winter formal

Becca and Jake and Kristen were in fine form tonight for the VSAA Winter Formal. They delayed long enough for the perfunctory photo shoot for the parents. They were all darling.







And it just started to snow.

The Momgoose

love for aunt vernetta

I was flipping through the book of recipes we got for Christmas and stopped when I came to Aunt Vernetta's bread. I am actually surprised that there is a measured recipe - I'm fairly certain that Vernetta's kitchen is where I learned to cook without measuring anything.

I was young the first time I helped her make bread. Did she teach us all? Her kitchen was still the original farmhouse kitchen, big and full of light, that enormous table taking up most of the floor space - a table seated to capacity two and three times each day with family and the hired help considered family. Making bread was an intimate, tactile experience, hands in the flour, kneading the warm dough back before Bosches and bread makers. I can recall the dark, rich smell of that last batch just before it came out of the oven - you always had to burn the last batch for Uncle John. And I can still hear her voice. Kimmie said it on her blog - "That's about right," she would say, soft and in a little sing-song lilt from repeating it to me - or all of us.

Time always moved differently on the farm. Slower, as if the current of light and air moved with the wide loop of the Bear River down on the far side of the farm. When I was really little, it was Vernetta's big boots I followed out to feed the calves. Later it was the cousins, and then when I brought my children, it was the cousin's children. But in the beginning, Aunt Vernetta led us to the back of the milking barn, split the milk and water and just the right amount of mix into buckets and the big plastic bottles. The feral kittens popping out from the hay barn. The calves with their rough tongues and heads butting up into your face if you weren't careful.

I can even recall feeding chickens with her, back when there were chickens in the top of the old barn - after it was the playhouse, after it was something else, I am sure.

Once when I was little, I leaped from the highest point I could find in the hay barn (our favorite pastime back when there were bales stacked like towers in there) and gashed my head on an exposed nail from one of the rafters. I know I ran screaming like a banshee to find Aunt Vernetta, who calmed me down, dressed my little wound, and gave me a glass of milk and a piece of bread. Those soldiers at Pearl Harbor she cared for during WWII probably got the same gentle care, only without the bread and milk.

My memories do not reach back so far as when I was a baby and lived there on the farm, but I am told that I didn't want to go back to my parents by the time they came to get me. Perhaps it was that early bonding that took me back throughout my life, even if it was only in my mind, to get my feet under me, re-ground, breathe a sigh of relief. And make bread.

Grieving the loss of a loved one is such a personal experience. Even with understanding and release. My life was made better for Aunt Vernetta. Because of her and Uncle John, the farm was always a place of sanctuary for me, a reliable anchor in my otherwise nomadic childhood and chaotic youth. My love and gratitude goes out into the universe today in remembrance and honor.

Sherri

portrait of a family

You gotta wonder if the parents really thought through all the extended long-term repercussions of having seven children. Who knew it would be like this?

Regardless, here we are in all our glory - sans Rick and Missy :-(

(Although Rick says he knows someone who could photoshop them both in...)



I love all the little kids on the bottom step. They are totally adorable.



And somehow we got away without a picture of all the little girls with their shoes on their hands. I think that was the best pose of all.

Hoffman girls rule! Of course, we missed Rick and Squid. It was quite a week-long adventure between the road-trip challenge, the snow, the family-hopping between Roy and SLC, and feeling a bit of our cultural diversity. Kind of like the story of the city mouse and the country mouse - only more like the PAC-NW blue river crabs and the Utah red desert crabs.

So here's the rest of the sibs, etc. (How did Lor and Jer escape these shots?)

Debbie, Brian, Hannah, Megan and Alex

Brad, Susan, Jonathan, Maggie, Katie, Ben and Matthew

Sandra, William, Amelia and Lilly

Amy, Seth, Sam, Ellie and Jayne

Scott, Amy and Susanna

(listed most logically by height)
Brad, Scott, Papa, Debbie, Amy, Sherri, Lori, Sandra and Grandma

We're already looking forward to the next family adventure.

Sherri

mirror, mirror

In Plato's Symposium, Aristophanes writes that humans originally consisted of four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces.

[Primeval man] could walk upright as men now do, backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this was when he wanted to run fast. Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods...

The gods began to be afraid of their power, and Zeus was offended by their "insolence."

Doubt reigned in the celestial councils. Should they kill [man] and annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they had done the giants, then there would be an end of the sacrifices and worship which men offered to them; but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their insolence to be unrestrained.

Zeus decided that instead of destroying them, he would simply cut them in half.

[Zeus] said: 'Methinks I have a plan which will humble their pride and improve their manners; men shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers. . .'

So the gods were safe, but the separation condemned these split beings to spend their lives searching for their other half.

Aristophanes must have foreseen Missy and Simeon.


. . . . . . . Baby Missy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Baby Simeon . . . . . . .

The Momgoose

Did you feel that?

I did. Just a little 4.5, about 70 miles from here...but being that I'm on the 7th floor, I really felt it.

Good news: the teevees showed up today.
Bad news: the teevees showed up today.

I had an asthma attack last night. I can't remember the last time I had one (as evidence: the albuterol inhaler I dug out of my first aid kit and used last night expired 4 years ago), and I'd forgotten how physically draining they are. Then, my lungs were still a little sensitive when the teevees showed up this morning, so unloading the truck wasn't exactly what I'd call fun. Add the regular workload to that, and by the end of the day I was just wiped out. When the quake happened (7:49PM) I wasn't quite sure if the room was moving or if I was feeling woozy. Again.

This time, it was the room...

Good news: the teevees showed up today.
Bad news: the teevees showed up today.

Since they're here, I'll be done and home a week from this coming Saturday...barring some other unforseen fiasco. But I was looking forward to spending some time visiting my little sister (who lives less than 10 miles away), her husband, and their new baby boy, and now there's less time for that.


Good news: the teevees showed up today.
So now I can get away from this, and breathe easy...
literally.


Bad news: uhhhhhhhhh...what's bad about that?

Swimming pools...movie stars...

Beverly Hills, out of the window
of my hotel room
here at the Crowne Plaza.

Have I ever mentioned that I do not like palm trees?

Well, maybe in Hawaii...
but I think
they look completely out of place
on the mainland.




Looking south, LA in the distance, at the edge. It's always good to see what you're breathing, right?






The granite tops showed up today and
the teevees didn't.
Here we go again.

Just another day in Paradise.




It all kinda reminds me
of somethin', Elly May...
I got it!







"One great big festering neon distraction,
I've a suggestion to keep you all occupied.

Learn to swim."


UPDATE: 7:14PM PST
The teevees have
been located.
They
are on the loading dock
in Ft. Worth, Texas
having never left
the LG (Zenith) facility.




It's a
three
ring
cir
cus
side
show...

randomness and another late night

More of this ridiculous snow tonight. You'd think we lived in the Arctic rather than the Pacific Northwest. Although I hear rain on the chimney-cap now, so the snow may not last the night.

Rick left for Beverly Hills this afternoon, and here I am again, late at night, sleepless. It's only been 11 days since he came home last. Definitely not enough time to get caught up on snuggle time. Yes, I know that snuggling with your wife after being married for 12 years breaks all the man-laws, but Rick is rather the law-less type.

I found this pic in my phone tonight - these weird little ice-urchins formed on our wheels as we drove home after Christmas through the freezing conditions in the Blue Mountains. A bit of post-traumatic stress for Kristen who had nightmares after we got back of big truckers chasing us over icy roads.

I talked to Scott yesterday and they made it home earlier this week - all 3.5 of them (congratulations!). And I heard through the grapevine that Amy and Seth et al made it home for new years. Debs and Brian got home before Santa and it only cost them one speeding ticket. For all of us being on the road so much during such drastic weather, I'd say we did alright.

And finally, to top off my random notes, consider the blasphemy that I found taped to my Peyton Manning shirt yesterday pre-game.


I suppose I should be proud of Kristen for stepping up the trash-talk. We had to work with her after her first attempt was a text: "the cults are bad." tsk-tsk. So while I am disappointed that my team is not advancing in the playoffs, I have a warm spot for Kristen's football growth and development. And for Becca for cheering for my team even though she despises football.

Everyone back to school and work in the morning. Weather permitting. Rick is quite possibly the only one who need not worry.

After midnight. Perhaps I'll start some laundry...

Sherri

hockey, new year, and football of course

We celebrated New Year's Eve with the traditional Winterhawks vs Thunderbirds hockey fest with Ryan, Megan and Atreyu and 70-ish of our friends (Friends of Thor) at the Rose Garden. Becca and Kristen were appropriately thunderous with their thunder-sticks and perhaps surprising (or not), our mild-mannered Kristen's favorite parts were the fights. A proven good time every year. We tried to get Becca interested in the goalie, Kurtis Mucha, because if she married him, she could change her name and would sound like something delicious from Taco Bell (I'd like three Becca-Muchas with extra cheese).

It is New Year's day, and I am finally feeling better from my Utah-cold with only residual coughing left although a migraine kind of took me out for the afternoon, but oh well. We cooked a 20 lbs. turkey to start the year and allow Kristen to celebrate a successful year-long vow of vegetarianism. Meat is definitely back on the menu.

For entertainment purposes, we watched the Orange Bowl tonight - what is a Hokie, really? The Sugar Bowl is on the schedule for tomorrow and we will be watching closely for Uncle Brad's planned streaking episode (did you get those big red U's tattooed in the appropriate spots, Brad?).


And finally, on Saturday an epic playoff battle between the Indianapolis Colts (fans: Sherri, Becca, Rick) and the San Diego Chargers (fan: Kristen). Let the trash-texting begin!!

~ The Momgoose

p.s. WEATHER ALERT!! Kristen and Rick have conspired to put The Spoon under the pillow. And you all know what happened the last time that happened....

UPDATE: 1:15 a.m. Snow!


Oh, the power of The Spoon.