Modern Day Pioneer

For many years, I have had a hard time with the pioneer legacy of our church. I am not your typical looking Mormon since I'm Chinese. Trying to pay attention to pioneer stories was hard for me. I didn't see myself reflected in these these stories. So many members of the church can trace their ancestry to someone who fled persecution in Missouri or walked across the plains to Salt Lake with some handcart company. Those stories didn't seem to pertain to me.

However, I remember a General Conference talk I heard a handful of years ago. I can't remember who gave the talk but they were talking about pioneers. They started recounting some pioneer stories and I started to zone out. Then, they said something that really stood out to me. They said that even if you didn't have ancestors who walked across the plains, these stories are part of our spiritual heritage. Even those who were converts, could claim those pioneer stories as their own because they figure into the genesis of our church in these latter days. Also, he mentioned that we may have someone who is a modern day pioneer in our lives and brought the gospel into our lives.

For me, that is my mom, Sook-Wah. My mom was born in China and lived in Hong Kong from an early age. She was a teenager when she encountered missionaries and learned of the gospel of Jesus Christ. She gained a testimony and was baptized in 1969.

My mom (holding chairs) and some missionaries

 She made many friends in the church and developed a strong community of friends.

Years later, when I served my mission in Hong Kong, I was able to meet Sister Lai (seated in wheel chair) in the Tsuen Wan Ward. She remembered my parents fondly. My mom has her arms crossed behind Sister Lai.

My mom served faithfully in her callings. Years later, when I served in the Tsing Yi Ward, Sister Jeung (sister at the far right in the picture below) was coming to church but wasn't super active. She had a calling to teach in Relief Society but just came to Relief Society when she had to teach and that's all. She invited my companion and me to have dinner with her family and she discovered that I was Sook-Wah's daughter! She was so startled and pleased to find out. She remembered the time of great growth in the church when she was young with my mom and Sister Jeung started coming to church regularly. I attribute it all to my mom's example so many years ago.

My Mom (back row, third from the right) and primary children

After a while, my mom and dad met. She was working at a textile factory that had a school associated with the factory. My dad, Kim-fai, was going to school during the day and working in the factory at night. They started dating and after a while, my mom had a talk with my dad and said they had to break up because she wanted to get married in the temple. My dad met with the missionaries and also gained a testimony of the gospel. He joined the church and also a few of my uncles joined the church also.

My Mom, my Dad, Uncle Hung and Uncle Ming (from left to right)

They dated for a while and then a rare opportunity came up for a group of 18 Hong Kong members to go to the United States to get married or sealed in the temple. My mom and dad saved up money and were able to go on the trip. In this video about the early church in Hong Kong, at time 6:10, Brother Sheldon Poon tells about this temple trip. At time 6:16, you can see my parents in a picture. My dad is the tall guy in the back row towards the left of the picture with glasses and my mom is to the right of him in the back. All but 2 of the couples were already married and going to get sealed and my parents and one other couple were going to get married and sealed. An interesting fact was, my parents stayed with the family of Truman Madsen before their wedding. After getting sealed, they toured around some parts of the US (Salt Lake City, California) and then they returned to Hong Kong. I was born a year later.

My mom and dad (I love mom's snazzy fur coat!). To the left of my mom is Sheldon Poon, from the video.

My parents are my very own modern day pioneers, who blazed the way for me in my own journey of my faith. I'm grateful for them and their example and sacrifices they made to make it possible for me to also have the chance to learn about church and develop my own testimony of Christ. Thanks Mom and Dad!

My baptism in Mexican Hat, UT.

Triple Batch Lasagna Sauce

At our house, Fast Sunday makes for trickiness in the cooking arena. I cook by taste most of the time and that is tough to do on Fast Sunday. So, I've devised a way to get around this by making a triple batch of lasagna sauce when I make lasagna. I make this triple batch on a day other than when I'm fasting and then pull out the extra sauce to put together my lasagnas on Fast Sunday. Since I've seasoned it all to taste previously, I don't have to worry about it being flavored correctly.

Triple Batch Lasagna Sauce
This recipe allows you to make one lasagna and freeze sauce for 2 future lasagnas!

For Sauce
4 - 24 oz cans of spaghetti sauce (I usually get the Hunts brand since it is often on sale for 99 cents or less. Also, whatever flavors are good)
3 - 14.5 oz cans diced tomatoes (again, I get whatever flavors are available. If they have a Italian spiced one, those are good too)
1 - 6 oz can tomato paste
Optional - chopped Cremini mushrooms
1 pkg of ground turkey (I usually use one of the Costco packages that come in 4 packs.)
Spices - Italian seasoning, ground black pepper, garlic salt, dried chopped onions, dried basil

For Lasanga
1 box no-boil (oven ready) lasagna noodles
8-12 oz grated cheese (we tend to use cheddar or Colby jack for more flavor than mozzarella) 
1 batch of lasagna sauce (see above)
Feta cheese or cottage cheese. (We're not fans of ricotta)

1. For Sauce: Heat very large pot (stock pot) and add some cooking oil or non stick spray to pot. Add ground turkey to pot. Sprinkle generously with Italian seasoning, black pepper, garlic salt, dried onions and dried basil. Add mushrooms (if you have them). Brown turkey and cook mushrooms. Taste meat to make sure it tastes alright and has enough salt and pepper.

2. Add 1 can tomato paste to the meat. Mix tomato paste thoroughly with the meat. Add 4 cans spaghetti sauce and 3 cans diced tomatoes to the pot. Mix well. Bring to a simmer, mixing occasionally. Taste the sauce and add more Italian seasoning, pepper, garlic salt as needed.

3. Assemble lasagna. Read the box instructions and preheat over per box instructions (Usually 375). You usually have to add a 1/2 to 1 cup more water to the lasagna since they are no-boil noodles. Spray 9x13 pan with nonstick spray. Put 1/2-3/4 cup sauce in the bottom of your casserole dish. Put down noodles to cover bottom of pan. You may need to break some noodles to get noodles on all parts of the pan. Add 1 1/2 cups of lasagna sauce. Sprinkle with cheese. Add more lasagna noodles, add another 1 1/2 cups of sauce. Sprinkle this layer of feta cheese or spread a bit of cottage cheese. Sprinkle with regular cheese too. Add more lasagna noodles (you should have a total of 3 layers) and another 1 1/2 cups of sauce. Add extra water (per box instructions) now. Sprinkle last layer of cheese.

4. Spray underside of a sheet of aluminum foil to cover the casserole dish. Cover the pan and cook per box instructions. Usually you need to cook 40-50 minutes covered with foil and uncover for the last 5-10 minutes to brown cheese. Keep an eye on the bottom of the lasagna that it doesn't burn. A glass casserole dish helps with that. Cool for 15-20 minutes before cutting into it and serving.

5. For future lasagnas: Cool and freeze remaining lasagna sauce in gallon freezer baggies. I usually put around 6 1/2 cups of the sauce in the baggies. Get all the air out of the baggies before sealing (as much as possible). Lay flat in freezer while freezing and then you store it easier. This helps with thawing the the future too. To cook up the lasagna in the future, just thaw the sauce and heat in a pan on the stove top till warm. Construct lasagna like before.

Gatorland

Since we opted to not go to Disney World for our Florida trip, we were looking for alternative activities to do with our family. In neighbor of ours had gone down to FL a couple times and loved going to Gatorland with their kids. So, we decided we would try it out. It was very low key and fun to see all the gators around. Driving around Orlando, Mad Scientist saw a gator on the side of the road and my brother saw a few out by the Kennedy Space Center. I hadn't seen any gators yet so I was excited to see them.

Trogdor, the Gator Wrangler. I don't know if he's trying to save or egging on the gator to get Faux Hawk. :)

There were a whole bunch of gators that looked like they were smiling. Maybe a way to stay cool?

Fly Girl at Gatorland

Lots and lots of gators

Apparently the birds will go and steal food from the smaller gators.

 

 

They also had a few shows that we could watch. A fun one was the Gator Jumperoo. They have these wires suspended out over the water with large gators below. Then, they attach chicken legs on with string and the gators jump out of the water to get them. It was fun to see, especially because you could see just how large they were.

Of course, our boys wanted to ride the Gatorland Express.

We just had the boys go in their swim suits so they could play in the splash pad at Gatorland to cool off in the heat.

They also have an alligator breeding marsh and surrounding trees are the Gatorland Bird Rookery. There were many types of birds and I was able to get some good pictures of them.

Snow Queen, Fly Girl & Mister Chef plus a Gator! Going full Asian with their shade umbrella.

There are actually a couple chicks under this momma bird's wing. They were peeking their head out but I missed it.

This bird's feather's remind me of a leather fringe jacket. I love it!

They also had four white gators (the largest group of white gators in the world!) One that is a true albino (completely white with pink eyes) and three that leucistic white alligators. They had a bit of dark pigmentation spots along their lower jawline.  They have to be in a enclosure out of direct sunlight because of their pigmentation.

The Albino gator called Pearl. There are just over a dozen true albino gators living that they know of living. They don't know how often albinism with gators because white gators are easily picked out as prey when young.

Boys at the splash pad. They are shielding their eyes because the water spouts were really pouring out the water hard!

The boys just fed the gators some hot dogs that Fly Girl and Faux Hawk bought to feed the animals. We were all thinking about the hot dogs we had in the rental house and wishing we knew to bring them. :)

As we were leaving, we saw this bird posed like this like it was threatened by something and he was posturing to scare it. We never figured out what he was doing.

Kennedy Space Center

As our vacation drew nearer, we started looking into visiting the Kennedy Space Center. There was a launch of  a SpaceX rocket on Sat, the 17^th at the Space Center. We were sad that we were going to miss it but there wasn’t much we could do about it. Then, there was bad weather on the 17^th so the launch was delayed till Monday, the 19^th! We were going to Orlando on the 19^th but we didn’t get in to Orlando till 10:30pm and the launch was scheduled for 2:10pm. So would still miss it! But, on Sunday before we left, the launch was rescheduled again because of weather till Friday the 23^rd. There was a good chance that we could make it to the launch! We rearranged our schedule to go to Legoland on Thursday and then the Space Center on Friday so if there was a chance to see the launch, we could be there.

 We headed out with my brother, Faux Hawk, to the Space Center. When we arrived, we saw SO many people there to see the launch. Our original plan was to look around for a bit and then get on the bus to the Apollo Center that has special launch seating. It is about 3 miles away from the launch pad. We waited in a really long line in the hot & humid weather. Did I mention it was hot and humid? We really missed Why-Oh-Uh weather. (We get some humidity here and there, but nothing like Florida in the summer!) Anyway, we were worried if we'd be able to get on the bus. They were only going to let 2,500 people out to the launch site and that was it. We made it on the bus and the bus took us on a tour of the area before taking us to the Apollo center. We saw the Vehicle Assembly Building where they assembled all the rockets. It is a massive building. Then we saw some of the crawlers (used to transport rockets to the launch pads) and launch pads.

 Then they took us to the Apollo center which was the closest location to the SLC-40 launch pad where the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket would take off. We went into the visitors center and there was a HUGE Saturn V rocket that greeted us. It was absolutely enormous! It was the length of a football field and it was humbling to be standing next to it. You felt really small.

One end of the Saturn V rocket.

I went to check out the bleachers for seating to view the launch. We had some lunch while we waited. It was hot and super sunny. The launch was scheduled for 2:10pm so we got closer but there was someone who was following the SpaceX Twitter feed and they said they wanted to do additional tests on the ground so it was delayed for 1 hour.

SpaceX launch pad with the Bulgaria Satellite, ready to launch.

The stands started filling up and the excitement was building. There was a guy out in front of the crowd who did history and a Q&A for people before the launch. The guy explained that the rocket would go up carrying Bulgaria’s first communications satellite. This was the 2^nd use for the Falcon 9 rocket boosters. They were going to try and recover the rocket on a barge out int the ocean after deploying the satellite. Someone else came up telling the crowd that Elon Musk put this on Twitter: “Falcon 9 will experience its highest ever reentry force and heat in today's launch. Good chance rocket booster doesn't make it back.” So, we weren’t sure if it would make it back to the drone ship barge. The idea was the rocket would communicate with a drone barge ship out in the ocean and hopefully land on the barge. The guy told us the video feed would cut out right before it landed on the barge and that was normal because of the vibrations of the rocket coming down. Then hopefully, if the landing is successful, when the video feed came back, we would see the rocket standing proudly on the barge.

About 15 minutes before the launch, the SpaceX video feed started showing on a big screen. The anticipation was great. There was a live stream from SpaceX about the launch and it was a go. The countdown was intense! You could feel the excitement in the crowd. The rocket took off successfully and it was utterly amazing! I couldn't help but be in awe of the ingenuity of scientist being able to propel rockets into space. Everyone was cheering and so happy. 

We waited to see if the rocket was able to be recovered on the barge. The video feed cut out like they said and when it came back, the rocket was there!!! Everyone was cheering and clapping. We were so happy that it was able to get back when they weren’t expecting it. It was such a great experience! Here's a video of the launch.

We didn't find out till we got home that even when they are counting down and get to T minus 10 seconds, the launch could still be aborted. There was a launch scheduled for July 2nd that we watched the live stream and the computer aborted the launch with 10 seconds left. The had to scrub the launch that day. They tried again the next day on July 3rd and there was another computer abort with 10 seconds left. Trogdor was VERY disappointed that this happened. They finally launched that rocket on the 5th. I just think of all the poor people waiting to watch the launch and then not having it launch. We were so lucky that everything went alright so we could see the launch. Our rocket was one that had previously launched so they knew it would go.

After the launch, they had to ferry all the people back to Kennedy space center so we lingered at the Apollo center and looked at displays while the crowd thinned. We heard later that they let 3,000 people over to see the launch.

Lunar Module

Apollo 14 crew capsule

After getting back to the Space center, we went to the Space Shuttle building to explore. They had great displays to see and it was fun to see the Space Shuttle Atlantis. They also had a memorial for the astronauts of the Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia. It was sobering to see.

The booster rockets greeted us at the entranced of the building. Despite being pretty huge rockets, you have to stack 2 of the shuttle rockets to equal the length of the Saturn V rocket that we saw in the Apollo center!!!

We then headed to the Rocket Garden where they had replicas of the various rockets that have been used in the space program.

They had a replica of the capsule that Alan Shepard sat in as the first American in space. You could go inside to try it out. It was VERY cramped.

n x 1.6 km (for n>1) could fit in pretty well. He's about 5 feet tall now (yes, he's creeping up on me for height! I told him to stop growing but he won't listen to me.)

Trogdor can definitely fit.

I made Mad Scientist and my brother get in too. They are both around 6 feet tall so we having a bit of a problem fitting! It was pretty funny to watch.

Anyway. We had a great experience. We didn't get to see as much as we wanted at the actual space center because of the launch, but it was sure a memorable experience!

Legos on the Brain

Recently, my side of the family had a family reunion in Orlando. However, we decided not to brave the normal Orlando attractions (Disney World, Universal, Sea World) in favor of places with fewer lines. Mainly, we were there to see family and to do a few fun things in the meantime. Since the boys are a bit Lego crazy nowadays, we thought  visits to Lego-related places would be fun.

Our first full day in Orlando before my siblings came to town, we went to Disney Springs to visit the really big Lego store. They had some fantastic Lego sculptures there and the boys were in heaven!

Buzz greeted us at the door.

There was an employee walking around with a Kylo Ren light saber and he let CED and Trogdor hold it. They were VERY impressed! Not only have they been obsessed with Legos, but they have also been obsessed with Star Wars.

Trogdor is so obsessed with Star Wars, he will regularly start singing the Star Wars Theme song at the top of his lungs.

Missing a piece? They probably have one here.

This sculpture of the Maleficent dragon is so massive! It is taller than the roof of the store.

 

There was a lagoon opposite the Lego store and this Lego sea serpent was in there.

They also had this huge table where kids (and adults) could construct a Lego car and then race it Pinewood Derby style down this ramp. The boys loved that.

 A couple days later, we went to Legoland. It's about an hour from Orlando. Since most people were at Disney, the lines were not very long at all so that was fantastic. We were glad especially because it was so hot and humid while we were there. We're glad we don't live in Florida and will probably never go there in the summer again if we can help it.

They said these were tractors but they don't really look it.

Jousting anyone?

These horses were so cute. The rocked back and forth and had a speaker that let out the occasional "neigh!"

 There is also this whole area called Miniland USA. They have various national landmarks recreated in Lego form.

Recreation of the Iwo Jima Memorial with the Washington Monument in the background.

 Then, they had lots of Florida attractions recreated in Lego form. We were especially excited to see this one since we were going to go to the John F Kennedy Space Center the next day!!

 

 The boys were so excited to see the Star Wars section of Miniland USA. Trogdor wanted to go back and look at the displays a second time.

CED and Trogdor indicating that Darth Vader is DEFINITELY a Bad Guy!

Anyway. The boys loved it. They also had enough bigger rides to occupy my siblings. They also had a water park that we wished we got to earlier because it was so hot and also since it was fun.