On Friday morning I woke up at 3 am (that wasn't the fun part) and was wide awake, trying to fall back to sleep until 4:25, then gave up and decided to just get up for the day. It turns out you can be really productive if you wake up five hours before your alarm!
At a more reasonable hour, I headed north to Everett. I got to June and Joel's, had a little lunch, then June and I went to visit my great-aunt Carol. It was great to see her! We also enjoyed seeing her grand-daughter, my second cousin, Lori and her two kids. They are so much fun! Her little boy climbed right up onto my lap and was my little buddy after that. Such a cutie! I wish I had taken a picture of all of us enjoying tea and dessert, but, very un-like me, I didn't even think to get out the camera. We were having too much fun just enjoying our time together! Thanks for the great afternoon!
That evening June and Joel took me to a delicious Thai restaurant in Everett where we were serenaded by a young pianist. Thanks for the yummy meal!
Friday night I had another night where I woke up in the middle of the night, but this time I was able to fall back to sleep after an hour. Saturday morning, none of that mattered anymore, because we had a lefse-making day! The day I arrived in Everett, we started talking about having a lefse-making party with June and Merrily's daughters-in-law: Holly, Sarah, and Kelli. We headed over to Kelli's house because of her AMAZING counterspace. It's a blessing to have a builder-husband!
On Friday night we each made our own batch of dough, using my mom's cousin Judy's recipe. That way, Saturday morning we were all ready to go!
Holly, Sarah, Kelli and me, after getting set up, mixing in the last of the flour.
After rolling out and flipping a few, I started feeling pretty proficient with the whole process! It had been 7 years since my mom and I had made lefse at Penny's house on Thanksgiving, so I wasn't sure I'd remember what to do. June was a good teacher for all of us!
Here we're all in different stages of making it, and you can see Merrily giving it a try.
Here Kelli and her mom are in the dining room where we had all the racks and towels for cooling each piece.
We broke for lunch and here's Holly enjoying a great soup Kelli had prepared.
Such fun just being together! Here are June, Sarah, and Holly.
When we were all finished, you could see the mess we had made. I'm sure there will be white flour dust around for a long time!
We each made about 20-25 pieces of lefse to enjoy. They're cooling off under these towels before we packed them up for the day. Merrily suggested we go into business, and we figured we could make quite a bit of money if we did!
These are some great women! I'm glad they married into our family, and wish we could spend even more time together!
Here are the three mom's who came to watch the four girls learn a new trade. Thanks for the fun day, ladies!! Can we do it again next year?
This morning I got to do something I've really been looking forward to during my time here in Washington. I got to attend Word of Life Church in Marysville! It's a church I've felt very connected to over the years, and it was so good to worship there this morning! It was great to hear from the Lord and so good to spend some time just worshipping Him. It was also REALLY fun to see some old friends, and I loved getting the reaction of the big eyes and even bigger hug when I saw a few people that I hadn't seen in quite a few years! That's the kind of reaction that makes a person feel really loved!
It was also really fun to hang out with Brad and Traci and their kids. I know I said this post was about family time, and Brad and Traci aren't family, but they're pretty close... Ever since Brad was a dean at Hillcrest when I was there, and then especially during my time working for Youth Ministries, he's always been like a protective older brother. He's been a great one to give advice, ask how I'm really doing, tell it like it is, and he's the only one that can call me "Swanson" and have it sound okay! It was really fun to have the kids show me their rooms, tell me all sorts of stories, and then we ate a great meal at Red Robin. THANKS for taking me out to lunch, and for spending time together. I love you guys! (sorry I didn't get a family picture!)
After lunch I headed back to Puyallup so I could get ready for my first dinner guests! Here's the view of Mount Rainier from my drive home. I have usually done this drive in the dark, so it was fun to see just how much of the mountain can be seen from the freeway!
June and Joel, and Erick and Merrily had been asking to see my apartment, and I love having people over for dinner. In fact, it's been really strange for me that in the last six weeks I've had my dad and my cousin, Tim, over to see my place (each for just a few minutes) and that's been it! I'm used to being much more hospitable than that! Well, it was great to have guests for dinner tonight. I served Mexican Stew and salad, and we also had some of the lefse. Like Joel pointed out, with the Mexican Stew and lefse, it made for a culturally diverse meal! We finished it off with some brownies and ice cream, and fun conversation.
Thanks for taking the time to come all the way down here to see me! And, THANK YOU for all you've done for me while I've been here in Washington!
3 comments:
You are so amazing Kari! You continue to organize parties and entertain and delight people no matter where you go! We can hardly wait until you come to our area of the world!
Sounds like you have made use of every minute of your time while in Washington! So many fun things to do and see plus all your very special connections and visits with family and friends!! So blessed you are! Helps your mom not to worry as much knowing how well you have been taken care of! Ha. Lefse making looked like great fun with so many. This coming Saturday pm I get to do lefse making with cousin Judy! Best to learn from the "pro"!! Should also be fun visiting. Come join us! Will have to try making lefse when you return home to MN. to see if we really learned how!!
Way to go with the lefse! I was just rolling some with my sisters last week too (and they actually were selling it!) Making it with other people is definitely more fun than by yourself. I've got a 20 lb bag of potatoes waiting for me to make up a few more batches.
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