FEBRUARY - THINGS WE LOVE

When I look at all of the pics for the blog this month, I realize that there are mostly pics of people and things we love.

Most appropriate for the Love Month, don't you think?

 Roger and I don't really care much about the Super Bowl anymore, but we use it for a good excuse every year to have something Roger loves, wings from Winger's.  So we get them on Saturday, with the sauce in a separate container, then on Sunday after church, I crisp the wings up in the oven, then pour the heated yummy sauce all over them, and yum! 

I made a broccoli and bacon salad, which we both love . . .

. . . and we love cinnamon streusel cake.

We were invited to Crystal Lakes for their annual Valentine's Dinner and I brought potato fennel gratin.  It was such a fun evening; lots of our branch members live at Crystal Lakes. We even danced after dinner, which we both love to do!

We had our last-for-a-while Aggie Dinner Night on February 10 at Taylor's.

Both the Taylors and the Bradys are soon to go on missions.  We have loved these evenings together with dear friends, and will miss them, the evenings and our friends, dearly!

I made a chocolate brownie torte for dessert in the heart-shaped pan my kids gave me.

As my kids know, their mom loves to fiddle with new recipes - I had fun!

Didn't Anne set a lovely table?  She made a delicious chicken pot pie and the most wonderful home-made rolls.  Mary brought a yummy salad. 

Anne put candles on the torte and they sang Happy Birthday.

I love these guys!

We had dinner with our college days friends, Jane and Dan Madsen.  Jane and I are both Valentine babies, so we love to get together around our birthdays every year.

Roger booked a hotel in Las Vegas for the night after Valentine's Day for a quick get-away to celebrate V-Day and my birthday because the prices were dramatically better.  So on Valentine's Day, he took me to lunch at my the restaurant I love most in St. George, The Painted Pony. And we both ordered the dish I have a hard time not ordering when I go there for lunch (that must be love), seared ahi tuna salad. 

Had to have a dessert on my birthday, right?  This was a good one!

Then we went off to Las Vegas the next day. We heard of a little restaurant in Henderson in a strip mall with 5* food at reasonable prices that is all prepared by a CIA-trained chef. It was hard to choose our entrees, they all sounded so good!  Roger had short ribs with jalapeño mashed potatoes and I had sea scallops with pistachio and mushroom mashed potatoes; it all was described much fancier than this, and it was delicious!  We loved Todd's! 

After dinner, we went to one of the very best shows we have seen in Las Vegas, Terry Fator, the ventriloquist. He won on the first season of America's Got Talent.  We absolutely loved his show!  He's really got talent! We had lots of fun shopping, going to Primm, Fashion Show Mall and the other outlets.

  

Grandma, Chyrrl and Glynn came and stayed with us that weekend to see Shaylee perform in the Rebel Dance Team at Dixie. It was an end of the year review of all of their numbers and other dance groups also performed.  She is the cutest, bestest one, of course! We loved visiting with these guys and hanging out.

Kara, Shellie, Todd (3 seats down), me, Grandma and Chyrrl are waiting for the program to start. All of Shaylee's family came to St. George to see her dance.

Susie, Jenny and her twins, Ella and Abbie also came and stayed with Jerry and Delores Hagen, Susie's long-time friends.

Sunday morning we went to church in our branch and INSTA-CHOIR sang, Battle Hymn of the Republic because it was President's Day weekend. Many visitors came up, and we had almost 60 people sing!  For the last chorus, I turned around and directed the entire congregation.  What a thrill and it made our hearts swell with love for our country! We had almost 500 attend our Sacrament meeting. 

We invited all of the Stratfords over for dinner on Sunday.  Shellie's family (except Shaylee) had to get back for Todd's uncle's 50th wedding anniversary, so they couldn't come.  I made carne asada with tortillas and guacamole and black bean corn salad, and we had Los Lupe's salsa and chips (we picked up on the way home from Vegas).  For dessert I made panna cotta with fresh berry sauce.

Shaylee's last two games were the next Wednesday and Saturday nights, so Dad and I decided to go. The Red Storm are a good little scrappy basketball team and are fun to watch.  Wednesday night they were playing BYU-Hawaii for the championship.  What a great game; they won in overtime and the place went crazy!

Saturday night they lost by 2 points, but the championship had already been determined.  Oh, I can add a another thing to our Never Happened Before list - Roger and I were put on the jumbotron on the scoreboard for a few seconds and at the bottom it said, "Kiss her!"  I guess this is commonplace at the games and everyone who comes regularly knows about it.  We were so shocked to see us up on the screen, that we didn't notice the words, so we just grinned and waved.  A minute later, my sister, Kay, texted Roger from across the gym, " why didn't 'cha kiss her?"  Da! We're a little slow! 

We invited Shaylee to come for dinner after church next day.  I made cream of chicken soup, a green salad, corn muffins and we had salted caramel sundaes for dessert.  Shaylee is a very special young lady and we love having her in our home.  She will finish her semester at Dixie, then she wants to get into a dental hygienist program.  

Roger and I attended our last institute class on the Pearl of Great Price, taught by Dean Marriott on Monday, the 27th.  He and his wife were just called on a mission to Stockhom, Sweden, to work with the young adults. His classes have been so good and we have loved going to them.

What a great Love Month it has been! I kinda hate the celebration to end!