Our Story: The Bell Family

On Monday, our niece, Lauren, got married! We had hoped to go in person, but it was just too hard to get away for a few days this semester. Luckily they were able to broadcast the ceremony on Zoom. It was nice to be able to participate from a distance. Unfortunately, their internet cut out so we missed the second half.

Mark went pheasant hunting with Dr. Conover. He got one pheasant this time. He continues to stay busy working on his dissertation. He was also able to attend his great uncle Gerald’s funeral on Friday. He was really excited to see his Grandpa Bell there!

I only had one VIPKID class this week and it was my very last one! I’m definitely going to miss my students, but I’m not as sad as I thought I might be to be done. I’m looking forward to more sleep and more time! A lot of my students and their parents sent me sweet messages on WeChat thanking me for teaching them. I’m happy we can maintain our friendships online!

This week’s Great British Baking Show theme was caramel. I decided to make a caramel apple tart. I’ve never made a tart before and was excited to try it. My first batch of caramel was a complete, messy disaster. I had to throw it away and switch to a simpler caramel recipe. The tart was delicious! This is one dessert I will likely make again in the future.

Saturday morning, we went to the mountains near Preston to cut a Christmas tree! My dad came with to pick one out for him and my mom. We had a lot of fun and the weather was beautiful! We chose to go early this year to beat the snow and it worked out perfectly!

We made some soup in the morning so we could have a nice, warm lunch.

I’m so excited for Christmas! It’s my absolute favorite time of the year. I’ve been listening to Christmas music all week and we watched one Christmas movie already. We’re excited for all the fun holiday moments ahead!

Mark’s professor suggested he lighten his course load in the spring. So now he’ll just get to focus on writing his dissertation! He’s very grateful and excited about the change because the dissertation is going to take a lot of time.

Mark went grouse hunting again. He got four between two hunting trips.

This was my last busy week with VIPKID. I said goodbye to some favorites. I also had a lot of new students this week. I typically don’t like teaching new students, but all of the new students I taught this week were amazing and I’m sad I’ll never get to teach them again. I just have one class next week and then I’m all done!

I watched a virtual meeting for BYUI professors. The director of Pathways spoke. It was really interesting to hear about some of the experiences of students around the world. Some students have to choose between paying for internet so they can take classes and paying for food. It’s eye opening to think of people who have so little and who sacrifice so much for a good education. We’re very blessed to have all that we do.

This week’s Great British Bake Off was pastry themed! I’ve wanted to try making choux (French pastry dough) for a long time so this was the perfect time! I made chouxnuts-donuts made from choux. The people on the show fried theirs, but I choose to bake mine. They are supposed to puff up and become hollow inside. Some of mine turned out ok, but others collapsed after they cooled. I’d like to try again with a simpler shape for cream puffs. I made a peanut butter whipped cream filling.

Monday night we carved a Jack o lantern. He turned out pretty cute!

Saturday evening we made a “spooky” Halloween dinner. We had guacamole with a Greek yogurt spider web and olive spiders. I got some blue chips to be Halloween-ish too. Then we made stuffed bell peppers and carved the peppers to look like Jack o lanterns. We had “poison apple” cider for a drink. Mark made blonde brownies and cut them with Halloween cookie cutters for dessert. We ended the night watching The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. It was fun!

We had Flynn go trick or treating in our apartment and gave him some new toys! He loved them and was so excited!!!

Sunday was our primary program! It went really well. The children sang better than I think they ever have and only one child decided to shout out something silly during his talking part. We thanked the children for their efforts with popcorn and a movie during singing time.

On Sunday we also went to the North Logan pumpkin walk. There were a lot of fun scenes!

Mark finally completed the first chapter of his dissertation! (YAY!) He submitted a condensed version of it to a journal for publication! He has two more chapters to write.

Thursday evening we went to a potluck dinner with my coworkers from WebAIM. It was at the house of one of the workers. Due to COVID concerns, we stayed outside. They had a campfire to sit around and it really wasn’t too cold. It was a lot of fun to visit! I work with some great people. The person hosting the party’s partner recently retired as a hired organist for the Catholic Church. He played a few songs for us which was really fun!

Mark also got to go hunting this week. He went grouse hunting on Wednesday with his professor. They didn’t get any though. On Friday night, Mark and his dad hiked up the mountain in Richmond to Egan’s mine. They camped over night and woke up early Saturday for deer hunting. They didn’t see any deer and Mark was home earlier than we expected. I was happy to see him and didn’t mind that he didn’t have a deer! 🙂

This week’s Great British Baking Championship was German desserts! I tried making German Cinnamon Star cookies, also called Zimtsterne. I learned that most German cookies use tree nuts. These cookies have a lot of almond flour in them. They were relatively easy to make, but the sticky dough was hard to get out of the cookie cutter. I also wish I had thought to pipe the merengue on top to make a more clear star design. We really liked them though!

I thought this week would be less busy than last without my BYUI student group meetings, but somehow I ended up get a bunch of extra hours with WebAIM. It’s nice to have extra pay, but wow it was a busy week!!

We did make time to get our flu shots though. We decided to reward ourselves and used a gift cards to cold stone since cold stone is right by Lee’s where we get our shots. I tried the Halloween ice cream- Boo Batter. It tasted like vanilla cake batter but was black. It was super fun and delicious! Mark got chocolate ice cream. We brought them home to eat while watching Halloween movies.

Monday night we cleaned out our garden. It was perfect timing because we woke up to snow Tuesday morning! One family in our ward measured 11 inches in their yard! I made our traditional “first snow soup bowls” for dinner that night.

In the storm, a ton of tree branches broke and USU had a delayed start for classes. Homes and businesses lost power. I’m really grateful our power stayed on so I could teach VIPKID and do my webaim and BYUI work from home.

Speaking of VIPKID… this week we received official word that November 5 is the last day for us to teach. This week was the last time I taught my regular, Elsa. I’ve taught her for four years and just adore her. I’m definitely going to miss her, but we’ll stay in touch on WeChat and her dad says they hope they can come visit me when COVID is better. I do wish I could keep teaching until Mark graduates because it’s been really nice to have the extra income, but I’m happy it lasted as long as it did. It’s going to be really nice to sleep a little more. Four of my students’ parents asked me to teach their child after VIPKID ends, but I think that still goes against the government policies and it would take a lot more effort for me to prepare lessons without VIPKID’s curriculum, so I’ve told them “no.” I did offer to do occasional video calls just for fun if their kids want to stay in touch and practice conversational English. I hope they will call!

Friday was Great British Bake Off day!!! I decided to try the show stopper challenge and made Joconde Imprime- a French decorative cake that is filled with fillings. It had a lot of different steps, but wasn’t terribly difficult. I had a lot of fun piping the chocolate batter to make the leaves. I would like to try that again, but with regular cake batter. The Jaconde sponge was good, but didn’t have a lot of flavor. I found a simple chocolate mousse to fill the cake with and that was really good.

Saturday morning I got to attend an area leadership training with Elder Christofferson. I decided to watch the livestream from home because right after it was done I had to run to the church for our primary program practice. About half of the kids and half of the teachers came, but it was a good practice.

Mark’s fall break was Friday, but his professor planned a field trip that day, so Mark spent most of his break collecting Greebes for research. We wanted to do something fun for his break so on Saturday, after the program practice, we picked up pizza from our favorite pizza restaurant- Firehouse Pizzeria. It was delicious!

The Sunday conference sessions were great! After the final session, we joined my parents for a big dinner and our traditional apples and caramel dip!

This week was so busy! It feels like Mark and I hardly saw each other. Mark had his first test of the semester this week in his soils class. He spent a lot of time studying and thinks it went well. He got to go bird hunting with Dr. Conover one afternoon too. He also met up with some old friends for lunch one day.

Mark was so excited to bring home the gun cabinet he worked on all summer! We had to rearrange our office to make room for it, and it just barely fits between the closet and the bookshelf!! It will be hard to reach our food storage, but that’s ok! It looks so nice! He just needs to attach the handles now. Mark’s friend, Logan, helped him carry it into the apartment. It was really heavy, but they got it in! We fed Logan dinner to thank him. I wasn’t sure what to make for dinner since we were low on groceries and I wouldn’t have time to be actively cooking because I was meeting with BYUI students I realized I had everything we needed for White Chicken Chili and I could cook it in the crock pot. It was perfect! Except I forgot to turn on the crock pot! Oops. Luckily the chicken had been frozen when I put it in, so it was still cold when I discovered the mistake, and I was able to throw it all in the instant pot and get it cooked in time!

This is the week I met with my BYUI students in their study groups. It takes a lot of time and scheduling to meet with nine groups, but I get to know everyone better when I can see them face to face. Most of the meetings went really well. I have one student who asked me to change the requirements for the biggest class assignment four times, so that was exciting. 🙂 I have students in the Bahamas, Kenya, Chile, Ecuador, Argentina, and Canada this semester.

It was National Day in China so most kids weren’t allowed to take VIPKID lessons from last Friday until this Thursday. I have one student who is allowed to take lessons during holidays because she studied in America previously. She is in level seven so she gets hour long lessons, and I got to teach her every day! We had a lot of fun! It’s looking more and more like VIPKID will be ending soon. I so hoped to be able to teach through the end of the year, but I guess we’ll just see what happens!

This week’s Great British Bake Off item was focaccia bread. I might actually make this one again! I made a garlic-Parmesan focaccia. I used whole wheat flour since we prefer whole wheat bread. On the show, they were making all sorts of designs with vegetables on top of the bread, so I added a few tomatoes. It turned out a tiny bit soggy under the tomatoes, but the rest of it was great! And it went perfect with the new Italian Zucchini soup recipe I tried the same day.

My sister, Tiffany, was in town on Saturday. I got to take her and her daughter (who is a high school senior) on a tour of campus. It was raining, but we had a lot of fun! Flynn had a blast playing with her kids.

Mark was in Blackfoot most of the day on Saturday helping his brother fix his car and doing some projects for his dad. He also had time to get his jeep running which he was very excited about! He hasn’t had time to work on it for a while. He and Steven also went to the desert to shoot a bit which was fun for them.

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!

We put up Halloween decorations this weekend too!! My favorite are the new bats I got!

Monday, I had a Zoom meeting with the other CHILD 330 instructors. It ended up just being me and the other instructor who started last Fall with me, so it was a short meeting. I’m already getting into a good routine with my classes this semester. My students are awesome! I have three students who had babies within the last two weeks. I’m not sure how they’re staying on top of everything, but they are!

In my attempt to better love fall, I decided to get a couple more fall decorations. I found these at TJ Max.

Then I went to Seagull Book. They had a special event going on-kind of the sister celebration they used to do during General Conference. I entered in some drawings, and I got to choose a free gift with a purchase. I bought the grey sign and got the pumpkin sign for free! Having cute decorations makes me so happy!

I got another African Violet this week! I ordered it online from the same greenhouse my other one is from. This one has pink blossoms. They are supposed to have blue speckles, but so far they are just pink. They’re very cute though! I named her Gertrude. 🙂 I love that I finally found a plant I can keep alive (crossing my fingers this new one gets settled in well).

Mark stayed busy with class work this week, but also found time to go grouse hunting with Dr. Conover. They didn’t see any though.

Friday night, was our ward camp out! People could start setting up tents at 4:00 and dinner was at 6:00. We weren’t staying over night, so we got there about 5:30. We were the only ones there!! The couple who planned the camp joked that we could each have our own crock pot of soup. Luckily, more people showed up in time for dinner! We had so much fun visiting and stayed for the campfire. It was FREEZING. I’m glad we didn’t stay all night! We loved singing primary songs around the fire and seeing the bishopric’s silly skit. We love our ward so much. They’ve become a second family and it’s going to be hard to leave them when Mark graduates. Luckily that’s not for a little while longer!

A sister in our ward, Sister Lyons, posted on Facebook that she wanted to do a fun challenge. Every week you watch The Great British Baking Show, bake one item from the episode, and then post a picture on the Facebook group she made. I decided to join the group!! This week, I made mini cake rolls. It was convenient that I made my first cake roll last weekend! I did chocolate cake rolled with mint flavored whipped cream (it’s definitely easier to roll a cake with cream cheese). I then covered them in chocolate and sprinkled Andes mints on top. They were pretty messy, but tasted good.

Saturday morning, we packed a picnic lunch and drove up Logan Canyon to Temple Fork. The leaves are starting to turn beautiful fall colors. We found a nice little place to pull off and played with my bow and arrows. We’re pretty sure we were in the exact same place where we took engagement pictures and I had to walk through cow pies in my wedding dress!

My first shot was really good! I progressively got worse the longer I went though. I wish there was a place closer where I could practice more because it’s a lot of fun. Mark did great! His arms are much stronger than mine, so he makes it look easy!

This week was SO busy. Mark is getting in a good groove with his classes. He spends a lot of time in his office doing homework or writing his dissertation. He also helped take his professor’s class spotlighting one night.

BYU-Idaho started on Monday! I have fifty students this semester, which is more than I’ve ever had. I’m also contracted to do 100 hours of grading for EnglishConnect3 this semester. Between reading introduction posts from my students, grading the first assignment, a Zoom meeting with a student, grading EnglishConnect3, teaching VIPKID, and working for webaim, I barely had any free time this week! Mark was so awesome to help a little extra with the housework when I was barely keeping up.

I think it’s going to be a good semester though! I have a lot of great students and am already seeing miracles. I have two students who “just happened to pick the same group,” but they live in the same city and were able to make a special connection over a similar life experience they have. I love when things like that happen!

My primary presidency and I also had a quick Zoom meeting to finalize the primary program. We have written a question for every class and on Sunday, we will pull the kids out of singing time and ask them to answer the question. That will be their speaking part for the program. I love helping put the primary program together! It’s so fun hearing the kids’ responses and songs!

We were able to meet up with some of my friends from Florida this week! The Winks were in the Jacksonville YSA branch- my very first area. They recently moved to Utah. They let me know they would be in Logan for the day so we made plans to meet them at Aggie Ice Cream. It was so fun to catch up! I got to meet their son and they got to meet Mark! I hope we can see them again soon!

Fall has never been my favorite season-I don’t really care about the big fall holidays and I don’t like the cold! But I’m working to embrace all things fall this year! I decided to start off by trying a new pumpkin recipe! I’ve never made a roll cake before, but this pumpkin roll cake turned out great! We’re also making a bucket list of the things we want to do this fall! It’s going to be so fun!

We also were able to pick apples from a family friend’s orchard this week. We dehydrated them so we’ll have some yummy snacks this winter (if we don’t eat them before then)!

On Sunday evening we were out for a walk when we saw throngs of young adults in church clothes walking to the spectrum. We realized we heard something several weeks ago about Elder Christofferson coming to speak to young adults, but we hadn’t heard any announcements recently. We looked up the institute events online and sure enough it was about to start! We dropped Flynn off at home and rushed over! We were tempted to stay home since we were tired and weren’t planning on it, but we’re glad we went!

Sister Christofferson talked about how joy comes when we focus on the Savior, no matter the circumstances. Elder Christofferson talked about some beliefs that Gen Z has (since most people at the event were born after 1996). That really aged us because we’re considered millennials haha! Most people in their late twenty’s don’t go to young adult events anymore, but you can go until you turn thirty so we figure we should take advantage of them! He talked about how many people in Gen Z believe truth is relative. He said truth is eternal and not up to us to decide.

Mark started his last year of school!!! It’s going to be a very busy one, but it’s exciting (and a little terrifying) to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We’re hoping and praying he will find a good job in the spring, and really hope he can find a job near here.

I wanted to make Mark a special breakfast for the first day of school. It was kind of perfect that I couldn’t teach vipkid because I got to sleep in until 6:00, go for a jog, and still had time to make breakfast! I thought apple pancakes seemed appropriate for the first day of school!

I didn’t get to teach Vipkid on Monday or Tuesday, but was able to begin again on September 1. I am fully booked next week, but the week street is booking more slowly than usual. It will be interesting to see what happens. I hope I can teach until the end of this year, or maybe even next Spring when Mark graduates, but I guess we’ll see what it dies off.

Mark and I are taking an institute class this semester (another amazing resource most people stop using by our age). Our very favorite teacher, Brother Jacobs was supposed to retire last year, but is still here so we signed up for his class! It’s a special topics class he designed about repentance, forgiveness, and the Atonement. Mark actually already did this class once, but I haven’t taken it and Mark was happy to take it again. The class is once a week on Tuesday evening which is perfect for our schedules!

Saturday Morning, Mark went to the shooting range with a friend from school. He had a great time and is proud of how much better he’s getting!

Saturday afternoon we went to Blackfoot for our niece, Cassidee’s baptism. It was great to be there and to see how excited Cassidee was! I was asked to play piano which was fun too. I’m out of practice after almost five years without a piano in my home, so I’m excited for the day we have room for one!

We also have had some red bell peppers this year! We’ve never had peppers turn red before!

Some of the young squirrels in the cemetery aren’t scared of Flynn and they seem quite curious about each other.

I gave Flynn a haircut this week and you can’t really see the spot that got shaved for his allergy test anymore! Yay!

We enjoyed having Friday to relax and catch up on things like grocery shopping after our road trip. Mark was able to get some work done as well.

On Saturday the 21, my cousin, Sarah, got married! Sarah and I spent so much time together growing up and we were so excited for her and her fiancé Josh. My parents rode with us to the luncheon and sealing. The luncheon was so pretty! And the sealing was wonderful, in the beautiful Payson temple. Our niece helped check on Flynn since we were gone all day.

It was hard to go back to work after a nice long vacation, but also nice to get back into our routine. Mark is working hard on writing another chapter of his dissertation. He was invited to be a guest speaker for a field techniques class. He got to explain his research at the bird refuge. One of the professors said he is a natural at speaking! He also had another flight over Great Salt Lake.

I wanted to get Mark a back to school present for his last fall as a student! I have been saving up extra money I made this summer and found a great sale, so I was able to buy Mark an Apple Watch series 6! He thought we might get one for him on Black Friday because I love my watch so much. He had no idea I was hoping to get him one sooner. It is rare for Mark to show genuine excitement about gifts and he was thrilled when he opened the watch! It made me so happy to see him really excited. Now we can do activity challenges together too. We have one going right now and currently I’m in the lead. I hope I can keep it that way!!

I received news this week that China will no longer allow children to take classes during holidays or weekends. I haven’t been teaching weekends for a few months, but my classes for the rest of August were removed because the kids are on their summer holiday. I didn’t really mind having a few days to sleep past 5:00am.

It was nice to have my lessons cancel on Friday August 27 because it gave me more time to exercise and get ready for our niece, Katelyn’s, wedding! Mark and I were able to finish the last audio book from our trip while driving. We drove to my sister’s house in the morning and got Flynn all set up to stay there. The wedding was at 1:00 and we had a family luncheon after. It’s so crazy to think we have a niece married! It was really fun to see them so happy and excited. Katelyn borrowed my veil which was sweet.

We drove home Friday night and took advantage of our first Saturday home in three weeks to relax! We went to the farmer’s market and ran some errands in the morning, but spent the rest of the day at home! Mark played a computer game with his brothers and I read. We also watched some Paralympics which is amazing!