A Very Carlin Thanksgiving Pt. 1

I just can't believe November is ending already. What a month; never a slow moment! December may bring more of the same...we'll see how much blogging I get done. Lots to do in the next couple of weeks!

Our family was very excited for Thanksgiving this year; my sister Jocelyn decided to bring her whole family down to visit us...including her husband Paul. On the Barrett side, Nathan's oldest brother Ryan also came to visit, along with his wife Judy and their son Cameron. They didn't spend Thanksgiving Day with us because they were busy golfing, but we got to spend some time with them later in the weekend. I'll have some pictures of them in the next blog post.

We've been in Arizona for nine and a half years now, and this is the first time Paul Carlin has ever come to visit us! Jocelyn also brought her four cute kids: Abigail, who just turned twelve and just entered the Young Women's program at church (that makes Jocelyn and myself feel pretty old!); Elaine, who will soon be ten years old; Simon, six years old and the only male Nash-related grandchild (so far); and the newest member of the family, baby Laura (who was actually 14 months old at this visit, but that's a baby compared to the rest of them!). It was our first time meeting Laura, and I was very happy to see her. She has such big beautiful blue eyes and she keeps them wide open so as to take everything in.

The Carlins also brought a four-legged member of their family...their neurotic yet lovable mutt Zorro. As you can imagine, having a dog staying in our house made our kids much more excited than having other human beings staying in our house. Celeste and Aurora, in particular, were completely obsessed with Zorro (or "Zorry," as Aurora charmingly called him). They followed him everywhere--upstairs, downstairs, inside, outside. They offered him food and water at every possible opportunity. They talked to him, petted him, and generally showered him with affection.

At first, Zorro repaid my girls' love and affection by throwing up in one of our bedrooms and pooping on our stairs. Sigh. Poor guy; all the change was too much for him. As a result of his accidents, I kept him outside for all of Thanksgiving day. I guess I am not ready to be a dog owner, because I was not in a mood to be forgiving. Of course, I also had a lot of other things to worry about on Thanksgiving morning...

...like cooking!! Since Jocelyn and family arrived late Wednesday evening, I did all the pies by myself. We had four pies: the "usuals" (pumpkin, apple, and mixed berry), plus one other flavor. I got a lot of requests for cherry this year, so I grudgingly complied. I say "grudgingly" because last time I made a cherry pie, it bubbled over and permanently stained one of my stainless-steel baking sheets. Well, guess what? This time, the cherry pie bubbled over again, and this time the bubbly stuff burned right through my oven liner and spattered all over the floor of my oven. Tough stuff! As if to add insult to injury, I got two cherry pits in one bite of this pie! Perhaps cherry pies attack when they can smell fear... Anyway, everyone else enjoyed the cherry pie, so I am happy that they're happy. Besides, I was too busy greedily devouring the pumpkin pie to worry about the cherry too much!

I didn't take "before" pictures of my big turkey this year, since I prepared it pretty much the same way I did last year--I'm a sucker for tradition. However, tradition aside, I did try something slightly different this year...I cooked a second turkey, with a very different flavor!

I'd had a smallish (10 pound) turkey in my freezer for almost a year now; I knew it wasn't big enough to feed a large family, but I had a different recipe I wanted to try. And since my generous sister gifted us with a lovely new roasting pan, I decided to take the plunge and roast an additional turkey Thanksgiving night!

This turkey was scrubbed off, but not doused in butter and sage. Instead, we created a fancy, garlicky-lemony-zesty marinade (it also included half a can of frozen orange juice!). Here's what the marinade looked like:

To add to the lemony flavor, we stuffed the turkey with several halved lemons.

Then, we put the turkey in a bag and poured the marinade inside with it. We made sure to massage the turkey and re-coat it with the marinade several times throughout the day...the rest of the time it stayed in our fridge while we cooked everything else.


Speaking of everything else...here's our spread!!

I realize the effect was ruined somewhat by leaving the box of aluminum foil in the picture...oops! :) We had my favorite green bean casserole; a cheesy zucchini casserole; rolls; cranberry sauce; orange tapioca salad; sweet potato souffle; mashed potatoes; loads of gravy; and not one, but two types of stuffing. The bread stuffing was inside the bird, of course; however, we also made a sausage-filled cornbread stuffing that was cooked inside a pumpkin!

Sooo delicious! *drooool*


Our large turkey also turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself:

Everything was great! The adults ate everything in sight...and the kids mostly ate rolls. Oh well...someday they will come to appreciate the joy of Thanksgiving food. I ate heartily, then promptly fell into a Turkey Coma(TM) for a couple of hours.  After finally rousing myself (to the sound of kids running throughout the house), I decided to put the next turkey into the roaster.

I sadly didn't get a picture of the final result...but it tasted very different from your typical Thanksgiving turkey! The flesh was very tender from the marinade, and had a bright, almost sweet citrusy aftertaste. We really enjoyed it, and feasted upon its leftovers throughout the week.

As for the non-cooks (aka Nathan, Paul, and all the kiddos): they had some fun too. They spent much of the morning at the playground, and crashed by watching movies most of the afternoon. Right before we sat down to eat, Lorelai had an unexpected milestone: one of her two front teeth finally fell out!

I was so glad it had finally fallen out...it seems like her teeth have been loose forever, but nothing had changed for months! I have been calling her my "jack o' lantern daughter," because of her suddenly holey grin (she lost one of her bottom teeth the week before). It makes her look so grown-up.

That evening, the whole family gathered together and watched The Avengers--most of the Carlins hadn't seen it, and they all gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up! We went to bed tired but very satisfied with our busy day. I'll talk about the rest of the Carlin's visit next time around.

Our New Stake Center Got All Dressed Up

Okay...I reeeeeeaaaaaally didn't manage to blog every day this month! By my best guess, I'll be batting about .333 by the end of this month. Well, there's always next November!! (or heck...another month of the year. Another goal to ponder!)

Well, a lot of stuff has been happening this month, most of which was caused by two big events:
1. My sister and her family coming to visit; and
2. The new stake center for the LDS Sahuarita Stake being completed.

I've already written a bit about our stake center's "grand opening," when we attended the first-ever stake conference in the new building. A week later, however, the church held an official Open House, in which the building is opened to the public. As a part of the open house, a guided tour takes visitors through various rooms in the building, describing both their function and their meaning in a larger spiritual context.

An open house is a fairly common thing for most LDS buildings nowadays...our family attended an open house for the newest Arizona temple in Gila Valley a couple of years ago, and we plan on going to open houses for both the newest Phoenix-area temple (sometime next spring or summer) and the long-awaited Tucson temple, when it finally arrives.In a way, though, a stake center's open house is just as important, since these are the "workhorse" buildings of the church. They hold regular Sunday meetings for the whole family, and the entire community is welcome to attend. Sahuarita's new stake center was therefore a pretty significant event (by LDS church standards) for our little corner of Arizona.

Luckily, our stake is full of many motivated, energetic people who worked very hard to put the open house together. A good friend of mine was charged with making all the permanent flower arrangements for the building, plus a large assortment of live floral decoration for the open house. As is Elizabeth's way, she went above and beyond in creating a beautiful assortment of flowers to greet the guests. Most of them were used in the gym area (church members often refer to the gym as a "cultural hall"). It looked lovely, when all was said and done:

Besides a corner of the room set aside for light refreshments, there were several stations throughout the cultural hall devoted to various things...family, church statistics, the Christ child, etc. In the very center of the gym was a piano and several music stands. Throughout the day, many musically talented people sat there and played soft spiritual music to soothe the spirits of volunteers and visitors alike.

Yours truly also took a turn at the piano for an hour...not that I'm any more talented than most of the people who came before and after me *ahem*. I played from 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock in the morning, so not a whole lot of visitors were there at first. By the time I was finishing up, though, there was a steady trickle of visitors headed throughout the building. It felt really good to play whatever I wanted for an hour...not only did it fill my soul with peace and comfort, it was such a refreshing feeling to get real playing time on a piano for once, instead of merely teaching lessons most days. Sometimes playing is just as nice!

I had double duty on open house day...as president of the Primary (children's organization) in our home congregation, I was asked to serve as a Primary representative during the tour. My role was pretty simple; I was to greet people as they came into the Primary room, and then take a few minutes to explain what Primary is and its role in our faith. I was to provide a few logistical details of Primary as well. Here I am in the Primary room:

I'd come in earlier that week to help set up the Primary room chairs and add a few small decorations (however, I can't take credit for the lovely table display...my friend and stake Primary counselor Lexi set all that up!). I thought the room looked very beautiful and I was really excited to lead a tour...but I never got the chance!! That's what happens when I sign up for the 9 am time slot; nobody wants to get up and go to church that early on a Saturday morning! However, many other wonderful Primary workers had the chance to share the joy of Primary with visitors later in the day.

Many other rooms throughout the building were decorated, each by a different auxiliary organization of the church (Relief Society, Young Men & Young Women, Scouts, Seminary, Employment Services, and so forth). Each room had a distinct look, and it was neat to see the "personality" of each auxiliary emerge as it shared its message with visitors.

Speaking of visitors...we decided to take a tour as a family after my Primary and music shifts were finished. It was about as wiggly and distracting tour as you can imagine, with our nutty little girls. However, they asked lots of questions and got so excited to see everything. The Young Women's room was especially fun...Celeste "oohed" and "aahed" endlessly over all the jewelry. She wants to be in Young Women's already, because of the bling! Too funny.

Posing next to this lovely nativity scene was a nice way to end our morning at the new stake center, as well as get excited about the upcoming holiday season. We weren't able to visit the open house in the afternoon, because Nathan and I were invited to a lovely dinner at his boss's home (their annual "pre-Thanksgiving" Thanksgiving feast, with only adults! We were honored to be invited and had lots of fun, while the girls went wild with their babysitter). I can only assume the crowds continued to grow throughout the day, and I hope everyone who went felt the same lovely spirit we did. It was a good reminder for us to remember the many blessings that are ours due to the birth of the Christ child.

Next up...Thanksgiving with the Carlins!

Story Town Fun

Playing a little bit of catch-up today...I wanted to make a short post about a fun activity the kids and I attended earlier this month.

We are frequent visitors of the Pima County Public Library, and that includes the preschool Storytime activities. We love Ms. Michelle, the Green Valley branch's children's librarian. She has been in charge of Storytime ever since we moved to Sahuarita. She is energetic, loving, creative, and fun...and she makes Storytime a wonderful place to take my kids as often as possible!

For a while now, Ms. Michelle has encouraged our family to visit Story Land, a yearly activity the library holds at its main branch in downtown Tucson. We have always shrugged it off before, but this year (thanks to Ms. Michelle's reminder and the recommendation of another friend), I thought, "Why not?" So, on November 3rd (the first Saturday of the month), the girls and I drove to Tucson to have a look.

We were all really glad we did! Story Town is a kid-sized festival celebrating books and reading...perfect for a family of bookworms. There was live music and dancing, many activity booths, picture stations, and even food vendors along the perimeter of the event. Our first stop was at the used-book tent, where each of the girls picked up a book for about $0.50 each!

After that Lorelai headed to the cake walk game (or "book walk," to be more precise). All the girls took turns walking in the circle as the music played. However, after a few minutes, the number Lorelai stopped on was called, and she won another book to take home! We were all very excited to get so many great new books!

Perhaps the girls' favorite activity center was the "fairy tale castle" (big surprise, I know). There were "princesses" seated inside (probably volunteers from a nearby high school, but why ruin the illusion?), and they took turns reading fantastical tales to the girls.

Celeste and Aurora would have listened to "Rapunzel" tell stories all afternoon, so long as they could have stayed under this romantic "fairy canopy!"

Lorelai preferred to take a book from the "fairy tale" pile and start reading it over herself...she gave it back eventually, though.

At another station, the girls were able to make animal stick puppets. They got to color the animal pictures first before cutting them out. While they were hard at work, they got a visit from a favorite book character...Clifford, the big red dog:

The girls were a little wary of Clifford, but soon warmed to him when they realized he was friendly. They saw several other characters wandering throughout Story Time, including Curious George.

Another cool craft booth (which I unfortunately didn't photograph) featured projects made with old stamps. There were a few chests there filled with literally thousands of old stamps, some decades old, and many from other countries! Lorelai made a fill-in-the-blank story, using pictures on the stamps as the missing words in her story. We all made bookmarks plastered with old stamps (I found two from Mongolia, and a 5-kopek stamp from the 60s era Soviet Union! Score! Yes, I became a major stamp nerd while at this table). At the end, the girls all got to address a postcard to themselves from Story Town. They received it in the mail a couple of weeks later, and they were quite excited!

After all the creating, the girls were hungry, so we each got a hot dog from a nearby stand and enjoyed an outdoor lunch in the park:

They also had to goof off on this large modern art sculpture that sits at one end of the main library's outdoor plaza:

Overall, we had a great time, even though we weren't able to stay too long (Nathan and I had painting to do that night). I think we will definitely mark Story Town on our calendar for next year. It is great to have kids that are still young, and who don't think they are "too cool" for this kind of sweet, fun activity. I love to see them get excited about books, reading, and learning. I hope this kind of activity will still appeal to them for a few more years.

Painting The Downstairs (Some More)

Well, amongst the other craziness of November, here's the biggest reason I haven't been able to blog every day...home improvement! My sister Jocelyn and her family will be visiting our home for Thanksgiving, so Nathan and I decided to get most of the downstairs painted in anticipation of their arrival. Granted, this wasn't the most convenient time to start a painting project, but sometimes Nathan and I need a good kick in the pants to get working.

So we've spent the last three weekends turning the downstairs upside down, moving furniture, cleaning floors, rearranging stuff, and generally leaving the house a huge cluttered mass (which makes me very jittery, as anyone who knows me well will realize).

As you may remember from several days ago, we first painted the wall behind our television, as well as our small "side" walls around the closets & bathrooms:

The next two weekends were a bit more complicated; it involved moving around both our living room bookshelves and our old TV stand. First, we decided to paint the fireplace column, which would be a different color from the rest of the room. At first, we thought to paint it a bold, dark brown color; ultimately we decided to go with a pale, sky-blue type color (to match the blue tiling around the fireplace).

This blue was originally going to be on the surrounding walls, but Nathan's parents convinced us to limit the blue color to the fireplace column. A wise move; it probably would have been too overwhelming otherwise. Instead, we painted the surrounding walls the same brown as the rest of the downstairs:

Nice contrast! Nathan pointed out that the blue in the fireplace column makes the tiles appear almost "transparent"...it's a neat effect!

Here's what it all looks like once we put all our stuff back in place:

It makes the room look cozier and more "professional" (if that word applies here).

We spent most of the next weekend painting the kitchen...the room we dreaded doing more so than any other room downstairs. We hate painting around cabinets!

We chose a gray color, and at first I worried it would clash with the fireplace color. However, it all blends together very nicely!

Climbing all over the cabinets to reach the ceiling (and moving the fridge to paint behind it) was quite annoying. But thankfully, the walls aren't very long, so the job only took one (frustrating) weekend. We even had game nights each weekend we painted, so everyone could see our crazy messy house! We'll have to plan for that better next time.

But at last, we finished the job, packed away our painting supplies, and put the kitchen back together.

Looking good, kitchen!!

Now all that remains in the downstairs are two white walls (the west wall in the front room and the long south wall in the kitchen/dining/living room area). We want to paint those with a matching, yet fairly basic color (white? Off-white? Light gray? We're not sure yet).

Then, at last, I can put up some CURTAINS downstairs! I am pretty sick of our vertical blinds falling onto the ground every time someone sneezes in their general direction. Plus, I would like the kitchen sink window covered, so the neighbors can't watch me cook any more. But all that will come soon...we're hoping to have our downstairs decorating finished by the spring!

So, gentle readers, this is why I haven't been writing much. Granted, we've only been painting on the weekends, but painting on the weekends in addition to all the other usual November craziness has added up to be quite a lot going on. I still have more pictures to share; they're coming soon!

A Big New Blessing In Sahuarita, Arizona

Today was an historic day for the LDS church in our little corner of Arizona. For the first time, the Sahuarita Stake (formed in 2009, a little more than a year after we moved here) was able to hold Stake Conference in its very own stake center, which was completed mere weeks ago. Up to this point, our stake has had to borrow other church buildings (and once, a community auditorium) for its stake conferences, displacing many other wards in the process. But no more!

Look at us all us Barretts, back at Lorelai's blessing (our old meetinghouse is in the back)

We have lived in Sahuarita for more than four years now. Before moving here, we lived in the central part of Tucson, and attended the stake center at 22nd Street and Broadway (otherwise known as the Kenyon building). It was a large, roomy place, with stake offices, a family history center next door, and more classrooms than were necessary for our mid-sized ward. I didn't realize how good we'd had it until we moved to Sahuarita at the beginning of 2008.

The meetinghouse in Sahuarita is not only an older building (constructed in the 1970s, by the look of it), but it is also undersized, with small classrooms, a narrow chapel, and a half-sized gym/cultural hall (shortly after we moved here, an additional classroom wing was constructed onto the east side of the building). While it has plenty of storage space, and two small mother's rooms (for nursing moms), many of the classrooms have been converted to bishopric's offices and so classroom space has grown terribly limited. The stake officers have had offices in a trailer out in the parking lot!

What's more, instead of two wards and two branches using the building (as was the case for our large building back in Tucson), there have been four (sometimes five!) good-sized wards crammed into these close quarters. With the church growing so fast in this area, it was clear another building was needed. But years went by with not much progress. Government sloth, red tape, testy negotiations with landowners...you name it. But thankfully, all that has finally been swept aside.

The groundbreaking ceremony for the stake center was back in September of last year. After that, much of the early work involved clearing the land and hauling in literally thousands of tons of dirt (the land needed to be leveled out, and the dirt needed to be packed more firmly to properly hold the foundation). After laying the foundation, though, things started to proceed more quickly.

Here's what the building looked like in early summer. It made slow but steady progress throughout the year; I like to think the construction company (which had constructed several other LDS meetinghouses in the Phoenix area) knew very well what they were doing by this point!

Our new building is somewhat unique, not just its Southwest-styled exterior design (mandated by the building codes of Rancho Sahuarita), but its interior perks as well.

Our stake center was the "Legacy" architectural model (common among many large stakes of the church in the United States). By permission, it was the last Legacy model to be constructed! This means that some of the "bugs" from earlier Legacy models have been smoothed out of this iteration, as well as a few new perks being added in (multiple Wi-Fi ports throughout the building; wheelchair-accessible rostrum; additional high-quality framed artwork on the walls; and other delights). I like to think that our building, besides being beautiful inside and out, is truly one of a kind!

Nathan and I attended the adult session Saturday evening; our whole family went to the Sunday morning dedicatory session. Since people in this area of Arizona had waited years for this building (many years, in the case of some), it was one of the more crowded stake conferences I've ever attended:

However, the crowds didn't feel nearly so stifling as they have in the past. Probably because everyone was "oohing" and "aahing" together at this beautiful new gift of a building. There was a lot of happiness and optimism in the air, and the Spirit was strong throughout the session (and throughout the broadcast from Salt Lake City that followed the dedicatory session).

It will be a pleasure to attend church in this building weekly (our home ward, the Sahuarita First Ward, will have the stake center as its new home, as will the Sahuarita Second Ward and the Midvale Ward). I pray that all of us will treat it with the respect and care such a fine gift of the Lord deserves. We'll be moving into the new building for good starting on December 2nd...just a few more weeks! Yay! But before that, there will be an Open House for the whole community this coming weekend, in which the LDS Church will invite everyone to see the new building for themselves...and hopefully, come again another time.

I'll be helping out with the Open House next weekend, and I'll share more later. For now, I will go to bed happy there are now two LDS meetinghouses in Sahuarita. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, this has been a great weekend to count our blessings!