Happy Recreation Therapy Month From the Hospital

From the Hospital:

 

Winter Decorations 2024

    On January 25, my ward's Relief Society had a chili cook-off. It was a lot of fun. We were told to bring a muffin tin to put our chili in to try it. One of the R.S. presidency members made homemade cornbread to eat. It was so delicious. We had 5 different chilis to choose from. My favorite reminded me of Indian/Middle Eastern food. It had some interesting spices and I loved it.  Another recipe called for chocolate. I would have never been able to tell. After the cook-off, we voted on our favorites. I ended up tying for 2nd. Congrats to all the winners! 

    After eating we made blessing jars. After something good happens (a blessing), you write it down and put it in a jar. When you're feeling down or need a reminder that God as been in your life, you can open your jar and read all your blessings.

Crystal and I shared a muffin tin.

My chili. I'll include the recipe below.

My Prize

My Chili Recipe (Combination of 2 Recipes from a Crockpot Cook Book):

1lb Boneless Chicken

1 Teaspoons Chili Powder

2 Teaspoons Ground Cumin

3/4 Teaspoon Salt

1 C Onion (I usually use about 1/2 an onion; 1/4 if it's a large onion)

3 Cloves Garlic, Minced (I didn't have fresh garlic. I used garlic powder)

1 Green Bell Pepper, Diced (I didn't have a green one. I had a red one that I used)

1 Cup Chunky Salsa

1 Can Diced Tomatoes with Green Chilis, Undrained

1 Can Great Northern Beans Drained

1 Can Black Beans Drained

1. Combine chicken chili powder, cumin, and salt in a crockpot. Toss to coat.

2. Add bell pepper, onion, and garlic; mix well. Stir in tomatoes and salsa. Cover; cook on LOW 5-6 hours or on HIGH 2 1/2-3 hours or until chicken is tender.

3. Increase heat to HIGH; stir in beans. Cover; cook 5-10 minutes or until beans are heated through. Ladle into bowls; serve with desired toppings.

Waterfall Canyon Hike

On January 20, I went with 2 men from my ward (Daniel and Hayden) and 2 of Daniel's friends on a hike to Waterfall Canyon. This was the first time I had done a hike in wintertime. It was beautiful but slick. Not too long after we started, a guy came running past us saying there had been a bad accident up at the waterfall. Some ice had fallen and had hit a woman in the head, and if we continued to go up, not get too close to the waterfall. 

We decided to continue onward. We started to hear a drone-like sound in the sky. We looked up and saw that Life Flight had been called. They circled for a long time looking for a place to land. Unfortunately, there wasn't one and the downdraft from it caused more ice to fall up at the waterfall (I was told later by 2 men I passed).

We kept going. At some point, we all got separated. I know I slowed down when I put on some spikes and then was just going at a slower pace. We had talked about not going all the way up. I kept expecting to run into the guys at any minute. At some point I passed 2 gentlemen and we talked for a minute about the accident and how crazy it was up at the waterfall. We heard a third set of ice fall. I guess that should have been my clue that I was close to the waterfall. I thought I was a ways off. I kept going on and the next time I looked up, I was at the waterfall. I took a few photos and realized that they were walking down the woman who had been hit in the head with the ice. I don't think search and rescue had gotten there yet, and With the ice being as unstable and falling, they decided it would be safer to move her. 

She walked past me. She had one guy leading her down (he was facing her going backward) and a girl holding her up from the back. She had one arm tucked into her coat (as if it was in a sling), and she had her head had the coat hood pulled up. I'm assuming she also had some other padding in that because her head was kind of cone-shaped. I suppose some of it could have been ice stuck in her head. I just kept thinking to myself, "What a tough lady." 

I finally caught up with the guys and we took a few pictures (I don't have any of the group photos) and started our way back down. It was even slicker going down. There were a few times I looked at how steep it was to go down and decided it would be better to slide on my butt purposefully instead of falling and sliding. It wasn't long before we caught up to everyone walking down, including the gal who had been hit in the head with the ice. We finally made it to a road and the girl was able to get into a search and rescue snow machine to then meet up with the ambulance to go to the hospital.  

What an eventful hike. I wouldn't mind doing a winter hike again, but I would be okay with a little less adventure.

For a news article and pictures visit https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/hiker-injured-by-falling-chunk-of-ice-on-ogden-trail.

Jan. 2024 Library Book Club

It was time for the library book club. The book we read for this month was Porcelain: A Memoir by Moby. I'll admit, I didn't get the chance to finish it. I also don't remember too much of the conversation we had. We were small in numbers this month. There was me and two other people along with our host. We had a good discussion though and it was interesting to learn about the music industry in New York during the late 80s and 90s. New York seemed like a little bit of a scary place. I don't think I would have had the guts to do what Moby did. 

From Amazon: "From one of the most interesting and iconic musicians of our time, a piercingly tender, funny, and harrowing account of the path from suburban poverty and alienation to a life of beauty, squalor and unlikely success out of the NYC club scene of the late '80s and '90s.

There were many reasons Moby was never going to make it as a DJ and musician in the New York club scene. This was the New York of Palladium; of Mars, Limelight, and Twilo; of unchecked, drug-fueled hedonism in pumping clubs where dance music was still largely underground, popular chiefly among working-class African Americans and Latinos. And then there was Moby—not just a poor, skinny white kid from Connecticut, but a devout Christian, a vegan, and a teetotaler. He would learn what it was to be spat on, to live on almost nothing. But it was perhaps the last good time for an artist to live on nothing in New York City: the age of AIDS and crack but also of a defiantly festive cultural underworld. Not without drama, he found his way. But success was not uncomplicated; it led to wretched, if in hindsight sometimes hilarious, excess and proved all too fleeting. And so by the end of the decade, Moby contemplated an end in his career and elsewhere in his life, and put that emotion into what he assumed would be his swan song, his good-bye to all that, the album that would in fact be the beginning of an astonishing new phase: the multimillion-selling Play.
 
At once bighearted and remorseless in its excavation of a lost world, Porcelain is both a chronicle of a city and a time and a deeply intimate exploration of finding one’s place during the most gloriously anxious period in life, when you’re on your own, betting on yourself, but have no idea how the story ends, and so you live with the honest dread that you’re one false step from being thrown out on your face. Moby’s voice resonates with honesty, wit, and, above all, an unshakable passion for his music that steered him through some very rough seas.
 
Porcelain is about making it, losing it, loving it, and hating it. It’s about finding your people, your place, thinking you've lost them both, and then, somehow, when you think it’s over, from a place of well-earned despair, creating a masterpiece. As a portrait of the young artist, Porcelain is a masterpiece in its own right, fit for the short shelf of musicians’ memoirs that capture not just a scene but an age, and something timeless about the human condition. Push play."

Snowshoeing

Today ended up being an eventful day. I started the day at the library to watch the movie Evita. The group I watch movies with on Wednesdays decided they wanted to watch it, after learning I would be visiting Argentina this coming year. We reserved the movie and a room. Some of the people brought popcorn and other treats to share. It ended up being a really fun time. 

That afternoon, I went snow-shoeing for the first time with some members of the ward (Sarah Huber, Daniel Stewart, and Hayden Langford). Sarah and I rented snow shoes from Weber State. Daniel brought some for him and Hayden. Then we were off. We ended up on some trails behind Rainbow Gardens. We could have used a bit more snow, but overall it went well. We found an old car along the trail and stopped and took pictures before turning around to head back. 

Thanks everyone for a fun-filled day and thanks to our Heavenly Father for creating such beautiful scenery!

My pictures loaded with the last ones I took first and the first ones last, which is why it goes from dark to light. 

Left to Right: Sarah, Hayden, Me (Cassy), and Daniel