Ni'm I'neteen*

plus a story from Vietnam with pictures!

Rowdy and I took a cooking class in Hanoi at our hotel. Our instructor was Nguyen Thanh Van, the Assistant to the Executive Chef at the Hotel Metropole. She was delightful. Our first stop was the outdoor market in the Old Quarter. It was crazy and chaotic--lots of live animals, baskets of produce, people and mopeds everywhere.

Then it was back to the schoolroom in the hotel's Spices Garden restaurant. Thanh taught us how to make Vietnamese banana flower salad, deep-fried spring rolls, marinated pork grilled in bamboo, grilled chicken skewers with lemon leaves, steamed fish with beer and herbs and sauteed pumpkin branches with garlic.

Of course we were able to taste everything, and everything was delicious. We both received goody bags with an apron, cooking chopsticks, a wire holder for barbecuing, spring roll papers, vermicelli, black mushrooms and all of the recipes for our day's dishes.

And then, we were able to have an all-you-can-eat lunch in Spices Garden! It was heavenly! We had snail soup, and even that was delicious.

Today, R, K and I made banana flower salad and shrimp spring rolls. We need practice to make things look prettier, but everything was still delicious.

Today, I'm grateful for:

1) The cooperation and ease with which R, K and I worked together in the kitchen. I love my boys (including the one that's not here and our girl, of course!).
2) The opportunity to travel and see the beautiful, wide world and the interesting people who live on this earth with me.
3) Patience. It's something that I have struggled so hard to gain.
4) 30 Rock.
5) Book club tonight at Liz's with her, the Amys, Marilyn, Juli and Kathy. You don't have to have read the book to come to our club. We have a good discussion, but it mostly is about getting together and catching up.
6) SWBH, who will know immediately where I got the title of this post. (It's from The Muppet Frog Prince.)

On on the 18th day, she posted

Let me tell you how grateful I am for:

1) Heavenly Father making our bodies so they metabolize acetaminophen and ibuprofen differently. That way, I can alternate them when Aunt Irma comes to visit and I still have to function at work. The first two hours of work were horrid until all of the pain relief kicked in.
2) A co-worker with a fridge full of Diet Coke that he's willing to share. There's nothing like it to help me get through four hours of reading ultrasound.
3) The power of prayer and the answers that came when needed. It was a struggly kind of afternoon.
4) Periodical bonanza this week! Real Simple, Cooking Light and Saveur magazines and the Boden and Tiffany catalogs. I marked probably 20 recipes in CL, picked out a turkey recipe from Saveur and got some ideas for homemade Christmas gifts from RS. Tiffany has some darling stuff, but I have a bowl full of jewelry that I don't even wear. If I could, I would fill my closet with Boden. Their clothing is well-made, cute and fits well. It's fun to snuggle up on the couch with magazines and catalogs.
5) Amber and her generous sharing of hotel perks as well as her Nutella cheesecake. People will want to stay in our hotel with us over Christmas. As soon as I get the recipe for the cheesecake, I'll pass it along.

What day it is again? I've lost track.

So tired, but also grateful for

1. A good dentist appointment for R. He's the only one of the three of us who didn't reach and exceed the deductible. K's first round of fillings seemed to go well, too.
2. The Madagascar Christmas special. We're watching it now and having a very good time.
3. Abundance, including leftovers on a day when I just couldn't face figuring out what to make for dinner.
4. Having to think about gratitude daily, so when I'm exhausted and annoyed and frustrated I can stop and remember to be grateful that I can help someone who really needs me, that I work with people who are doing the best I can, and those thoughts help me keep it together and behave more kindly to others.
5. My big sister and her example of giving today.

A couple of things to add...

I just read Amberly and Jaime's posts for today, and I thought of two things I wanted to add...

1) Not to be bandying about the sacred, but I was told in a blessing once that I should always be grateful for the things I have and that I would find many rich blessings in just being grateful. I have really gained a testimony of this in my life, and there have been tiny, tender mercies given not only in my life but obviously in that of all of us who are part of what I call The Gratitude Project.

Yesterday, R turned to me in church and said, "I just realized that I will only be able to spend two days with Jamie and Amy when they're here." So I said, "Well, be grateful that you will have those two days with them. We haven't seen them in ages." And then the thought came to me, and I feel like it was inspiration gained from being grateful, "Honey, why don't you just drive up and spend a day in Disneyland with them?" Okay, maybe that would have been obvious to others, but our minds weren't open to thinking about options until we were grateful just for the fact that we would have a few days with family we never get to see.

2) Jaime mentioned that she was grateful for how things sometimes don't go according to plan. We had that experience here in K's life today. K had been planning for a couple of weeks to try out for the wrestling team. The tryout was going to be a 5-mile run, which he could've done fairly easily. However, because of certain vagaries of his school's schedule, he ended up having to run in the gym, do a bunch of calisthenics, and then do some wrestling drills. In the middle of the drills, it became apparent to him that being in wrestling would interfere with jiujitsu. So he decided not to join the wrestling team. If he had been able to just do the run, he would've been on the team before he realized that he wouldn't be able to participate in the sport he really likes and has a lot of talent in. So what might have been a let-down ended up being a positive experience. Where he was unsure about competing in an upcoming tournament, now I think he's actually going to do it.

Sweet Sixteenth

Today, I am grateful for:

1) A good dentist to take care of my family's considerable dental needs.
2) Dental insurance.
3) Being on call. Maybe I will be able to work enough to cover the part our deductible does not cover the NINE fillings for a certain young man who has had particularly poor dental hygiene up until now and hopefully has learned his lesson.
4) Dental floss, toothbrushes and prescription toothpaste. Yes, prescription-strength toothpaste.
5) The eventual empathy I'll be able to muster up from my prior experiences having dental issues and being a stubborn teenager.

The Gratitude Project, Days 14 and 15

Somehow, the day got away from me yesterday, and I never had time to post.

Yesterday's Gratitude List:

1. Being friends with a family who shares some common interests, particularly (and unusually) MMA. It's always fun to watch the fights with the Wildes.
2. Beautiful San Diego weather.
3. The energy to run/walk (yep, being honest here) for an hour and then serendipitously ending up at a Pilates floor class for 40 minutes.
4. The wisdom to know when a sale is a bargain, or if it is better just not to buy anything.
5. Hot showers

The theme for Sacrament Meeting today was, it should not surprise you, Gratitude. One of the speakers said, "Gratitude is like gravity; it's not just a good idea--it's the law." He also took some of his text from a talk by President Faust, who mentioned that two things he was grateful for were gentle, sweet-smelling soap and oatmeal.

One of the group of bloggers whose Gratitude list I'm following mentioned a couple of days ago that she thought her previous day's list was "lame" because she said she was grateful for windshield wipers and crayons. Well, if President Faust could say over the pulpit that he was grateful for soap and oatmeal, no one should feel bad that they are grateful for such seemingly-mundane things as windshield wipers and crayons. They make our lives better and really can be a blessing at times.

So for today:

1. A good son who made gnocci with tomato sauce for lunch. (Not from scratch of course; that would be quite the feat.)
2. My sisters in the Relief Society. The more I know them, the more I love them.
3. Parents who taught me to say "thank you". I don't remember it being stressed particularly, but I think that Mom and Dad must have taught by example. R, K and I thank each other for little things all the time, and it really helps us to have the Spirit in our home.
4. The opportunity to take the Sacrament.
5. The priesthood. I'm grateful to have it in our home. Tonight is Priesthood Preview. It's the third year in a row that I get to attend. The speakers always present something that gives me new insight into some aspect of the priesthood.

Grateful the Thirteenth

1. Thankfully, tomorrow is a chance to reset, renew, and recharge. Too much of the wrong kinds of food today and not enough exercise this week.
2. Penny and Aaron had a baby girl yesterday! I'm grateful that all went well, and they have their sweet little Sandi with them.
3. We thought that Keiler was going to get a promotion from white to yellow belt at jiujitsu today. I'm grateful that I have a good support staff at work and we work well together, so that I could get out of work in time to run over and watch the end of his class. He didn't get promoted today, but it was fun to watch him.
4. So I'm grateful for how jiujitsu has helped Keiler to blossom.
5. I'm grateful for the love of reading that my mom instilled in me. She taught us how to read, as I recall, mainly by reading to us. Our dad read to us also. He especially loved reading Dr. Suess books to us. But Mom read us chapter books that were her favorite as a girl, like The Secret Garden.