Part Two of my Sunday Lesson

I showed you part of my lesson from Sunday about the value of work and the Little Red Hen, and this is the other part now. I had to teach two lessons combined, and the other part of the lesson was, "Using Time Wisely." I was supposed to use a jar, some biggish rocks and smaller pebbles or soil in the jar and just do it and show them. I thought that was a good idea, but I wanted to make it better. I wanted it to be "hands on" for all the girls, and I wanted it to taste good!

This is what I came up with: M&M's, chocolate chips, marshmallows, and rice krispie treats. I kept my containers of treats hidden under my jacket for the first part of the lesson so the plain bread would still be appealing. Haha! They got really excited when I revealed this part of the lesson because they thought they already got their snack for the day. (I make something to munch on for every lesson I teach.)


I gave the girls all the ingredients and told them to figure out how to make them fit in the container. The big colorful balls (rice krispie treats made with fruity pebbles) are supposed to represent things like reading scriptures, saying prayers, going to church...etc. The other little things are other parts of life like going to school, playing sports, doing chores and homework, hanging out with friends, playing video games...etc. And of course, the container is supposed to represent your day or life in general.

What they found was that if you tried to put all the little things in first, there's not room in the end to make prayer and scripture study fit in your day. But if you plan your day by first deciding that that you will do those things and when, then everything else just falls into place. I've noticed that when I do that, everything else either falls into or out of my life. The important things work out and the unimportant things go away and are forgotten. If there were too many of M&M's and they fell out of the container, you might say that means you've spent too much time texting your friends or checking out facebook and those things will fall out of your life when you put the important things first.

I think the girls liked that object lesson...especially since it tasted so good!

Happy 3rd Anniversary!

These are the greatest containers. What makes them so great is that they all match!


Greg's been complaining about our old containers because he can never figure out which lid goes to which container. So I got some new ones that were cheap and flimsy and somehow I got two packages of slightly different ones, so then I couldn't even tell the difference either! It's so annoying to push the lid on and it not fit. So on Wednesday while I studied for my chem final (it was 7-10pm on our anniversary) Greg went out and got these new containers! They are a bit more sturdy than the other kind too. My favorite are these two little ones that I like to use for treats. That's like the "Bennett snack" that we always got as kids and still love.


Greg thinks they're cool because they click together like this. (I'm not really sure when that would actually be useful though.)


After my chemistry test Wednesday night Greg surprised me with a new plant! It's pretty English Ivy that has been growing around a wire stand so it has a nice shape.

On Thursday we celebrated our anniversary for reals. We went to Spokane to Christmas shop, go out to dinner, and do some work in the temple. It was nice to spend time wandering around the mall without having to rush or worry about getting home in time to study. Dinner was really good too. We went to Boston's The Gourmet Pizza.


I got penne pasta with creamy tomato sauce, chicken, and broccoli. It was delicious! They baked it with mozzarella cheese on top, and it was like pizza--only better! Greg got a ravioli kind of dinner with their special tomato basil sauce. Our waiter was really great too. He was nice (not pushy/annoying) and did things like bring us more bread sticks before we asked for them.

Then we went to the temple. It was beautiful. I always love doing work in the temple because I just feel happy and so much love for the people I'm serving and working with.



After the temple, we went to Dairy Queen and got some treats for the ride home. Overall, it was a great date!

Ha! Ha!

That's kind of what I'm doing this year. I just put up lights in one window and that's the extent of our Christmas decorations this year. It just seemed like something I could cut out to lower my stress levels while I'm in school. Maybe next year I'll do better.

The Little Red Hen

My lesson on Sunday for the young women was titled, "The Value of Work." Hmmm, does that sound like a fun lesson to have right before Christmas? Or any time for that matter? I imagined my girls all looking bored out of their minds or like they were getting a horrible lecture. So I tried to think of a way to make it more fun.

The first few questions in the manual are, "How would your life be different if your parents weren't willing to do any work in your behalf?" and "What do you think the church would be like today if the early members weren't willing to do any work?" That made me think of this story I heard when I was a kid. I don't know if mom has the book or if it was at the library....Anyway, I checked it out at the library and started my lesson by reading it to the girls. I think they liked it a lot.


The little red hen found some wheat berries when she was searching for food. Somebody told her what they were and that you can bake bread with the wheat. The whole book shows step-by-step all the work she had to do to make the bread. And for each step the little hen says, "Who will help me plant the wheat?" or "Who will help me harvest the wheat?" etc...and each time the animals all say, "Not I!" because they're a bunch of lazy bums.


So the little red hen does it all herself, and her baby chicks help a little too.


Finally the little red hen bakes her bread! All the animals smell how good it is and want to "help" her eat it. And she says, "No! You didn't help me before so you can't have any now."


And then the bread comes out of the oven and the little red hen and her chicks enjoy it. "Oh joy of joys!" And I shared my bread with the girls too even though they didn't plant the wheat or grind it or bake the bread. Hahhaa!


It was fun though, because I had just baked the bread right before church so it would be fresh and hot. I put it in our classroom about 15 minutes before the lesson, so by the time we got in the room it smelled really good like fresh bread!
That was a fun lesson!

Pretty Surprise

We went to visit Summer for Thanksgiving and were gone for about a week. Right before we left I ran around the house and watered all the plants. I noticed some pretty pink flower buds had appeared on this cactus. I was a little surprised and didn't know what to expect.


This is what I found when we got home.


Really big pretty tropical-looking flowers! Cool!

My favorite snack

This is one of my favorite lunch time snacks--thanks to my dad. He used to pull out the crackers, cheese, ham, and pickles on Saturday afternoons when we had done some house cleaning and needed a break for food. There was usually some kind of Saturday mid-day TV movie on and we'd sit around to watch it while we ate. I like having this snack now while I'm working on homework... So off I go back to homework land!

Yes, that is soap in my plant

I'm trying to get rid of these stupid little flies that live in some of my plants. They are called Fungus gnats.


My plant teacher said they live off the organic matter in the soil, so one way to kill them is to put soapy water in the plant. (She said the Ivory dish soap is safe, but not all soaps are safe though so be careful if you do this.) I also got some bug death spray, and I've tried both of those methods to get rid of the flies. The soap kills the fly larvae in the soil, and the spray kills whatever it touches, but you can't get all those little specks flying around in the air when you move the plant. I feel like walking around the house with a running vacuum cleaner so I can suck up all the little flies as I see them. Sometimes they appear right in front of my eye (seriously, it was probably trying to land on my eyelash) and of course it just looks like a big black blurry thing so I jump. Then I get mad when I realize it was just another one of those dumb little flies. Grrrr!

These pictures look really disgusting, but that's what it looks like up close. When I look in the plant I can hardly see the little tiny yellow specks, and since I've been putting soap in the plants I haven't seen any more.


The flies are so small you can hardly make out the details of their wings like you can in this picture. If you have them in your plant you might not even notice until you disturb the plant. It will just look like little specks of dirt moving around in the soil. Yuck!


I spent all day working on homework stuff and now I am happy to run around cleaning the whole house like mad. I feel like if I can clean every surface then maybe I will catch some more fly specks. I also want to sanitize everything because it grosses me out to think of little flies crawling on all my stuff and especially the surfaces in the kitchen and bathroom. Luckily they don't seem to be in our bedroom at all. I still feel like I'm going to breathe one in as I fall asleep at night. I want to put the blanket over my head to cover my face.

Do you have any suggestions? I'm thinking if they don't disappear in the next week I might just bug bomb the house when we leave for Thanksgiving. From what I've read, they naturally live outside in your garden or lawn or a tree--pretty much anywhere, so it's very likely that they will come back again. They get in the house by jumping on your clothes and taking a free ride to the house. They also travel when you get a new plant from some place and bring them home in the soil. I think that's what happened here, because they are mainly in the areas of the three plants I got from a friend last spring. A safety precaution is to put you new plants in isolation for a few weeks to make sure they are clean. I didn't know that before, but I will definitely do that from now on!

I really should have taken care of those tomatoes last week

Greg was so good and took apart all the garden stuff last weekend. That pile of on the side is the black covering I put over the garden soil. Greg pulled it all up and wrapped it up in a bundle of fabric and dead plants. I'm glad that's already done, so it will be easy to prep the garden in the spring. Hopefully I'll be able to plant earlier than I did this year.


It's so weird though...I feel like we just barely left August behind, and now I'm hearing Christmas music and seeing snow!

Well, I'm sure it's somebody's Birthday...

I've been wanting chocolate cake for about two weeks, so I finally took a quick break from homework and made a cake! It looks like a Bennett Family Birthday cake, which it's not really my birthday, but I'm sure that somewhere it's somebody's birthday.

Halloween Cookies!

Yum! I love these cookies! My family usually makes them for Christmas or Valentine's Day, but I've started making them around Halloween too because I got some fall-shaped cookie cutters.


If they had the right shapes I'd probably make them for St. Patrick's Day, President's Day, Labor Day, or pretty much any day!

This time I tried making them kind of pumpkin-ish, so I put pumpkin pie spices in the frosting. It's SO GOOD! Want a bite?

Disco Fever

Introducing Greg's Parents.

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Happy Halloween!

Featuring Greg, Holly, Wendy, Dad, and Ginger!

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Fresh Pizza Sauce!

When it was getting close to freezing outside we covered the tomatoes with a tarp and set up a little heater at night time so they wouldn't die. Today I uncovered them and picked all the ripe tomatoes. I was glad so many did turn red! It's supposed to be a little warmer for the next few days, so I'm hoping a few more will ripen.


Tonight I chopped the tomatoes and made this pizza sauce. I'll probably make pizza tomorrow and freeze the rest of the sauce. It's so much better than store bought sauce! Yum!

Sorry for the ugly picture

Haha, now I'm sick of seeing that ugly picture of me with the goggles every time I look at my blog. I will have to hurry and find a new picture to post.

The worst goggles ever!

We have to wear the worst goggles ever for my chemistry class. If I could find a good set somewhere I'd get them, but they only offer these horrid things at the Bookie and the chemistry club sold the same kind too.


There's no place for your nose, so it just pushes really hard on the bridge of your nose and across your forehead.


It's so awful that now, 4 HOURS after I took the things off my face there is STILL a line on my forehead! It's kind of embarrassing to walk around like a nerd with a line on my forehead. It hurts too! My face is so irritated afterwards that I can't stand to even put my glasses back on.


Oh well. My partner and I just finished all of our lab report tonight so I'm really happy right now. Usually I spend hours working on the report at home by myself, and then try to squeeze in to the tutorial room to get help after getting really frustrated with it. We decided today to go straight to the night tutor hours after lab and do it together. So after spending from 2pm to 5:30pm doing chemistry, we took a little break for dinner and did more chemistry from 7pm to 9pm. I'm so GLAD it's DONE!

I'm rewarding myself with the fun activities of listening to a Harry Potter book and washing the dishes and putting away laundry. What a joy!

Green Growing Jewelry

What's next?

This was designed for people who live in the city so they can feel like they're close to nature... It seems like a guy would have a hard time accomplishing anything while wearing that lovely piece of jewelry. I'm sure it's worth it...


And you only have to water it once every 5 weeks!


Maybe if I wear a ring full of moss I will be as beautiful as her.

Halloween Surprise!

Mom sent us a surprise box of fun Halloween stuff! She said I had to wait and open it with Greg. When he finally got home and was ready, we opened the box together. We found the book first and he read it to me, then Greg carefully picked out one item at a time from the box. It was fun to find so many treats and fun things! This is a cute shirt for Halloween. It's nice to have a change from the same boring orange shirt I always wear.


The picture doesn't really show it, but there's a lot of pretty sparkles and shiny parts--like the pumpkins are bright and shiny.


Greg liked the box. He opened and shut the top a bunch of times to hear all the different sounds it makes. It plays spooky music with a vampire sounding guy saying scary Halloween stuff. It would be fun to use this box for trick-or-treaters.


The gummy flies are really tasty, but those eye balls kind of grossed me out. I haven't tried them yet.

Kelley Family Photo

I lined up all the kids for a nice picture.


It froze hard last night, so I harvested all the food from the garden. There are a few carrots in the ground still, but for the most part the garden is done for the year.


It's kind of too bad that it froze so soon. There were lots of small fruit that could have grown a little more and been used. These are all damaged from the freeze and not good for eating.


I feel like taking a moment of silence in memory of the garden I have so dearly loved.




I wasn't ready to let all the tomatoes die, so we covered them with a big tarp and stuck a heater in there. (They are on the deck so I knew it would be unbearably cold for them.) When it was 28 degrees last night our tomatoes were happy and warm in their 48 degree little home. (Sorry the picture is dark. I didn't think to take a picture during the day when it was sunny.)

Koelreutaria paniculata, Goldenrain Tree

...of the family Sapindaceae.


I was having a hard time remembering this one and how to spell it. I thought if I put it on the blog that would help me out. You might also notice the funny fortune cookie-like things on this plant. They are called bracts. They are papery and house the little black berry fruits inside.

Greg helps me remember this by singing, "If you like paniculatas, and getting caught in the rain.." (That's the song they play on Shrek when it shows the princess.)
Wish me luck on the quiz tomorrow!

Garden stuff

We got a few cantaloupe from the garden this year. The biggest fruit turned out to be rotten when I picked it...very disappointing. But the fruit we got tastes good!

I'm hoping all these tomatoes will hurry up and ripen before it freezes.



There are a few orange-red ones, but most are all green. They say there are green tomato recipes out there that are good, but I don't know about that. I'd rather make a bunch of pizza sauce with red tomatoes!