Of Food and Failures . . . and Successes

So Tuesday began as a dark and exhausting day. Thankfully, my loved ones have pulled through and are now on the path to begin the journey toward healing.

That night, Tyson and I wanted to unwind by sharing some dinner together. He found an interesting new recipe online for spinach pesto, so we went to the store and bought everything we'd need - including a food processor. It wasn't until we got home that I realized the box of penne we planned on using was already half empty. So we used a box of shells. Then Tyson couldn't get the new processor to work. He decided he would take it back later that night, and instead went through the hassle of blending the cheeses and fresh spinach in the blender. Only after the final mixing of everything together did it occurred to us that we'd forgotten to chop the remaining fresh spinach. And finally, we think the recipe contained a typo, since the video showed two cloves of garlic being used, but the recipe said three. Yowzas! No vampires will be bothering us anytime soon!

Despite the comedy of errors, it was a good dish, and we made it again tonight - only this time we did it right. :)


Also, Friday night I made the recipe on the back of the box of Barilla Whole Wheat Medium Shells - minus the leek and the mint. It was fabulous! Definitely something to repeat. And Saturday evening I brought together some apples, peanuts, and caramel to make caramel apples for the first time. I discovered the hard way that a slap-chop isn't an effective way to chop peanuts. :P They're not cute, but they're still tasty. :)


Oh yeah, Tyson made a cobbler Saturday night, too. He looked up Paula Dean's peach cobbler recipe, but we didn't have any fresh peaches, and he couldn't find enough home-canned peaches, so he supplemented with some home-canned blackberries. As is easy to imagine, it was divine!


At church this afternoon it was announced that our ward will being moving to the newly finished building much closer to our house. To Tyson's delight, and my dismay, our meeting time is also changing from 1pm to 9am. Goodbye Sunday morning sleeping-in. :P

Finally, thanks to Kevin and Jacqui, mom and dad have their flight itinerary and hotel booked to come out here for Christmas! YAY!!!!!

A Glimmer of Hope

On Tuesday, Tyson called me while I was at work to tell me that his #1 choice firm in Salt Lake emailed him and invited him in for an interview that afternoon. I thought this might be the answer to our fasting and prayers, and I tried fiercely to not be ecstatic. :)

The following day, a few of my customer support coworkers and I were told that a position was opening up that would require no phone work, only working on the computer all day. Again, I was very excited, and wanted to jump up and down, and say, "Pick me! Pick me!" I think three of us were interested, and again I'm hopeful that in a few weeks I might be able to move out of customer support.

Tyson's interview went well, and we are still waiting to hear if he will be called in for a 2nd interview. We expected the call before the week was up. It becomes harder to hold on to hope, but we do our best.

Also, yesterday we attended the temple together. I have a personal goal to attend every temple in Utah, so we drove up to the Draper temple - only to find that it was just closing for regional conference! :P So, we caught some lunch and then drove over to the Oquirrh Mountain temple, instead.

As we were leaving, standing on the temple grounds and looking out over the valley, I could see the Draper temple over toward the right, the Jordan River temple down and slightly left, and then downtown Salt Lake where the temple was eclipsed by larger buildings farther to my left. All while still standing on the temple grounds! It was amazing! How blessed I am to live in the latter days!

Family Pictrue

It's been a few months since we've updated the blog, but I thought the family picture session would be a good excuse to catch everyone up on us. Nothing terribly exciting, but we have been enjoying the beautiful fall weather and doing some of our favorite fall activities like going to the local cider mill. We also have plans to visit a corn maze this coming week with some friends, which I've never done so we're looking forward to that.

The job hunt continues for me. I met with a great firm in downtown Salt Lake, and the owner really seemed to like my work. His wife also happens to be from Flint, so he was intrigues by my Midwest ties. I didn't get a job offer, but meeting the local firms is a good first step I think. I also got a couple of referrals from him, so I'll follow up with those this coming week. I also got my website up this week which I'm really excited about. You can check it out at www.tysonstevens.com.