I'm Late This Week

I said I was going to post every Wednesday, but the day AND the evening got away from me.  Yesterday I just couldn't seem to move a muscle of this old body, so I just relaxed and let everything go.  I am doing a little better tonight, so have no good reason to procrastinate longer.  Besides, I am eager to hear from everyone again.  It's still hard for me to believe that it is Thursday though. 

I just have to say, before I forget, that my new glasses are working great!!  It's about time.  It is so much better to have my prescription glasses work, instead of having to use the kind you buy at the drugstore.  My eyes don't get quite so tired now when I do all my puzzles each morning.  I'm definitely having some problem with allergy in my eyes though, due to all the junk that is floating through the air.  They are scalping all the grass and planting rye for the winter here in our beautiful Palm Desert.   A lot of it has beeen going on the last week or so in our neighborhood, so of course each fall I have a bit of a problem, not as much as I did before I started to take a nasal inhalation of a spray with cortisone in it.  It is called fluticasone.  It has helped a lot.  I take it in the spring too for my hair fever, or I would really be miserable.  Darn these allergies of mine!

Our party last Saturday at Pikes was a great success!!!  It was for the husbands of the High Priests and their wives.  We had almost forty people there and the food was absolutely terrific!  Everyone brought either an appetizer or a dessert.  It was from 4:00 to 6:00 in the afternoon, but I think everyone ate so much that it was likely  no one went home and had dinner.  So many of the appetizers were hot and yummy.  I took one of my all time favorite and EASY desserts called Butter Pecan Squares.  It is the easiest dessert ever and I needed something easy.  I decided to post the recipe right now.  Try it...........I can gaurantee it will be a hit with you too.

Butter Pecan Squares:

1/2 cup butter, softened                            1egg
1/2 cup brown sugar                                 1 teaspoon vanilla                 
3/4 cup flour                                              2 cups milk chocolate chips
3/4 cup chopped pecans

In large mixer bowl cream butter, sugar, egg, and vanilla until light and fluffy.  Blend in flour. Stir in 1 cup chocolate chips and 1/2 cup pecans.  Pour into greased 8 inch square baking dish.  Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.  Remove from oven and immediately sprinkle with remaining  1 cup of chocolate chips.  When chips melt, spread evenly over top with knife.  Sprinkle with 1/4 cup chopped pecans.  Cool, then cut into squares.  Makes 16.

Try it:  I know you will love it!!  I sometimes use regular chocolate chips for the dough, but always try to use milk chocolate one on the top.

Yesterday we visited an older lady from our Ward who lives in a beautiful assisted living facility.  We took a whole recipe to her so she could share it with the other four ladies who live there.  I am sure they will love it.  I meant to call her today to see how they liked it, but have had such a busy day that I forgot.  This morning I went to my hemotologist to get my hemoglobin tested and to see the doctor.  My hemolglobin was way way down, so they kept me there for the rest of the morning to have an iron infusion.  I have to go back in a week and have another one.  It's no wonder I could hardly drag myself around.  I know I will feel much better after getting my iron next week.  It seems like I do have to have these infusions fairly often and I hadn't had one since May.  They never have been able to find out why I am losing blood.  They did an endoscopy and a colonoscopy but couldn't find anything amiss in either my stomach or my intestines.  So I guess I'll just have to keep on with the iron, or even have another blood transfusion one of these times. 

Sorry I'm late, who knows, I may take Sue's advice and just post when I feel like it, but after all twelve of you post I know that if I want to hear from you again, I will need to post.  Also, I do like to keep track this way of what I do each week.  It is like keeping a journal for me.  I can't imagine that any of you can truly be interested in that, but I am glad you are.  I LOVE HEARING FROM YOU GUYS ANY TIME, and that's the truth.  I love you all.................

Dar

Fun Filled Week

First of all, I must tell you that I have lost the six pounds that I gained on our trip!!  Yep, today when I got on the scales I was 170, which was where I was when we left.  I was so happy that it came off relatively fast.  I am now poised to go into the 160's.  I only have to lose the 10 pounds I gained over the year end holidays last year that I was never able to lose thus far this year.  I really need to get back there so I will be poised to get into the 150's.  I am sure I will feel much better when I do.  It has been quite a few years since I was 150. 

What a busy week this far!!  I hardly had a good rest before I had to start my rounds of doctors.  I had to go to my retina specialist Monday morning.  My eyes have been hurting me plus I think my vision is getting worse too, so she did the  heavy duty pictures  and that is not much fun, let me tell you.  She had to inject me with something intravenously and then take the pictures behind my retinas.  It really hurts to look into those bright lights and then afterwards I can't see normally for hours.  Everything is pink and green, other colors too.  She called my optometrist, who is a very close friend of ours, to make an appointment for the next morning to get my eyes tested again.  Instead of asking me the questions, "which is better, this or this," which always confuses me, he had me put my newspaper in front of me to where I do my puzzles each morning.  I do two crosswords, one cryptocrip and one sudoko.  Then he just kept changing the lens until I could read everything clearly.  I really think this time it will work!  My distance glasses were fine and he didn't think I should have to wear glasses all day.  I would hate that as I have never had to do that.   I will see soon, maybe even Monday I'll get my new glasses.

Then Tuesday afternoon I had to get a mammogram, which is always unpleasant.  She did a very comprehensive exam this time and took a bunch of pictures and told me I would have to come back in a few days to have some more pictures taken and possibly have another kind of test, all because I told her my left breast was extra tender and hurt sometimes.  She told me something I found quite interesting.  She said that almost always when one experienced cancer in a breast that it was the left one.  Isn't that something? 

I told Dick that today I didn't want to do anything at all today!  I have to say that I haven't done a darned thing either.  I've just rested the whole day and Dick has waited on me hand and foot.  He's fixed all my meals, brought me whatever I needed and just totally let me rest.  I have napped a lot too, so I must have been more worn out than I thought, because I never sleep during the day.  I decided though that I'd better write something on my blog as I did say I was going to do it every Wednesday.  Sue tells me that I should blog only when I feel like it.  I'm afraid that I wouldn't do it at all any more, but I would hate not hearing from some of my favorite people.  I really do feel like I have gotten to know the few people that comment on my blogs.  I have never really wanted more.  I just love the ten or twelve that I do have. 

Dick had to go to church to do some kind of report for the stake, so it is very quiet right now.  I guess I won't be posting any pictures, but I don't know what the heck I would post that would be relavent to what I've done this week, so it is probably just as well. 

I just want you all to know that I am really doing pretty well and I'm looking forward to another good week.  We are having a church get together at the Pike's this Saturday afternoon.  I have to make a dessert.  I am so glad as we haven't had a church party for so long.  We have a new Bishop and I think we will be having more parties.  I think it is important for people to socialize more.  It's hard to visit with very may people on Sunday's. 

Take care, everyone, I hope I will have more to report next week.  Love to all...........

Final Week of Trip

Yes, we are finally home again.  We actually got home Monday evening after driving straight through from Lake Tahoe.  We made it in 9 1/2 hours, the last three hours being absolutely horrible travelling on a two-lane highway with so much slow traffic that we had no way of going much over 50 mph in a 65 mile speed limit.  I was beginning to wonder if we would ever get to a decent freeway, which we had about the last 1 1/2 hours.  Needless to say, it was great to be able to sleep in our comfortable beds once again.  I do have to say though that the beds we did sleep in at Rich's and in Reno were very good beds, so it could have been a lot worse.  The biggest problem in Tahoe, of course, was the altitude, about 6500.  Dick and I both had trouble breathing, especially Dick.  We couldn't move around too quickly or we would get out of breath, so we had to move in slow motion.  At least we didn't have to get oxygen though!

We met our niece, Nancy Lee, in Tahoe where we spent her birthday.  Unfortunately, we didn't get many pictures at all and the ones we did get weren't very good but will at least post what we have:

 

This table is very long. Stacy's three darling children (my new grandchildren) are pictured 

with Nancy Lee, Dick and me. Trent is on Nancy's right, Troy and Lilly are to my right.

 

I'm not quite sure that I am the only one that had their picture taken with Nancy's birthday cake. It was truly delicious and we ate the whole thing, except for two pieces between the ten of us. I think we all had at least two pieces.

Stacy and Rich behind their super wide bar preparing salad.

 

Rich's boys, Sean on left and Blaine. They are such great kids and are so good with Stacy's three.  These two families have blended perfectly.

Trent, Lilly and Troy with Winnie in the foreground

Rich has a huge backyard with many many trees. There were a lot to begin with and Rich bought 40 more. I wish I had a picture that showed the whole yard, along with a terrific deck where I love to sit in the sun.

View of another corner of the yard

The next three days we spent in Reno where we attended the Four Freshmen Convention.  It was truly a great success and everyone that attended were so glad they did.  We plan to go to next year's convention which will be held in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  Each day was pretty well packed with different events, which we attended.  We had two different sesssions that were called "The Wannabe's" where we sang Four Freshmen songs from musical scores that had all four parts.  At times we sounded pretty darned good, but the idea was just to have fun, which we all did.  We also had a session where people related stories about interesting things that happened to them when they were with any of the many groups that toured over the years.  It was really fun to hear about those experiences.  We had a fairly interesting experience with the current group when we ran into them at the elevator.  We had quite a nice talk with the four of them and Nancy particularly enjoyed talking with Vincent (the bass player) about the years she spent when she worked at Capitol Records in Hollywood when the original group was recording there.  Vincent was really interested in hearing about that time.  I got into a pretty interesting conversation myself with Brian (the lead singer) about Jim Pike who lives in our ward and who we have become pretty close friends with.  Jim was the one who started the Lettermen.  He happened to be at a Freshmen concert and he went up to Brian  afterward and started to introduce himself to Brian and Brian must have had a lot on his mind, because he pretty much ignored Jim.  When I told him about this, he could hardly believe it and he was really sorry that happened. 

I just have to mention how wonderful the hotel was.  The whole affair  was at Harrah's in Reno and they were all so helpful and happy to have us there.  The two dinners they served to us on Friday and Saturday nights were absolutely incredible.  They did such a wonderful job and the food was presented in such an appealing way each night.  We had chicken the first night and it had the most delicious sauce on it.  We had key lime pie for dessert, which is one of my favorites.  Saturday night they served prime rib and it was all beautiful too.  I have a picture of the dessert they served.  It was really terrific, but I can't remember what they called it.  

The Freshmen were amazing both nights and they sang so many neat songs.  The second night was devoted to performing a lot of the love songs from their new album.  We enjoyed it all so much that we were hating the fact that it was over.  But all good things must end and the next morning we were off to Rich's again.  Nancy came back with us as she wanted to spend a little more time with the family, even though she had to get up pretty early to go back to Reno to catch her flight home.  The shuttle didn't work with her schedule so Stacy arranged for her to have a driver who drove her to the airport in Reno.  It is about an hour and twenty minutes from Tahoe.  Everything went smoothly for her and she was quite excited when her seat mates turned out to be a couple of board members whom she had been talking with.  They had to change planes in Dallas to go back to their home in Fort Wayne where the convention will be held next year.  In fact they are in charge of it, so Nancy really did get the inside scoop on what woud be going on there. 

We had an enjoyable day with the family on Sunday as Rich and Stacy were both home so we spent a very relaxing day with them before we both had to leave Monday morning.  Here are a few pictures we got at the concert Saturday night.

 Here they are, "The Four Freshmen."

Here we are with our name tags.

  

These are four lovely Filipino women who were at our table. We all got along so well together and Dick was the only man so of course we called ourselves his "Harem." We had the same table and seats both nights, so we really did get to know these four.

This is the lovely dessert I mentioned. The "25 years" was written in chocolate on our plates. It was actually the 25th anniversary of the Freshmen Society, which is their amazing fan club. We have only been members for four or five years. The membership is between 2500 and 3000, so it is quite a large Society.

Our last day in Tahoe was a very relaxing one and Stacy and Rich fixed an amazing dinner  for us.  Rich did cornish game hens on the barbecue.  He cooks them really slow for for almost two hours.  He also did snap peas and fresh mushrooms wrapped in foil on the barbecue.  It was so delicious.  The hens were so tender and juicy.  The veggies were outstanding.  I don't know what seasoning he put on them but it was perfect!!  Stacy made a huge ceasar salad and we had three desserts!!!  Everyone had to have a taste of all three, chocolate pie, lemon pie and strawberries with lots and lots of really thick whipped cream.  We were all so full we could hardly move.  We took enough of everything home in our freezer so that when we got home we had another great meal and all we had to do was warm it up.  Unfortunately Dick gained six pounds during that week and I gained six and a half!!!  Darn............at this rate, our doctor is going to win the bet, but we are right back on it so hopefully we will lose it quickly plus lots more.  We'll see.

Here are a couple more pictures we got of the kids in their Halloween costumes.  They were happy to model them for us.

 Trent and Troy

Lilly and Winnie. We didn't get Winnie in her costume, but she did have one which she modeled for us later but unfortunately we didn't get a picture of her. She had a rufferie uniform. I was told because she was a dog it was a rufferie uniform instead of a referee one.

 

Oh, by the way, I am now going to do my blog on Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays.  I still have to get Dick's help and he is too busy to help me on Tuesdays.

A Great New Recipe

      I've told you before what a great cook Dick is.  I am very fortunate in that respect.  Usually the meals he cooks are very simple but flavorful.  He NEVER uses a recipe.  He just starts throwing things together and they always seem to turn out very tasty.

      Well, this last week he really pulled a surprise on me.  He decided he was going to make Chili Verde.  It is one of my favorite meals, and one of my specialties.  I love making it and usually make a huge batch.  I use about five pounds of pork, cut it up in small bite size pieces, brown it and put all the rest of the ingredients into a very large pan and finish cooking it on the top of the stove.  He decided he wanted to make it easier and had a package of pork chops that he decided to use, instead of the shoulder I usually use.  The pork chops he used were shoulder chops though, so there wasn't much difference there.  He threw all those cut up pork chops in the crock pot, added all the rest of the ingredients and put it on to cook.  He actually used my recipe, but he cut it in half as he only had about 2 1/2 pounds by the time he got it all cut up and off the bones.  It sure didn't take him very long.  He cooked it all about 6 hours on high.  It turned out to be delicious.  In fact, I thought it was every bit as good as mine, and mine took a lot more work.  So now, I have a new way to cook Chili Verde.  He actually made it twice this week.  We had a couple of our friends over last night, and we enjoyed it and the company so much that we decided to do it again tonight, only we had a different couple of friends over.  I have decided to share HIS recipe with you tonight.  Yes, he went to the church tonight so I will have to wait until he comes back to post the picture he took of it last night.  I might have tried again, but it is still on his i-phone so will have to wait until he gets home so that he can first put it on the computer before he can transfer it.  I hope it all works out. 

 

      Here it is and I truly hope that you will give it a try.  I'll give you the 2 1/2 pound recipe and you can double it if you like. 

      Chili Verde:

2 1/2 pounds pork, cut up
1 can stewed tomatoes ( 14 1/2 oz)
1 can diced tomatoes (14 1/2 oz)
7 green chilis (canned)
3 stalks celery, diced fine
4 cloves garlic finely chopped
1/2 can water (use tomato can in measuring
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. pepper
3/4 t. cumin

Put pork pieces in bottom of crock pot and add the rest of the ingredients.  Turn to high and cook for 6 hours.   Enjoy! 

Or, if you want to cook it on top of the stove, brown the meat before, I use a 12 inch frying pan with lid, and after pork is browned, put in the rest of the ingredients, cover and cook on top of stove on medium for 2 1/2 to 3 hours or until pork is very tender.

By the way.............I will be posting on Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays from now on.  Dick prefers not having to do this after he gets home from church and I don't think I will get quite as stressed as I do on Wednesdays.  I don't think I will be able to post at all next week though because we will be VERY busy on this 7 or 8 day trip.  I'll try though.

     

     



     

    

    

Trip Highlights

On my way to find a place for me to sit down. I'll admit, I'm in a bit of a hurry.

At last! I'm pretty sure mom won't mind.
Kristin, Andelin and Sullivan, not long after Andelin was born.

It may be that her hair is a bit red

Proud Great Granadma with Andelin

Kristin and Craig

A better picture of Kristin and Craig

As usual, I have spent the last hour or so trying to download some pictures so that this post will be a bit more interesting. I guess I will have to just do the written part and hope that Dick won't be too late getting home from his meeting with the Bishopric tonight. I really would love to be able to show you some pictures of my newest great granddaughter, Andelin Grace Mills. A few of you have expressed interest in knowing how the induced birth of her mom, my adorable granddaughter, Kristin, went. Actually she did give birth that very night and the baby was totally perfect. She had a lot of black hair, but the latest picture of her shows that her hair is turning a bit auburn. It looks to have quite a bit of red in it. That wouldn't be too surprising because her grandfather, Perry, has red hair. I guess time will tell.

Kristin herself has had a rough time since. She lost so much blood that she came within a hair of having to have blood transfusions, but managed to avoid that. Her sisters-in-law have provided so much support though. One of them took Sullivan (her two and half year old, enough said ) on Wednesdays and Thursdays and the other one took him on Fridays. That was disappointing to me, because I didn't get to see nearly enough of him to suit me. I think you will all remember how besotted I have been with him since he was born. She had a Nanny who came in to help on Mondays and Tuesdays. That pretty much took up the week. Craig was there to help on weekends. I am pretty sure she is doing much better by now. I need to call her myself to see if I am correct in my assumption. I don't think I've mentioned before that my first name is Grace. They named the baby Andelin (a family name on Perry's side of the family and Grace, after me, as her middle name. Pretty cool, huh?

I seem to have been pretty busy myself this past week:

I knew I needed to see my doctor, so made an appointment for a complete physical for Thursday. Before that, I pretty much didn't do a thing but rest and sleep. We were in the doctor's office for an hour and ten minutes!! He never rushes me whenever I go. He had some great suggestions and I am trying very hard to do what he said. It is really quite funny what happened. He told me that my legs would feel much better if I could lose some weight. Whenever he mentions that (which I know that of course it would help me) I remind him that he could also lose a few pounds and that invariably leads to my asking him if he remembers a bet we had some years ago to see which of us could lose ten pounds the quickest. (I don't remember who won, but the jist of the conversation is that we finally ended up having a three way bet, $1.00 each, to see who could lose 40 pounds by January 13. We each had to put up the money, and he put it in my folder. At the end, the one who has lost the most, wins the whole pot! Dick has by far the most to lose, so he probably will win.

So far, both of us have done very very well. Dick has lost 7 1/2 pounds in five days. I have lost 3 l/2 pounds. We write every single thing we eat for the whole three meals (nothing in between) and total up the calories for the day. Dick can't go over 1200 and I can't go over 800. Well see how it goes. I am feeling much better doing that plus exercising. He is really stressing that! I have to walk on the treadmill for five minutes every morning and on the stationary bike for another five minutes. I am supposed to increase that by 10% every week. Plus we do our 40 minute pool exercises that are supposed to exercise every muscle in our bodies. So far we have done it and between doing those two things, I really have improved. I seem to feel a little bit stronger every day. On Jan. 13 I will post before and after pictures. Hopefully I will have learned to transfer pictures to by blog on my own by then. (Don't count on it though).

I didn't post ALL the highlights of our 10 day Salt Lake trip. We did do more than just enjoy our three day family reunion. I didn't tell about our trip to the cemetary at the end of our reunion. My mom and dad and others in our family were buried in Lund, Idaho, which is a little farming community on the other side of the divide from Lava Hot Springs. We did enjoy the peaceful feeling we all had there. It was so beautiful. The caretaker does such a wonderful job of keeping it up. I may post a picture of me and my grand niece, Beth-Anee. I was pretty worn out just walking to the gravesites and the guy who was supposed to have brought a chair for me to sit on forgot to load it in the car. I had to sit, so had to make do by sitting on Mom's gravestone!! Beth-Anee is standing behind me. She lives in South Carolina and I was so glad that she could be there to represent her family. After we had been there for awhile, just visiting and taking pictures, we left to go back over the mountain where we all had lunch and then disbursed as the reunion was declared to be over. We are going to meet again in two years instead of the usual three because everyone who went enjoyed it so much, even my daughter, Jayne, who insisted on driving her own car there because she expected to be bored, but she had so much fun that we were about the last ones to leave. I am the youngest in my family by far, so all of her first cousins were way older than she and actually she hadn't met a lot of the older ones. She knew the three youngest as they spent most of a lot of their summers staying with us as they were growing up.

This post is a bit jumbled up, but at least I was able to write one. When I started, I can tell you that I sure wasn't in the mood. Thank heaven, Dick came home early tonight. Sometimes he doesn't get home until after 10.00p.m. I am going to turn this over to him and see if he can find a few pictures to post for me. Love to you all.....................

I'm going to post now, so if you find all of the paragraphs and the spacing messed up, I can tell you it was fine at this point and I AM NOT going to call Sue to have her fix it for me.

Home Again

Dick, Jayne, and me at the reunion.

Our six weeks trip didn't last very long, I'm afraid. We were in Salt Lake for ten days and attended my family reunion. I am so glad we were able to be there for that, because it wasn't long after that Dick and I realized that I would not be able to do the whole trip. I am just not strong enough for a road trip lasting that long. Hopefully next year we can do the middle part by flying instead of trying to drive. I could hardly wait to get back to my chair. I couldn't find a comfortable place to sit at Jayne's. I had a wonderful chair there, but her daughter, our 21-year-old autistic granddaughter, Kirsten, broke it. Bless her heart, Jayne did try very hard to find something that would do, by bringing up a chaise and another chair from the basement, where she spends most of her time. She has a large living area down there, incuding living room, bedroom, bath and office. I don't blame her for living down there as it is much cooler and far more spacious than upstairs where the bedrooms are small, along with the bathroom. I really couldn't spend much time down there because of having to go up and down stairs. Dick was up and down quite a lot because before we left his legs were aching pretty badly.

I am so sorry that Dick didn't get to attend his high school reunion because so many of the things were prepaid and not refundable, hotels, meals etc. I wanted him to fly back and attend anyway, but after figuring it out, he decided not to go, because the people he really wanted to see were not going to be attending or had died. I hope he won't be sorry in the future.

We got home Friday night (drove straight through). I haven't done very much since then and am hopeful that I will start to feel better soon. I have made an appointment to see the doctor Thursday. I don't expect he can do anything for me as my biggest problem is pain, hot pain in the back of my calves in both legs, and hot pain in my shoulders and upper arms. I can't imagine why it is so bad. Of course I can't take pain pills so I don't know what the heck he can do. I have had so many cortisone shots that I don't suppose that would help either. I actually think that I will just have to rest a lot for quite a period. I hope it feels better in three weeks though, because we still want to try to make the end of our trip as we are scheduled to attend the Four Freshmen convention in Reno in October, and I surely do not want to miss that! Also, our son lives in Lake Tahoe, so we were planning to stay three or four days with him. I am going to think positive thoughts. My niece Nancy, from Dallas, is meeting us there and she says if we don't go, she won't either! Another good reason to go! I didn't get to see enough of her at the reunion, so wish me well, everyone, because both Dick and I really want to go. We do love the Four Freshmen!!

I am so darned disappointed that we didn't get to do the middle of our trip as I truly wanted to see our friends in Canada, to say nothing about longing to be with Kathy (Yaya) and Donna, my wonderful blogging friends. We had planned to stay with Kathy for three days!! Some of you are blogging friends to them too, so you know that Donna is finished with her chemo and is now taking daily radiation treatments. That gal has been through a lot, and she has even managed to work part of the time throughout all of this. I just hope we can make that trip one day and if we do, you can be sure we will fly.

Well, my dear friends, I am about finished, I think..........'til next Tuesday then...........................

Darlene

Trip Notes and Brownies

We seem to be very busy trying to get ready to leave on our trip a week from today. I am wanting to be completely ready to go two days before the day we leave. Today I am trying to get my clothes ready. We both want to travel with just enough to get by. We will have to do laundry about once a week while we are gone, but I'm sure we can do that wherever we are. There are so many things to do at the last minute. We are very fortunate that our neighbor across the street is going to take care of our house while we are gone. She does this for a living, so she will be very careful and caring. We will have her take in our mail, check everything in the house and outside. We are going to pay her for her services, even though she would have done it for free. It will be nice not to worry about the house while we are gone. Six weeks is a long time!!

Our weekend was pretty busy. I made brownies to take to one of our friends that we visit each month (visiting teaching). I love to bake, but am getting so slow at it because I have to sit down so often. My time standing keeps getting less and less, and now it is about five minutes. I can walk a bit longer than that because it is much easier for me to walk than to stand. My brownies are pretty darned good if I do say so myself, and I will post the recipe at the end of this blog, if I remember. They are easy but delicious. By the way, I NEVER use mixes but I do like to bake things that are easy to put together.

After our V.T. I got my hair cut again. It grows so slowly, and I guess I am fortunate for that, but the last time I got it cut, my regular gal was on vacation, so had to use another one and unfortunately, she cut it so short and it was all choppy. It looked awful because it stuck out in many places. Honestly, I thought it would never grow out long enough to cut it right before we were to leave. As it was, it was almost 12 weeks, and it was still pretty short. Alma, my regular girl, mostly trimmed it and tried to correct it, but now it looks pretty normal again, thank heavens.

Sunday we didn't do anything but go to church, come home and rest. Our new schedule starts in September (our Stake President's idea, since he thinks we ought to make the change when school starts, instead of at the beginning of the year) and we will be going to church from 1:00 in the afternoon until 4:00! I really hate this schedule, but we have three wards meeeting in our chapel, so have to take our turn.

Yesterday was a pretty crazy day! We went shopping in the morning because we needed to get Dick some new clothes for going to church. His are all so tight because neither of us has been able to lose the weight we gained over the holidays. Goodness knows we have tried and we will lose a few, but then something happens to get us off track........celebration dinners out, having company, dinner invitations, or just too much candy on "chocolate Sundays". At any rate, we bought him a new suit and also a sport jacket, so at least he will look decent. I also bought two pairs of sandals. I can't wear a closed toe because my right big toe hurts when I try. I lost the nail a few weeks ago, and it takes about a year for the nail to grow back. It is okay in the summer, but I am not sure how I will make out when the weather gets cold on our trip. I'll just have to freeze, I guess. About two o'clock in the afternoon I got a call from my daughter, Nikki, telling me that Kristin (my darling little Sullivan's mom) had preeclampsia and the doctor's were going to induce her, a little over three weeks early. She had terrible stomach cramps and was throwing up way too much. We were both upset, but I was about to go crazy with worry. We had company coming for dinner that night, and I was so grateful our friends, Jim and Verna were coming because it helped so much to keep my brain occupied. They had missed the celebration of President Monson's birthday concert on BYU TV and we had taped it, so we watched it again and that helped too as we did enjoy it the second time. It was such an excellent concert. Later that night, Nikki called to say they had decided to wait and see how Kristin was today. Nikki had already made plans to catch the earliest flight out, plus she is a school teacher and I suppose they had a substitute in place, but I suppose she managed to undo all that as she didn't want to leave until they actually did induce her. She called me just a little while ago from her school and told me they were going to induce her within the hour so I guess she is in labor right now. I do feel so sorry for her as she doesn't handle pain too well, and had to have an epidural for Sullivan. I had to be induced when I had my first with Sue. I had all my babies naturally because I CAN stand a lot of pain, but I will have to say, that birth with Sue was so super painful. I thought it would last forever. The last three were a piece of cake in comparison. We are both praying mightily that all will go well for her and the baby.

I think I am about to the end, and guess what? I remembered to post the recipe so here it is:

Grandma Robbins' Chocolate Brownies: (This can easily be mixed by hand)

1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cocoa
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cups flour
6 tablespoons margarine or butter (1 cube +2 tablespoons)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Mix sugar and cocoa in small bowl. Add eggs and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Stir in flour. Add margarine or butter and mix well. turn into buttered 8X8 pan and bake @ 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes (check with toothpick)
You can sprinkle with powdered sugar but I prefer to ice it with the following:

Great chocolate icing:

1/2 cube plus 1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons cocoa
1/4 cup milk
Cook these three ingredients over low heat until it comes to a boil, stirring so that it doesn't stick. Pour this mixture over 2 cups powdered sugar that has been sifted into a bowl. Add 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and 1/2 chopped walnuts. If too thick, thin with milk or hot water, just a teaspoon at a time until right consistancy for spreading. If too thin, add a spoonful of powdered sugar until perfect for spreading. Pour over cake and spread evenly. Yum!