A San Diego Christmas, Part 1

As promised, here is the story of our wonderful trip to San Diego for Christmas, split up into manageable chunks. Although Kevin's family isn't from San Diego, they have enough ties there and enough respect for sunny weather that they figured it would be a good place to meet up for a week.

So, Friday morning at way-too-early Eastern time (which is, equivalently, extremely-way-too-early Pacific time), we got on a plane, waited for the plane to de-ice, watched muted movies on the plane, and made it to San Diego all in one piece.

"So this is sunshine," we said to each other as we headed into the 60-degree weather. And suddenly I understood the appeal of living in California.

We had a few hours to kill before we could check into the hotel, so we decided to visit Torrey Pines, which I vaguely remembered from our visit there 6 years ago.

My younger brother didn't want to wait for us, but he didn't want us to worry, so he left us notes on the way.

The inscriptions from Spencer had long faded, but we replaced them with stroller grooves. At first the stroller seemed like a really good idea, especially as we were trudging from the lower parking lot up to the trails. And it did fine on the trails, for the most part.

Only problem was, I was pretty sure there was something I wanted to see down at the beach, and the longer we went the less we wanted to turn back. 

So, we took our stroller down this:

Well, it was more like this picture below, but still.

Not shown: stroller. I was probably holding it.

As we were moving our little handcart company down the hill, a pair of seasoned hikers came up to us and started to laugh. "We have been grumbling the whole time about the mountain bikers, since they're not allowed. But it turns out it was a stroller! That explains why the grooves stayed so parallel."

Other than our adventures getting a stroller down a rather steep and rocky hill and working with a mostly napless little boy, it was a really nice afternoon. Great weather, great company, great views, and great hair! (Well, not really that last one for me so much.)

Everyone we ran into on the trail was so friendly and so eager to take our picture (probably because we were super good looking after several hours on an airplane). California people struck me as rather nice in general.

So this is a cactus. All those readings of "Hop on Pop" prepared him well.

When we got back to the parking lot, Kevin saw his reflection in the car window and laughed. Then he made me take this picture to prove that he did know how to comb his hair.

And . . . that's enough pictures for today. 

Grocery budget

Every now and then, an article shows up on Deseret News with the story of how a family of, say, 4 cut back their grocery bill to some still rather large amount. Kevin and I discuss these articles in shock -- how could people still spend that much?

Now, the more I've thought about it, the more reasonable it is for a family of 4 to spend, well, several hundred dollars on food. I mean, our family of three doesn't spend much, but it's made up of not very tall people, including a stay-at-home mom and a toddler who really doesn't add much to the grocery bill. So if we lived somewhere where food was more expensive, had bigger appetites, and lived a busier lifestyle, it would make sense to spend closer to that range.

But even so . . . I think there are legitimate ways to save money at the grocery store that might be overlooked. So I thought I would share some things that have worked for us to keep our grocery bill low these days.

Planning

• Have a meal plan for when you go to the grocery store. Plan your meals around what's on sale, and stick to it. As an added bonus, this makes the rest of the week go much more smoothly because you know every day what you're going to make.
• Look at coupons, but don't obsess over them. Honestly, most coupons won't save you money because they're making you spend money on things you don't need like snacks. We find that we get the most use out of coupons for things like cereal, especially when that cereal is on sale.
• Go to the same store as much as possible. I don't know that this necessarily saves as much money as going to the store with the cheapest deal, but I do know that it saves time and energy. Additionally, the longer you go to a certain store, the better feel you have for when things are on sale at that store. That way, you can kind of guess when the things you want will be on sale, and save up til then.
• Try to go to the store as little as possible. It's very hard to go to a store to buy one item because there just might be something else you'd like, so the fewer trips you have, the fewer chances you have to buy extra items.

At the store

• Buy the cheapest version you can stand. There are definitely some things that name brand is the best for, but it's worth it to check the store brands first.
• Pay attention to unit price. Usually bulk will be cheaper per ounce, but not always.
• If you are low on something, and you know it will be on sale soon, get the smallest amount possible. For example, if you know that cereal will be on sale next week, go for the 14 ounce instead of the 18 ounce if the 14 ounce will get you by for the week, even if the unit price is more. Why? Well, because it should still cost less overall! And since you'll be able to get your cereal for much cheaper the next week, the average unit price will still be less. (I just checked this with an imaginary $2 box of 14 oz, $2.50 box of 18 oz, and $2 on-sale box of 20 oz. Buying 1 $2 box of 14 oz. and 4 boxes of $2 20 oz. ends up being slightly cheaper per ounce than one 18 oz. box and 4 20 oz. boxes.) This one isn't a huge deal, and honestly the results will vary, but generally buying more of something that's more expensive than it needs to be isn't going to save you money. 
• Don't be afraid to buy a lot of something if it's on sale and it will last. Hooray for food storage and freezers!

Lifestyle

• The biggest way to save money is to not buy something. There are things I've discovered since getting married -- we really don't need ice cream in the freezer all the time. Or juice, or crackers, or snack foods, or supplies to make cookies, etc. It's not necessarily bad to want those things, but that's all they are -- wants. And, the less you buy them, the less you want them.
• Plan your meals so that you don't throw food away. Keep tabs on your produce and leftovers, and use them!
• Use your freezer! Meat lasts so much longer in the freezer than the fridge, and if you buy it on sale it can be so much more affordable. Freezers are also great for fruits, vegetables, and bread. But not milk, I've heard. (Ew.)

Eh, there are probably other tips I could share, but this is long enough for now.

What else have you used to save money/change your spending habits?

Finishing up the year

And, just like that, 2014 is over.

It went fast. Well, at least December did. This is probably because December can be summed up as follows:
First week: Celebrate Kevin's birthday. Finish getting ready for creche exhibit/concert. Finish organizing and arranging musical numbers. Set up for the concert. Say goodbye to Kevin while he goes off to Montreal. Execute the production. This is how it looked, by the way. So it worked pretty well, and I think it had pretty good turnout, and I don't really know how much I've explained how much went on with it on the blog and I'm not sure that I ever will. (Basically it just followed me around for more than three months and I gradually found myself in charge of everything and really not into delegating since that meant just as much work and waiting.)

Second week: Kevin is gone at his week long conference. I am tired a lot. I have very few memories about this week, but somehow Joseph and I both made it through. The night before I am supposed to accompany the ward choir in church, Joseph spends a few hours throwing up.  I hear that I am not needed after all, but then ten minutes later I find out I am needed after all. The whole episode is so funny to me that I don't even mind having to accompany even though I would have liked to sleep instead.

Third week: Kevin comes home Sunday afternoon right after Joseph threw up for the last time. Hooray for help. We spend the week slowly doing laundry, finishing up take home tests (Kevin, not me), helping with voice recitals (me, not Kevin), getting Christmas plates full of cookies we have no  chance to reciprocate, and packing for our trip beginning Friday to San Diego!

Fourth week: It is sunny and warm in San Diego! We have crazy nonstop fun with Kevin's family visiting beaches, theme parks, zoos, etc. and staying securely on Eastern Time until the last day. (I will probably talk about this more later since it deserves its own blog post.)

Fourth and a half week: We come back home Saturday. Slowly slowly slowly do lots of laundry. Go shopping most every day for one missing item, of course picking up more at the store. Rent our first Redbox movie in more than a year. Disappoint our son daily by not eating restaurant food anymore (although he pretty much only ate tortillas at the restaurants anyway).

And . . . then, here we are. At the end of 2014.

It's been real, yo.

Bring it on, 2015.

Contact

I was recently in charge of a concert/créche exhibit for my ward. There's a lot to say about it that I'll probably talk about in another post, but the thing that was most amusing and frustrating to me throughout it all was how hard it was to get in contact with people.

Gone are the days where you would simply call someone's home phone, count on them answering, and be done with it. Instead, I compiled this list of ways to contact someone and acquire information:

• Email
• Google chat
• Google docs
• Call a home phone
• Call a cell phone
• Text
• Call the spouse's cell phone
• Email the spouse
• Call a home phone and leave a message, when it turns out they were listening to the message all along and then answer as soon as you're done talking
• Send out emails to find someone's home phone number (this was for people who weren't in the ward anymore)
• More google docs
• When trying to submit the event online, create an entire account with the event website simply to send an email into the void
• When trying to track a package, call several different plausible numbers for businesses in a nearby town, only to get redirected multiple times to a completely useless 800 number and a printing company in Virginia
• Talking in person (probably the most effective method, but it also required tracking the person down)

And so on. I generally found that one or two of these methods worked for contacting a given person -- the trick was knowing the most effective method.

(Or, I suppose I could have been like Joseph's dentist's office, which just does them all multiple times. I have gotten at least two emails, one postcard, and two texts. I guess they really don't want me missing his appointment tomorrow.)

At any rate, I think it's safe to say that any phobia I've ever had of calling or emailing people has been entirely eradicated.

Although, I do still have social anxiety about google docs. Don't let me down, anonymous loris.

So much gratitude

With Thanksgiving swiftly approaching, I realized it was time to share what I'm grateful for. Since it's the 26th, I decided to do 26 items -- one per day of November. Because that's when gratitude matters the most.

1. I am grateful I have never mixed up the chili powder and the cinnamon.

2. I am grateful for masking tape.

3. I am grateful Elsa made such a beautiful ice palace.

4. I am grateful Daniel Tiger likes carrots.

5. I am grateful for people who respond to emails, for they shall inherit the earth.

6. I am grateful for people who don't, because it reminds me to respond to emails.

7. I am grateful I have never had a traumatic experience in an elevator, just lots of slow ones.

8. I am grateful there are other fonts besides Comic Sans and Papyrus.

9. I am grateful I haven't played Red Rover in years.

10. I am grateful for penne rigate.

11. I am grateful for clickbait articles, because instead of clicking on them I can just bask in my incredulity. I will never believe what happened next.

12. I am grateful for all of the consonants except C, G, W, and Y because they ruin phonetics.  Q and X are sort of dumb, too.

13. I am grateful I've still made it this far as a parent without buying any Goldfish crackers.

14. I am grateful for sweet potatoes.

15. I am grateful Kevin and I can forgive each other when we lose each other's games of Hearts on the computer.

16. I am grateful the last time I did a group project movie about DNA was never.

17. I am grateful I have never gotten injured curling ribbon with scissors.

18. I am grateful that there are books in the library about construction vehicles, because I was starting to get embarrassed that I was calling everything a bulldozer.

19. I am grateful that Joseph has learned the names quickly, because hearing him say, "Look, there's a trackhoe" or "Is that a compactor?" is kind of the best thing ever.

20. I am grateful for Internet that does not hog the phone line.

21. I am grateful that tie-dye isn't part of my life.

22. I am grateful for tupperware that is all the same size so I don't have to worry if the lids are going to fit.

23. I am grateful my keyboard doesn't have scroll lock.

24. I am grateful that Wikipedia has synopses of TV shows and movies I never plan to see so I can stay well versed in pop culture.

25. I am grateful for ligaments. And other parts of the body too.

26. I am grateful for Thanksgiving, so I can remember all these things I am grateful for.

A couple of Joseph quotes

Sorry I haven't posted much here lately. It's been pretty stressful (most of it self-inflicted, but some of it not . . . long story). So, I've got lots to catch up on at some point.

But in the meantime, here are a couple of things Joseph has said lately to keep us smiling:

K: "Joseph, what does your shirt say?"
J: "You need to go potty." I asked him again a couple of other times, and each time that's what he said. I have no clue why. His shirt actually said "Boy Genius."

(While walking home in the cold)
J: "It needs to stop winding. It needs to slow down." I totally agreed.

(While playing with hangers and having them interact with each other)
J: "The blue hanger is a good friend."

(While watching this old Divine Comedy video)
J: "We don't run in roads."

(I've let myself get worked up over most everything lately, and I think it shows)
J: (kisses me on the cheek) "Now you feel better, right?"

(While just Joseph and I were home)
J: "It's snowing outside, right Daddy? Right Kevin?" (In a low voice) "Right."

(Pretty much daily . . .)
J: "He (some stuffed animal, or his hands, or something else) needs to go into time out! He needs to take a nap!" Incidentally, neither Kevin nor I can even remember the last time he had a time out, so we have no idea where this game is coming from.
.
And . . . there are so many other great quotes all the time. He is astonishingly good at playing by himself right now, and I love hearing the simple stories he makes up. Last night, his hands were interacting with each other, reminding each other to share.

It's also cute how he is a little self-conscious about it, as any self-respecting child would be. "Stop smiling at me!" "Stop looking at me!" Can't say I blame him.

Pretty much, he is just great.

A hymn I wrote

Today, the ward choir performed "Let the Glory of the Lord," a song I wrote. It has been so exciting to hear people practice it and perform it. I decided that it would be sort of fun to explain the story of the song.

First, here are the lyrics:

Let the glory of the Lord

Enter in my seeking soul

Let it bring a mighty change

May it heal and make me whole.

Let the blood which from thee flowed

Cleanse my hands, refine my heart.

Let thy grief upon the cross

Give my soul a joyous start.

Let my heart be free of pride,

Meek enough to follow thee,

Let me cast off all my sins,

Leave no darkness found in me

Let my soul be filled with love,

Growing in thy truth and grace,

Let thy light in me abide

Show thy image in my face.

Let thy glory clothe my soul,

May it cover and protect,

Let me know thy love’s embrace

May I feel its full effect.

Let me then be one with thee

Safe in thee from sin’s demands,

Let this sealing be secure,

Etched into thy holy hands.

Q: Why did you write this hymn?
A: I think there were a lot of things that contributed to its creation. I think the first was one time in March when Kevin and I were driving back from the temple and I basically said that I didn't understand the temple any better than I did within a few months of being endowed. Because we weren't able to make it as often as we did when we were childless and 5 minutes away, I had sort of lost the ability to consistently get new insights the way I had previously. And, I wanted that back.

The next thing was the General Women's Meeting at the end of March. There were lots of talks about covenants, and I felt like I was missing something. I actually took the question to Facebook and got a lot of awesome responses, and those helped.

Another thing that influenced me was hearing a recent convert speak at an "I'm a Mormon" devotional. She described how being baptized had brought God into her heart. I loved that imagery, and I wondered how that fit into covenants.

The final thing happened in May when my friend Sarah, the music chair, told me that if I ever wrote a song she would use it as a musical number. That day, as soon as I got home from church and got Joseph down for a nap, I sat on the couch with my laptop, and all the ideas that had been swimming around for a few months just spilled out onto the screen. Just like that, it was there. Over the next few weeks and months, I tweaked things here and there, trying to get rid of cliches while creating a stronger narrative, but the main idea came back in May. In a lot of ways, writing the song gave me answers both about covenants and about what the temple means to me.

Q: What do the lyrics mean?
A: I don't know if I could parse it line by line, but here are some scriptures and ideas that influenced me. You can probably see where they fit in.
D&C 93 (basically all of it)
Psalms 24:3-4
Romans 5 (basically all of it)
Alma 5 (particularly verses 14, 19, and 26-28)
Kafar
D&C 88:50
Isaiah 49:16


Q: How did you come up with the melody?
A: I originally was planning on using an old hymn tune from here. I mean, why reinvent the wheel when there are so many great melodies we don't use?

But after looking through some of them, I realized that I needed to make it my own. For a while I was stuck here because the only melody I could come up with that I liked was from Lord of the Rings -- the gorgeous Shire song. I tried to make different melodies, but when I played them back they didn't work. Finally I decided I could still use a melody somewhat similar to the Lord of the Rings one, and once I had that the rest of the song basically fell into place.

This isn't exactly related to the lyrics or the melody, but this old talk by President Packer influenced me a fair amount in setting the mood for the hymn as well as providing motivation for writing it. (It also reminds me to not be a temperamental musician, which I often become without constant vigilance.)

Q: Is there anything you would change about it?
A: There are notes within the harmonies that I would tweak, chords that I would rearrange, etc. I like the words now, but it wouldn't surprise me if I came up with something better here or there if I thought about it more. Kevin pointed out to me that people whose music makes it into the hymnbook probably feel the same way.

I do wish there was a bit more of an outward focus in the song. It's about bringing God into our hearts, but not really about what we do once He's there. At one point I did have a half a verse that was more outward focused:

Let me then join in thy work

Bringing souls into thy care

Let me succor as thou would

Make me ever more aware.

It didn't fit with the rest of the song, and I couldn't adapt it to fit, so it's not currently part of it, but maybe it will make it back in.

Q: Why are there so many key changes in the choir version?
A: I feel like certain keys bring out certain moods, and I needed to get back to those keys to capture those moods. But to get there, sometimes you have to go around the circle of fifths a bit. In retrospect, I don't know that going from D to F to E to E flat is the best, because you have to fit in 4 or 5 other keys to make the transitions work. But it was cool. I felt like I was channeling my inner Mack Wilberg.

So, there you have it. My first big choir number. Feel free to use it (or any of the versions of it [no promise of no typos]) for noncommercial church or home use.