill, was McArthur-Burney Falls.  This was spectacular, and we didnt even mind being out in the rain.  Sam hiked down the hill a bit in the rain to get a better shot.  Here are a couple of my favorites.

I could have sat there and just watched/listened forever if it wasn't so cold and wet.  I love the sound of water, I'm not sure what it is about it.  My favorite part of going to the beach is the sound of the waves.

We stayed in an old hotel in Fall River Mills, above a restaurant and bar.  It was a small suite, and was very cute with handmade quilts on the bed and 1930's furniture.  However, there was SO much noise upstairs.  We all laid in bed and speculated as to what was going on.  Some possibilities:  football game watchers, sumo wrestlers, rain dancers, tap dancers, construction, polka contest, horse wrangling, goat herding, etc etc.  

The next morning, we had breakfast in the cafe below us, then headed towards Lassen National Park.  Sam has been wanting to go there to photograph for years, so he was pretty excited about this opportunity.  Unfortunately, while it had been raining on us, it was snowing on them.  Consequently, the pass was closed through the main part of the park.  We did get to see a volcanic lava tube cave.  We took a little hike around and through it, about 1/2 a mile, I guess.  It felt longer.  I haven't hiked anywhere above sea level in so long, and we were at about 5000 ft.  But, it was very cool, and we had fun.

When we came out of the cave, it was hailing and sleeting and colder than it was in the 48F cave.  We had been hoping that as the morning went on, the pass might be opened, but it appeared that it was getting snowier and colder.  We drove up as far as the road was open, and took a side route down the mountain into Redding.  Just before we headed down, I took this pic at about 6000 ft.

About 30 minutes later, at about 1000 ft, I took this picture.  A lot changes in a couple thousand feet.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, except for a stop at a Sonic (yay!  we don't have a Sonic at home).  

We learned on this trip that Nevada can be sort of pretty in the spring, that Idahoans like Ranch Dressing on their pizza, or at least the people at Gertie's Brick Oven think so, that we could live in Boise if we had to because they have a Sonic, a Texas Roadhouse and a Walmart.  Plus a zillion relatives as a bonus.  Eastern Oregon is not the vast wasteland we expected it to be.  And it can snow in June.  

Ranch Idaho Pizza and other stuff....

My niece Emily M, adopted two kids from Ethiopia last fall.  Today, they were all sealed in the Twin Falls, Idaho temple.  So, we decided to take a road trip to Idaho. Not our usual vacation destination.  We went via Carson City, where we stayed overnight with our friends, the Halls.  The drive over the Sierras was beautiful.

We had lovely BBQ at their house, and a couple of games of Butthead (yes, really) and BS aka Liar aka I Doubt It.  Their girls are fun, and it was fun to see them again.  I wish we lived closer. 

We were supposed to be in Twin Falls by 4:30 or so for a 5:00 pm time at the temple.  We figured it was eight hours from Carson City, so we left at about 7:30 so we'd have lots of time.  The drive through Nevada was just about as exciting as you would expect.

Although the skies were gorgeous.  We found out that Winnemucca bills itself as "The Gateway to the Pacific Northwest".  I know I always think of Winnemucca when I think of the Pacific NW.  

Unfortunately, in our planning, we forgot that Idaho is on Mountain Time, not Pacific Time.  As we crossed the border into Idaho, big sign saying "Mountain Time".  Uh Oh, now, it's not 3:00, its 4 pm and we're still 25 mins from Twin Falls.  We got there, checked in, changed quickly and headed to the temple, which was fortunately not too far away.

Em's family looked beautiful all dressed in white, and she was surprised to see us.  I didn't tell her we were coming.  Nyah and Nathaniel are fun, happy, delightful kids and it was great to finally meet them, and to catch up with their siblings, who we haven't seen in a couple of years.  

After the temple, we went to Gertie's Brick Oven Pizza for dinner.  It's a pizza buffet, but instead of a buffet table, they send servers around with different kind of pizza and you just take what you want. We got our salads and sat down.  The first pizzas by were; Hamburger Ranch, Chicken Bacon Ranch, Veggie Ranch, Chicken Cashew Ranch and Pepperoni Ranch.  I finally asked if they actually had tomato sauce...by this time Sam was speculating about the Great American Tomato Shortage.  Later, they came by with Ranch Idaho pizza...ranch sauce, hash browns, bacon and onions.  Then dessert pizzas;  strawberries and cream, Oreo, Butterfinger, Smores, Reese's.  I didn't try most of those, they seemed like sugar overload.

After dinner, we wanted to see Shoshone Falls.  It was close by, so we all went.  It was spectacular.  These pics are just with my cellphone, Sam used an actual camera and they will be much better.

Then we drove over to where the bridge goes over the gorge.  There were BASE jumpers parachuting off the bridge into the gorge, but we watched a spectacular sunset there.

Tomorrow we drive to Boise to hang out with whichever Baileys happen to be hanging out there, too. 

Visitors!

Last weekend we got a visit from the Toone's, some of our favorite people.  They used to live here, had all their cute boys here, then went and moved away on us.  Bummer!  But, fortunately, they didn't move far away and it was lovely to see them.  We also found out, that after three boys, Jen is pregnant with a GIRL!  Woot woot!!  Congrats!

We spent the afternoon at the beach, it was a beautiful clear, though windy day.  However, approximately 8 million other people had the same idea, so it was kind of crowded.  We did manage to find a nice spot, though.

Later that night, as we were playing our weekly card game, we found out that the next day there was to be a solar eclipse.  Had we known more in advance, we would have gone the 2 hours north to see a total annular eclipse.  As it was, Sam had his camera (because, really, when DOESN"T he have his camera), but not  the filters he needed.  He did a pretty good job, though, and took this from our friend's front yard.  I can't believe he didn't know in advance though, Sam's usually up on celestial happenings.

Ryan and Susan are still in Santiago.  His last post is here .  It's pretty short, and I know they went to Argentina last weekend, he says he'll tell us about that later.

Meghan and I are DONE with school this year.  YAYAYAYAY!  Last day of seminary is tomorrow.  This weekend is pretty quiet, oddly enough, since it's a holiday. I think my parents are coming this weekend, but I usually don't find out until they either show up, or Keri makes a FB comment that indicates they're on the road.  They'll be here all summer with my nephew, Tanner.  The next weekend we're taking a little roadtrip, and the next weekend Jenny B, Amber and her kids are coming to visit, and the next weekend Ry and Sue will be here....etc etc etc.  

Kind of a strange post :0)

Odds and ends.  Can you believe it's mid-May??  Sam says we should hurry and go check out Costco's summer stuff cuz they'll be putting out Christmas stuff any day now.  That would be funnier if it wasn't so true.

First business;  Jen!  I know you read this and my samsgallery email isn't working and I'm wondering if you're still coming this weekend.  I have your old phone number in my phone, so this is the only way to catch you, lol.  My numbers are all the same, give me a call when you get a minute, or email me at shelberrybailey at hotmail dot com.  Thanks!  Excited to see you guys and your munchkins.

It's pretty quiet around here, so not much to blog about.  Ryan posted a journal entry about his adventures in Santiago.  It's very entertaining and you can read it Here .

We did have a lovely Mother's Day.  Sam made a huge pot of spaghetti sauce, and I think he outdid himself this time.  He says it was the best sauce he's ever made, but it's always good so I'm not sure how he can tell.  We had dinner with our friends and Dan and Sam did most of the cooking and cleanup, so it was somewhat relaxing.  Or as relaxing as it can be with five kids running around. Lysa said she ate the leftover sauce for breakfast, with a spoon.  It was THAT good.

So, I was reading through old posts looking for something and came across a couple of old stories that made me laugh all over again.  Sam singing to the cows .  Visiting the sequoias in the snow with Meg.   A possum in church.

And these pics of Liz, Danny, Lynn and Mark:

It's time for another reunion/cruise/wedding/party of some kind.  You can't get pics like these just anywhere. Only at a Bailey party.