Strawberry Lemonade

Ok, maybe this idea has already occurred to the rest of you, but even so, it made me happy and I wanted to share.

A week or two ago I bought a container of strawberries because they were a great price. I don't usually eat a container before they go bad, so I could never justify the price before. But these were too good to pass up, and I figured that we could finish them between the two of us.

Well, the reason they were such a good price, of course, is that they were fairly ripe and close to going bad. So a day or two after buying them, it looked like they were going to rot before we ate them all.

So Jeff had a great idea to freeze them to keep them from going bad. And I decided that, after they were frozen, it would be easy to blend them up and add them to a pitcher of lemonade to make strawberry lemonade. I got this idea from Ben and Hilary, who added raspberries (I think they were frozen) to their lemonade when we were visiting over Easter.

I always love it when I go out to a restaurant and order strawberry lemonade, and they use real strawberries instead of the syrup. It's so much better!

NOTE: if you have never done this before, learn from my mistake and remove the leaves before freezing the strawberries. They were very annoying to remove after they were frozen.

Well, we made strawberry lemonade tonight, and it was a success! I was so happy with our fancy drink that I got out our fancy glasses for dinner (see picture).

If you've never done this before, I highly recommend it for strawberries that are getting to be past their prime. And we ended up with more strawberries than we needed for our lemonade, so I mixed up the rest with some vanilla-fudge-twirl icecream and milk for dessert. It ended up tasting like Neopolitan icecream when it melts and all the flavors mix together. Yum!

Visiting Great-Aunt Ruth

Yesterday Jeff and I visited my Great-Aunt Ruth. Or maybe she's my Great-Great-Aunt Ruth. I think that she's my Opa's (for those who don't know, that's grandpa in German; he's my dad's dad - we call those grandparents Oma and Opa) Aunt, if my memory serves me correctly. But I could be wrong. But I know she's related to Opa.

This month she turned 97, and she is very with it for her age. Her memory is incredible, and she's a lot of fun to talk to. She's fairly cheerful and almost always smiling.

She's less than 5 minutes away from where Jeff and I live. I found this out a few months ago when I visited her with Oma and Opa. I've been meaning to pay her a visit since then, but either she, I, or Jeff have been sick most of that time, and it never seemed a good time to visit.

For Marie and Suzanne, I just wanted to say that I think it would be cool if you brought your kids to visit her and got to take some pictures. She'd enjoy it, and it's not often you get to take pictures with a family member so many generations removed from you.

Christine's New Church Calling

I am now the Ward Choir Director! It's a calling that I've always secretly wanted, but never had. I love singing, I took a conducting class in college (for my music minor), and I had some experience running choir practices a few times in high school. I'm really looking forward to it!
My first goal is going to be recruiting. We have some talented singers in our ward who don't make it to choir on a regular basis, and I hope that will change. I know that part of the difficulty is that our church is at 1:00 and we've been holding our choir rehearsals at noon, which leaves no time for lunch! I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any. Maybe I should have us practice earlier, like 10 - 11?
But I'm definately going to have to find a way to get more people to come. Because for the past month or two I've been the lone alto. And now that I'm going to be conducting, it definately poses a problem...
Well, it's a challenge I'm looking forward to undertaking!

Easter Weekend

Sorry that we didn't post last week, but we were out of town. I had the Monday and Tuesday after Easter off of work, so Jeff and I decided to spend a few days down in Cedar City with Jeff's brother Ben and his family.

First of all, a huge public THANK YOU to Ben and Hilary for letting us stay with you guys. It was a ton of fun!

We drove down on Saturday morning/afternoon. That was the longest time that Jeff and I had spent in the car together. We brought a bunch of CDs to listen to, as well as some food to munch on. We found that it was fun to give each other jelly beans and try to guess what flavor they were. Neither of us were very good at it, but it kept us entertained.

Our Saturday evening and Sunday were fairly uneventful and relaxing - nice vacation days. We watched the kids (Benji, Kendra, and Lindy - pictured below) on Saturday night so that Ben and Hilary could go out on a date, as our way of saying thanks for letting us visit.

Monday was my favorite day. We went to Zion's National Park - it was my first time there. We met up with Jeff's sister Rachel and her family and we all went hiking in the afternoon. The first hike we went on was to Observation Point. The view at the end was gorgeous.

I loved climbing up a bunch of rocks that were next to the cliff. Don't let this picture fool you - it's not a drop-off on the other side. But let's just say that I did get up close and personal with the edge (but not when Jeff was looking). I LOVE heights!

On our way from driving from the first hike to the second, Lindy and Kendra were pretty tired and totally zonked out.

In between hikes we took a bathroom break, and a few of us were waiting outside. Hilary chased Jeff around with Lindy's stroller, and Lindy loved it.

It was fun being with family and hiking in such a beautiful area. And the cousins had fun spending time together. The second picture shows Benji, Audrey, and Kendra getting up close and personal with the red dirt (which really stains your clothes) that was on the hiking trail.

The two youngest cousins, Lindy and Olivia, got to ride in style on their dad's backs.

On Tuesday Jeff and I thought about going to St. George, but we decided to just relax at Ben and Hilary's and make an early start for home. It was a fun trip. I'd love to go back down to Zion's and do some more of the hikes someday.

Wii

So Jeff and I borrowed my sister Suzanne's Wii for the past few weeks. It was fun and entertaining, but I'm kind of glad we don't own one. I would spend way too much time playing games. But it was definately fun to have in our home this past month.
Our favorite by far was the Wii sports, especially tennis and bowling. It's kind of funny that I feel a sense of accomplishment by reaching the Pro level in those two games, when all it means is that I spent way too much time playing Wii.
We also played several of the games in Rayman's Raving Rabids (I think that's what it's called). They have a variety of different games - some are meant to give you a little workout (like having to pump your arms up and down to make your character run), while others are more skill-based. Jeff's favorites were the shooting games that we paired up on, and my favorites were the music ones where you had to pump your arms up and down in time with the music.
Last night, we were going through and playing each of our favorite games and sports trainings one last time, since we gave it back to my sister today. When we were on the sports menu, we noticed that we had never tried the "Wii Fitness." When we clicked on it, we discovered that it takes you through a few exercises that are supposed to grade you on your speed, accuracy, etc, and then it tells you what your "Wii age" is. The idea is for you to play Wii Fitness several times and lower your age. The lowest you can get is 20 (I don't know what the highest is). The three exercises it has you do is returning tennis balls, hitting home runs, and knocking down spares. Jeff went first and did very well, and he was told that his Wii age was 25. After seeing what the exercises were, I was a little nervous. I had only done batting practice - I had never done either of the other two extra trainings (while Jeff has). Well, I didn't do that great, so I thought I might be ranked in my 30's, possibly up to 40. But when my results came back, it says that my Wii age is 60. 60! Ouch!
So now you know. I thought that I was 8 years his junior, but I'm actually 35 years his senior.

p.s. - And thanks again, Suzanne and Kenny, for lending us your Wii.