Family

You know what's awesome?  You're awesome.  This paper I'm writing?  Not so much.  Wish me luck!

<3
Eliza

Heidi's guest post

Hello. I am Heidi. That is my  name. I am cooking with Eliza and also Megan, whose blog this is not. They are great chefettes and I am not, and therefore am intimidated. But not really because they are nice. And I also like to eat the things they create. But this time, I contributed, with cookies from a bag. Good bye now.

Hello. I am Heidi. That is my name. I am a generally boring person, who does homework and makes plans to do awesome things that never actually happen. Also worth noting: I like the sound of typing on a Mac. Good bye now.

Hello. I am Heather. That is not my name. Eliza is forcing me to doo thislasdlkfjap-io1j! ... That was my face hitting the keyboard, which was propelled by Eliza's hand. Not really because she is not abusive... ahem.

Hello. I am Heidi. That is my name. This is not my blog. This is my guest blog post thing. I have never commented on a blog before, and here I am writing my own post. I couldn't feel more fulfilled. Megan is laughing and making me feel self-conscious. Also, she is eating grapes, like a queen of the olden days. This is really difficult. I cannot come up with intelligent things to say.

I will now give this blog back to Eliza, because this blogging stuff is surprising difficult. Amen.

There's just something about February...

... that makes my diabetes want to destroy me.  I'll try not to let it this time, but spending approximately 90% of the last 48 hours with a blood sugar above 250 kind of gets me down.  The real problem is that I have no energy or motivation to do anything.  Anybody know someone with a spare pancreas?

New hours, or Elijah's prophecy coming true

In the past few weeks, I have discovered an amazing new thing: there are extra hours in the day!  4:30-8:00 am is not a myth!  Wow.  Seriously a revelation.

So, I've been going to sleep earlier and getting up earlier - usually I'm in bed by 9 (!) and up before 5.  It's awesome!  I don't have to work through being tired, I don't late-night binge, the apartment is quiet while I do my homework, and I'm late to class less often!

Also, I'm turning into my grandpa.

This leads me to think of a whole new meaning of the prophecy of Elijah, of children turning their hearts to their fathers.  Since coming to college I have discovered that my parents were right about a lot of things that I always thought they were mistaken about.

Here is a list of things I've learned from my parents and now do:


Getting up early and going to bed early


Keeping my fingernails short (otherwise you clack in class, and nobody likes a clacker)

Make the bed (for pictures...)


Save money (yes, I totally have gold bars stored under my bed)

Eat a healthy breakfast every morning (wait, what?)

Exercise often (or at least take pictures when you do)

Keep receipts (and file them when your purse starts overflowing)





And other things I have learned but am still working on implementing:


Keeping up is easier than catching up (otherwise you end up feeling like this at 3 am)


It's good to clean your room occasionally


You don't really need that many shoes



And things I'm still not sure they've figured out, but which I will probably admit I was wrong about a few years down the road:


You can have bad handwriting and still be awesome


Flip flops are great!


Sweats are the best!


Fiction rules the world

Food processors are essential to life

Anyways, still learning.  I can't wait to corrupt my own children.

Some things I'm grateful for...

Here are some things I'm grateful for today:

Wow, it's been a while!

Thank you for waiting so patiently for this post.  I apologize for how long it's been.  I will try to keep this short, and update more frequently!  (Update: the short thing didn't work too well.  Maybe next time.)  First, a Christmas recap.

Christmas was wonderful.  We stayed home for most of it, making food, playing games, watching movies, and having a lovely time.  The three girls made the annual trip down to Manteca to finish up Christmas shopping, and while we were there we picked up the best present of the day - Grandma Houghton!  She stayed for about two weeks, although sadly I wasn't there for the last half-week or so.  That reminds me- we had Uncle Chris and Aunt Kristen over for the first few days of break, and they were wonderful houseguests.  It was fun to see them, too.  They were great contributors to the weekly family ping-pong tournament; boy did we have some hustling going on!

In the week leading up to Christmas, we made truffles - mint, raspberry, orange, and cherry.  I think I'm missing a few, but oh well.  My mom's truffles are the BEST.  I love them.  We also went to see Tangled, which is probably my first-favorite fairytale, contrary to what some may think.  It is super-cute, and heads-up for next birthday, I want a copy of Tangled and a cast iron frying pan.  Oh yeah.

The day before Christmas Eve, the high schoolers had a crazy party.  We were busy all day making appetizers and desserts - not something I'm likely to complain about :)  I also got to go grocery shopping with Dad.  With my love of grocery shopping, it shouldn't surprise you that I had a marvelous time with him.

I really had a wonderful time catching up with the family this Christmas, especially Mom and Dad.  I really love you guys, you know.  It was fun to see how everyone had progressed, although a bit sad to know that I've missed so much!

On Christmas Eve, we went caroling in our Victorian masks, which is always fun.  That is one of the few pictures I have of all of us, because Dad put it up on facebook.  :)

Not the best picture, but that's what I've got.  You get the idea.

On Christmas Eve we also made tea rings (very similar to cinnamon rolls, but more beautiful), and took them + gingerbread cookies + other assorted treats to the people we visited.  It was mostly an effort by Dad, Mom, and Grandma.  Next year I'm going to help more.  We also made eggnog rolls, which I love.  I did help with those, and I need to get the recipe and pictures so that I can post them on my food blog.

Dad holding the tea rings, and Grandma in the background!  When they're done, the tea rings are much bigger.  They're decorated with glaze and chopped maraschino cherries.  We eat them every year on Christmas morning.  Yum.

On Christmas morning things went as usual, if a bit more orderly than in years past, due to increased age of the youngest few... :)  We had our family friend Julie over, and it was wonderful to see her.  She has since moved to England, which makes me very sad.  She knows me quite well, and she gave me a beautiful length of silk for Christmas, as well as leaving me many of her kitchen supplies when she moved.  I miss her already!

For Christmas, Santa Claus gave us some family gifts.  Sadly, I don't have the picture of us all wearing our new swim caps and goggles.  But here's a picture of the matching Land's End vests (picked out when they were on sale in November... :)

Where's Dad?

Also, Levi got shot in the eye.  I told him he shouldn't have given Dad new nerf bullets for Christmas...

And finally, all of us with classic books from Grandma.  I got my favorite - Jane Eyre!

For the next week, Dad was off work and we were all at home together all week.  I LOVED it.  One of my favorite things in the world is just spending time with family.  During that time, we took our first family pictures in ten years and I spent some much-needed quality time with my dear Tess, the only really faithful blog-reader I have besides Mom (*sniff* she is just so wonderful).

We had the traditional New Year's Eve appetizer party, which featured homemade focaccia, leftover black bean and mulligatawny soup, bacon-wrapped dates, cocktail sausages (when Mom says we have cocktail sausages, you'd better believe we have COCKTAIL SAUSAGES), crackers with my homemade jalapeno jelly (from October!), and pomegranate punch.  We had other things too, but I can't remember what... :)  The middle kids went to a church dance in Modesto and Dad, Grandma, and I had Dungeness crab.  And guess what?  I actually liked it!  Enough that I even learned to crack open the crab on my own to get to the meat.  Whoa.  It was pretty much awesome.

On Saturday morning, I had a train to catch at 11:30 in Sacramento.  Mom packed me a wonderful lunch/dinner and then I drove down with Dad and Grandma.  We went for a walk along the river when we arrived an hour early, and then I had to catch the train.  The fact that I met an old friend from girls' camp at the station and we sat together held me together, but it sure was hard to say goodbye to everybody and go back to Utah!

We got into SLC at 4:30, and I drove back to Utah in 5 degree weather, exhausted beyond belief.  In spite of my best efforts I slept through church and had to go to another ward's sacrament meeting at 12.  Ah well.  The only problem was, that night I discovered that school didn't start until Tuesday!  I could have left a day later!  Sad story, but it's probably good that I had a day + to unpack, grocery shop, and sleep.  Anyways, that was Christmas.  I'm still sad that it's over.  You should all email me or comment so I don't feel so un-familial-ized!  I love you all!

<3
Eliza

The beginning of winter semester, 2010

Tess, this post is for you :)

I started school last Tuesday.  It was a bit of a surprise, because until Sunday night I thought it started on Monday, but I welcomed the opportunity to laze about in sweats all day, unbroken except for a visit to winco with Megan. 

So, for this post, I’ll just give a quick rundown of my classes and professors.

I’ve only been to basketball once.  It’s fun, as should be expected, although walking all the way across campus in shorts when it’s twelve degrees outside is not so much fun.  Swimming is great as well – it’s a relief to have my class in the evening, so I can have time to get ready before and after being in the pool.  We’ve only swum once, and it was frustrating because we weren’t given a set.  So, I think you (one of the parents) should write down sets for a few days and then send them to me, so I have some ready if we continue not getting specific workouts.  I knew two people in my swimming class – one girl from my PlSc 200 class last winter, and one from water polo.  Anyways, I like it.

National Security is a really cool class.  It requires a LOT of books, which is unfortunate because I don’t have a bottomless wallet or a timeturner, but I’m looking forward to reading them all.  Our class discussion is fascinating, of course, as Professor Hudson teaches the class.  Yesterday, we had a talk about the United State’s top national security interests.  She had three people come up and write their lists on the board and then defend them.  After seeing some normal issues, like China, nuclear security, and economic growth, I wish I’d raised my hand!  Here are a couple of my favorite national security issues (I  think they are important; I don’t know if anybody else does): political solidarity, security of information (including copyright issues and intelligence services), and satellite security.  I’m thinking about writing an article about political solidarity as an aspect of national security for BYU’s political review.  Another interesting fact: Condoleezza Rice is coming to give a forum tomorrow, and Professor Hudson was asked to have her students come up with good questions.  So we have that challenge, and we were told where the microphones will be.  :)  I haven’t thought of any questions, but if I do, I will know where to sit.

My geography class seems to include a lot of busywork, so far.  And the book is more important than coming to class.  Sigh.  Ah well.  Professor Otterstrom is very nerdy, which I appreciate, and my small class is fun.  We’ll have to see how it turns out.

Comparative politics is, so far, relying on knowledge I already have from other politics and history classes.  I just have to skim the chapters before the (daily) quizzes, and I do fine.  Usually I read the book during my geography class.  It’s started to get more interesting as we talk about different aspects of democracy, so I’m looking forward to the rest of the course.  Professor Preece is very enthusiastic.  She’s happy, really enjoys the subject, and has class activities that keep us involved (unusual in a class of 150+).  Today we discussed the difference between procedural and substantive democracy.

New Testament is awesome.  Professor Ogden has the best sense of dry humor, and is funny and a bit sarcastic while being completely kind and humble.  He started the first day of class off by discussing the spellings and pronunciations of some terms and names we might come across in our readings.  He was very adamant about the spelling, which made me happy.  We have to turn in a summary of the previous day’s class and our readings at each class, but so far I’ve found that helpful and easy rather than burdening.  

Finally, Spanish 106.  It's a pain doing all of the online homework, but otherwise it's not so bad.... except that I have this problem with 1:00 classes - I can't stay awake, no matter how well rested I am.  Urgh.  I'm working on that.  My teacher, Profesora Bean, is a grad student in Spanish linguistics, and she's very nice.  There are two males in the class, and the rest of us are girls.  We take turns doing the beginning of class, including opening song, prayer, and activity.  Mine was yesterday, and I had everyone play vocabulary charades.  

Well, that's all I have the energy to write about now.  I will post about Christmas break and my new job soon.

<3

Eliza