From Sea to Shining Sea

Glenn Beck came to San Diego last week and Curtis and I bought tickets! The event was entitled "The Unelectable," and was formatted as a debate between two presidential candidates, one being your "normal" candidate who takes the entire allotment of his time during a debate avoiding the actual question, and the other candidate (Glenn Beck) giving America answers that would work fantastically well to improve our country's situation, but would not necessarily be "popular," and thus would never result in an actual election. As you can imagine with Glenn Beck, the interplay with the two "candidates" was hilarious. Despite the humorous presentation though, I was saddened by the point Glenn was trying to get across, and that is that our country is falling apart because there are so many hidden agendas from those in Washington, and too many special interest groups that are not concerned about the greater good...

God bless our country that we can elect people with strong moral values and faith in the divine providence of God, which our country was founded on.

 I loved Glenn's overall message. He ended the evening in a heartfelt plea for everyone, regardless of their religious affiliation, to get on their knees and pray for our country--to pray for the hand of the Lord to be in the affairs of our country, and to pray that we might be united as a people, for only through that unity will our country be strong. Before George Washington fought the Revolutionary War, he called for a national day of fasting and prayer. Glenn has invited us to do the same on May 17th. I would invite my readers to join with me in fasting a praying for our country on the 17th. As individuals, often we may not feel like we can do much to change the problems in our country, but this is something we can do...and there is Someone who CAN change the problems in our country, if we have the faith to turn to Him. God Bless the USA.

One Great Big Happy Family

About a month ago, we headed off to Utah to celebrate several wonderful occurances. We welcomed my brother Matthew home from his two year mission in the Phillipines, we participated in the official adoption and temple sealing of my niece and nephew to my sister, Charity, and brother-in-law, Dave, and we had our second official Hardin Family Reunion, which was a blast. It was awesome to see Matties again. He is such a stud! I loved getting to spend a bit of time getting to know his girlfriend (now finace) as well. So excited to have her in the family! It was so neat to hear Matthew's testimony of the gospel, as well. He has been such a great example to our kiddoes. Charity and Dave's adoption proceedings went well. I was glad we were able to go to the court event, because I have never witnessed something like that before. It was very educational. The judge seemed like a really neat lady, and everything went more or less smoothly. The temple adoption was wonderful, as well. It is so neat that we are able to participate in ordinances that allow families to be sealed together for time and all eternity. Our reunion was...hilarious and fun and delightful...I adore my family. We had everyone there with the exception of one brother. Mom and Dad had found an enormous house in Salem to rent for the several days of our reunion, complete with a huge indoor pool and hot tub. We enjoyed playing on a bouncehouse, a "how well do you know your spouse" game, and a family water olympics, hosted by Charity. (Toshi's skills in carrying a popsicle stick between his nose and upper lip are unparalled!) We also watched "The Great Race" in honor of our brother who was unable to attend. We know he would have liked that. (-; All in all, it was a wonderful week.

Smoothie Secrets

Tip of the day: I am happy to say, I have now discovered the secret to awesome smoothies. You know that fresh citrus-y smell when you go into Jamba Juice? Well, follow this one tip and your smoothies can taste like Jamba Juice smells. Use fresh oranges! Yum!

Stay tuned for my post on green smoothies! I know you can hardly wait!

Things Not to Do

Note to self: Do not send husband to the bakery requesting "some awesome bread to go with dinner" or he may interpret that to mean gigantic chocolate chip coconut macaroons.

Oh Honey!

So, Kayla and I are now officially beekeepers! We just started our first beehive, and hived our bees a couple of weeks ago.
Can I say, I did not expect this, but the experience of hiving our bees was unbelievable, and one most people will never have! It was just the coolest thing to be in the midst of a huge swarm of bees and watch them start off in their new home. I can see why people get addicted to this hobby. Just FYI, since I know bees sometimes have the bad reputation of stinging people, as we have done our research and reading in preparation for this, we have come to relize that honey bees are actually quite gentle, and usually so intent on their business that they could care less about other things, such as people! In fact, many experienced beekeepers don't even bother to suit up when hiving their bees or checking on them. Kayla and I, being the novices that we are, weren't quite ready to trust the books completely, so we got fully suited in preparation for hiving our bees, but Ben and Curtis were right in the thick of it, helping us, without any protection on at all, and were just fine. The exception to the gentle bees is in the fall when they have a full hoard of honey they are guarding, or of course, when people bother them.

Anyway, we are looking forward to a bountiful harvest! I kind of have to chuckle a bit, because neither Kayla nor myself cares much for honey. Kayla is mostly doing the hive to pollinate her fruit trees, and I am mostly doing it for educational purposes. That being said, I do love honey in granola, and bread, and I know local honey has a lot of good health benefits!

Here's to the bees!

 

 

 

 

Of Soups Galore!

Curtis made fun of me for trying a bunch of different soups at Souplantation.