Ladies' luncheon

Almost every month the church ladies have a pot luck luncheon. Due to their schedule cancellations and my work schedule I haven't gone for many months but today the stars aligned and my mom and I went. We brought pizza and I had a slice of that along with fruit, a salad, a rice dish, and a croissant.

I'm a dessert girl and this was my favorite part--pumpkin crumble and peach cobbler.

Relief Society Homemaking Meeting (or is that "an additional Relief Society meeting"?)

There was a terrific turnout tonight for a beading class. Obviously lots of interest and the cost was only $1 for each kit. I hadn't signed up, so I waited until those who had, had chosen their kits. By the time I got to choose, I didn't like anything left, so I decided to just sit and chat with the others who were making things. This is what my friend Lisa made:

My friend Nancy made a necklace, but since she doesn't have pierced ears, gave me the earrings part of her kit. We decided we'd wink at each other when we happened to both wear our beaded jewelry on the same Sunday.

When I went up to the supply table to ask the teacher how to finish off the earrings I spied a bead kit I hadn't noticed. I'm not sure who it was for, as the teacher paused before telling me I could have it (buy it, of course). It was faceted glass beads with an opalescent sheen, and silver flower beads to make into a bracelet on elastic thread. The color is funny in this picture, but you can get the idea:

Quiet Sunday

This morning I taught Relief Society. It was the lesson on sustaining our church leaders. When I first read it I thought it would be hard to make it into an interesting lesson, but I was determined to have learning activities that didn't involve too much reading out of the lesson manual.

I had the bishop's wife tell about her impassioned plea for support when they were first called two years ago. In reference to succession in the presidency, I read a list of all the apostles and had them raise their hand when they heard the name of one who became a prophet. For the section on being warned by the prophet or asked to do something, I passed out slips of paper and pens and had them write down either something they have problems following the church leaders on, or something they were asked to do and the results of doing or not doing it. I read some of the responses aloud and the ladies really liked that part. I had time to read only about eight of them before we were out of time. I couldn't believe it had gone so fast! And in the closing prayer the sweet sister thanked Heavenly Father that "Katie made learning so fun." That made my day!

After dinner Conor made chocolate chip cookies from a mix Bill and I found at Grocery Outlet. It was really delicious and I'm thinking we might need to go back and buy a couple more.

That store is kind of dangerous to our bank account because we're working on improving our year's supply of food and you never know what Grocery Outlet will have on an outstanding sale and then we'd just *have* to stock up!

Good Saturday

This morning I traveled by charter bus to the Mesa Arizona LDS Temple. The ladies in our local area take a women-only trip once a year and I never miss it. In the temple we learn about where we came from, why we're here, and where we're going. Simple, yet important, right? In additon, we perform ordinances for our ancestors who have died so they can have the same knowledge on "the other side."

When I got home this is what was in my driveway:

Dh was in the house kitchen whipping up a late lunch of boxed macaroni and cheese and fried Spam. We know how to eat around here.

Excellent day.

Happy 170th birthday, Relief Society!

Relief Society is the women's auxiliary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and it was organized 170 years ago next week.

Every LDS woman 18 and over is a member of Relief Society and friends are always welcomed.

The anniversary is celebrated every year, usually with a dinner, either casual or formal. In addition, there is usually entertainment of some kind, such as a speaker, or some kind of activity.

We had four stations where we learned about the history of Relief Society, which was surprisingly interesting.

I can always remember how many years it's been because I remember the very big celebration for the 150th birthday of Relief Society. I was living in Germany and was overdue with my third child. He's my missionary now and is just about to turn twenty. :-)

Relief Society luncheon

Our church ladies' group has a pot luck luncheon every month. It's mostly older ladies, but somehow I usually get there as well. Maybe I'm getting to be one of those "older ladies"? Today I brought the delicious Chicken Supreme casserole I made and froze earlier in the week. It sure was easy to pop that into the oven!

That's me on the left.

And my mom in the middle.

We're off to an "additional Relief Society meeting," i.e. Homemaking Meeting

Dh was invited to a college basketball game tonight, so the girls are coming to Homemaking Meeting with my mom and me. They really like to go to the nursery and play with their friends, so it's a win-win for everyone.

I told the girls they could bring a set of toys or some books. E is bringing Little Pet Shop toys and a few tea set dishes tonight.

"Bring your favorite Valentine treat"

That's what the invitation to our monthly church ladies' meeting said. Unless I find a box of See's candy lying around, I won't be bringing my favorite. But in my email today I found this recipe for brownie hearts. I have a huge stash of brownie mixes so I didn't make it from scratch, although I could have. Don't you think this will be a nice dish to bring?

Here is my funny for the day: last night's dinner. C has gone on a cooking spree lately, wanting to help me cook and wanting to make things on her own. I actually see a budding chef because she doesn't care much about recipes and prefers to make things up as she goes, out of what she has on hand.

This is the recipe card she wrote out, but it's not all she put in. As close as I can recall, these were the ingredients:

water
potato soup base (1 teaspoon)
potato cubes
an asparagus spear, broken into pieces
"lettuce" which thankfully turned out to be greens so it held up after boiling
carrot slices
peas
bay leaves--one for each person so that was six
salt and pepper
a pinch of brown sugar
a LOT of cinnamon

She was pretty pleased with it. Thank goodness I suggested she make some Ritz-cracker-and-peanut-butter sandwiches to go along with her soup. Honestly, if she'd left the cinnamon out it wouldn't have been too bad. She and I were the only ones who finished our soup. She, from pride of ownership and I, from the habit of eating what I'm served and not wanting to hurt her feelings. I did suggest that next time I'd probably leave out the cinnamon.

Edited to add: I can't say my Valentine treats are quite as beautiful as the ones on the Kraft website, but considering mine are only about 2" across and thus the frosting hard to get even, I think they turned out really nicely and I'll be glad to bring them along tonight.

A surprise Relief Society lesson

I'm the Education counselor in our ward's Relief Society (women's group in our church) which means I'm in charge of all the teachers (one for each Sunday of the month) and the music. We've had only a single teacher since our ward was reconfigured the first Sunday of January. Every week in church I hope someone will be called but week after week goes by with no RS teacher callings.

This month we had Stake Conference on the 1st so there was no lesson that Sunday. Since there is no "second Sunday of the month" teacher, I dutifully taught that lesson. I found a willing substitute for the third Sunday and it was nice to not be up there teaching. I was looking forward to the fourth Sunday because that teacher is an older lady whom I just love. She has a cheerful outlook and tells just the right little stories to illustrate her lessons. Friday I got a call from the RS president telling me the older teacher is in the hospital! She had a mild heart attack and is in the hospital in Albuquerque. I was so surprised because you don't expect your friends to have medical problems. So my thoughts have been with her and also on the fact that the RS ladies are going to have to hear from ME again! Haha. After the happy expectation of a lesson from the lovely, lively older lady, their little faces will droop when they see me up there again.

The lesson is based on Henry B. Eyring's talk "Our Hearts Knit as One" which he gave in the October 2008 General Conference. I've read it through a couple of times but I still think this lesson is going to be mostly my reading the talk and introducing talking points that ocurred to me as I read it. I hope my older friend gets well soon and I hope some RS teachers are called soon so the ladies don't have to listen to me week after week after week . . . .

New Sunday

I'm still getting accustomed to our new ward. When they made two wards out of three, our ward was the one that got split. We kept the name, and thus our callings, but everything else is still really strange to me. Instead of families scattered throughout the chapel, we have one to two families on almost every row. I know that is normal in other wards, but we had an average Sacrament Meeting attendance of less than 100 for a long time and I kind of got used to it. The good part is there are plenty of people for all the callings that an average ward has. Before the reorganization it was kind of like those little carnival puzzles I used to get when I was a child. You know the ones with 16 spaces and 15 numbered tiles and you had to move them around to put them in numerical order? That's how it was with callings before the change.

Happily, I hear there will be two new teachers in Relief Society. I'm the education counselor, so that's important to me! One will replace a departed teacher and one will replace a teacher who has also had a stake calling forever. Next Sunday is my turn to teach the Fast Sunday lesson. Since those come from the current month's Ensign I can never prepare too far ahead, but that's okay because they are usually pretty easy. I thought that part of the calling was going to be my downfall, but it's been all right.

Sacrament Meeting is going to be a challenge with the girls and no dh there. ~sigh~