Ken in Belize: Hurricane Harvey: What a letdown!

Well, Harvey came and went without too much excitement. In fact, the brunt of the storm went right over us, but if you hadn't told us so we never would have assumed it was something other than a slightly heavy long-lasting rain storm. It may have been only a Tropical Storm by the time it hit us (in fact it was only ever a hurricane for 1 hour), but the Weather Channel's website made it look like it was still really powerful even though it was nothing. We were all bracing ourselves for a cool show and were ultimately let down by Harvey's utter weak-sauce display. Meanwhile, everyone in the country had shut everything down for the day, so we couldn't even go do anything, especially even work on projects, which would have been nice considering how little time we have left!

Katie was scheduled to fly out today since she has a race on Monday morning, but her flight got cancelled because of the impending storm and now she flies out tomorrow instead. So, we at least got to hang on to Katie a little longer, but for causing such an inconvenience to Katie, I figured Harvey at least owed us some good lightning. Oh, well. Better luck next time, I suppose. Not every Hurricane can be a massive swirling tool of destruction and good wearther theatrics. ;) (Do any of you remember the "big blizzard" that was supposed to hit Provo last year on Thanksgiving? It was all kind of like that story.)

The day itself was rather lazy and laid back. We were mostly stuck inside all day and we all knew we should be packing or cleaning or something, but nobody really had the motivation to do anything. I tried in vain to organize a hurricane party so that at least we could have fun together inside during the rain, but nobody seemed that interested. I kept thinking soon everyone would be together and we'd do something, but it was all in vain and my day became mostly composed of waiting around for others and not doing anything at all in the end. :-/ Talk about a boring day!

In preparation for the Hurricane party that never happened, I made my signature blondie cookie bars, albeit with a few substitute ingredients that worked just fine. More unusual than substitute ingredients, though, was the substitute kitchen tools. We have no mixing bowls or 9X13 pans, so...

...I used a pitcher to mix it in instead! First you have your dry ingredients...

...then wet ingredients on top of that...

...then I put the lid on and just shook it all up! (James Bond would appreciate that these brownies are shaken, not stirred.)

For lack of a 9X13, I just shaped the rather thick batter into half of this larger pan. I would have just doubled the recipe, but I didn't have enough flour. Anyway, they bake for 22 minutes, and...

...Voila! Blondies!

Anyway, despite not having a hurricane party, we did have fun this evening venturing out through the drizzle to the chapel where they were broadcasting the cultural celebration from El Salvador tonight in preparation for tomorrow's temple dedication. It was a wonderful performance and they zoomed in on Pres. Eyring at the end and he and his wife were just in tears from how touched they were are the thousands of Salvadoran Saints who put so much time and dedication into the performance. They had rented out the national arena and completely packed it with audience members, not including the cast, which, at the very end came out in its entirety and filled the entire field shoulder to shoulder!

* * * * *

Okay, so I was about to publish this post, but I'm glad I waited a bit, because I was called away for a bit to participate in a pillow fight and foam pad jumping extravaganza with the other team members who were still awake. We have a ton of extra foam pads since the previous waves of volunteers had lots more people and now we don't need all of them, so we stacked them up and jumped around. Ultimately, it culminated in the coolest photo-shoot ever, as demonstrated: