Pumpkin Bread

I've had several people ask for my pumpkin bread recipe, so thought I'd share here.  There aren't any pictures at this time because we've finished off the last of the bread that I made a couple of weeks ago.

It's yummy!   Enjoy!

Pumpkin Bread

• 6 eggs, beat well
• 4 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 c. vegetable/canola oil
• 3 c. pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 3/4 tsp. baking powder
• 3 tsp. baking soda
• 3/4 tsp. nutmeg
• 3/4 tsp. cloves
• 3 tsp. cinnamon
• 5 cups flour

In a large mixing bowl combine the eggs, sugar, oil and pumpkin and mix well.  Add the spices and flour and combine on low speed until mixed well, then on medium speed.  Be sure to scrape the edges of the bowl to make sure the ingredients are all mixed together.

Lightly grease and flour loaf pans.  Fill 2/3 full and bake at 300 degrees for 85 minutes.  Check with a toothpick before removing from oven.  If the toothpick still has sticky batter on it after sticking it in the center of the loaf, bake an additional 5 minutes and check again.  

Remove from oven and lay pans on their sides or on a cooling rack to cool.  When completely cool, remove the bread from the pans and put in ziplock bags, or wrap in saran wrap.  

This was a recipe my mother had and I used to make it when I was living at home (LOTS of years ago).  Our house was never wired to be able to have an electric stove, so we heated our water and cooked all of our meals on the coal/wood burning stove, and it still turned out fabulous!  And hey, I'm not THAT old - but growing up certainly was an adventure!

Hope you enjoy the bread - our family loves it.

 

Prayer

 

I've been reading a new book by Emily Belle Freeman titled: The Christ Centered Home.  I've found that it can be purchased at any book store, but the one I order from online most frequently is Amazon or here.

Our family has had an interesting couple of years, and as I read the chapter that focused on having a household of prayer and really conversing with the Lord, I realized that we really have been doing that.  We've called on Him in our times of great need.  We've prayed for others, by name and for specific blessings that we know they need and/or desire.  On my way to work, I often pray to thank Him for the beautiful valley that we are blessed to be living in, for our family, for the amazing scenery - and last summer - for the abundance of rainbows!   I've prayed for calmness, and it has come.  I've prayed to know how to serve others, and thoughts have come into my mind.  I've prayed for our children, their spouses and our grand-children. 

I truly have found that as I've included my Father in Heaven in the details of my life, I have felt His presence in greater abundance.  I have been made aware of times when others have prayed specifically for us and our circumstances, and we have felt lifted up because of those prayers.  

I want to share a bit of my own testimony about prayer by quoting a short paragraph from this book.

"Making prayer a part of our daily routine may require us to set aside and turn upside down many of our original daily patterns.  We have to shift our thoughts vertically.  Inviting the Lord to be part of our lives will require us to live intentionally.  But the blessing of constant companionship is worth it.  The ongoing conversation will bless our lives in a way that we may have been missing out on previously.  Through prayer we can receive answers, comfort, and strength.  We can experience the miracles that can come only through prayer and fasting.  We can find direction.  Perhaps the most important lesson we can teach our children is the importance of regular prayer."

I hope that your life can be enriched and your relationship with your Father in Heaven and Savior will be enriched by making prayer a part of the intimate moments of your life.

It's a girl!

The grand kids got to help announce the gender of the new baby that will be joining our family in August.  That silly string is PINK!

Miss Emma is very excited that a sister is joining the family.

We are finally enjoying some amazing spring days.  There's still snow in the mountains, and we are getting rain showers.  We love living somewhere that is like a 3D postcard each and every day!

Anxiety - Part 3!

It has been such an interesting process figuring out 'life'.  It's something we all do each and every day.  Every person has different experiences that they are working through and different perspectives that they bring to the table - so each and every one of us will have different outcomes.  How I handled my situation that was causing such extreme anxiety in my life may not work for you. 

So - a year plus since my last post on anxiety, and I'm happy to report that I'm doing well!  Let me tell you about that year ----  whew!

• I quit my job
• My husband retired from his job 
• In April we spent three weeks in Utah helping our daughter with a new baby and looking for work and houses
• Made an offer on a home - it didn't go through
• The first part of May our house in Missouri sold!
• We went back to Missouri and finished packing our place up and doing things to the house that had to be be done for the sale to go through
• Phone & Skype interviews -- that happens when you are 1,000 miles away from where you are trying to find work
• Lots of emotional good-byes to very dear friends.  Some that we likely will never see again.  Thank heavens for FB, email and phone calls!
• Packed up and drove across country.  Do you want to know what caused me the most anxiety about all of this?  Driving behind the U-Haul!  I watched it almost go off the road, I watched it look like it could tip over while changing lanes on uneven pavement.  I watched it going way too fast down some very long hills.  I had perfect trust in our friend and driver of that van, but still - that was hard!
• Moved in with some friends because we didn't have a house of our own.
• We were basically homeless and unemployed!  YIKES!
• Spent lots of time with family - so therapeutic!  
• Went to the LDS Employment Center every day and spent hours filling out job applications, interviewing, crying over rejection letters, etc.
• I got a job the end of July
• Bought a home
• Don's back is getting worse and worse
• In October or November met with a neurosurgeon and determined that surgery was necessary
• Major back surgery the first part of December
• Don was called to be the bishop of our ward, that we had only been members of for three months! 
• He's still looking for work

 When I scored the events of the year on one of those life stress inventories, the score was quite high.  Anything 300 points or more raises the odds to about 80% of having a major health breakdown in the next two years.  We scored 423!

Even with a high score on the stress inventory, we felt SO MUCH PEACE!   Staying in the upstairs apartment at our friends' place was truly a healing time for us.  When we needed a friend, we just walked down stairs.  We had prayed and fasted and received a LOT of counsel from people we trusted as we made the decision to walk away from those things that were causing us the most stress.  So even with all of the changes that we made, and the stress that they could have (should have) caused in our lives, we have never had a time in our lives when we felt peace on such a consistent basis. 

We have loved being close to our family and enjoying time with our adult children, their spouses and the grandkids.  What a blessing each of them are to us.  What a joy to have those little ones walk in our house and throw their arms around us. 

We did a lot of 'studying it out in our minds and hearts' as to what we should do each step of the way.  We felt the strong confirmation from a loving Father in Heaven as we made decisions that we were on the right path - even when we couldn't totally see the path!  We felt like Peter at times, as the Lord issued the invitation to him 'to come' - to leave the boat and walk to Him on the water.  Sometimes we felt as though we had just taken a flying leap into the wind-tossed waters - but even as we did so - we felt our Savior's outstretched arms there to catch us. 

We feel blessed.  

We feel loved.

Life is good!

We are happy! 

February Update - Frost, Friends, Fun and more....

We have a fun place to go play with the grandkids here in town - it's called the Bounce and Slide.  After I got trapped in the obstacle course one a few weeks ago, I decided it was much safer to stick to the the big slide. 

We've had some amazing frost events.  We live in an area where there are a lot of streams so we tend to get more frost.  There were a couple of mornings where everything in our area was covered in this wonderful hoar frost.  It was so pretty.

Our friends, Brad and Martha Cochran brought their daughter Becca to Utah to drop her off at the MTC (Mission Training Center) in Provo.  She will spend about ten days there before flying to Nevada to begin that part of her mission.  They were able to come and spend a couple of days with us and WE LOVED IT!  It was so good to have them here.  See that 'smoggy cloud layer in this picture?  That was covering our entire beautiful valley.  From down in the valley, you couldn't even see the mountains, so we took a drive up into the mountains and enjoyed a beautiful day at Hardware Ranch.  It's a place where they feed the elk during the winter so they don't go down into the valley looking for food and cause property damage. 

 

 On our way up to Hardware Ranch we saw this moose eating the tops off of the sage brush.  

And then we saw the elk.  The estimate was between 400-500 elk that are fed on a daily basis.  We watched them with binoculars for about an hour.  On the weekends they take you out in the middle of the herd on wagons pulled by horses.  We've done that before and it is so fun. 

January thus far....

For all of our friends and family that we don't see much any more, we wanted to share a bit of what is happening in our lives.  

First off, Don had his one month post-surgery check-up last week and passed with flying colors.  Most of his initial restrictions were lifted.  He still can't lift more than 10 lbs and he does need to be very careful about putting himself in situations where he could be injured.  His stamina is not where he'd like it to be yet, but the doctor told him that by the three month check-up, that he would be able to tell a big difference.  

We were able to see some views of his presurgery  MRI that we hadn't seen before. The cross-section view looking down into the vertebrae was amazing.  What was amazing was how little room there was within the vertebrae with the most damage.  When we looked at that one compared to the others she showed us, our comment was: "Where is the spinal cord?"  There was a cyst sitting in there along with stenosis (which is arthritis in the spinal canal) and scar tissue -- we couldn't actually see the spinal cord because of the amount of compression that was on it.  The doctor told us that when she sees an MRI like that, that those people are usually bed or chair-bound because either a) it hurts too bad, or b) they have lost a lot of mobility.  So we count ourselves very blessed.  He is walking 2 miles a day on the treadmill and has been able to increase the speed at which he is walking quite a bit.  

The week after his surgery we had a visit in our home by the new stake president.  Our bishop had been called to be in the stake presidency...we had a bad feeling about that visit!  On December 27th, Don was called to be the bishop in our ward and today he and his counselors were sustained.  This is a very humbling position to fill and we wonder 'why'?!  But we have learned that when our Father in Heaven gives us these opportunities to serve, He will also strengthen us and lift us to accomplish the things that He would have us do.