Church, Cooking, Walking, and Working

Our stake and ward were given the go ahead for having Sacrament meetings again starting today. Boy was it hard for everyone to wake up to leave for church at 8:30 am. However, it was just Curtis and the 3 oldest kids that went to church today. We decided that I would stay home with Charlotte and Alice for now because they get wiggly and touch every thing. It turned out to be a good experience for me and the girls because I was able to read to them some stories from "the Friend" magazine, something I haven't actually done with them yet. We had stopped getting the printed magazines awhile ago but I decided it would be good for my kids to have something to read on Sundays and that isn't on a screen so I renewed our subscription a couple months ago. Today we read about a boy who loved going to church with his family and how he was reverent and happy while the sacrament was being passed and how he thought about Jesus. Then we read some stories about a Lamanite woman in the Book of Mormon who had great faith. Her name was Abish and she helped convert many to the gospel when King Lamoni and his wife were also converted. Until Ammon showed up as a missionary to teach King Lamoni she was alone in her belief in God. Anyway, the girls and I had a good little discussion about her and how they can be like her and tell their friends about God and Jesus.

Church is being shortened to 45 min and Sacrament meeting only with no more than 99 people in attendance. So we have to take turns going to church. Today people with last names starting A-I attended Sacrament meeting at church (who wanted to) and next week it will be J-Z. Curtis says there might have been between 50-70 people there today. Every other bench or row was left empty to help keep distancing but also for the young men to be able to pass the sacrament while walking in the empty rows so that the boys are the only ones touching the sacrament tray handles. It was also Fast Sunday today but instead of the usual testimony meeting the bishop was told by the stake presidency that the bishops should speak on the first week back. Before church got cancelled we (Curtis, Nikki and I) asked to give talks. We're wondering how soon that will happen or if it will. I had written only about half of my talk just a few days before the intended date. Nikki hadn't started hers and I don't think Curtis wrote anything down yet either but he had been listening to the talks related to his topic and thinking about it.

Today Garrett helped us make some Ratatouille for dinner. The recipe we found even said it was from the movie Disney's Ratatouille but I don't know that it would actually be the same thing but it tasted pretty good to most of us. I think it tastes similar to spaghetti. Garrett was the one who really wanted to make it and he loved it! We have made this once before but it's been a long time. It's actually vegetarian too. 

Curtis sliced up most of the veggies; eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash, red and yellow bell peppers. I chopped the onions.

Making the sauce.

Now to layer the veggies on top of the sauce.

All done!

It says to serve Ratatouille on brown rice, couscous, any pasta or some crusty bread. We served it on white rice except I had mine on toast. I did try some on the rice too and they were both good. After we cleaned up from dinner Nikki and I got to work on making dessert. We had some buttermilk to use up so we looked up recipes that used buttermilk and found a coffee cake recipe. It was delicious!

After we ate dessert we went ahead and did our Come Follow Me where we watched a couple of Book of Mormon videos and then talked about them. This time I printed off coloring sheets for the girls and it helped a lot! Even Nikki decided she wanted to color one. She's our artist! When we finished Curtis and I decided if we were going to go on a walk we better do it now. The weather cooled down quite a bit the last couple of days and was overcast. We drove over to the Stoddard Pathway again where we walked a few weeks ago. We went a little in the same direction we did the first time but then turned around at the first street that we came to and went back to cross Greenhurst Road and go the other direction since we had never walked that way before. Fortunately it was paved all the way this time and had two portable toilets along the path, which we used! It was also a beautiful walk. We got sprinkled on a little bit with rain but it wasn't bad. We visited Curtis's parents afterwards and not long after  we got there the rain started coming down a lot more.

We said hello to the cows.

This bridge was at the end of the pathway. I thought it looked cool.

The only thing we were able to get done on the playhouse this weekend was going to Home Depot to pick up a bunch of wood for our banister and swing set and a few other items. Since they didn't have any beams that are 14 feet long like we wanted we decided to buy 6 boards that are 2x4x14 and make our own by gluing them together. Curtis also used a nail gun to help hold them together. Then he went to his dad's house and got some boards ripped for the banister.

Here's our beam. Curtis will take it to his dad's tomorrow to plane it so it trims just a tiny bit off and smooths it out. He had to work in the garage yesterday because it was raining a lot.

Our banister boards.