Happy Birthday Laun & Payson Temple Celebration

Today was pretty eventful. Not only is it Laun’s 37th birthday, it was also the Cultural Celebration for the Payson Temple, which Clayton got to be part of. Another special thing is that Laun was born in Payson, Utah and today we were celebrating Payson getting a temple!

For Laun’s birthday breakfast I made him this homemade granola he loves:

VANILLA ALMOND GRANOLA (from My Gluten-Free Kitchen blog)

INGREDIENTS

• 4 cups gluten-free oats (I just used regular old-fashioned)
• 1 cup sliced or slivered almonds (or any nuts)
• 1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/3 cup melted unsalted butter or vegetable oil or oil of choice (I used butter)
• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 Tbsp. sugar
• 4 tsp. pure vanilla extract

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 300°.
2. Line a jelly roll pan (about 10.5"x15.5") with parchment paper, or spray with nonstick cooking spray.
3. In a large bowl, use a spatula to stir together oats, almonds, brown sugar, salt, and cinnamon.
4. In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the butter or oil, honey and sugar. Bring to a simmer over medium heat stirring constantly with a whisk to get the sugar to dissolve and the mixture to come together. Once it comes together and simmers about 30 seconds, remove from heat. Whisk in the pure vanilla extract.
5. Pour the hot liquid mixture over the oat mixture in the bowl. Stir well with a large spatula or wooden spoon. Spread granola on prepared jelly roll pan. Bake at 300° until golden brown, about 25-30 minutes. Once or twice during the baking time, pull out and stir well and put back in for the remainder of the baking.
6. Transfer pan to a rack; If you want to add in dried fruit, add it now. Cool granola completely. If you want smaller chunks, stir several times while it cools so that it doesn't harden into large chunks. If you want to add in mini chocolate chips, add them now after it has cooled completely.
7. When cooled, use your hands to break apart to the size you want and store in an airtight container.

Laun spent a lot of his day cleaning the truck.

 

His lunch was a baguette sandwich with olives and prickly pear lemonade.

We had dinner with our ward members outside the stadium before the celebration started. Clayton has been here all day practicing. He has gone to many practices to prepare for this evening. He is playing the french horn with the band.

We all poured into the stadium and we got a front row seat and then a problem occurred. It started to rain, like crazy.

It rained so hard, that we all had to leave our seats and go under the stadium. It was crazy! We were just hanging out for hours, hoping the weather would clear, so these kids who have practiced so hard and long could perform.

an empty wet stadium

Finally, the weather started clearing up, so they had everyone come back in the stadium. I love how they had the kids dressed in white.

And when the leaders of the church got driven in the crowd got wild.

Some of the leaders that came were: Elder Anderson, Elder Cook, Elder Oaks, Elder Nelson and Elder Eyring.

Eyring was so smiley and everyone kept cheering. I think everyone was so grateful that the program was going on, starting late, but starting!

The kids performing- they let a bunch of birds loose and it was awesome watching them fly.

Clayton is in the front row and close to the center in this picture.

He played the french horn and I was so glad he actually got to perform after all those practices and then the crazy weather.

My favorite part of the night was their ending. They had all the kids dressed in white, but under their shirts were bright colored shirts and they were sectioned off in their groups by color (which I didn’t know, that they had shirts under the white).

It was a beautiful sea of white.

Then each section of youth took off their white shirts and exposed their colorful shirts underneath(they went in order of colors) and it was like they were doing the wave, but instead of waving their hands, they were making a rainbow of colors. I wished I had realize what was going to happen so I could record it, but the element of surprise made it that more exciting.

a sea of colors

Then they released balloons:

Magical ending to a magical night.

This guy even made it through, thank heavens I thought to bring warm pj’s never realizing it would be so cold.

You could say we were all pretty tired. We had been here for like half the day/night!

The best french horn player in the band!

Clayton let Carter hold his little music maker he used tonight and he fell asleep with it in his hands.

We finally got home for Laun’s birthday cake and ice cream.

Laun loves this frosting I make that tastes sort of like caramel, so that’s what I made.

Luckily, before I baked the cakes I read that this recipe tends to sink in the middle, good thing I knew that or I would have worried I messed up the recipe.

37

The frosting was delish, but I wasn’t that impressed with this cake recipe.

What a way to end such a day of celebration, with cake and ice cream.

Happy Birthday Laun! I love you more than you’ll ever know. I’m so impressed with all you’ve accomplished in your 37 years and can’t wait to see what you achieve this year. We love you always!