Harry Potter

A little late because we didn't go on Opening Night, but we still wanted to do the Lightning Bolts. Any harm in that? Thanks Cassidy and Rich for a fun spontaneous night. Sorry Gracie was a pill. Lucky James will sleep anywhere.
Kind of disappointed in this movie but still fun to go! What did you think?

Ode to the Salad Spinner

Luke and I were talking about talents and how he doesn't feel like academics is his thing. As proof to show him that he has so many other talents that the "smart" people only wish they had, I had him quickly write a poem lauding the salad spinner. He sat down and wrote this in less than 5 minutes, read it aloud, and I was laughing so hard. He is so cute and funny and clever and can make people feel right at home in minutes. You always know you have a friend in Luke and he can always make you laugh. He may not be the best test taker or trivia winner but he sure is good at a lot of other things that we only wish we could do. You should see his clothes closet. hee hee hee!
BTW: I was still writing my LONG poem after like 20 minutes and I don't think it even compares to Luke's short and sweet one. Here they are:

Ode to the Salad Spinner
by Luke Barber per Hollie's crazy request
(She had just finished doing a short demo on the wonders of a salad spinner at a Church recipe Night! She is not usually a fan of kitchen gadgets that do just one thing, but the Salad Spinner is one exception. She just keeps it in the fridge all the time so it is a great container to always have crisp lettuce on hand.)

Ah the luxury of a salad spinner,
while in the kitchen I feel like a winner.
Makes it easy to decide what's for dinner,
and by eating it's contents I stay thinner.
The green leafy goodness contained inside,
takes me on a glorious vegetable ride.
It tastes so good you'd think I had died,
and how ironic that none of it's fried.
It looks so aestethic wiht dressing on top.
It I start eating I'm afraid I won't stop.

Ode to the Salad Spinner by Hollie
On behalf o f my lettuce I thank you.
Yes thankyou for just your very existence!
My lettuce used to complain and grumble,
over the long process he really did stumble.
Mr. Romaine loved being out of the bag,
but then getting wet really did lag.
Then he'd lay out on the towel and wait,
it seemed with Miss Mouth, he'd never get a date.
Then he'd be beaten and patted dry,
till at last he could see with his leafy green eye,
the bowl that very soon would be
his final meal presentation for his owner, me.
He would quickly get ripped into little bits.
This process mad him really feel like the pits.
And finally after the long arduous process,
he would sit for prayer and a recess.
And at last victory would be his and mine
as he was enjoyed while my family did dine.
So Salad Spinner not to get off track,
you can see it was a long process in fact.
YOu saved me and Romaine so much time.
You're well worth every penny and dime.
I'll spread the news as much as I can,
that of your spinning skills, I'm really a fan.

Lundquist Family Reunion- June 2009

We left Vegas at 9 PM after trying to decide if we were going to head out that night or go in the morning. I had court that night so we got a late start. We finally left and arrived in UT at 3 AM, crashed for a couple of hours and got back up to leave for ID at 8 AM. We got to Victor, ID at the Uncle Gary's ranch around 6:30 PM just in time for dinner. The weekend was fun and kind of a little more laid back than we are used to. We didn't really do much and we had a couple of nap times to work around. It was really cold and rainy and muddy the whole time which was a bummer and hard on Gracie since we didn't have any warm clothes. Luke got to do the auction and he did a really good job. It was hard though because we were inside the cabin and so it was really noisy and he did it following some entertainment they had so it was really late and everyone wanted to go to bed. He did well though and it was fun for him. I sold $150 of hair clips and headbands for the reunion budget which was awesome. It was fun riding up with Rick and Lenna but I think that might be the last time that we will get to share a room. Our family is getting a little harder to share a room with. Gracie didn't sleep well and the darn heater in the room kept coming on and off that kept us up all night. There was some crankiness on all parts but all in all we like spending time with family.

Hopefully I can do the rest of the brain dump tomorrow!

You seriously don't have to read it all. Pick one that sounds interesting to you. There are lots of posts that I have just let pile up. Sorry, I couldn't spread them out. I just needed to get them done cause more keep happening. I think the first new one is the DMV one followed by the Blue Man Group on the previous page of older posts. I guess that is what I get for waiting.

Celestial Survivor: Worth playing for? 100 Grand!

As part of my calling with food storage, self-reliance, and emergency preparedness in church I planned and hosted this "Celestial Survivor" Night as a kickoff to get everyone excited and recommitted to being prepared for the future. I wanted something different and fun where they would learn themselves what they need to do to get their family prepared instead of just coming and listening to a speaker tell us how the prophets have told us for years to get prepared and have food storage, get a couple of handouts, and say "I really need to do that" and go home and not do anything about it. So with my Mother-in-laws brain connected to mine for about 3 weeks, we came up with this night based on the reality TV show "Survivor." It turned out to be tons more fun than I could hope for and everyone said they went away knowing specifically what they needed to do, that is was important, and they had a plan to get started. The spirit was strong a couple of points during the night and we all worked and laughed together. Thank you all for participating and to my awesome mother-in-law who even came down to help me set it up and put it on. You are unbelievable and I do think the Superstar Survivor title goes to you. She can live off her food storage for two years and has taught me so much. Thanks for supporting me in this and being my committee. It was a huge hit! I had the whole ward- men and primary kids included asking if they could come to it. Let me know if anyone wants my materials and details of the night so you can do it for your church ward.

Team Naptali- scewed heavily by the Bishop's wife who is going to use her salt water pool as water storage.
Team Joppa- who very honorably won the wheat eating contest and had great team spirit.These are from the relay race where each team had to pack a mock 72- hour kit in different containers they got to choose from winning the previous challenge. They they had to do a relay around the halls of the church. It was to make them think about the containers their 72-hour kits were in and who would be carrying them and how for how long. It was so funny!
Yes this is me acting as Jessica Probst- from the outback. My face always gets so red and hot when I do stuff like this. But it was fun. A couple of times there were some dilemmas I didn't forsee and just had to improvise and run with it. It was fun though. I hope I didn't hurt any feelings being so harsh when the competition got tuff. They had to stick to the rules. No cheating!
This is from the eating contest where one contestant from each tribe had to eat 1/2 cup of plain cooked wheat. No salt or sugar/flavoring at all, just the kernels. This was to show them that we need to learn how to use wheat right now and start collecting recipes for our storage cause we wouldn't want to eat it like this in an emergency.
Kristin, on the left, was the winner! Kim claimed that someone had dumped their bowl in hers so she shouldn't have to eat it all and was dumping some out. I didn't see it so I couldn't let her win, but she did get second.
Thanks Cassidy for the hat, and Marina for the pictures and enthusiasm. Did you know that Cassidy was so prepared for that night's competition that she had studied up on all the gospel preparedness information that she could. Her studying did pay off on a couple of speed questions during the lightning round. Go Cassidy. No one was actually hurt during the night but there were a couple of close calls! Congrats to the tribe who won. You now have bragging rights that you are official Celestial Survivors. They did win 100 Grand. Worth playing for?
Watch out in case your home might be hit with a Survivor Attack! Will you be a survivor?

Car shopping and used car dealers- YUCK! Never buy cars in a hurry and don't put the oil dipstick in the transmission fluid hole!

We have spent way more time and energy looking for a car that we anticipated. Bottom line is Car dealers are not fun to deal with and it does take time to find a car. People are not nice to you because you are nice to them, and people are not honest with you when you are honest with them. You need to be in charge when you are car shopping and not reveal too much or anything for that matter. None of it is their business. In the end we ended up getting a really good deal from just a person off the street. We don't like car dealers and we got took by another "retired car dealer/mechanic" that was just selling his 1994 4runner off the street. He was really nice and seemed really honest and forthcoming. We had been looking for a 4runner for so long and it was crunch time because I needed a car to go to UT in 3 days. So when we found this one that was in really good shape, all of our habits went out the window. We didn't use our inspection and test drive checklist, we didn't sleep on the decision- something we always do, and we ran around like mad that night to get the "deal." We ended up buying the 4runner we have now the very next day and keeping it. So now we have a car payment but no problems. We finally sold the other older 4runner after about a month, but not without drama. We were in such a hurry to buy the screamin' deal of a car that we didn't notice the oil leak so when we were trying to sell it, we had lots of people walk away because of the leak. When we finally washed our hands of the car, we lost about $100, a small price to pay for a big lesson to learn. And we don't want to be used car dealers--EVER! We lost $50 in price below what we bought it for but then we lost about $50.00 in oil too. Cause of some airheaded mistakes on Luke's part and people test driving it. Long embarrassing story made short: Luke kept putting oil in the car because the dipstick kept reading bone dry. But there was never a puddle consistent with the oil he was putting in.Well when the guy who finally bought it came, Luke put more oil in to get it ready and moved it to across the parking lot closer to home. Well he left the cap off and so the oil bubbled out all over the engine and road making a big mess. But then after explaining the story to the guy they turned it on and the car was just rumbling. Not a good sound and it always sounded so good. So as they were looking at it, Luke noticed from the side that the oil dipstick was in the transmission fluid hole. So this whole time it was reading empty because the hole was much longer than the fluid hole. Sure enough when he put the dipstick in the oil hole, the stick was overflowing. OH MAN! They had to get 10 quarts of oil out. So Luke came inside while we were having company for dinner looking for something to catch the oil. When he went back out, the guy was laying under the car and the oil was spilled and gushing all over the street. Great for our HOA to get mad at us again... like when we spray painted in the street. DANG! Sorry to mother nature too. So then our company and I came out to look at the commotion and they needed help. We were supposed to be having Family Home Evening. But our friend ended up going to the store to buy kitty litter for us and his shovel twice. Dang thanks Ryan! The kitty litter was not for our cat that we don't have, it was to clean up/soak up the oil. We can still walk out there today; however, and see the big oil pond residue that belongs to Luke. At about 9:30 that night we ended up selling the car to the guy and they drove off. We were so glad to be done with that car even though she was a cutie. I liked it a lot, but I like our new one too.

I love our new car!

Our friends Kara and Clay helped in finding us this great deal on our new Toyota 4runner. It was on the air force base parking lot so we wouldn't have known about it otherwise. It is the newest car we have ever had and yet it is still 6 years old. Wow! We don't know if we really like having newer cars cause then you feel so so bad if one little thing happens to it. Like, we already got a crack in the windshield 2 days after getting it, I hit a piece of wood on the bumper while trying to get in our tight garage with two cars, and I noticed someone dinged it with a door (white paint) yesterday. It sure is nice though. And we love it. Luke's favorite part is the window that rolls down in the back instead of having to open it all the way up. My favorite thing is the keyless entry and the power, and putting Gracie in without bending clear over and stressing my back, and do you want me to go on?