September 26 – October 2 – Our Story: The Bell Family

Mark gave a lecture in Dr. Conover’s class about ducks nesting at Great Salt Lake. He’s busy with his classes and papers as always!

My presidency and I decided to print a huge General Conference coloring poster for every family in primary. I hope the kids loved them! I’ve also officially started planning and buying Christmas presents. There are rumors shipping will be very delayed this holiday season due to driver shortages so I’m ordering things that likely won’t be on sale later on. I get so excited for Christmas and love planning what to give my friends and family!

For my Great British Bake Off competition this week, I made Brandysnaps. Technically I used vanilla instead of brandy, so maybe mine are vanilla snaps. They are totally different from any cookie I’ve made and it was really fun to roll them. You have to roll them just a couple minutes after they come out of the oven. Then they harden and become crispy like baked sugar (since they are mostly sugar and butter). They taste like ginger. I chose to make a raspberry mascarpone cream to fill the cookies with. I absolutely love mascarpone now and was excited to have an excuse to use it!

Flynn is getting more puppy socializing lately. We’ve been walking with my friend, Regan, and her mini Aussie Champ once or twice a week for a while now. And my high school friend, Kierra, moved back into town this month. We met with her and her two dogs for a couple walks this week. I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly Flynn warmed up to her dogs. On our first walk he was giving shy, little tail wags and following them all over. I think he’s had better experiences with small dogs so dogs and both of these dogs are smaller than him. I’ve also found it helps to be on a walk when Flynn meets a new dog because the new dog will be less focused on Flynn. It’s fun Flynn finally has some puppy friends and it’s nice for me to have a little time to chat with friends too.

Saturday was General Conference. It was the first evening general session ever! Mark was really excited to have another session. I was a little less excited because six hours of church is a lot in one day, haha. But it ended up being great! We enjoyed all three sessions sessions at home together. I printed a slightly smaller poster for myself and colored it while listening to the second session. We went for walks in between and also delivered brandysnaps to family and friends because we can’t eat them all!