the wisdom of Hans Christian Andersen

I am lucky enough to be the proud owner of this book:

and have often noticed the little gems of wisdom scattered throughout it. I have always meant to record them somehow, but never have. I didn't want to underline things in the book, in case I found something else cool the next time I read it. So I decided today that I would record them here every once in a while so I can save them and also so that other people can appreciate it them. Enjoy! :)

[Others'] suspicions are nothing when a man is really true, and every one should persevere in acting honestly, for all will be made right in time. 

The Silver Shilling

[on knowing family history stories]: 

Preserve carefully the seed that has been entrusted to thee, that it may grow and thrive. Guard it well. Through thee, my child, shall the obliterated inscription on the old, weather-beaten grave-stone go forth to future generations in clear, golden characters.  The old pair shall again wander through the streets arm-in-arm, or sit with their fresh, healthy cheeks on the bench under the lime-tree, and smile and nod at the rich and poor... The beautiful and the good are never forgotten, they live always in story or in song.

The Old Grave-stone

[on how gossip changes the real story]:
...and there is no doubt about it, one little feather may easily grow into five hens.
"There Is No Doubt About It"


Where honesty leads the way, prosperity is sure to follow.
Everything in the Right Place


"But must we not all here on earth give up our best parts to others, and offer as much as lies in our power?"
The Snail and the Rose-Tree


"A cock can lay an egg! And do you know what's in that egg? A basilisk."
The Farm-yard Cock and the Weather-Cock
**I mostly just included this one because there's a basilisk in Harry Potter and I thought it was cool that there's also one in this HCA fairy tale.**

Oh my ganache!

Yesterday was Joel's dad's birthday and we're celebrating today.  Since his dad has been in love with Sister Sanders's Oh My Ganache cake since our wedding, we're making that as our birthday present for him.  So after church, while Joel was taking a nap, I made the cake and put it in the oven, setting the timer for a little less than the prescribed amount of time, and then went to take a nap in a nearby room until it went off.  After a little while I started being kind of restless, wanting to make sure I was awakeish when the cake finished.  I kept thinking about checking it, but I couldn't even smell it yet and decided to just wait a while until the timer went off.  As I in a more asleep part of was drifting in and out of sleep, I suddenly realized I had never started the timer.  Popped out of sleep and off the couch, ran to the oven, swiped the cake out of there and tested it with a toothpick..... perfect. Not burned even a little - I taste-tested a tiny piece of the edge just to make sure.

I have no idea how long it was in there.

But somehow, I got it out at the absolute perfect time anyway.

Proof that Heavenly Father cares about things that aren't really important. <3

By the way, that cake is going to be soooooooooo delicious! Thanks for the recipe, Sis Sanders! :)

Harry Potter 7!!!!!

Can I just say,

I don't know if I have ever been more excited for a movie in my life,

and I was not disappointed in the slightest.

What is a pachanguita?

I just realized today that the word "pachanguita" has been in two of my recent Mexico posts and there's a huge possibility that none of you know what that means, so here you go.  :)


A pachanga is a huge party.
"-ita" is a suffix you can add onto many Spanish words that means "little".
So a pachanguita is a little huge party!


My roommate and I liked to talk about having pachangas because it's more exciting and fun to say than "fiesta."  The majority of the time, we didn't use the word in the correct context - our Mexican friends teased us about it :)  So for the Sunday game parties we had, we wanted to call them pachangas, but they weren't big enough to actually be pachangas, so we just slapped an -ita on the end and made them pachanguitas.


You learn something new everyday! 

Sunday: Otra pachanguita!

Today at church, Nate played a piano song during sacrament meeting.  He did a good job :) 


After church, Jill wasn't feeling good so she went right home, but I went to Emma and Cassyi'e house to make lime bars! They live pretty far away - they live further than anyone else from the group - so their mom, Malena, picks them up from church.  That was kind of nice :) Also, it's funny, they said yesterday when we decided to make lime bars today, "Just so you know, we'll probably go to Costco for lunch, because we usually do on Sundays."  I guess Malena doesn't like to cook on Sundays or something.  But we did end up going to Costco to get pizza, which was weird but also tasty :)  Also, Malena is super nice. And rich! They live in this super pretty house in a gated community! With a doorman guy at the fence and he only opens the gate for you if he recognizes you! It's pretty cool :D 


When we got there, we ate lunch and then set about making the lime bars, using this recipe for lemon bars: http://www.ourbestbites.com/2011/05/glazed-lemon-bars/.  We just figured that, since limes are abundant here, we should take advantage of them... and we were right!  Oh man.  They turned out soooooooo delicious!  That recipe is definitely a keeper.  I only got to try them super hot (they were sooooo delicious and got me excited for later, when they were cooled down!), and then I decided that since the girls who live close were having a pachanguita tonight that Cassyie was going to go to, the lime bars could cool in their fridge and I would go home and take a nap and Cassyie could bring me a couple at the pachanguita.  Perfect :)  Cassyie and Emma are a lot of fun; I like hanging out with them.  I can definitely see myself being friends with them when we get back, for sure. Oh yeah, it was interesting - I've thought a few times that it would've been fun to have sisters our age in the house, but Cassyie and Emma have two sisters our age and I decided at their house that I'm really thankful for the family I have.  I feel more self-conscious with the older siblings, and not only about language.  I feel like I have to dress right or look cute or be funny or something.  I'm so thankful for Ariana, Carmita, Sergio, and Mariela.  They're the perfect siblings.  :)


Well, when we got the lime bars in the fridge, Cassyie and Emma walked me out to the bus stop and I went home.  Tony was there, but I decided to call people instead.  I had told Carrie that I would call her on skype, and I also wanted to call Mom/Dad/Kelli/Rachel, so I did that.  I talked to Carrie for an hour, Mom/Dad/Kelli/Rachel for an hour, and then rested for a while.  Then, Jill wasn't ready yet, so I decided to head out to the pachanguita at the girls' house!  I wanted to be close to on time just in case it didn't last long, since last week's was so much fun :)


The pachanguita was so fun! They totally have the perfect house for parties! When we got there, they had ice cream and a few toppings and pop, so that was fun.  I've been nervous to try bananas here since I don't like them ripe, but I had some on my ice cream with some oreos and they were the best bananas I've ever had!  They weren't even perfectly yellow with green at the top - they were spotty brown, but the texture and taste were so perfect!  mmmmm.  I couldn't believe how yummy they were.

While I was eating my ice cream (btw - we were all super thankful for the ice cream because it was HOT tonight in their house), I was sitting with Cassyie and we met two girls named Jeannety and Yara and they are hilarious and so much fun!  I just want to hang out with them all the time!  They were so funny!  It took me FOREVER to remember Jeannety's name - like, literally all night.  And I practiced over and over again all night.  They kept teasing me about it, but it's a hard name! :)  Yara's name definitely took way less time to remember :D  I also met...


*a boy named Daniel from the ward (he looks a little older, but I don't know exactly how old he is; he's the one from church who always plays the hymns in church; I found out he's actually a concert pianist, too, which is cool.  Also, Michelle actually met him before we came! I guess he has a friend in Salt Lake or something that he went to visit, and that friend happens to live in her ward, so she met him)

*Uri - He came with Daniel and is 27, so I assume they're close in age.  He's a kindergarten teacher.  He also told me something interesting - When I asked his age, he wouldn't tell me.  Finally I asked him why he didn't want me to know his age, and he said that when people know your age, they automatically form opinions of how you should be and who you should be and what you should be doing, and he doesn't want people to develop those pre-conceived ideas about him.  Interesting, huh?  Because it's true - people do do that, I'd never noticed before.)

*Jonatan - I don't really know anything about him, to be honest.  I know he's getting ready to go on a mission, I'm friends with him on facebook because everyone talks about him so I figured I'd meet him sooner or later, and he ALWAYS says "Pórtate bien!"  It's weird but also really funny :) Well, it was weird and then I teased him about it tonight and he laughed like it was all a big joke, so now it's funny :)

And I had a lot of fun with Markz, Beto, Tony (all Mexicans I knew before today), and Mari (girl from the group) and the girls who hosted it (Adrienne, Michelle, Jen, and Cat) before people all started getting there.  The group and the Mexicans together are so much fun!  I love them!

The pachanguita was so fun!  We ate our tasty treats, sat around and talked, played Jenga blind like last week :) Then a bunch of people wanted to play Mafia, which none of the Mexicans knew how to play, so we taught them how and played a couple of times.  It was super funny - the first game, when we were accusing people, I accused Beto just because he was sitting across the circle from me and was the first person I saw, but then the entire group turned on him and voted him out on the first round, just because I'd randomly picked his name and he'd gotten so defensive!  It was super funny. :)

Tony took us home at the end of the night, and like always, I should've gone to bed already, but everything was just so fun! I hope they have a party like this at their house for the rest of the Sundays.  Their house is so perfect.  Our house was great for how many people came last week, but probably twice the people came this week.  They would NOT have fit in our house.

Oh yeah, I forgot - Tonight I tried to do indexing, but it stopped working again.  For some reason, every time I want to do indexing, I have to un-install and re-install the program to get it to work.  It's annoying.  Maybe Grandma knows why or can help me.  

Happy birthday! is not well-sung with a gun.

here

BACKGROUND STORY: Last week, Joel and I came home from a refreshing night bike ride only to find a bunch of balloons very similar to these ones tied to our porch. It not being either of our birthdays, we assumed they were from our friends who sometimes like to leave treasures in our hammock. They had just made dinner for his parents to celebrate their birthdays, after all.

Me: But why would they have bought a Cars balloon for his parents?
Joel: Why would anyone but the Ammons have left Happy Birthday balloons on our porch?
Me: Yeah, that's true.

A couple days later, one of the Ammons came to our house, saw the balloons, and questioned our having them. Turns out, they weren't from them.

Today I have been cleaning the house and found the mystery balloons by the back door. They'd lost a lot of helium, so I decided to pop them and throw them away. The last one was one of those metallic ones, so it didn't immediately pop when I poked a hole in it. I didn't want to press all the air out of that tiny hole, though, so I put more holes in it.  As I was semi-consciously putting holes in the balloon to the beat of the song I was listening to, I remembered this story...

THE ACTUAL STORY I MEANT TO BLOG ABOUT: Once when I was working at a telephone survey place, we had a party. Our boss was leaving for a bigger and better job, so we were celebrating his last day with him. Sadly, however, it was still business as usual - there were just food and balloons involved. That place had a pretty pokey ceiling, and while some people were on the phone conducting surveys, several of the balloons floated to the top of the ceiling and popped, causing many people in the office to scream and many survey-takers on the phone to freak out, believing that we were being part of a drive-by shooting.

Thankfully, we weren't.

After assuring them that we were fine, (as I recall, I was just leaving a message, but I told the answering machine anyway), we hurried to tie the rest of the balloons to our cubicles so they couldn't float too high. It was a pretty eventful going away party. Popping those Happy Birthday balloons reminded me of that.