Lamb E Umptum

January Birthdays

Before Kirsti left for BYU, we had a birthday dinner for her. Here are some photos from that meal.

Smile, Kirsti!!!

One week later, we celebrated Jason Bell’s birthday on Friday, the 7^th, with a lovely meal where Jason provided and prepared the main dish – paella (a dish from Spain, of course). The missionaries, Steven, Tamara, and Beckie were also present. On Sunday, the 9^th, we celebrated Melanie’s birthday.

Noah had his third birthday back in November and I baked him a train cake at that time. Recall that his birthday week was when Emily was going through all her physical difficulties and Noah spent several days with me. Beckie drove him back home to St. Louis on his birthday and took his cake with him so I didn’t get to see him blow out the candles. It is a small cake pan and I had lots of leftover batter so I baked another train cake thinking I would decorate it for Thanksgiving. Well, with too many goodies that week, I kept it frozen until last Friday when I pulled it out and decorated it. The next day, Steve and I drove to St. Louis (to the temple) and then to the Southerlands. I brought in the second train cake and Noah was quite excited to celebrate his birthday again – complete with song and candles.

Finally, Steve’s birthday is today (and so is Kirsti’s) but we had his birthday dinner last night. He wanted an ice cream pie – mmmmmm.

You will remember that Steve and I gave each other (with the help of kids) a flat-screen HDTV and here is how it looks out of the box and on the bookcase.

During Christmas, because the tree was in front of the bookcase, we had to put the TV on top of the stereo where we have been displaying the beautiful Christus statue. It seemed to send a wrong message – that we worshipped the television instead of the Savior – so now, Christ is back in his proper place (notice that, positioned in front of the seascape my dad painted years ago, it looks like he is either creating the world or calming the seas) and the TV looks very nice nestled in the bookcase. (However, don’t look too closely or you will see that Steve and I lacked the proper tools to make the shelves look professional).

As for the rest of the week, I have been canning venison - 21 pints worth! A friend shot a deer for us (with a bow and arrow right next to Target at the Mall!) and we took it up to a meat processor in Centralia to have it cut into roasts, tenderloins, stew meat, and the rest was ground up. I cooked up a huge crockpot of venison stew on Friday and shared it with the Southerlands. It turned out really tasty.

Snow fell Monday afternoon and into the evening (totaling six inches) so we had a snow day on Tuesday. And, surprisingly, on Wednesday, too. But, I had to drive to Fayette on Wednesday to begin my third year of teaching at Central Methodist University. Fortunately, by that time, the roads were not too bad.

So, all in all, it was a pretty good week here.