Pandemic Pacing - Settling In for the Long Haul

Let's face it.

A major piece of Roger's and my survival during this Pandemic is good eating. 
To be honest, food is the highlight of most days these days.

While raising five kids in the earlier years, routine recipes were my norm and cooking 

fell more in the task category than the pleasure one. 

For about twenty years I have found adventure in expanding our palates. 

I think my try-new-tastes dad piqued my interest in food early, then when he was retired 

he enthusiastically cooked with this curiosity, sharing details with me in our phone conversations.

So, we shared this passion until he died.

A fond memory is, toward the end of his life, Mom had passed and he wasn't cooking much anymore 

and he gave me some expensive saffron he had with his spices and said, 

"Pam, I'll give you this saffron if you tell me all about what you make with it."

I digress.

Sequestered at home, I confess I spend more time thinking about what to cook, 

going through old, saved recipes and searching out new ones to try.

While this is a fun diversion, 

it's deadly on the waistline, unless you're Roger and he just runs longer or plays 27 holes of golf instead of 18!

Actually, the following pics aren't really of unusual food, but are some of our favs.

Grilled lambchops with mint jelly (not gourmet, but our favorite with lamb)

Wedge salad, which I make often and chocolate Bundt cake with chocolate buttercream frosting

Huckleberry ice cream with nectarine and plum sauce, candied pecans, Balsamic reduction and whipped cream

Cinnamon swirl cake topped with glaze and honey-roasted nuts

I decided that I must show the end result of our three months of sorting.

Our lower level is back in order!

With the St. George heat, I exercise on our treadmill and I use our weight machine 

and Roger runs outside - early! On Sunday morning, we go for a walk. 

If we go around 7 AM, we can mostly beat the heat.

We love to walk around Sunbrook's waterfall garden.

Where's Waldo (Pam)?

These are my favorite kind of pics of me these days!

Selfie in the sun!

Another pretty Sunday morning!

Our  regular Zoom meetings three times a week are helping save our sanity!

We meet with our "Come Follow Me" group on Monday nights, 

our kids and grandkids on Wednesday nights 

and our Pathway Connect kids on Thursday nights.

Our students each spend time making nice graphics for when they take turns leading the discussions each week.

After we got things put away downstairs, we tackled our files to sort and clean out upstairs.

Roger repotted a couple of plants.

We (he on the ladder, me washing everything) cleaned and edited some items 
from the top of our kitchen cabinets.

Though I confess that I was anxious about it, we got together for an Aggie dinner.

We tried to social distance, and you can see who was the most nervous.

It is so hard to not gather!

Father's Day we celebrated together. Roger had lots of great phone chats with the kids, 

we enjoyed our "Come Follow Me" discussion and we had grilled rib-eye steak with chimichurri sauce, 

baked potatoes, corn and lemon pie.

Our Pathway student, Jian, sent Roger this cute meme that he made.

Rick and Jodie asked us to come up north and be Katie's missionary "companion" 

while she was training in their home MTC, preparing for her LDS mission. 
Normally with this pandemic, the parent/parents of the missionary is/are their "companion."

The rest of the family (except Abby, who went with a friend to California on Friday) 
went to Sun Valley with Jodie's family for their annual family reunion.

We stopped in Alpine to see Mindy and the kids on the way.

We social distanced in their lovely backyard. 

Two friends were playing with them, but they were happy to see us and we all had a fun chat.

Fiona, friend, Mindy, Charlie, Addie and friend

Fi was excited to show us her new snazzy bike!

Katie is the cutest, Best-Attitude Missionary ever! 

She is down in her bedroom online with her missionary class most of the day 

with a couple of quick breaks and a half hour for lunch and an hour for dinner.

She would always come bursting upstairs with the biggest grin on her face, happiness radiating from her face!
She studied the Japanese language diligently and hopes she gets a chance to use it, 
if not in Japan on her mission later (as of now, Japan is closed with Covid), 
then at some other opportunity. 
The update is she has been assigned to NYC to begin her mission and leaves very soon!

With the various schedules of other missionaries around the world in her class, 

she needed to eat dinner at 4:30 PM, then start class again at 5 and go until 8.

I tried to make her favorites for meals and we had chicken lemon linguini, shrimp pasta salad, 

barbequed babyback ribs, tomatillo salsa and chips, fish tacos, tuna salad and chocolate Bundt cake.

We had brought our missionary badges because we met with our Pathway students 
Thursday night on zoom, so we put them on to have a pic with our Sister Shimai!

We saw this in a neighbor's yard.

We returned home on Saturday night and Sunday morning Stacy came by for a visit. 

She had driven Londyn and a friend to St. George to meet up with friends and she spent the morning with us. 

It was so great to see her! She brings so much sunshine into our lives!

She brought these beautiful flowers, yummy peaches and several other goodies for us! 

She is such a generous person and always comes bearing gifts.

A diversion we have been enjoying is exploring places around us, going on little day or half-day trips. 

We had heard of the little pioneer town of Pinto that is past the turn-off to Pine Valley on a dirt road, 

so one Saturday, off we went!

Another day, we drove to Kolob Reservoir and had our picnic right next to the water. 

The temperature was 109° in St. George and 74° there!

We stopped at a local bakery in Hurricane for sandwiches and this lemon roll that we shared. Delicious!

Rog by the reservoir a little further down

We drove on this dirt road all of the way to Cedar City. It was 24 miles to the reservoir from the road to Zion National Park, then 24 miles on this dirt road.

It was a pretty drive and a bit of an adventure!

On the 4th of July, Jian sent this cute mime he created.

Rog golfed in the morning and took this pretty pic.

We had our own little hamburger cook-out.

That afternoon we drove up toward Enterprise to the Holmstead Ranch.

There are several cabins around a man-made little lake and we had no idea that it was there. 

Evidently lots of people know about it because there were many people staying there.

That night we watched random fireworks in the distance from our balcony.

It was a pretty low-key 4th, but quite enjoyable. 

This "new normal" has us appreciating simpler times and fore-fathers of the past - 

not an all-together bad thing.