The homeless pumpkin

"Oh, pitiful pumpkin, outside you must sleep."
"Why?" you ask. "Because of the company you keep."

In the Temple

Dan and I received our endowments in the Salt Lake temple; Ethan, Kimball, and Greg in the Seattle temple; Neil, Jordan, Colin, and Shane all received theirs in the Boise temple. Shane may have felt a bit of apprehension yesterday, but for me, it was a time of pure joy. Thank you to our friends who were able to be with us. I am imagining how wonderful it would be to gather our whole family in a temple somewhere someday. I won't stop hoping, it can happen if everyone shares that joyful vision.

"As the pioneers had the larger vision in their daily challenge for survival, so also we need to have a greater vision and understanding of our eternal destiny. Our challenges are more subtle but equally hard. Maintaining our spiritual strength is also a daily challenge. The greatest source of that spiritual strength comes, as it did in their time, from our temples."

"I urge all who have not yet received these greatest of all blessings within the walls of the temple to do whatever may be necessary to qualify to receive them. To those who have received these blessings, I invite you to prepare yourselves to savor again the experience of being within the sacred premises of the holy temples of God and have the visions of life eternal open again to your hearts, minds, and souls."

(James E. Faust, in"Eternity Lies before Us," Ensign, May 1997, 20)

Gladsome Tidings

1. We will be in the temple tomorrow with Shane.
2. His last Sunday at church here for two whole years will be on Nov. 15th. He will be speaking then, and all who would like to join us are warmly invited to do so. Let us know, and we'll treat you to a hearty dinner, too.
3. Our good friends, the Farrers, are planning to visit us for Thanksgiving. JoLyn will help me (what am I saying, she'll do it) transform Shane's room into our temporary guest room.
4. Greg, Tori, Juli, and Christian are going to spend the week after Christmas with us, and we'll be able to ring in the New Year together.
It's wonderful to have good things to look forward to, isn't it? It keeps me smiling.

Beautiful Bread

Bread

Wheat is a stream of gold

a living river

a golden, whispering,

dusty stream

how many sacks of flour?

how many loaves of bread?

in what far-off lands?

Up it thrusts

boldly piercing the hard earth

to unfold as a field

over the prairie province.

(from "A Cup of Sky)

I know precious little of presentation. Ah, but I do know how to savor the feel, the aroma, the taste of ffreshly baked whole wheat bread.

Who Loves Hummus?

I do. And I made it for the first time last night! It'd been on my want-to-make list for some time, but I'd been unable to locate one of its key ingredients, tahini, so my desire was cruelly thwarted. As Brianna and I meandered our way along the bulk bin aisle of Fred Meyers last Saturday evening, we chanced upon the tahini that had eluded me for so long, and thus it was that my dream became a reality. Next on my wannt-to-make list is baba ghanoush. With both eggplant and tahini on hand, I have everything I need to make that as well, and will do so in a few days. For the life of me, I can't make a decent pie crust, or pipe decorative swirls of anything onto anything, but as long as I can make the things I crave, I consider myself astonishingly accomplished in the kitchen. I have a teeny suspicion that I may be the only one, however, who holds that view..

My friend, JoLyn, is reading an excellent book most mornings over the phone to me, Master Your Metabolism by Jillian Michaels. It's jampacked with really essential information on nutrition, and how our food choices impact our health for good or ill. I wish I'd known this stuff decades ago! But much of the interplay between nutrients and anti-nutrients and their effects upon the body weren't even known then. It is an eye-opening mind expanding read for sure.

I still slack off sometimes and give way to temptation like, say, Papa Murphy's though. I thought I was too tired to cook last night, before I had a nap and regained enough energy to make the hummus, so I asked Shane to bring home a pizza. When the girl at the counter called out his order and he went up to retrieve it, she said something to him that he didn't quite understand. So he replied with, "ok." She said something else that he missed, and he answered, "All right." Next she said, "What's wrong?" He said, "I don't know," and quickly left. Hearing him relate this confusing conversation made us all burst into laughter. He told us, though, that it's random experiences like this that sometimes make him wonder what kind of missionary he'll be. We all think he'll be a fine missionary, but we also assured him that it was ok to ask people to repeat what they've said if you don't understand them. What a cutie he is. Sharing his thoughts and concerns with us makes him all the more endearing. It's harder to feel close to those who hide their thoughts and feelings. It's sad, too, when you begin to get the impression that you no longer truly know your own loved ones. Is it really so difficult to be open and transparent with others? I know it is possible to do that, and yet to still keep your own personal matters private. Some prefer walls. I favor less rigid boundaries.
-1 pound this week

MissionCallReceived!

Shane is the fourth grandson of my parents to serve in this very same mission. This must mean something! Both his brother, Kimball, and cousins, Jason and Dustin, will be filling him in on the New York New York South Mission! He'll be entering the MTC on Nov. 18th to study Spanish and everything else missionaries study. Go Shane, go, we are happy for you!

Countdown

Will it be tomorrow? Or the next day? Most likely it will be but two more days. Then Shane will have that all-important letter in hand, letting him know where he'll be spending the next two years of his life, in service to God and His children, away from home. At the moment, he and Colin are out doing a little coupon toy shopping for me. I'm chuckling at the thought of their first attempt at navigating the aisles of Toys R Us looking for the hot Disney Princess deals of the day, a task he'll surely be spared as a missionary.

In my other countdown, last week's total weight loss was three pounds. . That mmakes seven in four weeks. Onward and downward is my cry! I think I'm going to be able to wear some of the winter clothes that I haven't worn for a couple of years. Now that's frugality for ya.

Blog Scare

I know this is the month of spooky Halloween, but is google celebating early, or was it the prank of a malevolent hacker? When I came to my blog this morning, my blog was not here! My heart dropped. Fourteen months of pictures and thoughts, over 100 posts' worth, were, poof, just gone. I checked my email, and found that a friend had eamiled about 10 hours earlier to tell me of its disappearance. Then, suddenly, before I could take any action at all, it was back. Very good, but very weird. Well, hope remains that any of our grandchildren who may ever be interested will still be able to read the thoughts of Grandma Bonnie, and perhaps come to know me as a person, not just a name in a rarely read book. Hi, grandkids!

This is general conference morning. I always look forward to these two weekends of the year and make every effort to listen to all the sessions. Instead of taking notes as usual, I'm going to just write down what I'm prompted to do or to change, as the brethren speak. I guess I never give up hope that this imperfect Bonnie will improve herself with the ever-patient assistance of our kind and loving Lord. What is it the scripture says? - Keep kickin till the end? Come heck or high water (and I've seen plenty of both), I plan on doing just that.