Beneath the Wraps

          My mom’s birthday is June 29 th .   Our neighbor, Peggy, had been born on June 28 th .   Mom had been raised in San Francisco, California while Peggy had been raised in American Fork, Utah.   Peggy already had one son when she and my mom were both pregnant with Danny and me.   I was born at the end May and Danny was born in early June.   We were raised together by both moms.   Until Jimmy was born in 1970, there were six of us:   Daryl, me, Danny, Patrick, John and Matt (in that order).   We would spend time together doing different things. They’d invite us to go on outings and do things with them.   I remember camping with the Bird family when Jimmy was just a baby.   I remember going to the amusement park with them.   I also remember Patrick and I going to Birds’ house after school after mom had gone to work for a few weeks.   I also remember staying the night ...

                After we had picked pears in Medford for the Church, we gleaned about four bags of pears for us to take home.   Roland took 24 pears to give to friends he had made at the theater, and   I took 18 to my friends.   Most of the pears were not ripe at the time.   We continued to pass them out to neighbors until they became too ripe.   It got to the point where we needed to do something - such as pear sauce or pear cake or something.   I made pear sauce last week.                 Roland is the one who loves to bake and cook.   I was disappointed that he didn't do more of it during his time off.   I prefer not being in the kitchen for a huge length of time.   But Roland has returned to work and more than just the pears have ripened - but bananas as well.   In addition t...

            At the top of our back hill is the cherry tree belonging to our backyard neighbors. I don't know if Bill and Cheryl planted the tree, or if it was already there when they moved in. Bill likes cherries.   Cheryl does not.               They told us that we could come to pick cherries whenever we wanted.             Jenna's Easter bucket holds exactly 18 cups of cherries - though we hadn't figured that out until later. I did not get any pictures of Jenna and Roland picking them.               I hadn't considered posting about this at the time.             Roland wanted to make a pie, and thus we cut or pulled cherries apart in order to get the pits out.   ...

                I think the young men and young women have a combined activity each month.   Once a year (I guess in January) they have a cook off.   Jenna had wanted to make the "cupcakes" that we had at her last birthday party - sure she is combining three ingredients to make something else, but I don't really think it should count if Reese's, Pillsbury and Duncan Heinz are really doing most of the work.   The rules are that it needs to be a recipe and not from boxes.   We didn't happen to have brownie mix, cookie dough and peanut butter cups hanging around anyway and so Roland had talked her into making an apple pie.             Pie for an armature cook-off?   Really?   I could sense that Jenna was not that thrilled with the idea of making any kind of pie. Nor did she wish to start it last night but rather after she returns from school today.   ...