Poor packaging

Beginning when I was pregnant with Matthew, I have eaten perhaps an entire warehouse worth of Spiral Macaroni & Cheese. Not regular Macaroni & Cheese, mind you, but Spiral Macaroni & Cheese. Believe me, there is definitely a difference in how they taste - although my husband would disagree (then again, he can't tell that there is a difference in taste between many things such as skittles or other candies... he is certainly not to be trusted in matters of taste). Anyway, throughout the years of making Macaroni & Cheese - Spiral or otherwise - I have been continually vexed by the packaging. As you can see in the following picture, on the side of the box, at the top, there is a tab that reads: To Open Push Here.

Let me tell you something. It doesn't work. It never has worked. Perhaps it is operator error, but I have tried for years and years to use this method of opening the box, purely out of morbid curiousity these days, and it does not work. I always end up ripping open the top of the box, but never has pushing that tab ever worked. Does Kraft know about this? If so, how have they not fixed it after all these years? If not, why has the public not made it perfectly clear that this is a completely useless instruction?

{sigh...}

Rachel

This is the sweet new addition to my nieces and nephews (although only nieces thus far on my side of the family). Rachel was born on my mom's birthday, about a week and a half ago, and is so beautiful! She had a few health problems initially and had to stay at the hospital for almost a week but now she is doing fabulously. We are excited to have a cousin close in age to our baby, Elizabeth, who is due in about 2 months now.

On Monday, we had the fun opportunity to have all of my mom's grandchildren at her house and so I got to hold Rachel all I wanted to. Here is a fun picture of Rachel held by her favorite aunt (sorry Debby!):

Snow angels...inside?

Yesterday was a particularly trying day with our children. The worst thing that happened, however, was when I went downstairs to check on what they were doing and I found the office covered in all of the paper from our shredder (which was in desperate need of emptying, by the way). It was in the keyboard, on the TV, in the VCR/DVD player, in the book case, and covering every inch of the floor. This is a picture of a small section of the floor to demonstrate the level of frustration in cleaning it all up:

The clincher was that when I came in they told me how they were playing in the snow. They even provided examples by throwing "snowballs" at me, and did snow angels on the ground in it. Let's just say that after 3 1/2 hours of cleanup (they also tracked it all over the rest of the house) I did not think it was quite as funny as many of you may think it is. That is why I am blogging about it. I hope that someone will find humor in it...

PS We had church after this happened and as I was leaving Relief Society, I glanced back to make sure I hadn't left anything, and there were three or four small shredded pieces underneath my chair.

A night on the town!

Saturday Joseph and I were able to go up to Salt Lake City for a fun night out. We took Trax up and that was a very nice way to go - much less stressful for me and a first time on Trax for Joseph. We first went to one of our favorite restaurants up there, Biaggi's, that is located at the Gateway. We got two appetizers and a dessert to share. The stuffed mushroom appetizer is simply wonderful and we just adore the bananas foster for dessert. They also have great entrees, but we decided to just go with the appetizers and desserts for this occasion.

Then, we were given free tickets to the Utah Symphony this week and so we took Trax a couple of stops back to Abravanel Hall. The seats were incredible - we were very lucky to have been given these tickets. The first piece was Symphony No. 8 in B Minor (Unfinished) by Schubert. It was very good. The second piece was Piano Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25 by Mendelssohn, with a guest pianist, Louis Lortie (see picture below). This was amazing! It was beautiful musically as well as incredibly engaging to watch. Louis Lortie was a fabulous performer and we were so glad to listen to and watch him play. We could have left then and been happy - and maybe we should have...

The last piece was Petrushka (1947 version) by Stravinsky. Let's just say that it wasn't our cup o' tea. It was about a Russian carnival and some of the happenings there, and although we are definitely music appreciators, the cacophonous sounds and "story" being told were not really that appealing to us.

The overall experience was marvelous, however, and we had a very pleasant night, although we were out much later than usual and we could feel it. Many thanks to our sister-in-law, Amy, for babysitting our children!

Draper Temple

After moving to a new (for us) house in December, we were lucky enough to have moved from a stake in the Jordan River Temple District to a stake in the new Draper Temple District. This is particularly remarkable because our old stake borders our new stake. Yesterday, Joseph and I were able to be ushers in the open house for the Draper temple and it was a pretty amazing experience.

I was an usher in the Celestial Room and Joseph was an usher about 20 feet outside the door I was standing near. What a wonderful experience to stand in the Celestial Room for 3 hours! One of the many highlights of the day (and probably the best highlight!) was that Elder M. Russell Ballard came through the temple giving a tour to Martin Luther King III. When they came near to the Celestial Room, we waited for all the other guests to leave and held up the line behind them and they came into the room with their security personnel and then the doors were shut. It was just me, the other usher, and these two great men with their security in this amazing room for as long as they wanted to sit and enjoy it. How marvelous to be given that chance!

Then, at the end of our shift, we hurried home to drop Joseph off and then I went back and was able to play the piano for an hour for the guests at the stake center adjacent to the temple while they ate cookies, drank water, and looked at the beautiful pictures on display before loading the buses back to where they started. Another amazing opportunity! I am so glad that I was selected and able to do this wonderful service.

Hanks Family Pictures 2008

Here are the results of our family pictures from this year. Family pictures are always so stressful for me and so I have been dreading them for months but they turned out just fine.

Project of the year

First of all, if you keep up on my mom's blog or my sister's blog (Debby's), many of my blog entries will seem like old news. This will be one of those entries. But for those of you who don't read theirs - enjoy!

About a year ago, when my Grandma Orris came to visit, we went shopping at quilt stores and found a very cute kit to make advent calendars. My grandma bought enough for our whole family (5) and my mom and I set out to make them. Most of the work was done in our own little sweatshop last summer when Joseph was in Costa Rica for a week and a half. We had to trace each applique piece 5 times (since we were making five of these), cut out each traced piece, iron each piece to the fabric, cut each piece out again, iron each piece on again, stitch around the edges, press the edges of the pocket under, sew the pocket to its background, and then sew each of the backgrounds together. Then it was quilted and finished. Phew!!! It was an incredible undertaking and extremely rewarding. I must say, they are beautiful and a fun quilt made from the contributions of three generations of quilters. I am pretty proud of this accomplishment. They are our Christmas gifts to the family this year but we gave them to everyone on Thanksgiving so that they can enjoy them this season.


I have very fond memories of the advent calendar we had growing up that my Aunt Elna made for us and hope that my children will have many fond memories of this one in the years to come.