Christmas Food Court Flash Mob, Hallelujah Chorus - Must See!

Turn your speakers on and sit back and enjoy. I love the Hallelujah Chorus. It's so powerful, even in a mall food court.

Merry Christmas!!!
Pamela

Writing Something

So, it's a bit pathetic that I change my blog background more than I blog, but oh well. Changing my background has at least inspired me to write something. This coming Sunday is typically when Richard and I begin decorating for Christmas. We always decorate the Sunday before Thanksgiving. I haven't yet convinced Richard to get a tree before Thanksgiving, but hopefully I can make that happen one day. This year we are postponing this event until after Thanksgiving. Instead of decorating, this coming Sunday we get to go to a Christmas devotional for temple workers in the Washington DC temple. Other than making us push back our decorating extravaganza, the devotional's timing works out perfect because this Sunday is stake conference. So, after conference we'll take off and make it to Maryland just in time for the devotional. I love going to the temple, so I suppose it's okay that I postpone decorating for a few days--five to be exact.

The winter theme on the blog's background is in anticipation of snow this weekend. It typically snows the weekend of stake conference, however, it might be a good thing if the snow holds off for a few days so we can make it to the temple and back safely.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that Richard and I are also working at the temple the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We thought it would be fun to work that weekend as a lot of workers might not be able to come to the temple if they are off with family or vacationing. Yea for us!!!

From 3,000 Miles Away

Thank you FaceBook, and Richard and Randy! At the moment I am monitoring pictures my brothers are taking of my cousin's wedding in San Diego, California. As I don't get text messages on my phone, FaceBook is the fastest way for me to see what's happening at the wedding. Being 3,000 miles away from the place you want to be is hard enough, but seeing pictures of where you want to be is perhaps even harder. It shows you what you're really missing. Despite these feelings of longing, I am sure grateful for modern communication technologies that make it possible for me to vicariously see Sue and Andy's wedding.

Congrats Suzanne and Andy, or should I say SuzAndy. :)
I am so happy for both of you. I love you both.





Sue & Andy between KaDee & Robert's heads. Kind of a cool pic.



Thanks for being my photographers Randy and Richard.

Monkeying Around

A special date at Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City, Utah, with my mom, my nephews, and Lisa & Kyle on July 16, 2010.

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Weekend Getaway - play by play

This post is a little late in coming, but oh well. For Memorial Day weekend, Richard went catfish fishing on Friday night (May 28) and was out until the wee hours of the morning where he caught a 3 1/2 pound (22 inch) catfish. As a result of this fishing trip I didn't go to sleep until after he came home and we were both tired on Saturday afternoon. Needless to say we needed a nap. After waking up from our nap around 4 p.m., Richard suggested doing something spontaneous and going to upstate New York near Watkins Glen for the rest of the weekend. To make our weekend extra "inexpensive" he suggested getting a camp site that had showers so we could get ready for and go to church Sunday morning and then drive up to Palmyra Sunday afternoon. After talking about it for a while and then calling and finding a camp site, we grabbed some food from the fridge for our weekend adventure and loaded it in the car along with our tent, sleeping bags, and portable barbecue. Needless to say we were out the door by 6 p.m. Watkins Glen was our chosen location for many reasons, namely the glen we wanted to hike on Monday and the short distance (just over an hour) from Palmyra. It's also a prime location because it's at the bottom of one of New York's Finger Lakes (Seneca Lake). So we headed out--purchased a blow-up mattress--and made it to our campsite before 10 p.m.

We were so excited about our plans and how things just fell into place we were not expecting what happened once we arrived at our campsite. Each campsite was squished next to the other campsite. It was located at a park where people come to recreate during the day and see Eagle Gate Falls. The park was okay, but being so close to our neighbors was interesting to say the least. We were maybe 10 feet away from one of our neighbor's tents and not much further away from the other one. On one side of us the campers had blaring music coming from their vehicle that EVERYONE could hear. Unfortunately, it wasn't church music. Apparently these campers were having a big family reunion and they were kind enough to share their crazy music with everyone on site. To the other side of us was a group of young adults having a good time for the weekend. When we arrived these kids were nice enough to let us use their lantern so we didn't have to set up our tent in the dark. Once our tent was set up we went for a walk to check out the shower situation and then tried to get situated for the evening. Once in our tent the people having the family reunion turned down their music, but the kids on the other side of us decided it was time to turn on their music. Yikes! Richard and I like peace and quiet not only when we sleep, but we expect peace and quiet when we go sleep in the so-called woods (I have to say so-called woods because it was a campsite and not "real" camping). It was frustrating to say the least. Then as the night grew later, more and more friends started to arrive for the Saturday night festivities, which involved lots of beer games and music. Well, before 3 a.m., Richard and I fell asleep for about an hour and a half, but that's about it. Then he said to me, "I'm going to ask them to turn their music off." At this point we could hear that everyone was really drunk. I was scared to death that if Richard went and asked the kids to turn down their music he was going to get beaten up and so I begged him not to go. But he went anyway. Thankfully, the people were nice enough and turned off their music. Then he came back to the tent, unharmed. Within the half hour some police showed up. At this time the 19-year-old kids were told to hide in the tents. We chuckled at that. After the police left everyone got in their tents and quieted down. I was so grateful for whomever called the police, even though our neighbors thought it was us and I was not looking forward to what they said they were going to do to us for calling the cops.:) Nevertheless, they did not carry through with their threat. Then Richard fell asleep and I layed awake for most of the morning. At least most people in the camp were sleeping when we got up and took a shower, ate our bowl of cereal and headed out to find the church, but I secretly wanted to wake up the camp next to us. Church was good. We often forget what it's like to attend the family ward, especially now that we attend church on Penn State's campus, so being around families of varying ages opposed to just young adults is always fun. However, it made me grateful for the little branch we attend.

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After church we went back to our campsite and ate lunch. Richard barbecued a hotdog on the grill and I had a sandwich. We would have like to have hung out for a couple hours at the campsite enjoying a nice peaceful afternoon before going to Palmyra, but the environment wasn't conducive to a peaceful Sunday afternoon. While we were at the campsite the family next to us turned up their music and made sure they were sharing some of the most vulgar music I have ever heard with everyone at the park. Therefore, we ate and rushed out of there as quickly as possible. Once out of the park things were peaceful again. We had a nice drive through the vineyards growing next to Seneca Lake and then we hit Palmyra. We first pulled up to the Hill Cumorah and took a brief nap in the car. Then we milled around for a time and made our way to the Sacred Grove, one of my most favorite places on earth. It's so beautiful and peaceful there. After walking through the grove we sat down at some picnic tables near the parking lot--and a turtle--and then pulled out our portable grill. We had hotdogs and grilled corn on the cob. Yum! After eating we drove back to the top of Seneca Lake, stopped to walk along the lake and then headed back down to Watkins Glen. On our drive down Richard decided that there was no way we were going to "attempt" to sleep at that campsite again, and I didn’t protest. Needless to say we slept at a hotel along the lake that evening. We left our tent, blow-up mattress, and sleeping bags at our campsite and took them down Monday morning. Then we spent Monday afternoon hiking up and down Watkins Glen. Despite the lack of sleep, it turned out to be a magnificent weekend getaway.

Square Dancing

In January Richard and I took up square dancing with some local community members and a couple friends. This May we completed the basic square dancing class. In the fall we will learn mainstream and then graduate in December. After graduating we hope to spend a few months leaning the basic calls for Plus level and then we get to join Centre Squares--YeeHah!

Almost two weeks ago, on May 17, square dancing veterans brought old square dancing clothes to class (Radio Park Elementary where we meet) and I was able to snag a few "free" dresses and a green petticoat. During the free share Richard scored a great western shirt. It was really fun. Then two days later, on May 19, we joined Centre Squares, a community square dancing group, for an evening of fun where we dressed up and danced with the professionals. We have really enjoyed learning to square dance. It has also been fun to hang out with an older crowd and make some good friends.

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ABD

What are the three most preferred and BEST letters in the English language? A - B - D

Yes, I said ABD, not ABC or ABCD, but ABD. ABD stands for "All BUT Dissertation, not "All BUT Comps & Dissertation" (ABCD as Richard calls it).

Yes, I have finally reached a milestone in my life. All that stands in the way of me and my advanced degree is the dissertation. Hallelujah!!! How did I reach this milestone you might ask, well today I took my oral comprehensive exam. Fun you might ask, "NO!" Necessary, "I suppose." Over, "YES!"

Ahhh, I have devoted too much brain power to thinking about, writing, and now discussing my exam. I can now move on with life. YESSSSSSSS!!! Now onto the dissertation.

To all of you who offered prayers in my behalf, Thank You! I am so blessed to have such supportive family and friends.

Happy Birthday Richard

Happy Birthday Richard!
On Saturday Richard and I went to Penns Cave and then went to some Amish markets out in Penns Valley. These pictures are of Richard prior to going through the cave.
I sure am lucky to have such a great husband. Happy Birthday!

Milking a Tree - Continued

Well the next week my prayers were answered, it was cold for several days. We were able to collect nearly 30 gallons of sap. After collecting it I thought "great how are we going to boil this down". Running up to New York was out of the question. We needed a fire pit. Craigslist proved effective. I bought nearly 100 bricks for $10. Mike and I started brainstorming about what kind of container to use to boil the sap down. Our best idea was to buy a metal filing cabinet and weld it into a large pan.
Unfortunately the Penn State surplus store didn't have any filing cabinets. I really wanted to see if we could pull off the filing cabinet pan. Instead Mike found a couple of turkey pans. On March 24th, we formed an oven out of the bricks, cut wood from the same forest where we harvested the maple sap, and started a fire. It was a windy day which kept the fire going.


Pamela bought us pizza and we then continued to fuel the fire for 9 hours. At 11:00 PM we had boiled the sap down to 3 gallons. The next evening I finished boiling the sap and we ended up with 5 pints of syrup.

What a fun and wonderful process. Next year I will have to triple my number of taps and start collecting it earlier. I can't wait!.

Milking a Tree

When we first came to Pennsylvania a friend or ours, Mike Horning, described to us how maple syrup was made. I was flabbergasted that maple syrup actually came straight from a tree. Nothing is added to it, all you have to do is collect maple sap (i.e., milk the tree), boil it down until it is thick, and "Whala" you have syrup. I thought wow, I have to try that. Maple syrup runs during the late winter/early spring when temperatures creep below freezing at night and above freezing during the day. I was speaking with Mike about a week ago and said that I wanted to try to make some syrup. Mike is very efficient at finding things so we headed off to a True Value hardware store where we found and purchased maple sap spiles. The spiles are placed about 1 1/2 inches into the tree and they allow the sap to run down the spile into our buckets. We also needed buckets to hang on the spile. On the way back from the hardware store we found a recycle bin and went dumpster diving for milk cartons and other miscellaneous jugs. We found a bottomless supply of containers. I emailed the owner of the wooded property at the end of my street and asked him if I could tap his trees for syrup. Pamela suggested that he might be a tree hugger and wouldn't want me to damage his trees. Well, tapping a maple tree doesn't harm the tree in anyway. Also the owner of the property is a partner in a company called "Lezzer Lumber." Needless to say, he had no problem with me tapping his trees. Now the hard part, how to identify a maple tree during winter when they don't have leaves. I unsuccessfully tried this on my own. I told Mike that I was a "Padawan Learner" and needed his expert advice. We set off into the woods and Mike showed me the "Scientific Method" for discovering maple trees. Drill a hole in it and if it drains sap then its a maple tree.

We found more than 15 maple trees, drilled a small hole, pounded the spile into it and then hug our jugs on them. Instantly we were collecting sap. Throughout the week we collected over 40 gallons of sap. You might think, wow, they have tons of syrup. Well ... not exactly. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make 3 or 4 quarts of syrup. That means a whole lot of work for a little enjoyment. During the week Mike & I boiled down a few gallons of sap on our stove. Delicious! I was hooked. It would take a lot of electricity and a long time to boil down 40 gallons of sap on our kitchen stove. So, we headed up to Mike's home in Corning, New York to use his dad's evaporator and process the rest of the sap.

We cut up old pieces of wood from around Mike's parents home for fuel and placed our sap in the evaporator. Mike's brother Zane volunteered to let us use his antique metal fan to blow the fire. When I say antique, I mean antique. You had to reach in and twist the metal blades to jump start the fan. Mike's dad helped us cut wood and assemble the evaporator and the women (minus Pamela who was home working studiously on her comprehensive exams) were really nice and prepared us a lasagna dinner.

We boiled the sap from 1:00 p.m.until about 8:30 p.m. in the evaporator. We then took the sap into the house and boiled it until about midnight. It took us 12 hours to boil down nearly 40 gallons of sap. While it was boiling we had to skim off foam, keep the fire going, and continuously split wood. We used a hydrometer at the end to know when to stop cooking it.

I told Pamela that making maple syrup was a lot like going on a Boy Scouts camp out. We got to play with fire, it was wet & cold, and there were no women around (most of the time they were in the house). Well, we ended up with just under 3 quarts of syrup. It has a delicious buttery maple flavor. I learned that it takes a lot of time and effort to make a little bit of this divine liquid. The weather is now warm and the sap is not running so I am currently praying for colder weather so that we can collect more sap and repeat the process again.

Way to go Richard!

This weekend Richard and I traveled to Harrisburg where we represented the Penn State Facilities Engineering Institute (PSFEI)--Richard's work--at an awards gala (black tie event). During the awards ceremony, PSFEI was recognized as a finalist in the category of Best Technology Company. What's even more fabulous than the dress I wore and Richard's tuxedo was that the award nomination was based on a Web-based application Richard created for the energy team (a group of engineers).



In addition, his team was recently recognized by James Creedon, secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of General Services (DGS) for their work in saving the state millions of dollars in 2009. Ironically--okay not so ironically--when you read the news release about this recognition you will quickly realize that they were recognized for a "Web-based platform" that Richard--the only software engineer on the team--developed. I am so glad he loves his job. He works with some great people.

Pics of Groundhog Day

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Punxsutawney Phil's Shadow

[We will post our own pictures later this afternoon. This picture is from the AP. Yep, we are in the background, right above the guy's hat. Good thing he didn't cover us up.]

This morning we embraced a bitter--and early--winter morning in Central Pennsylvania (16 degrees) in an effort to see Punxsutawney Phil and hear his prediction on whether or not we will have an early spring.

We rolled out of bed at 3:45 a.m. and piled on layers of clothing. Within two hours we were in Punxsutawney, Pa. We followed our directions flawlessly, which was very unlike ourselves, and found parking in town near the railroad tracks next to the Country Store. Then we were loaded on a school bus. A mile and a half later, at 6:30 a.m., we arrived at Gobbler's Knob where we, along with 10,000 other individuals, awaited the annual debut of Punxsutawney Phil. As we stepped off the bus we were just in time to see the early morning fireworks show. It was spectacular. I love fireworks! Typically when fireworks go off the sky grows darker, but this time the sky grew lighter. It was great.

Through all of our layers of clothing, the cold didn't really affect us. In fact, Richard and I both felt very comfortable being outside. We had a great time taking pictures with my phone (my camera battery was dead, so we couldn't use it) and awaiting the anticipated announcement.

As you can imagine, when it was announced that Phil saw his shadow, and we will have to endure six more weeks of winter, the crowd was a little disappointed. But Richard and I are both excited that at least we ONLY have to ensure winter six more weeks--YIPPIE!

After the announcement we worked our way through the departing crowd to get a closer look at Phil. By the time we were near him they put him back in his cage. So we took a couple more pictures and then headed over to a huge bonfire where we warmed our hands. Instead of taking the bus back into town we decided to enjoy a brisk morning walk. It was nice to spend time together outside.

Once in town we walked around some booths and explored a souvenir shop. Throughout the city they have a number of statuesque groundhogs, which are painted and posed differently. It would be quite interesting to get a map of all the groundhog statues in Punxsutawney. I wonder if someone has put this together. If not, someone should. My favorite statue was the fireman groundhog at the fire station.

Interestingly enough, by the end of the morning my shoulders were sore from the weight of all the clothes I were wearing. On our ride home we stopped at a donut shop for some donuts and hot chocolate. By 11:30 a.m. Richard was heading back into work and I was getting ready for a nap. I hope he has a great day!

Phil's Forecast
Around 7:25 a.m. the inner circle brought Phil out of his little cage that was inside a make-shift tree stump. They identified his shadow and read his official forecast:

Hear Ye Hear Ye Hear Ye

On Gobbler's Knob on this glorious Groundhog Day, February 2nd, 2010, Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Prognosticator of all Prognosticators awoke to the call of President Bill Deeley and greeted his handlers, John Griffiths and Ben Hughes.

After casting a joyful eye towards thousands of his faithful followers, Phil proclaimed, "If you want to know next, you must read my text. As the sky shines bright above me, my shadow I see beside me. So six more weeks of winter it will be."

The Church Building

During our walk into Punxsutawney, we passed a church building right next to Gobbler's Knob that looked very similar to many of the houses of worship built by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We tried to make out the name on the Church and decided that it just couldn't be one of our Church buildings. But then we noticed a sign near the street that identified the Church's name. It was one of our church buildings. We were so excited. Although most of you reading this will find our excitement quite odd, what you don't know is that finding a church building that belongs to our church in Central Pennsylvania is rare. There are so many different congregations and church buildings out here that we are not accustom to finding or having a place of worship nearby. It was a wonderful sight and perhaps what some would call a tender
mercy.

Panic & Desire
Near Punxsutawney we saw some signs directing us to a couple towns with very unique names. Panic and Desire were the names of the towns. :) Now those are cities you don't hear about every day.