Our Lake

The snow has been melting. Our front gutter does not have enough slope for gravity to make the water run under the very frozen layer of ice and pile of snow under the tree.
















We now have a lake in our driveway and Clyde has been digging a trench/canal to drain the water. I have done this many winters. Now that we have a nice drain only 15 feet from our driveway, it seems silly for so much water to accumulate. Next year we will have to get our snow blower fixed and hope that Clyde will clear the gutter area - it takes a long time to melt that pile under the tree!

Crunch!

Today about 2:30 I decided to leave work and run two errands - one to pick up my two heart and blood pressure meds since they had both run out in the last two days. The CRV (new last April) was parked in the West ASB lot and there was a student trying to park a extra long flat bed truck in a car stall! At first he tried two stalls away from my car, but backed up and went further down the row. Then he started attempting to pull into the stall to the right of my CRV! He backed up a few times to get a wider turn, but his truck was huge AND wide and just as I was 4 feet from my car, his truck HIT my car!@!@! arrgh! It was terrible to see. So he jumps out and apologizes and tells me this is his FIRST TIME driving and he was coming to the "learn how to drive a truck " class! His boss just handed him the keys, told him where the training was and said good luck. NO instruction as to where it might be appropriate to park the huge thing (25 foot truck!) NO trucks except regular pickup trucks and passenger cars park in this lot! I finally went and got a BYU policeman and made a report. I was trying to remain calm since I really needed my heart meds - missing a day did not feel too good! Clyde finally got my message and showed up not too happy. The poor 18 yr old kid even said yes when I asked him if he wanted someone else to back up his truck and drive it away. He was going to walk to his bosses office and just give him the keys! About 5 other cars would not have been able to move if he did that. So Clyde pulled our car forward and the policeman guided the student driver on backing out and not hitting anyone else! BYU Risk Management will pay for this repair and Clyde made good friends with the guy in charge - he had just purchased the same car for his wife! The estimate is $1125 and will be fixed next Monday. It was a terrible sound and sight to see! I wonder if the student will even be able to keep his job as a driver! For sure we are going to complain about how they did not give enough instruction on where to park for his first venture out!!

Enough Already!

This is a Hawaiian saying in pidgin that expresses my feeling about all the snow we have received lately. It just keeps coming 3 - 4 inches at a time. But since our snow blower is not working, we have been shoveling this winter (mostly Clyde) The pile on the side of our driveway is HUGE!! See if you can spot the little bit of the corner of the mailbox in this photo. Spring we are ready!!

8 weeks later trip to the ER!

On my way to take Michelle to meet a photographer, my heart started racing again. We turned around and went home instead of to Salt Lake. This was at 2 pm. Heart rate - about 180 beats per minute. I decided to sit quietly and see if it would go away on its own. About 5 pm Clyde took me to the store so I could use the blood pressure cuff and see my heart rate. I really thought it had slowed a bit. nope - 188 per minute. So my neighbor brought over her stethoscope and let me listen to how fast it was beating. She encouraged me to go get 'converted' at the ER. This procedure is called "converted" because you get converted to a healthy heart state from a very fast heart rate. So we went at 7 :10 pm. Saw the same nurse as before, and at 8:15 pm got the same heart stopping shot as before. Worked like a charm, I think medicine is amazing that a shot of liquid can reach the heart in seconds, stop it and restart it so it beats normally. That's a miracle. Clyde is glad to be done with this long before the middle of the night! 6 hours is a long time to have your heat beat at 180 bpm. I'll count that as heart exercise...
I have a second follow up appt with the famous electro cardiologist so we'll see what he says after a second episode in 8 weeks. I promised to take my meds until then.

Shivverrr

It's been really cold here in Provo, as low as 4 degrees at night and Thursday it only got up to 16 degrees all day. So when I came home Friday night I didn't think much when Michelle told me she was really cold and had to put on a fleece jacket to even eat dinner with us. We left pretty soon after dinner to go to a movie with the Paxmans. Upon returning at 10:10 pm, we noticed the house was registering at 66 degrees!! No wonder Michelle was cold! We experienced this same problem of the furnace not working on Christmas day. After a $75 service call three weeks ago we thought all was well. So last night we bundled up and went to bed before our body temps dropped! This morning the house was 60 degrees! I baked some cinnamon rolls, drank hot chocolate, and wore my heavy fleece robe over my clothes. A different heating business is coming this morning to check out the problem. They have warned us it will be expensive since they charge almost double to come on a Saturday! Yikes. We wonder if we could last through the weekend and how cold the house would really get if we waited till Monday. Carlsons are coming from Denver on Sunday to visit the baby so we will pay the huge weekend fees to get our house warm. Right now I'm planning to hurry and get in the car to go shopping -- it's bound to be warmer at the store than our house!! Post Note: $350 later, we are getting warm again! a part had to be replaced, this time it is expected to work for a long time!

Fondue Fun

We had a very successful fondue party for New Year's Eve. Nicole land I found the sort of recipe on Cami's blog, then called Emily for more details. We used my new electric fondue pot and made a double batch for our 13 person party (prepared on the stover first). Here is the recipe for the record:
2 cans cheddar cheese soup
2 8 oz blocks cream cheese
8 0z swiss cheese, shredded
12 - 14 oz cheddar cheese
6-8 dashes nutmeg
3 shakes of garlic powder
3 shakes of onion powder
chicken broth as needed to thin - about 1/3 cup to start with and a little more during the night.

for dippers: grape tomatoes, celery, broccoli and cauliflower (cooked in the microwave 2-4 minutes to remove a bit of the crunchiness), two kinds of artisan bread ( rosemary and plain french), granny smith apples, beef little smokies, Italian meatballs,
We also had shrimp and sauce, spinach dip with crackers, pork little smokies in a glaze of bbq sauce and grape jelly, blue corn chips with yummy guacamole by Cisco, and queso from Bajio Grill (which we heated up in the little potpourri crock pot!).
JD and Jean and Carrie were still here due to weather so we had a fun crowd and Alicia and Dustin and new baby little James came later. We fed 13 in all! For a late dessert we had brownies and peppermint ice cream - perfect amt of sweet and chocolate to end the night.
We played Catch Phrase and laughed hilariously.
I think we have a new tradition! Maybe later I'll post pictures.

Holiday musings

We had a great time with everyone home for the holidays! Today we dropped Camille off at the airport after doing some wedding dress shopping with Michelle. Today's funniest moment came when we found a new bridal shop and sent Nicole out to see if it was open and to read the notes on the door. Nicole burst out laughing and brought the notes to us to read! They were from two angry customers who wanted service according to the posted hours. The customers were really mad. For sure we will not go back to that shop! Two years ago this week we were doing the same - wedding planning for two upcoming weddings. It is such a good feeling to have everyone home and enjoying each other.
I love all the traditions of Christmas and have thoroughly enjoyed all the music, and new CD's. I love that my family enjoys the traditions we have done over the years and some of the new ones. I think the stocking shopping for one person is great fun -- and it takes a ton of pressure off me! Everyone is so creative in their use of $20. This is the first year we had everything wrapped before the Christmas Eve Dinner began -- many thanks to Clyde! He kind of got stuck on one or two rolls of paper, but I was not about to complain since I was so thankful for his help! This year instead of a fancy dessert for the dinner, we just had our favorite traditional cookies that we make anyway. Perfect for a small taste of sweetness. Hello Dollies were my mom's favorite, Pomander Balls are a cookie we have made since the children could roll a ball, and ginger cookies we started about 16 years ago - learned from Pattie Shumway. We did not have small children for a nativity, but we had Tom and Linda and Mikey Draper and Emily's twin sister Melody and husband Jonny and baby Julia as our guests. Jill and Nathan also came. I love guests on Christmas Eve for dinner. I have had basically the same menu and dinner for all of my 54 years! My parents always hosted the Christmas eve dinner with relatives and it just makes Christmas seem so special to begin with a big dinner party. Once I moved away from home, it became important to me to continue the tradition and I am glad we were able to do it all these years!
In a few days we will put it all away and start our task of eating more healthy and doing more exercise. It has been such a sweet experience - in taste and emotionally.