Happy Birthday 23

Well friends. My birthday was the best ever. Sure, I didn’t get home till 5:00 because of work training in West Valley, but, it was my birthday! And, as many of you know, Mr. Wood is a wonderful person, spending the day with him is practically “wonderful day” insurance.

I woke up to french toast (my favorite breakfast) with buttermilk syrup!

When I got home I was greeted with a bath scrubby sponge (the thing I’ve been asking for for 3 months) and a riddle

Okay, Mr. Wood had to help me figure out the choices, hence the underlines and markings. But, I did figure them out! We went to Red Robin and used my birthday coupon. They gave us a huge booth! And I ordered a super spicy burger, the waitress was surprised.

Then, I opened another package which was all my bird watching stuff, plus a new book!

Woohoo! You all know I love to look at the sky, now I can do it in a more informed way, and look at this cover! It is a beautifully made book.

So, we went off to a secret place to watch birds and clouds. The secret place turned out to be Powell's Slough in west Provo. Oh my wildflowers, it was gorgeous.

 

It was incredibly more amazing then these little photo. There weren’t many birds because of the impending storm (did anyone see that dust storm yesterday?). We were walking around in a field and about 10 minutes before the dust and wind came up we saw flocks of birds and huge hawks come up out of the marshes and fly south, it was amazing. And, I have to admit the sound of wind howling through the fields and power lines buzzing overhead is spooky. So we headed back to the car and I opened my last present, which was something Mr. Wood has been working on for a while in Book Repair:

 

A lovely little box for a very special book. Some of you may not know that it is with this book that Mr. Wood proposed to me.

He is very skilled and creative.

Then, he whisked me off to “The Chocolate” in Orem for my birthday cake, or rather, a slice of cake. How cute is that place? I’ve never been, and always wanted to go. I’ll say this: the frosting on the Brooklyn chocolate cake is divine and they serve milk in chilled glasses.

Anyways, it was the loveliest birthday.

Shannon

Our Life: Let’s wrap up July

So many things happened that I forgot about writing.

July has been wonderful to us. Our little garden started growing, filling our meals with pure joy.

We got to go to the first Twilight concert of the year at pioneer park in Salt Lake

Featuring Beach House, whose singer we found (to our delight) is a woman, not a man.

This song is wonderful:

Really, she sounds more like a woman in real life. She was incredibly kind.

We made our first and second batch of ice-cream in our magnificent ice-cream maker.The second was a masterpiece of chocolate chunk mint, the likes of which have never before graced our tongues. I used fresh mint from our Chocolate mint plant, brewed a creamy custard mint tea and whipped it up as ice-cream. I followed this recipe. Using like 5 grams of leaves (which was as much as the plant was willing to give). I used my fathers trick of melting the chocolate with butter before pouring it in the ice-cream, so you get soft chips instead of hard stuck in your teeth ones.

The ice-cream was herbal and fresh, a flavor that I am still craving right now.

Mr. Wood and I parted ways at the end of July, him to Chicago and I to Toquerville. He got culture and I got fresh air. Him rural sociology conferences, She rural landscapes.

Mr. Wood got to present a paper he has been working on about Escalante + intergenerationality + sustainability. Yeah, it is that complicated.

I got to spend time with my gal pals and do some sight seeing. The big event was trying to spend a day in Kanab, I say trying because it is too small.

  

Kanab Utah is the “little hollywood” of Utah. They used to film a butt-load of western movies out there. There is a little museum out there of movie set stuff (be warned it is outside) and someone taught the local raccoons how to play cards.

Among other news. We had pioneer day, which in Utah is a day off work where you should go swimming and see the new Batman Movie. Holy stars! It was epic! It didn’t feel like we were sitting in the theater for 3 hours at all. I want to see it again.

In the end July was lovely, Mr. Wood and I would rather not spend time away from each other all the time, and have you seen the sky?

Shannon