Happy Birthday Lydia

Although your birthday gift is has more to do with the pictures we had Cindy Radford take for us of Tommy and Anna, there is one more thing we will bring you in mid September: raspberry and blackberry jam. And if I think you like gooseberry, you will get a bit of that too. The raspberries this year were a dark, beautiful red color, and their taste was incredible.

I am curious to see how Tommy and Anna react to it. While in Idaho Falls, I used some chocolate sprinkles I buy at the Dutch Deli in Salt Lake City to put on Anna's toast. She watched me do it very carefully, and then she picked up the tiny sandwich I cut in a triangular shape for her, and she pointed to the sprinkles. I waited for words that would express the ecstasy that sparkles in grandma's eyes at the mentioning of European chocolate.

"Dirty," Anna said. I spent the next few minutes scraping the wonderful sprinkles into the disposal. But I know there will a time in the near future when she will like them. The texture bothered her, so the raspberry seeds might create the same response.

Lydia, this is your turn for jam. Next year will be the year when mom and I travel to Virginia in early summer to put jam together for Cles and Leslie next year. If we drive there later this year, we will bring jam with us in the trunk.