Acarajé

Last night my amazing husband made a wonderfully filling Brazillian dish called acarajé. The essential ingredients include black-eyed pea dough rolled into a ball and deep-fried and then spread with a blended shrimp and onion filling. (The recipe also calls for palm oil. If you know where we can get some, please let us know.)
Acarajé was brought to Brazil from Africa by the slaves. It is frequently sold from stands on the street in Salvador where Jon served his mission. It is a luxury food for the locals and Jon said he had it about once a month while he was on his mission. We plan to take some to the Martineau family Christmas dinner.

Wonderful Christmas Luncheon

Today at work we had a holiday potluck lunch. Jon and I made dutch-oven potatoes for it. Some employees had formed a choir which practiced for weeks in advance. I joined the orchestra that played with the choir. The orchestra turned out to be ... (you have to sing this part)... three golden trumpets, two large trombones, and a big brown cello played by me. We wore festive Santa hats too. I played the melody for some of the songs, which is kind of like a solo. The coolest part of the luncheon was that I got to eat lunch with Jonathan. It is completely awesome getting to hang out with your husband during the day at work. Hehehe!
We've also gotten tons of snow recently. Hmmm, I'm wondering what volume of snow weighs a ton and how many tons of snow actually fell on our county this week. If anyone can come up with a creative way to measure this- (tons per county), please let me know. You might be eligible for an Amy prize, like mittens or an outdoor thermometer.

B-day wishes

Thanks to everyone who called, e-mailed, or made me breakfast on my birthday. It was a great birthday. Jon took me out to dinner too. :)

Accidental Death and Dismemberment Insurance

I tell this story with permission from Jonathan...
When Jon started work last week he was given many "big decision" forms to fill out by human resources. We'd been looking over the forms and had discussed various medical and life insurance policies. We finally got to a form for accidental death and dismemberment insurance. Weighing the pros and cons we came to the conclusion that the likelihood of accidental death and/or dismemberment were very minimal considering our modest lifestyle. We threw the form away and went on the next one.
It became apparent later that night that dismemberment can happen to the best of us. For our wedding, someone gave us a vegetable slicer. It's a manual device and the user slides the vegetable back and forth against its surface and a blade and amazingly thin slices of vegetable come out on the other side. You get the picture. Oh, there is also a knob that you can mount the vegetable on so that you don't cut yourself. Jon was slicing potatoes on our new vegetable slicer and talking to me. It wasn't long before Jon was running his thumb under the kitchen faucet. I already knew what that meant because I'd heard stories about members of the Phillips family running their injuries under running water to stop the bleeding. Needless to say, it took a long time for the end of his thumb to stop bleeding. With this experience, we recommend that you think twice before discarding your dismemberment insurance. You may need it sooner than you think. ;)

A Wonderful Open House

But first... filling a request to post some reception photos. Thank you Mandy for your fantastic camera skills.

Jon and I drove down to Orem on Saturday for our Open House at Jon's parents ward building. The RS room was decorated with lighted Christmas trees and long tables like the ones at our reception. We enjoyed talking to many people that Jon/his parents knew from their ward as well as wonderful Phillips relatives, and a surprising number that I invited including Sue and Jason, my Y.W. adviser from Grants-Sister Behunin, Anderson's, Katie, LaNae and Pat, Robin and Jun, and Tiffany and Joey from IF. I threw my "throwing" bouquet to some of Jon's cousins' daughters ages-7 and 10. They were thrilled to catch it and I was happy that it made them happy. Perhaps I've made some friends for future family functions.
I will post Open House pictures when someones sends them to me.

My Favorite Wedding Pictures

St. George Pictures