strawberries!!!

YUM!!

i love strawberries :) i remember when i was growing up that i was not a big fan of strawberries for some reason. perhaps it is the fact that they are covered in seeds that turned me off from them when i was a wee lass, but i can properly appreciate them now that's for sure :) i even remember the experience that led my opinion of strawberries to take a turn for the positive. i was invited to a sister in the ward's home for a seminary celebration dinner and she served strawberries with angel food cake and whipped cream for dessert. these weren't even just your standard i-picked-them-up-at-the-grocery-store strawberries...she had grown them in her garden herself. man. talk about guilt-tripping someone into eating something! she went on and on about how delicious they were and how proud she was of growing them all throughout dinner and when dessert rolled around, my plan of politely declining had been dashed to pieces. there was literally no way that i could turn her down. i figured i'd just eat a couple of them and that would be enough. however, a curious thing happened. i tasted one - hmm...that was actually not so bad. another one - okay, maybe i can eat them all. a third - YUM!!! i was hooked. i think i even had seconds :) 

so now i'm reformed and i quite enjoy strawberries in a variety of things. it seems that lately i've had quite a few pleasant encounters with strawberries and i wanted to share!! here are a couple pictures of strawberry delights of which i have recently had the pleasure of creating and partaking :)

light, delicious summer strawberry pie!!! and it's healthy too!!! :)

german pancakes for breakfast with strawberries and whipped cream!!! delectable!!!

all of my recent encounters with strawberries haven't necessarily been food related. i am including two strawberry songs for your listening pleasure because i have been enjoying them quite a bit as of late :)

enjoyable song, plus the video is pretty entertaining :)

no video on this one, but the song is top-notch :) always love owl city!

so as you can see, strawberries are great and can provide some tasty treats for the tummy as well as some sweet and fun sounds for the ears :) yay for strawberries!!!

"oh darling i wish you were here"

well, as i write this blog, mike is off at an elder's quorum activity. "an activity where the wives weren't invited??!" as my mom asked. nope. not invited. but not too horribly sad about  not being invited since it's a video game night ha :) my contributions to the evening consist of encouraging mike to go so he could get to know his quorum better and making chocolate chip cookies for him to take along.

anyhow, the title of this blog is a line from the Owl City song "Vanilla Twilight". i always liked that song and have thought of it at times when mike and i were apart. we both really love Owl City and listen to it together often :) we watched the video for it last night which is really neat and, unexpectedly, touched me. check it out:

click on this link in case the video doesn't work: Vanilla Twilight music video

i think this video is AWESOME. the idea that i get from the video is totally different from what i get from the song, but i love the creativity of the music video - it seems like we don't see that so often anymore. what i love about the video and what touched me is the way that this phenomenon that is occurring in the sky is something that connects all these random people. they all stop what they are doing (driving, walking, playing, sitting) and pause to watch what is going on...i noticed that even nature paused for a moment because it stops snowing briefly in the video! maybe it's weird, but i get this really cool feeling inside when i think of or see things that make people interconnected. i just love knowing that even though there are so many people and we are all so different, there are still things that make us all the same in some way. everyone feels sad whether they want to admit it or not, and everyone feels happiness too at some point. everyone desires to be loved. and like in the video, everyone who saw something like this going on in the heavens would stop and look up. it makes me think of the second coming and what it will be like at that day when everyone stops what they are doing in response to the Savior returning to the earth. which reminds me, everyone is a son or daughter of God and that is probably the strongest way we are interconnected. it will be awesome when everyone realizes that :)

i love being interconnected with other people. i wish that more people took the time to connect with others - even with people that they don't know that well. i see this all the time at the bank - some people are too busy and impatient to even have a conversation with the person who is depositing their checks or getting their rolls of quarters for them. or they go beyond being short and are rude and hurtful for who knows what reason. we're all the same in so many ways, i know they wouldn't want to be treated like that. all i want to do is make the people that come through my line smile or even just make their day a little better or easier. oh well. i just try to remember of how we're connected whether we're friends or not and move on to the next person who will let me help them to smile :)

well, all this deep thought just to say that i miss my husband. "i'll doze off safe and soundly, but i'll miss your arms around me." i'm excited for you to get home, mike!! :)