Sunday, January 30, 2011

TV, Bonding, and Memories

Has anyone been watching Downton Abbey on PBS's Masterpiece Theater? Oh my gosh...what a wonderful show. It's like watching a good novel. A good historical fiction novel (my favorite genre, by the way). The scenery is stunning and you really feel like you're in the mansion, and you see how hard the servants worked and you see the class system, both upstairs and down. Love, love, love it. You can catch up on back episodes until Feb. 22. So worth your time (in my opinion).

At any rate, watching this show reminded me so much of my mom, and I know she would have loved this show as much as I do. I could picture us curling up on the couch together enjoying it, and discussing the characters--hating O'Brian and Thomas, loving Bates and Anna.

I have such fond memories of watching tv in the evening with Mom. We always had a couple must-watch weekly programs. Remember Knott's Landing? St Elsewhere? 30 Something? The Thursday night line-up with the Cosby Show, Cheers and Hill St. Blues? Yep, we watched all of those.

My dad worked a swing shift during the week, so those evenings belonged to us girls (mom, my sister and me). We'd do a simple dinner, maybe eat out, and then spend time watching our shows, chatting and snacking.

Seems like TV was better back then. I don't know. I watch so little of it now (what I can find online since we don't have cable service). Anyway, I'm glad that I found this program to enjoy and to bring back some wonderful memories of sharing time with my mom.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

I'm Officially "A Mormon"!

My profile is up at Mormon.org! I love this site and it's amazing the diversity we have in our religion. Check me out! I would encourage you to watch some of the video profiles, they are very inspiring and none of it is "I'm going to shove this down your throat". You realize that we Mormons come from every walk of life and circumstance there is.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Icy Sheets

No, literally, sheets of ice!

This stuff has been slipping off our roof for the last couple of days. It gets really long, then crashes against the house. It's a little un-nerving to be honest.

It's these dog days of winter that make me think I can't do another winter in this house in this neighborhood. Our house is dark, and our part of the neighborhood is right against the mountain and we get virtually no sun. I go to other parts of town where there roads are thawing and their houses are being warmed by the sun, and they have actual SUN streaming through their windows, and I'm so jealous!
I keep my eye on the prize though, the glorious days of summer when I'm only a short walk from the lake and that's what keeps me living here in "little Siberia".

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Pretzel Baking Goodness

The girls got a pretzel baking kit from their big brother and Cass for Christmas. Miss Moo was a little more into the baking part of it (Nat helped with the eating part).
The directions said to roll the dough into 3' lengths! I don't think my little kitchen has 3' of counter space, so we did the best we could.
There's the twist...
...and now it looks like a pretzel.
Sprinkling salt (we did cinnamon-sugar ones too).
Ahhh, nothing like warm pretzelly goodness right from the oven!