Birthday Celebrations and Christmas Celebrations

It has been over a month since I last wrote. And a busy month at that. There have been so many things going on and I have been busy at work, busy at home, busy at church, socializing a lot, Paul and I have been doing things—it must be the holiday season. I was planning on relating some of the details of my birthday. It was such a happy day for me. But it was a long time ago and I don’t know that it is worth the recital that I might have given it, had a reported on it a month ago. But in brief form— My colleagues had asked me if I wanted to have a celebration to mark my entrance into a new decade—like hang a big “60” from the ceiling in my office. I said that I would not object to having lunch together, but I didn't want to make a big deal of turning 60. When I arrived at work, on my desk already was a canister full of lemon drops, yellow flowers, and a yellow balloon bouquet, with a card that suggested that the Counseling Center was going to make lemonade from the “lemon” of turning 60. And then every period during the day there was a new “lemon” themed gift. There was pitcher filled with lemons 2nd period, and a gift card to a local restaurant name The Blue Lemon 3rd period and 4th period they all presented me with one of the cute designer aprons in yellow and white chevrons. It was celebrate briefly every period. Then that evening Paul had surprised me with a large family dinner at Macaroni Grill. Erika, Jono, Peter, Kortney, Eleanor, my parents and my brother Stephen and his son Steve were all there, and we had a nice dinner and lots of laughs and fun. And so I was fêted into happiness at the crossroads of my middle age and old age. It was a really happy, day. And then we move on. A birthday only lasts one day. The next day, was the November meeting of one of my book clubs. Our book for the month was Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. This is a book club darling at the moment, and interestingly had been a book club pick in my other book club last spring. It is the story of a romance between an unlikely couple in unlikely circumstances—she, Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl who takes an interesting job as the companion to a quadriplegic accident victim. He had been a bigger than life young, urban professional, into extreme sports and living a big life. And was hating the caged life of a housebound, infection prone invalid. Over the course of the novel they develop a sensitivity to one another and love, but the novel asks the question, “What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart?” (That question comes from the book jacket.) I really like this group of women, but we are now at 13 members and it is getting just a little on the big side. It is hard to keep the group from breaking into sub groups and keeping the discussion going when there are that many people involved. I can’t imagine giving it up though—I like these women and we have been a club for years now, I think about 12-13 years. Another activity that had been largely occupying my time during the month of November was photographic slides. When Paul and I were first married we chose to record our lives with slides. We had a slide projector and a number of carousels and for a while we kept really good track of all of our slides. But then we didn't so much anymore and they had gotten mixed up and misplaced and out of sequence and order. Then in October when K.C. was home he told us that at the University of North Carolina there was a scanning machine that converted slides to a digital format and that he was willing to do that for us. That is all well and fine except our slides were in some disorder. So I brought them out of archive state—I organized them in chronological order, bagged them into snack bags which are just the right size to keep them in sequence order, numbered and labeled them and in a big box sent them off to K.C. He is scanning all of them and giving us the digital copies for Christmas. I am really excited about that. Anyway, our dining table was a sea of slides for several weeks. I had them in stacks by number—organized by year, and month and day—with labeling. It was a huge job, but when we get them back we will be able to completely order them in their carousels and have them in good order. I will be able to document a portion of our lives with them. And all Paul’s mission photographs are slides and much of his early climbing and hiking is documented with slides. So this is a really valuable family history gift. (Even if I had to do a lot of the initial organizing, it is a huge job for K.C. too. There are more than a thousand of them. I’m not sure he knew what he was getting into, but he did want to have some of the photographs of his growing up be available in digital form, too. And a lot of other things have happened in the last couple of weeks and I won’t go through them day by day. But I did want to share a little about our “alternative Thanksgiving.” I worked on Monday and Tuesday, but I had Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and the weekend off. It was a nice period but it was also a busy time. Erika and Jono and Peter and Kortney were going to their other families for a big Thanksgiving Dinner on Thursday at 1:00 P.M., and so I suggested that we gather at about 5:00 in the evening for an event at our house. I also invited my parents and my brother and his son. It was a party of 11 people. At first I was going to do a thanksgiving dinner of my own and then I thought better of it. Why try to duplicate that same dinner again for my family. (We did have family members who were coming for their one and only dinner, and it was the one and only dinner for Paul and me, but no matter, I decided to try something completely different this year.) I decided to have a non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner. I found a website with 10 different and interesting turkey sandwich varieties and I picked four that I thought would work for my particular group—and added a traditional open-faced hot turkey sandwich. I gathered up all the fixings for these five sandwiches and hung recipe cards from the cupboards for my guest to study and create their own sandwiches. I set up a Panini grill and a frying pan to make the sandwiches toasted or hot. And I made several cookie sheets of sweet potato fries. I also had a couple of fruit salads as sides. We had some appetizers first and then we did the sandwich-making buffet style. I had cooked a turkey the day before and then let it cool and wrapped it tight in the refrigerator overnight. It was super easy to slice for the next day—making really nice slices for sandwiches. The event did require preparation. I made a very tasty cranberry chutney, and I did cook a turkey and then deboned it, and I did prepare mountains of sweet potato fries for pan roasting instead of deep frying. Erika brought a gluten-free chocolate cake and my mother brought a pumpkin dessert. And there was also a box of See’s chocolates to keep everyone happy. It turned out to be really fun. The creating of an individual sandwich is very appealing—some of the men in the group had more than one sandwich and it was easy to have both regular and gluten free bread choices. I had some gravy, hot and ready in a pan on the stove top for those who wanted a hot open-face sandwich, and everything else was on trays on the counter top for easy access to all the choices. Most people didn’t stick strictly to the recipes, but followed their own creative muse so that was fun, too. Here are the choices that I offered: Hot Turkey and Gravy Open-Faced Sandwiches Ingredients 2 tablespoons margarine or butter 1 large onion, thinly sliced ¾ lb. cooked turkey breast, cut into ⅛ inch-thick slices 1 (12-oz.) jar fat-free turkey gravy 4 slices bread Directions Melt margarine in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion; cover and cook 4 to 6 minutes or until onion is tender and lightly browned, stirring occasionally. Add turkey and gravy; cook until thoroughly heated, stirring occasionally. To serve, place 1 slice of bread on each individual plate. Top bread with turkey and onion mixture. Turkey and Cranberry Chutney Sandwich Ingredients 2 tablespoons cranberry or some other fruit chutney 2 tablespoons chopped toasted pecans 2 slices sourdough bread 2 ounces thinly sliced roasted turkey 2 ounces Brie, sliced 1/4 cup arugula Directions In a small bowl, combine the chutney and pecans. Spread the chutney mixture on the bread and form a sandwich with the turkey, Brie, and arugula. Turkey Sandwich With Watercress and Apple Ingredients 2 slices white sandwich bread 1 tablespoon butter, at room temperature 3 ounces roasted turkey, thinly sliced 1/4 apple, thinly sliced 1/2 cup watercress, thick stems removed Directions Spread the bread with the butter. Form a sandwich with the turkey, apple, and watercress. Turkey Reubens Ingredients 8 slices rye bread 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard 2 tablespoons Russian dressing 8 slices roasted turkey or chicken 1 cup sauerkraut 8 slices Swiss cheese 1 tablespoon olive oil Directions 1. Spread 4 slices of bread with the mustard and 4 slices with the Russian dressing. 2. Dividing evenly, top the mustard-spread slices with the turkey, sauerkraut, and cheese, then the remaining bread. 3. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. 4. Add the sandwiches and cook, pressing occasionally with the back of a spatula until the bread is golden brown and crisp and the cheese is melted, 3 to 4 minutes per side. Serve with the potato chips and pickles. Turkey and Pesto Panini Ingredients 1 loaf soft French bread (12 ounces), split 1/3 cup store-bought pesto 8 ounces sliced roasted turkey 4 ounces sliced Swiss cheese 1/4 medium red onion, thinly sliced Directions 1. Spread the bottom half of the loaf with the pesto. Top with the turkey, cheese, and onion. Sandwich with the top half of the loaf and cut into 4 pieces. Dividing evenly, brush the outside of the sandwiches with 1 tablespoon of the oil. 2. Heat a grill pan over medium heat and cook the sandwiches, pressing down occasionally, until the bread is crisp and the cheese has melted, 5 to 6 minutes per side. 3. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, whisk together the vinegar, the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil, and ¼ teaspoon each salt and pepper. Add the lettuce and avocado and toss to combine. Serve with the sandwiches. I have to admit that some of the recipes had ingredients that I found hard to come by. The grocery store where I shopped didn't have any watercress and I used green leaf lettuce instead of arugula, because I already had some. But I had sour dough and rye bread in addition to gluten free options and whole wheat—I skipped the plain white bread in favor of the other options. And so we had a short order grill going on for a while at our house. And as I said, it was fun. After dinner we played games and then later in the evening we had a short celebration for Peter whose birthday was the next day. I had made a bundt cake and we had 28 candles and we sang and Peter successfully blew out all the candles and we had a few presents for him to open. For me it was a happy day. I had gathered my local family and we had enjoyed the time together. I had enough turkey for left-overs for the next few days and I didn’t have to go to work the next day. It was remarkably pleasant weather the week of thanksgiving and Paul worked on the horse trailer and we both raked leaves. Sandy City has a collection day—December 1st and any bags of leaves left on the curb on that day will be picked up and hauled away by the city clean-up teams. I felt honor-bound to rake our yard and get rid of the leaves while we had the chance. And as I said, both of us did rake, and rake and rake. Ultimately there were 20 large leaf bags stretching across the front of our house on the curb. He hauled them out the night before and arranged them in a line. It was quite impressive actually. We do have a lot of trees and they do produce a lot of leaves and now all those leaves are long gone. Isn't that grand. And now we are passed Thanksgiving and into the Christmas season. I had Jono and Peter help Paul pull all the Christmas decoration boxes from the attic on Thanksgiving Day and on Friday and Saturday—my school vacation, I spent nearly two entire days putting up the tree and doing the decorations. This year I was hosting the Christmas Party for both my book clubs and I wanted to get all the decorating done in those two days so that all would be ready for the seasonal entertaining. Also because I work full time, I just wanted to get it done and not spread it out over several days after I began work again. The first Christmas party that I hosted was on December 4th. I’m in two book clubs and each of them has their own personality and I like them both very much. The interesting thing about this book club is that Erika has joined it. In October, it was my turn to host and Erika talked me into choosing Gone with the Wind as my book choice, and then she came to the meeting because she read the book and wanted to have someone to talk about it with. Everyone adores Erika anyway and at that time they invited her to join, but she demurred at the time. But I invited her to the Christmas party and she was invited again and this time she accepted. So we will be doing this together. Anyway, we had a really fun time. We do a book exchange and can steal books from one another. It is always interesting to see what people are interested in, what they give up and what they steal. I made a beef and broccoli entrée and everyone else brought food, so it really isn't that much work. I do decorate and set the table and of course I have to tidy up a bit—but I’m not cooking all day. And I really like this group of women. And Thursday night after the party was over and I was cleaning up in the kitchen we got a phone call from K.C. with the happy news that he was engaged. He and Elizabeth had already been ring shopping and they went out to dinner, he took the ring with him—they had dinner, he proposed, she accepted and now they are getting married. This is a very happy piece of news for both Paul and me. We are so glad that K.C. is going to be going to Korea with a wife. And, of course, we have had several contacts with Elizabeth over the last year. We saw her in Boston when K.C. graduated and also at Erika’s wedding—and last summer several times….so this is a happy time for K.C. and for us. Then two days later, I hosted another event. This time a four course dinner for eight people. It was Peter’s friends group doing their annual murder mystery dinner. This was the 11th one that I have hosted for him since he was a junior in high school. Some of the original young men who were in the original ones back in 2004-2005 have moved out of the state, but two of the originals were there and two new players were also there. There were part of Peter’s friends group from high school, but weren’t a part of the original group. The girls have changed a lot, at first the girls were girls who were friends or girlfriends of the boys, and later they started bringing their wives. This time it was four married couples all with children—although the children were not invited. I usually do one of these for Peter each year and one for Erika each year. Peter’s is usually in November—this year the first week in December. So that was two dinner parties in two days. Then the following Tuesday, December 9th was the second book club Christmas Party—also hosted at our house. This one proved to be a bit more complicated because we have more members of this group. My dining table only comfortable spreads to accommodate eight—nine in a pinch. And we had twelve of our fourteen coming. So Paul and I hauled the kitchen table into the dining room which didn’t fit too well considering that the tree fills some of that space, but with some adjustments and wiggling and such we managed to get everyone a full place. I made a really easy chicken pesto, using bottled pesto from the store and it was really delicious. I had never made the recipe before—so it was kind of a gamble, but the ratings on line for the recipe were outstanding and so I took the leap and made it. Really easy, really good. Baked Pesto Chicken (Makes 4 servings, recipe adapted slightly from The South Beach Diet Quick and Easy Cookbook.) 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts salt and fresh ground black pepper for seasoning chicken 1/2 cup basil pesto (you can use purchased pesto.) 2 oz. (1/2 cup) grated low-fat mozzarella cheese Preheat oven to 375F/190C. Trim all visible fat and tendons from chicken pieces, then cut each chicken breast lengthwise into 2 or 3 pieces. (I cut the larger ones into 3 strips and the smaller ones into 2 strips.) Spray a 9" x 12" (or 8.5" X 12.5") baking dish with non-stick spray, then spread 1/4 cup basil pesto over the bottom of the dish. Lay chicken strips over the pesto, then spread 1/4 cup more basil pesto over the chicken. Cover the baking dish with aluminum foil (or use a baking dish with a tight-fitting lid) and bake the chicken for 25-30 minutes, just until chicken is barely firm and cooked through. (Don't cook too much at this point, or the chicken will be overcooked by the time the cheese is melted and browned.) When chicken is barely cooked through, remove foil and sprinkle chicken with 1/2 cup grated mozzarella cheese. Put dish back into the oven without foil and cook 5 minutes more, just until cheese is melted Serve hot. There will be some flavorful juice in the bottom of the dish when this is done, so you may want to serve with rice, couscous, or quinoa to soak up the juice or serve it as “gravy” to pour over the hot chicken. The picture shows that it was toasted under a broiler for a couple of minutes, but I just served it baked with the melted cheese on the top. Everyone like it very much. Actually we had wonderful food, the other members bring salads, appetizers, bread, vegetables and desserts. So there is always a great variety and lots of choices for everyone. And we were a noisy, laughing, chatting group. It was loads of fun. We do a book exchange in this club as well and there was a lot of competition for the many interesting and diverse book options. The guests have a choice of picking a book from the unwrapped pile or choosing a book from the many that have already been chosen. You get a better choice if you are down the line to pick a book. We draw numbers to see who goes first. I ended up with a Joan Walsh Anglund book—which was an author I read when I was a child. She is in 50th anniversary reprint and it was fun to get this delightful book in my library again. Both of my book club parties were loads of fun and I have such a good time hosting them. This is about my fourth or fifth year as the hostess for both of these parties. On Thursday it was party time again, December 11th was the Back Country Horseman Christmas Party. This is always a fun party with a dinner and a silent auction. We always end up buying things that we didn’t intend to buy because it is just so appealing to see if you end up getting what you bid for or watching the bidding going up. I started bidding on tickets to the symphony, but when they went up over $50.00 I dropped out. I did get tickets to Hale Theater for just under the normal price and Paul and I both picked up some odds and ends. Paul got a magnetic sign to put on the side of the truck with the Back Country Horseman logo on it, and I got some Christmas cards. Usually we do an extensive barbeque with a big outside grill and do New York Strip steaks and chicken breasts, but there has been a changing of the guard in the administration of the club and now there is a group of women running the show. (Paul relinquished the presidency at the meeting—actually quite happily.) This year for the first time since we have been members of the club there was a really different menu and instead of club members preparing most of the food it was catered this time, with ham, funeral potatoes, barbequed beans and a nice green salad. There might have been a few people who were hoping for steak, but the food was really good, and everyone was able to eat hearty. The best part was that Paul and I didn’t have to stay for an hour after the party was over helping to do all the heavy clean-up. We helped a little and then left. Paul has served in the presidency or as president for six of the last seven years, so I think he has been a very respectable participating member for a long time. The flavor of the club has changed a lot over the last few years, with a lot of the men bowing out in favor of women. The 2nd vice president, the 1st vice president and the president this year are all women. So it will be interesting to see how this year and the future years go. Paul still intends to ride with them, but he feels like he has taken his turn as part of the administration—and some of the ways that things have been done is changing. The club will no longer be printing a mailed newsletter anymore, but will be posting on a Facebook account. So things are changing. Friday night, Paul and I went to the big Christmas concert held in the Conference Center downtown with the Tabernacle choir. Every year they have well-known guests and this year the concert featured Santino Fontana and the Sesame Street Muppets. Santino Fontana is a versatile actor whose greatest claim to fame currently is that he starred as Prince Hans in Disney’s mega hit Frozen, and of course, the Sesame Street muppets have been fixtures on PBS television for more than 40 years. I thought that the concert was delightful. The way that they staged the muppets so that they were very visible, and yet still accommodated the puppeteers was very clever. Santino Fontana was the glue that held the concert together, performing as an independent artist and also playing off and interacting with the muppets. I enjoyed the concert very much. Paul, who isn't that great a muppet fan wasn't quite as delighted as I was, but we enjoyed a very nice evening with my parents. Paul and I haven’t actually scored any concert tickets (which are quite hard to come-by) through the regular channels, but have benefited from the largess of my parents who get tickets annually from the choir president—so without any effort on our part, we usually get ground floor center section tickets. And are happy to get them. We have been to every concert but one in the last twelve or so years and that was because we were unavailable and my parents took someone besides us. They score tickets every year. I feel like this letter is kind of a rehearsal of our last month of activities—maybe a little boring for you to read, but it has been a really fun month of great activities for us. And I have just a couple more things to report on. Our Stake puts on a wonderful musical event every year. The Stake Music Chairman has organized this event which features a number performed by every ward choir, plus some solos and other musical contributions. We have a couple of over achiever wards that have set the bar high for everyone and so everyone really steps up. We have fancy arrangements with four hand accompaniments and bells and percussion and string and woodwind players. It is very interesting and special. One of the wards in our stake, 7th Ward’s choir director is Lex D'Azevedo and he was a guest performer this year, playing an arrangement of We Three Kings and the 7th ward choir, which incidentally is conducted by his daughter performed an original Christmas number written by him. Erika has sung in this event for a number of years coming home from college or from her apartment to share in our ward choir and she performed with us again this year. I had Erika and Jono and my parents for dinner and then we all went over to the musical soiree together. It was another happy Christmas time activity. And the last event that I will write about took place on Tuesday this week. December 16th. This was an event that starred Paul. He was asked by Mary Dollahite, who is the president of a women’s club named Cleofan, to be the entertainment for their Christmas party. This is their premiere event of the year and was held in a magnificent home in the same neighborhood as Erlyn and Duane Madsen in Provo. Paul and I drove down and were invited to eat dinner with everyone and then Paul performed in the spacious and very acoustically advantageous living room. Paul did a series of poems, mostly Christmas themed accompanied by guitar. It was a very lovely evening and he did a very nice job. He brought a couple of his guitars and stool to sit on and a sound system—very professional. I was very proud of him and the job he did. He has been practicing copiously for about eight weeks—and so he was well prepared and ready to perform. And now it is time to put the final touches on Christmas. I have sent off a couple of packages to Philip and Camille and today I will send off a package to K.C. He is spending Christmas in Oklahoma City with Elizabeth’s family. And I have a few more things to do to be ready for Christmas, but it is coming. I’m really excited because tomorrow is my last day of work until January 5th. I will really enjoy the next two weeks off of work.

The Trip to end the 50's decade: Monticello Temple, Mesa Verde, Four Corners and Monument Valley

Today is my birthday and I am now 60. There is no denying that time is marching on for me. However, I had a really wonderful weekend before my birthday and so I am not feeling too badly about it all. Paul and I went on a really great weekend outing and so I am basking in the glow of good things. We left Friday at about 6:15 PM for the long drive to Monticello. I was very excited that the time had finally arrived for going to Monticello, which represented the last operating temple in Utah that I hadn't visited yet. Paul had been working on some family names and we had done preliminary work for a number of them the previous week, so we set off with some alternatives for getting the most work done as possible. The Monticello Temple is a very small compact temple and it was really interesting to be inside, they do have an organized timetable because it is small. There were endowment sessions at 8:00 AM and 10:15 AM. We had originally thought to do two endowment sessions and then a sealing session, but the second endowment session and the sealing session were at the same time, so we ended up passing out some of the endowment cards to other patrons so that we could get all the endowments we needed to have ready for the sealing session. We did one endowment session and then a sealing session. And it was a very nice experience. A few words about the Monticello Temple. It is located about 60 miles south of Moab, sits on a rise on the west side of the town, which was the side that we entered on. We arrived in the dark and it was one of the first visible sites as we rounded the road into the city. Patrons to this temple come from the Four Corners region—a large group of youth from Grand Junction was doing baptisms when we were leaving. The Monticello Utah Temple was the first of the new generation of temples as conceived by President Gordon B. Hinckley. It was the eleventh temple built in Utah and was constructed in just eight months. The Monticello Utah Temple originally supported a white angel Moroni statue atop its spire. Recognizing the problem that the statue seemed to "disappear" on cloudy days, officials directed the statue to be replaced with a taller, gold-leafed Moroni about a year after dedication. The white statue was gold leafed and installed atop the Columbus Ohio Temple. Once the smallest temple of the Church, the Monticello Utah Temple was originally just 7,000 square feet and accommodated a single ordinance room and a single sealing room. Just four years after its dedication, the Monticello Utah Temple was rededicated in 2002 after an expansion project that added a second ordinance room, second sealing room, entrance canopy, waiting room, additional offices, and a laundry. Even so it is still very compact. There is no chapel. Paul and I went straight from the dressing room into the endowment room. It is a two stage endowment set-up and a small, but very beautiful celestial room. The sealing rooms are right off the endowment room and the dressing rooms are in the same hall as the sealing room. The dressing room was a vision of organization, very small, but well contained. There were about ten dressing locker stalls, and then exits on every side, one to initiatory, one to the new name, one to the ladies room, one to the entrance. It was very interesting to see how efficiently this small space was laid out. I was so happy to have had the chance to visit there. And now so happy that I have achieved this particular goal. I have visited every operating temple in Utah. –not in one year, but in two years. When we finished in the Monticello Temple it was just before noon and we hopped into the car and headed into Colorado. We were heading for Cortez and Mesa Verde National Park. Paul remembers with some fondness a family trip to Mesa Verde when he was in elementary school, maybe about 10 years old. And when we realized how close we were going to be to Cortez when in Monticello, we made the decision to head off to there to explore the locale. From Monticello, we headed to Cortez, Colorado which was less than an hour drive and really a very pretty drive. We had a reservation for a hotel in Cortez, but didn’t even stop, just continuing straight into Mesa Verde National Park. Not only is this a national park but also an UNESCO World Heritage Site It is the largest archaeological preserve in the United States. The park was created in 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt to protect some of the best-preserved cliff dwellings in the world, or as he said, "preserve the works of man". It is the only cultural National Park set aside by the National Park System. It features numerous ruins of homes and villages built by the Ancient Pueblo peoples, sometimes called the Anasazi. There are over 4000 archaeological sites and over 600 cliff dwellings of the Pueblo people at the site. We were there during off season, but were still able to see a lot of the features. The Spruce Tree Village is open all year round so we were able to take a steep switchback to see it, but some of the other sites which had trails to them, were closed until next April. The park entrance from Cortez has a beautiful visitor’s center and museum where we stopped at first. This is where you would normally buy tickets to the areas of the park which were closed this time of year. There were examples of the Anasazi pottery and their famous baskets. It was a very impressive building. Then there was a long winding drive to the top of the mesa and then another stretch to get to the area of the park where there are the most dwellings and villages. We had a perfect day, pleasant sweater weather, lots of sun, and practically no other visitors. We parked in large parking lots or parking area with one of two cars in them. It was like having the park to ourselves. We were able to visit some of the more popular places from afar. There were points of view that we could observe from, even though we were not able to take trails down to walk in the ruins and villages. Cliff Palace, Balcony House and Long House require extra tickets, but were not open, but we visited and saw what we could see. We also went to the Visitor’s Center which is by the Spruce Tree Village. It is called the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum. A very interesting building built in the 1930’s by the WPA. There were two major fires in the park, one in 2000 and one in 2002 which did a lot of damage. This land has not recovered as well as Yellowstone Park. I asked one of the rangers about it and he said that about ½ of the park was burned. And he said that both of them were such hot fires that not only was all the vegetation burned but the seeds, too. So there are no new trees starting to come up, yet. He said that it would just move in from the outside and maybe some bird plantings, but that it isn’t coming back anytime soon. There is green grass on the ground, and lots of snags, but no new little trees coming up. Paul and I wandered around in the park until closing time, checking out ruins and designated sites. We took a couple of short hikes to view points, and generally had a very nice time. We returned to Cortez, and checked into our hotel, and Paul asked the desk about a recommendation for a restaurant for dinner for the two of us. We had eaten the continental breakfast in the hotel in Monticello in the morning, and then had just snacked in the car for the rest of the day and so we were ready for a nice dinner. We were directed to a local restaurant called J. Fargo’s. It was a combination family restaurant and bar, with the family portion on the left side of the front door and the bar on the right. I told Paul I didn't want to go in if there was smoking, because I didn’t want to smell like smoke when we went to church the next day, but fortunately that wasn’t a problem. It was no smoking. We both had the same meal, steak and shrimp and the steak was one of the best I have had for a long time, very tender and delicious. I skipped the dessert, but had one bite of Paul’s coconut cream pie which had roasted coconut with just a hint of cinnamon on the top. Very delicious. Returned to our hotel and turned in early as it had been a long day. We looked up the address of the church in Cortez so that we could attend our Sunday meetings and when we followed them in the morning, we ended up in a residential neighborhood with no church building to be seen anywhere. We were going to give it up, but we stopped at a gas station and Paul got another set of directions and we managed to find the building and only arrived a few minutes late. The same woman who was one of the officiating sisters in our endowment session in the Monticello temple the day before was conducting the music in the Cortez Ward the next day. That was kind of interesting, realizing that she drove from Cortez to Monticello to serve in the temple. After church we headed off for Four Corners. I don’t know why I was so interested in going there, but it was something that I wanted to visit so we headed off there. It is truly in the middle of nowhere. And then additionally 18 miles off the main road—if you can call it the main road (a two lane state road.) It is on the Ute Indian Reservation and when we pulled up, they wanted $5.00 each for an entrance fee. We offered a credit, a debit and a check, but it was cash only---so we had to drive 5 more miles to the nearest ATM and then 5 miles back. And it is kind of a little deal. But I had my picture taken while being in four states at the same time. (K.C. points out that with GPS Satellite imaging they have determined that the site of this monument is not really at exactly the four corners point, but I am choosing to believe that I was actually in four states at the same time.) We took some pictures and walked around the site and checked out the souvenirs—didn't buy anything and then left. We drove out of our way some more to go home through Monument Valley. Paul had always had this idea of taking the horses to Monument Valley and riding and having pictures taken of him in this iconic location, but we found it a bit disappointing. It is also managed by the Indian Nation and is on the reservation and the locals have put up double wide trailers from which they sell artifacts and handmade jewelry and bead work so that they obstruct the most beautiful vistas. Everywhere you look there are white double wide trailers, single wides and also other mobile home structures. It is kind of sad really. Paul has no interest in bring the horses to this area anymore. It was interesting to see this valley though. It was very spectacular and beautiful. As a point of fact, the entire four corners area is full of the most interesting topography. We really enjoyed the drive and looking at the red rock and formations everywhere. From Moab to the Four Corners region there is the most spectacular land. We drove back through Monticello and Moab and then Price to get home and arrived home on Sunday evening at about 8:30 p.m. It was really a wonderful trip and I had a terrific time, visiting places that I had never been to before, and enjoying time with Paul and completing a two year old goal.

Healthy Sandy, Keys, Jordan River Temple Day, Birthdays....

For the past three years I have been participating in an initiative which Sandy City generated called Healthy Sandy: Shape Up Sandy. It is a pretty interesting concept. The city structured a program which runs for eight weeks. Each Monday evening there is a “walk” usually a mile or more, which you make at your own speed and time table either before 6:00 p.m. or after. Right at 6:00 p.m. there is a “talk” which lasts about 10 or so minutes. The city has a sign-in card and you keep track of your walks and whether you attended the talk. During the week there is also a bonus walk, which you can do on your own time—and they want you to track your eating. On the first meeting they have the fire department come and take blood pressure readings for the participants and then again on the eighth week. It is really just a healthy living incentive program. There are a lot of little extra incentives—each week there is an inexpensive give-away; things like a pedometer, water bottle, aprons and t-shirts with the Healthy Sandy logo on them, measuring tape, portion control plates, etc. Each week you get points for completing the various activities. You get points for the weekly walk, more points for the bonus walk, points for tracking your eating, points for staying for the talk, etc. On the last week, your points are totaled and there is a drawing for lots of “prizes” for the participants. The prizes are donated by various businesses and are quite random—some are health related items, or exercise related items, and some are just things—cleaning tools and supplies, game items (badminton rackets, bocce sets, nerf ball stuff, etc. The first year I participated I won a month’s membership to Curves. The second year I got a small Coleman cooler, we use it for car trips. Well, this long exposition leads up to the story of the week. This Monday was the last week of the fall, Shape Up Sandy session. It is the first time that they have done a fall session and so instead of just having a couple of tables of prizes, they had an expensive and deluxe prize, in addition to all the regular prizes that they offered. The big prize was an adult, three wheeled bicycle. And the grand prize winner of the whole session was me. I was actually no more deserving than anyone else who had completed the program, but my name was the one drawn out of the box. And I won the bike—which from the very beginning I had no interest in. I was hope for something like the George Foreman Grill, or one of the outdoor games that I could give as gifts to my children. I was kind of horrified that I won. And then I had to come up in front and have my picture taken next to the bike—and all the while I was thinking—what am I going to do with this, I don’t want to ride this anywhere where anyone I know will see me, and how am I going to get it home. It was way too big to fit in my car. I was there with a friend who was doing the program with me, and she just kept laughing and shaking her head at me. When the drawing portion of the evening was over, I went up to the bike and looked at what I had to deal with. While I was standing there, looking at it, a sweet, chubby woman, maybe ten or fifteen years older than I came up and looked wistfully at the bike. She said, “Do you know how much these cost?—My doctor recommended one of these to me, because I kept falling off my regular bike. But I just can’t afford one—they cost about $500.00. [Actually they cost about $400.00—on Amazon at least plus shipping]. And then I realized I had an ideal solution. I said to the woman—“Do you want this bike? You can have it!” I wasn't any more deserving than she was and she really wanted it. She was flabbergasted and amazed and thrilled. She got on it and rode it around the room and was just delighted. And I felt such a lightness of being to have gotten rid of it so easily. She traded her two pound weights that she won for my bike and both of us were happy. So that is how I won a nice bike and then gave it away in fifteen minutes or less. Another grand adventure occurred this week. It is the first time that this has ever happened to me. I was charged with putting on a luncheon for the Student Center and Main Office Staffs. (We have a group luncheon every quarter to celebrate the birthdays of those people who have their birthday during that quarter. It is a voluntary event and we have a committee who chooses the date, plans the menu, assigns the food, and generally organizes the event. I was the chairman of our group. So on Tuesday afternoon, I headed over to the grocery store to buy some of the items that I would need for our luncheon. (A counselor and I were working together on Taco Soup and I was buying all the canned goods for both of us—I also was buying some odds and ends for us and I didn't want to have to figure out how much she owed me when the dust settled, so I had them totaled on different tickets.) When I got out to the car, I began shuffling items from one bag to another so that I could leave some things in the trunk for the next day and bring some things in. I spent a few minutes fiddling around in the trunk and then I closed the trunk lid. ---only to discover that I had closed my keys in the trunk of my locked car. Now the whole car was locked, trunk, too, and my keys were just inches away, but completely inaccessible. What to do? (Aside from feeling extremely foolish and stupid and absent-minded.) Now, I am standing in the parking lot with my trunk full of my goods, and no way to drive home. Luckily, I knew that Paul was home, he and I had spoken while I was in the grocery store, so I called him and threw myself on his mercy and he came to the store, which wasn't too far from the house and brought another key, opened up the trunk to free my captive keys and I was back in business. Wiser to be sure than before I had this experience—how fortunate that I wasn't far from home and unable to connect with Paul. Paul has been researching some family names and we planned on going to the Temple on Saturday to begin working on these names. (The genealogical department of the church has made some commercial genealogical sites available without membership fees to members of the church with accounts on the church’s site—which has made new information available. Paul and I have both joined some of these sites. Paul especially likes myheritage.com. We decided to go to the Jordan River Temple because it was more convenient to the horses and we could go to the Temple and the pasture in the same trip. So Saturday morning we got up and got going, arriving at the temple at about 9:15 AM. We were planning on doing baptisms, confirmations, initiatories and a couple of sealings. When we arrived at the temple one of the brothers at the recommend desk asked us if we were interested in doing sealings and we said we were planning on doing some anyway so we got dressed in our ceremonial clothing and went straight to a sealing session. We were able to do the two sealings that Paul had identified as well as a bunch of temple names. We were in the sealing session for about an hour. When we finished with the sealings we headed to the baptistery. We actually did quite a few clothing changes and during the day I had three different lockers. Paul had printed temple cards on seven sisters and five brothers—so I had seven baptisms, confirmations and initiatories to do and he had five for each. Paul baptized me for the seven and then was baptized for his five. (Interestingly, the standard count for baptisms, confirmations and initiatories is five and I show up with seven –it is a big deal. The workers allow me to do all seven, telling me each time that the only reason they can allow me to do all seven is because they are not that busy at the particular moment when I arrive—and it was really true. When we arrived at the baptistery it was almost empty, but by the time that I was done and had showered, dried my hair and gotten redressed, the baptistery was full of people. It was interesting and a real blessing for Paul and me. After we finished with the baptisms and confirmations—(Paul got to do the confirmations on me, and then was confirmed by an ordinance worker for the five men he was working on.) we headed down to the cafeteria for lunch, and then back to the dressing rooms for the initiatory work. The same thing that happened in the baptistery happened in the initiatory. There was no one there when I arrived, and they agreed to let me do all seven sisters names. When I finished and came out, there were about eight sisters waiting to do initiatory work. It was nice to get all the names done in one visit and not have to come back for the last two names. By this time we had decided that we would also stay and do an endowment session, since we were moving forward with these names. And so we attended an endowment session, too. I was kind of hoping to get to see temple film #3, but as it turned out it was a #2 day for us. We were anxious to get all the preliminary work done for these names since we are going to Monticello this weekend and we wanted to work on family names when we were there. Getting an endowment session in on Saturday was kind of an extra since we hadn’t planned on doing it when we left home, but we had the unique experience of doing some of all the vicarious work available on the same day. Paul counted up the number of ordinances that we had done and we had done 40 different ordinances in one day. That was pretty satisfying. We left the temple at about 4:30 PM having spent the day in the temple. We got a phone call from Philip on Saturday when we were in the temple, but he called again on Sunday morning and we got to talk with him. He and his family have arrived safe and sound in Kiev, Ukraine. They are really satisfied with everything. The plane trip went well and the children were well behaved and traveled well. They were met by their sponsor and delivered to their apartment, shown around the town, taken to a grocery store—all the things you need to do in the first few hours of arrival. They are nine hours ahead of us—so it will be tricky to connect with them on a regular phone call basis, but it was really nice to talk to him. He put Jonathan on the phone and for about four minutes Jonathan talked without pause about their new home, room by room and each piece of furniture, about the neighborhood and his first ride on the metro, about the airplane and the balloons that he and Andrew got…on and on. Paul and I just couldn’t keep from laughing as he chatted away about the family adventure that they are on. Philip hopes to get him into the local preschool this week. They have made arrangements for him to be in a local Ukrainian speaking preschool, which will be both challenging and interesting for him. (I went through this with K.C. when we first arrived in Belgium. It turned out to be a wonderful experience for him and he did really well—we have no regrets—but it was a tough first two weeks when he was overwhelmed by so much French—it will probably be easier for Jonathan because he has already been attending preschool in Washington D.C.—going to school won’t be a challenge, just the language thing….hmmm. I have been thinking about this little family a lot this weekend because I have been getting their Christmas package ready for them. I did a lot of shopping this last week and over the weekend, I wrapped and then packed the mailing boxes. Philip is going to email me his new address this week and then the Christmas packages will head on their way to Kiev. It is a bit of a birthday season for us in November. Yesterday was Kortney’s birthday. She turned 25, and tomorrow is Jono’s birthday. He will be 26. And next week is my birthday. And I will be super old. (It will be my 60th birthday—I just want to know how that happened. I’m not feeling that good about this new decade.)

Vernal, Brigham City and Ogden Temples, Hoo Hung Woo Murder Mystery Dinner Party and Joan of Arc Book Club Meeting

I am finding it harder and harder to find the time to write these last couple of weeks. We have had full days and evenings for a long time now. Paul is recovering nicely, last Monday he went to physical therapy and the therapist evaluated his mobility and stated that Paul has 85% facility now. Paul has certainly been working at it---so it is gratifying that he is showing some good recovery. He hopes to be at 90% by 12 weeks since surgery. In the meantime, he has been able to do many things that were impossible just a few weeks ago. Including riding his beloved horses again. Today, while I was a work, Paul took the day off to go on the Buffalo round-up. I don’t know yet how long he was able to participate, but he was very hopeful of riding for a full day. K.C. came into town on the 12th and was here from late Sunday night until late on Friday night. He gets a rental car when he comes to work here for a week, so he is free to come and go as he wishes. He was involved in a retreat during part of the time he was here, and then spent time interfacing with the newer computer guys in the office. He will be with them for just a few more months so they have to get as much of his knowledge transferred as possible before he leaves their employment. I organized a family dinner for when he was in town. We got Peter, Kortney and Eleanor and Erika and Jono to come to dinner on Wednesday evening and we had all the family members except for the Philip branch—all under one roof for a few hours. I enjoy gathering the family and we had a lively, noisy, happy dinner. It was great fun. We laughed and talked and shared. Good times were had by all. Food and family is a great combination and we do have a dynamic and energetic group. After the evening wrapped up, I got the kitchen cleaned up and prepared a few things for the road trip, the next morning. I have been watching this year drawing to a close and I still had four temples that I needed to visit to have attended an endowment session in all the operating temples in Utah. This was a goal set in January 2013 and I didn’t achieve it during that year, but just rolled it over into 2014. Now 2014 is almost over and there were these temples still unvisited. I didn't want to have to roll it over into another year, so I took a hard look at the calendar to see when I had days that I could use to do temple sessions. The fall break from school was approaching and I decided that I could do a day trip to Vernal, leaving in the morning, doing a session and returning home all in one day. I committed myself to that. As the time approached, I asked Erika if she would like to take a “fun day trip with me to Vernal.” She agreed to do it and so we set the date for October 16. I left the house at about 7:00 a.m., then picked up Erika leaving her house at about 7:30 a.m and then we headed off to Vernal, though Park City and Heber. I had googlemapped the best route and the time table and figured the trip would take about 3 hours. We stopped for gas in Heber and made another bathroom break in Roosevelt and when we arrived in Vernal and at the temple it was about 10:45 a.m. We had missed the 10:30 session. We did get to visit with a very chatty temple worker who told us some interesting facts about the temple. The Vernal Utah Temple was the first temple built from an existing building—the Uintah Stake Tabernacle. A modern temple was built within the shell of the gutted tabernacle, which had fallen into serious disrepair and had not hosted a stake conference since 1983. (Since then the Manhattan Temple and the Copenhagen Temple have been constructed from existing buildings and now the Provo City Center Temple is under construction—using the old Provo Tabernacle.) At the dedication of the Uintah Stake Tabernacle on August 24, 1907, President Joseph F. Smith's words would prove prophetic when he said he "would not be surprised if the day would come when a temple would be built in your own midst here." The Vernal Utah Temple is labeled 1907 and 1997, indicating the two years when the building was dedicated—first as a tabernacle and then as a temple. The idea of converting the Uintah Stake Tabernacle into the Vernal Utah Temple was first proposed by leaders of the Vernal Utah Glines Stake to area authorities in 1984, but the proposal was eventually rejected by the First Presidency. Many other possibilities were pursued, and the building had even been put up for sale for a time. However, in 1993, the idea of a temple was proposed again. This time, it met with First Presidency approval. All of the furniture and fixtures salvaged from the Uintah Stake Tabernacle were sold at public auction on April 15, 1995. Everything available sold in 3½ hours. Due to the narrowness of the building, a two-stage endowment room was innovated for the Vernal Utah Temple—a concept which has been used in many temples ever since. The Reader Home, a turn-of-the-century residence in Vernal, built of the same bricks as the tabernacle, became the source of thousands of needed replacement bricks for the Vernal Utah Temple. The owner, a friend of another faith who planned to raze the home, agreed to donate it to the church instead. For two months, 16,000 bricks were painstakingly removed from the home and brought to the temple. The old dome of the Uintah Stake Tabernacle was removed and renovated into a gazebo, located at the Ashley Valley Community Park. The Vernal Utah Temple was given two domes instead of one, as was featured on the tabernacle. The eastern dome of the Vernal Utah Temple features a gold-leafed angel Moroni statue added on September 16, 1996. In an experiment, the statue had originally been painted gold. After four months, however, it was decided that the statue should be given the traditional finish of gold leaf. The sessions in the Vernal Temple run every hour and a half so we had more than an hour until the next session. So Erika and I did a set of initiatory names each and then dressed and waited in the chapel. Then we went on the session. The endowment rooms are on the second story of the building and there is lovely etched glass work and trompe l’oiel patterns on the walls. The celestial room has an enormous photograph of Christ’s second coming with arms outstretched. The room is narrow, but very pretty. And for only the second time I was able to see Temple Film #2. It was a very nice experience. When the session was over Erika and I left the building—we were really ready for lunch. It was about 2 o’clock. But before lunch we had to run an errand to the Vernal Deseret Industries. Peter had told us that when he was visiting Vernal with Kortney sometime earlier they had been disappointed that they had missed the local DI and suggested that we stop there in their honor. Erika was looking for a costume for a party and we found just the thing. Then we had lunch at Café Rio and back on the road for the three hour trip home. And for me happily have met a personal goal that represented a significant challenge—and really took a whole day to achieve. Erika was a really good sport about driving with me to and from Vernal and attending the temple with me. She admitted that part of the reason she did this was because I was helping her with a Murder Mystery Party that she was hosting at our house on Friday. This was one of the standard How to Host a Murder games that we have done so many of over the years. The name of this one was Hoo Hung Woo and was set in 8th Century China. The costumes were Asian in theme and the group really came through with interesting costumes. Peter and his group had done this mystery in 2009 and I had made Peter a costume for that party which Jono wore at this party. The costume that Erika wore is the one she bought part of the components for in Vernal Deseret Industries. She felt quite lucky to walk in and find a silky surplus front robe and a cummerbund. It was a very productive DI visit. She wore leggings on the bottom. All four of the girls at the mystery did their make-up with white face in the Chinese style. They looked very authentic—in a costumy kind of way. I was responsible for the food and the decorating and setting the scene. I had thought I could find some of the same decorative items that I used back in 2009 for decorating. I had purchased some items from Zurcher’s party store, but when I went back five years later, the selection was entirely different and I only bought chopsticks and napkins. The table looked cute anyway. I served Spicy Orange Sausages and mini egg rolls for appetizers and an Asian flavored salad (recipe off Allrecipes.com) and two entres: sweet and sour chicken and vegetables over rice, and beef and broccoli over fried rice. They both disappeared like snow in summer. For dessert we served dessert crepes sporting three different fillings: apple cinnamon, vanilla crème and berry. Erika made the crepes in advance and brought them to our house that evening. She made some of them regular and some gluten free. I filled the crepes over the course of the evening—served cold with whipped topping on the top. The Murder Mystery was a great success. There was so much laughter and carrying on—the participants had a fun time, I think. Erika said it was the best time of all the parties that she has put on. She started doing them when she was in junior high school and has done a number of them, like Peter and his group. Their group has changed over the years—but there is a nucleus which has been consistent. Two of the girls are now married so their husbands are part of the group now, and they have gotten to know one another really well over the years so it makes for a fun evening. I enjoy having the group at our house and doing the dinner. Erika said it is embarrassing to continue to have parties at your parent’s house—but it is a tradition now. I expect I will do one more before the year end—because Peter’s group still continues to do this annually. I conceived of the idea of doing the Brigham City Temple and the Ogden Temple on the same day because I was seeing the end of this year descending on me and with a limited number of Saturdays available to make a trip to these temples. Earlier in thespring of this year, Paul and I made a trip to Petersboro and Brigham City with the idea of attending a session in the temple and then going and doing some farm work. When we arrived at the temple for the 12:00 session we were asked if we had an appointment. It hadn’t even occurred to me that we would need an appointment. We were unable to get into a session, but did do sealings on that day. Two other times during the summer and fall I had found a time and day when I thought I could go and do a session in the Brigham City Temple and when I called to make an appointment that session was already completely scheduled. This was more challenging than I had anticipated. And then the Ogden Temple was rededicated and I had another temple to add to the list of temples that I wanted to attend—so I decided to try and fit both of them in the same day. I looked at the list of Saturdays in October and the only one that didn’t have a major event already in place was the 18th of October. I called the Brigham City Temple first and found out that I could make an appointment for the 9:15 a.m. session. Then I called the Ogden Temple thinking since it had just re-opened that I would need an appointment there. I was mistaken. They had sessions running every thirty minutes and they required no appointment. And so it looked like I was actually going to get two temple sessions in different temples on the same day. Paul who is still recovering from his shoulder surgery didn't think he would be up to two sessions, but agreed to come with me—check out the property in Petersboro while I was at the Brigham City Temple but planned on joining me in the Ogden Temple. I went on-line and got directions from the Brigham City Temple to the Ogden Temple and everything was a “go”. We got up early on Saturday morning because we had to stop and feed the horses before heading north. We arrive in Brigham City with time to spare and Paul dropped me off there and headed to Petersboro. I entered the temple and prepared for the session. The endowment room I visited was really lovely—and after all the difficulty that I had had with getting into a session, it was very sparsely attended. And it turned out that I was to see Temple Film #1 again. When I had completed the session, I went out onto the Temple grounds and walked around a bit until Paul came and picked me up and then we headed to Ogden. With the directions that I had downloaded, we were able to get there easily. It does not stand on a hill or a place visible from afar and it is in the middle of town, surrounded by buildings. But it is on a large tract of land which is beautifully landscaped. Because it was past lunchtime, we went immediately to the Temple cafeteria and had lunch and then dressed and proceeded to the chapel and in a timely way ended up in a very full session. The façade of the temple and the interior are very lovely. The temple has been renovated and the exterior is now entirely different that it was previously. There is no art in the endowment room which is a “single location” room, you don’t move into another room except to enter the celestial room after passing through the veil. And once again I saw Temple Film #1. It is interesting that I have been in a number of different temples over the last several months and I have yet to see Temple Film #3. K.C. claims that it is the one he prefers of the three. So in another couple of hours, I had completed three temples during the fall break five day weekend. This was a very satisfying accomplishment. I now have one more temple to complete my goal to visit all the operating Utah Temples. Originally it was all the temples in one year, but that didn't happened. Instead of giving up, I just rolled over previous accomplishments and gave myself another year, but I felt really compelled to try and finish this goal up. It has been work and effort, but I feel like it has also been worth the time, energy and resources that I have applied to this project. I keep wondering when things are going to slow down, when I will get some downtime again. I have some outstanding projects that I just can’t seem to finish. I think the fact that I have something to do—some place to go every day is part of the problem. This week is an example. Monday evening I participated in the Shape Up Sandy walk at Bicentennial Park. Tuesday was our ward Homemaking Meeting. Wednesday I went to the home of the sister that I team teach Sunday School with to plan our lesson for November 2nd. Thursday was one of my book clubs. Friday, I am working the football game as a ticket taker and Saturday I am giving an accommodated ACT Test and going to our annual Lauper Ladies Brunch. It is no wonder that I am not getting my ironing or my quilting done. I wanted to mention my book club in particular because we read an interesting book this month. It was a book I had never heard of even though it was written by a very famous author. It was the last complete book that Mark Twain wrote, titled Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte and as the title suggests it was about Joan of Arc. It is a novel, but also a history. The novel is written as if it is a found manuscript, discovered in the National Archives of France. The manuscript is supposedly the memoirs of Joan of Arc’s page, Louis de Conte. A pseudo forward in the book explains that the manuscript was"Freely Translated out of the Ancient French into Modern English from the Original Unpublished Manuscript in the National Archives of France". In the novel, de Conte is presented as an individual who was with Joan during the three major phases of her life—as a youth in Domrémy, as the commander of the army of Charles VII of France, and as a defendant at her trial in Rouen. Originally, Mark Twain's novel was published as a serialization in Harper's Magazine beginning in 1895. At Twain’s request, Harper's Magazine published it anonymously to avoid expectations for it to be humorous. It was inspired by a lifelong fascination Twain had with Joan of Arc. Twain spent fourteen years on the novel and considered it his best work. The book was fairly well-received at the time of publication, though critics since then have generally dismissed it as overly sentimental. We had a lively discussion about how much history we learned from this book, even though it was a fictionalized account. The story line explained certain aspects of the Joan of Arc story that are confusing. Why did Joan of Arc get burned at the stake if she was responsible for leading the French against the occupying English and placing King Charles VII of France back on the French throne? (Because she was captured by the Anglophone French as traitor to the English that held portions of France at that time.) We all learned a lot and it was interesting to make comparisons between biblical prophets, Joseph Smith and Joan of Arc and discuss the concept of visions and revelation. A really fascinating discussion. ,

Paul's recovery, Children Reports, Conference weekend at the Cabin

Seems like forever since I have written. Here it is the end of another week. We have been busy—both Paul and me. Things going on at work, things going on at school, things going on at home. Enough to keep us going. Paul is recovering a little bit every day. He is going to a physical therapist that is making him work hard. The day or two after the session he is pretty sore, but he sees the improvement from each session. He is also going to the City Creek Gym every day but Sunday and swimming and working out and so he is seeing that sometime in the future he will be normal again. He still has periods of discomfort (pain), but he is actually sleeping the whole night in our bed again. And has actually slept through the night a couple of times. Pain and other discomforts to wake him up from time to time, but we can see that he is getting better. And that makes us very hopeful. Philip called a few days ago with his ipad and we had some facetime with him and the grandchildren and Camille. He called mostly to show us that Andrew is really up and walking now. He isn't just taking some of those first tentative steps but is waling like a champ, moving around like he owns the place. We had a nice chat with Philip and Camille. They are getting ready for the move to Ukraine. They leave their home in Washington D.C. on the 22nd of this month—then there is a week of meetings and travel before they actually arrive in Kiev. Philip has to shadow an immigration officer at the International Terminal in New York for two days. Then they will fly to Frankfurt, Germany and overnight there, then continue on to Kiev. They are ready to go—Philip has been studying for the last eight months, language and policy, and now it is time to put it all into action. We told them from the time that we knew about the assignment to Ukraine that we would be coming to visit them and Paul has been looking at flight information for the last three months. Sunday we took the plunge and booked and bought airline tickets for the two of us to go and visit them. We will be going in June next year. We will leave on the 15th of June and come home on the 23rd of June. That is just after I get done with work for the 2014-2015 school year. So we will have the whole year practically to look forward to the trip. I took the precaution of buying insurance for the trip—who knows what could happen in all that time—but we are really excited and happy about the prospect. We will be seeing K.C. again this week. He is flying in on Sunday. Friendemic, the company he is working for right now is having a company retreat next week and he is flying in for that and to work with the other employees that are concerned with information technology, which is the area where he works. He will be staying with us but will get a rental car so that he can come and go on his own. It is fun to have him come and visit because he is a magnet that encourages our children to gather at our house. We will see the whole group at least once while he is here. I suppose that I should organize some kind of family dinner, which I haven’t done yet. This week on Tuesday, I had a gathering of one of my book clubs. I didn't care much for the book—Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walters. I didn't really think much of it while I was reading it. (Many dysfunctional people in ridiculous situations.) But it has been positively reviewed and has won some very prestigious awards. It is total fiction, but it is set in Italy and concerns events that happened during the filming of the movie Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. (That is where they fell in love and their romance figures into the story.) The hostess, Lisa Whiteley has a sister who is a movie critic and a movie aficionado and a collector, and she came to the meeting and did a very interesting presentation on Elizabeth Taylor. She had books, and dolls and movie posters and signatures. She collects signatures and has about 250 celebrity signatures in her collection. That was the most interesting part of the book club evening. I found out lots of interesting tidbits about Taylor/Burton. One of the books was about Elizabeth Taylor's massive jewelry collection. It seems that whenever Elizabeth and Richard had a fight that part of the make-up was a piece of jewelry—so sometime Elizabeth Taylor would pick fights when she wanted a particular piece of jewelry. Hmmm. It is a lovely group of women and I enjoy very much our time together. Paul and I spend last weekend (Conference Weekend). We can’t watch conference, but we can listen. We listened to all four sessions and Paul went to Mack’s Inn to the priesthood session. We actually listened to the closing session in the truck on the way home. We went to Island Park for the weekend for another reason besides conference, to take down the fences, bring the horses home and winterize the cabin. It was such a lovely weekend there. It was bright and cool, the trees losing their leaves and turning colors. There was this quiet sense of the end of summer. The horses were happy to see us, and were happy to hop into the trailer when it came time to go home. We loaded them into the trailer on Sunday between sessions and then took the fences down. When we had finished and all the fences were lying down and the poles standing straight and unconnected, it looked so much like the change in season. We do feel blessed that the option of leaving the horses there was available when Paul was so indisposed, and that they ended up being good at self-care. Peter came on Monday and Wednesday last week and helped Paul get hay and get it placed in the pasture in Midvale—so now we are ready and prepared for winter. Paul has decided to try and get ready to do the Buffalo Round-Up on Antelope Island and so we are going to do a short ride in Dimple Dale on Saturday—and see how that goes. We are moving into the “healed” place—sooner or later. I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but Erika had a series of tests a couple of weeks ago—she had been combating continuing stomach problems—runs in the Kern Family. She was diagnosed with Celiac disease and so now she is gluten-free, too. It isn't happy news, but at least she knows that it is possible to live a comfortable and normal life with celiac, as she has witnessed it first hand in our situation with Paul. And I won’t have to do anything different when she comes to our house for dinner since Paul and I eat pretty much gluten-free anyway. Erika and Jono and their group of friends are having a Murder Mystery Party next week—it is set in 8th Century China—so I am thinking about Chinese and Asian food for the party and looking forward to that.

Cabin, Concert, and Pears and more pears

We headed up to the cabin last weekend for a whirlwind trip. We left when I got off work on Friday and arrived at the cabin a little after 9:00 p.m. We always stop to check on the horses when we arrive. It is dark, but when the horses hear the truck coming down the access, they run up to the fence, so by the time we actually arrive at the inside gate, they are there. They always act really glad to see us—the fact that we always give them sweet mix or grain doesn't have anything to do with it, I’m sure. We knew from the beginning that this was to be a very short trip. We intended to spend the night and then leave sometime the next morning. It is still really nice to go to Island Park, even for a short trip. It was so pleasant there. The fall colors are in evidence everywhere now, but it has been such a wet summer that there isn't a dried out feeling, it is still quite lush and full looking and feeling. The cabin was in great shape, it is so nice to have it as a place to come to. Ralph and Connie were not there—apparently moved into their new place now. But we weren't there very long anyway. In the morning we got up and headed out to the pasture again. One of the wonderful things about cabin visits now is that I can strip the bed and wash the sheets and then make the bed with clean sheets and not have to change the bed twice every time I visit. First thing I stripped the bed and popped the sheets in the washer, and by the time we finished breakfast they were washed and ready to go in the dryer. Then when we got back—all I had to do was put the clean sheets on the bed. It was quite wonderful. (Ahhh, the simple pleasures of life. –I really do love having a washer and dryer there, even more than I expected.) Anyway, we headed off to the pasture where we checked on the horses, we haltered them and had them run on a lead for a few laps and Paul checked their feet. They are going great. It has also been a blessing that they have done self-care so well this summer and fall, while Paul has been convalescing. The two of us walked the fence and it just needed a few staples in places, but is also holding up pretty well. After about an hour and a half at the pasture, we went back to the cabin, cleaned up, packed our stuff, shut everything down and we were off. We left at about 10:30 a.m. because we wanted to stop at the lumber yard in St. Anthony. Paul used some of their raw lumber for our carriage house, and he wanted to price out what was available for our barn in Petersboro. We still don’t plan to start until next spring/summer, but we are getting some estimates and working out a spreadsheet, so we will know what we can do. It is fun to start working on this project. We also stopped in Petersboro on the way home. We were there last weekend, but we wanted to make sure that we liked the position that we picked out. And we did. Our grass is still doing well, and starting to choke out the weeds and our fence looks good. It has also been quite rainy there, and so everything looks healthy and lush still. We were in a hurry to get back to Salt Lake on Saturday evening because we were going to attend a concert in the Assembly Hall. It was part of the Temple Square Performances Series. It was “Music of Crawford Gates”. This concert featured choral and instrumental music and included a variety of performers including vocalists, pianists, and instrumentalists (violin, flute, viola). The concert was offered to pay tribute to my dad for his contribution to “uplifting and inspiring music throughout his lifetime.” We don’t know how many more of these kinds of events are in my dad’s future and so I felt like we needed to come back to attend this concert even though we had planned to go to the cabin the same weekend. It made the trip to the cabin seem almost like it didn't happen since we were back so soon after we left. The concert was very nice and we were glad that we were able to attend and that we were able to participate in the evening with my parents and some of our children. Peter and Erika and Jono also attended and after the concert our little group went out for ice cream so the evening ended up having a “party” feeling to it. Our sacrament meeting on Sunday was a broadcast of the Ogden Temple dedication. It was in our chapel and we had to show our recommends in order to go into the chapel. It was a very nice experience and there were outstanding talks and the music was very well performed. Paul and I had a very enjoyable worship service. Now I need to go and do a session there, to continue my quest to visit all the Utah Temples. I have four more, Ogden, Vernal, Monticello and Brigham City. (Paul and I visited the Brigham City Temple several months ago, but the endowment session was full and we did sealings. I still want to do a session there.) Erika and I are going to the Vernal Temple in October when there is UEA convention and we will be off school and Paul and I will go to Monticello in November as a birthday present for me. I just need to make an appointment to go to the Ogden Temple in the next couple of months. I hope to have all the Utah temples visited by the end of the year. Then I will have to design a new quest—maybe Idaho Temples. I have already done endowment sessions in the Rexburg and Idaho Falls Temples and a sealing session in the Boise Temple, so it would only mean a couple more….we’ll just have to see. Monday, I had my semiannual dental visit and am happy to report another visit with no cavities. I thought I might have one because one of my teeth has become a bit sensitive to cold—but so far no evidence of decay so I will carry on. I went to the dentist after work and while I was not at home, Paul got all busy and picked apples and pears. Our fruit trees are in full harvest mode now. We didn't get as many apples this year as last year, but we did get a bountiful harvest of pears. Yesterday afternoon and evening I made pear jam. And it is work, cutting and peeling pears and pears and pears. And after peeling many, many, many I ended up getting eight pints of jam—working from about 5:00 p.m. until about 9:30. It seems like a lot of work for eight pints, but we will be happy to have it. I actually quite like pear jam, it is a more subtle flavor than many jams, but quite pretty, almost clear and golden colored. And so that brings us to the end of our current adventures.

Cabin Trips, Petersboro, Healthy Sandy, Gone with the Wind and Family News

Paul continues to improve. He is now sleeping a little bit better, and spending most of the night in bed rather than awake and sitting up. He is back at work almost full time; there is still a significant level of discomfort and pain, but he is doing physical therapy and he does see some light at the end of the tunnel, though still quite distant. It has been a long haul for him and he is looking forward to having this all behind him. In a few more months it will be a dull and unhappy memory. I have been involved and busy these last couple of weeks with many small and big projects. Paul and I have been going to the cabin every other weekend for the last month and a half to check on the horses. We went the first weekend in September and we are leaving today to go there again. The weekend of the 5th-7th we had a really lovely time. The weather was really nice and because we had done some really serious repair work the previous time in August when we were there, the fences were in good shape. We saw Connie and Ralph and visited with them briefly and really enjoyed the get-away. We still love going to the cabin and we have gotten really good at packing in and out when we go to the cabin for these short weekends. We stopped in Petersboro on the way home and walked around our property. We are getting serious about our barn and are making important decisions about where we want to put it on the property. This weekend we are just racing up and back. Normally we stay and go to church at Mack’s Inn, but this Saturday evening there is a concert at the Assembly Hall featuring the Music of Crawford Gates which I want to attend, so Paul agreed to come back on Saturday afternoon in time to make the concert. Our intent and reason to go to Island Park is to check on the horses and the fences and we can do that on Saturday morning and then come on home. It is hard to know how many more opportunities to share an evening like this with my dad and mom are in the future—so we will take advantage of the ones that come and be happy for them, even if it means a very quick trip to the cabin this week. Sandy City has continued their summertime health initiative into the fall this year and I signed up again for Healthy Sandy which involves a number of small healthy lifestyle challenges—centered around walking, which I do anyway. The new session started on the 8th, and I have been meeting their challenges. Every Monday evening there is “a walk”. It is organized at one of the many Sandy Parks which have walking trails and you are expected to come and walk the trail a specified number of loops. You walk at your own pace and can start and stop when you want. Each week there is also a talk on some aspect of health and lifestyle which starts at 6:00 p.m.—you can walk before or after the talk. You get points for listening to the lecture as well. The park location changes every week and there is also a challenge walk every week as well—to be completed sometime during the week (an easy option 1-2 laps—or a more challenging option 4-5 laps) also at a different park each week. I have now completed two weeks in the eight week challenge. Erika and I did the summer series two different years, but now that she doesn’t live in the same house with me, it is more challenging to do it together, this fall session I am doing without her, although another friend joins me sometimes for the Monday walks. Paul recently ordered a set of plans for the barn from an architectural company that provides plans for a number of barns, sheds, out buildings, stables and the like. We had been poking around the internet for some time looking for plans that met all our criteria and desires. This plan isn’t perfect, but as close to what we both want than anything else we have seen. Paul would like to change the slope of the roof and extend the eaves more, but it has the right size and shape and elements that were important to me—like a loft that we can use as living space if we want. It is exciting to see this plan take shape—to realize that we will be able to actually build a barn on our property. On Saturday the 13th Paul and I spent the day in Cache County. We drove up with tools for measuring and marking the possible location of our building. We have to figure out where we think we want the house and then figure out where we want the barn relative to that and how it works with the undulating nature of our land. We think that we have picked out a place that will work for an attached paddock and a good location not to obstruct a view of the valley from our house when it is built. It was a fun process—measuring, reviewing, looking at the site, etc. When we finished at the property we went into Logan, picked up some items at CAL Ranch and then decided to go to a movie. Without really knowing what we wanted to see we just headed for a theater. The Giver was showing within about twenty minutes of our arrival so we decided to go see that. I had read the book years ago, when we first moved back from Germany. It was published in 1993 and won the Newbery Award in 1994. I disliked this book. It has been a darling of book readers, critics and many, many of my book club friends, but I never liked it. I found it quite disturbing. When the movie was announced, I thought I should perhaps read it again, and see if as I have aged I would like it better—or at least “get” what made it appealing to so many other people. And now here was an opportunity to see the movie without really make plans to do so and see if I liked it better on the screen than in print. And so we watched it. ---As a total aside to this story, normally Paul and I never buy popcorn or treats at a movie, but we had been outside tramping around the property for a couple of hours and it was well past lunchtime and we were both kind of hungry and so Paul bought a tub (more a barrel, really) which included refills and a couple of drinks and while we were waiting for the movie to start—between the two of us we finished all the popcorn and so Paul went back and got a refill—which thankful we hardly made a dent in—but we had planned on getting something to eat after the movie and we were both so full of popcorn that we skipped the dinner altogether.---So what did I think of The Giver? I thought it had some wonderful production values—the use of black and white and color was amazing. I thought the casting was very good and the sets really interesting. I was glad that I had the chance to see the movie, but I can’t really say that I really liked it. The things that disturbed me initially in the book still disturbed me. I am feeling like I have just been exposed to many teenage angst/dystopian society pieces in the last while to appreciate any of it—between The Hunger Games, Divergent and The Giver I feel like I am hearing/reading/seeing the same story in a different dress. Would I recommend this movie? I wouldn’t discourage anyone from seeing it if they read the book and liked it-it was a good rendering. And in fairness, Paul thought that the ending was positive (and it was) and so put a redeeming spin on the movie. Yesterday was my book club meeting for this month. I was the host and it was my book selection. I had selected Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. This was a pretty long book; the mass market edition which used had more than 1000 pages. But it was an interesting read and generated a lively discussion among our ladies. While we usually serve some kind of refreshments at our meetings, we don’t usually put on a whole meal (except at our Christmas party), but I decided that I would like to host a Southern Dinner and prepared a meal of southern style food in the way meals are described in the book. I eventually ended up serving fried chicken, whipped sweet potatoes, carrots, and acorn squash with cornbread and then for dessert I served an apple crisp cookie bar and peach pie. It was really enjoyable. I set the table with china that I inherited from my grandmother, it is my most old fashioned looking china and vintage cut glass candelabra that my mother gave me a few years back which matches those particular dishes. So it was a fun and festive meal. Additionally we discussed with much enthusiasm Antebellum South, the Civil War, Reconstruction, slavery and the wonderfully drawn characters of Margaret Mitchell. We talked about the Lost Cause Literary movement of which Gone with the Wind is the poster child and we also watched the Carol Burnett version of Gone with the Wind titled Went with the Wind from youtube.com and we all laughed a lot over it. Erika, who put me up to this book, having read it and loved it, told me that she had never had anyone to talk to about it and wanted to come. So she came and joined the fun and it was really delightful to have her as part of the group. The ladies invited her to continue to come, I don’t know if she will, she has a pretty full life and might not want to read all of our choices, but it was great to have her be a part of this one. I’m including an invitation to the evening because I thought it was an appropriate invitation and I had a good time putting it together. Other items of interest from the home front: Philip and Camille are entering their last month in Washington D.C. by October 29th they will be in Kiev. They are really excited to be going and are looking forward to going with much anticipation. They have received their housing assignment there, and have been using googlemaps to look at their location and figure out what is close and what they can easily walk to. The embassy is not close. Philip is trying to figure out what he wants to do about a car. It is the detail he is working on now. Peter and Kortney took another trip to Tennessee and the environs, doing a road trip and having a great time and catching two more state capitol building. We saw them on Sunday. Big news is that Eleanor is toilet trained. Everyone happy and proud over that. And so life goes on.

"Grape" Weekend and Soldier Hollow Sheep Trials Classic and Thunderstruck Bookclub

Paul continues to recover. This week Monday-Friday he went into work for a couple of hours. He still isn’t sleeping very well, lots of interrupted sleep, but he is no longer taking any of the narcotic pain relievers, and is getting a long better. He still isn’t attending events with me, though. Being in large groups that could potentially bump into him or accidently brush by him roughly kept him wanting to stay close to home. After he has put in a couple of hours at work he is really ready to come home and take a nap. He is anticipating starting physical therapy next week. My book clubs are starting up again. One of them met last week and one of them will be meeting this week. The book we read for last week’s meeting was Thunderstruck by Erik Larson. This was non-fiction and quite interesting, but has been reviewed quite negatively. Most of our bookclub group found it an informative read—exposing us to stuff we were totally unfamiliar with. In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men—Hawley Crippen a mousey salesman and con-man who is accused of killing his wife, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of wireless communication which at the time seemed almost like some kind of magic--whose lives intersect during the flight of Crippen by sea and his identification and capture resulting from the early use of wireless communication from sea to land. The book is set in the early 1900’s and spends more time with Marconi and less time with Crippen. I learned so much about the invention period and the trials of the innovator; his failures before he had success. Marconi faced incredible odds and the competition nipping at his heels and so much skepticism it is a wonder he succeeded at all. I was amazed at the level of suspense that could be generated in a story where we know from the beginning that radio ended up being a successful endeavor. The Crippen story is tragic, but also interesting in its own way. This is the second Erik Larson book I have read. His specialty is taking historical events and reviewing them in the style of a novel, and he does a good job of it. I have also read his In the Garden of Beasts—set in WWII. But his most famous book is The Devil in the White City. This weekend has been a “grape” weekend. We have been harvesting our grapes. We have an arbor in the back yard which isn’t enough to contain our vines which have branched out to our scrub oak trees and our fruit trees and so we have grapes everywhere. Friday night I picked a couple of big bowls worth, just the clumps that were easily in reach. Then the grapes have to be removed from all the stems and so it takes a while to prepare them. I usually heat them up in an eight quart stock pot that I have to release the juice, but there were so many that on Friday night I tried something that I have never tried before. I cooked all that I could fit on the stove top and then I filled my eight quart crock pot with the grapes, put it on low and let them “cook” overnight. It was a great success, actually better than the stove top method because the liquid was so much clearer and not cloudy like it is when I stove top cook the grapes. Usually when I stove top, I have to wait 24 hours while the liquid settles, but this was so clear that I was able to use it right away, bearing in mind that it took seven hours to slow cook. On Saturday Paul came out with me and held the ladder and picked bunches that were within his reach. And we gathered twice as many grapes as I had gathered the day before by myself. And so I spent Saturday day doing grapes. I picked the grapes off the stems and also made grape juice concentrate, and grape syrup. Picking the grapes off the stems took a long, long time, because there were so many bunches of grapes that we harvested. And without belaboring the time involved and the number of crockpots at seven hours each, and the dishwasher running several times a day with bottles, and all the various sticky bowls, pots, measuring cups and utensils in it, two trips to the store to buy sugar and pectin and just the work involved—I ended up Monday night with 31 pints of grape juice concentrate, grape syrup and grape jelly. All in a weekend’s work. Since we knew that we weren’t going to the cabin over Labor Day, which we usually do, I have been planning on going up to Soldier Hollow to attend the Sheep Dog Trials. I have been casually interested in this sport since watching the movie Babe back in the 1990’s. They have a huge competition in this rural area of the Heber Valley every year over Labor Day. Erika went with Jono’s family two years ago and reported that it was pretty interesting. Originally, it was going to be with Paul, too, but he still isn’t up to attending large gatherings where bumping is a possibility. So he stayed home. I got tickets for Erika, Jono and me. And it was a really fun event, we had a great time. And what happens you might ask? The world’s most highly trained border collies and their handlers walk out to the post in front of all of us spectators. (And I was wildly impressed by how many there were—thousands of people) High up on the mountainside, which we faced, a group of wild range sheep are released. And they are far away, the field where the event takes place is big, about four hundred yards by six hundred yards or so. And Solider Hollow has a reputation for the world’s wildest sheep. One handler called them “wicked.” The dog must race up the hillside and listening to the whistles of his master must carefully gather the sheep. There are a number of feats and skills that the dog must accomplish with the sheep and the sheep have to figure out that the dog can be trusted and then do what the dog directs. The dogs never barked. Two groups of eight sheep are released on the hillside in different places and the dog must bring them down the hillside and bring them through some free standing “gates”, gather the two groups together, herd them around the “post” where the handler stands, and then run them through two more sets of “gates” across the entire length of the course and then the handler and the dog have to separate out some of the sheep from the rest of the group. (Some of the sheep have red collars and some do not.) and then the separated group are put into a small pen. It all has to be done in twenty-five minutes. We did not see a perfect run all day and there were fifteen teams. They start with 170 points and then lose points every time there is some kind of mistake. The highest score of the day was 153. The dogs and the handlers were amazing, but trying to separate five sheep out of sixteen is hard work for both dog and handler. Monday was the Grand Championship round, but the trials had been going on all weekend and we were watching the fifteen best. We got there at about 10:30 and five competitor’s had already gone---we watched four handlers and dogs compete and then wandered off for a while to watch some of the other attractions going on at the same time. There were other dog related activities not connected to the trials per se. The County had a demonstration of their dogs, which are part of their K9 unit. There was a “long jump” for dogs which they did in a Splash Pool—leaping after an airborne toy, which was really fun to watch and there was an agility course with lots of obstacles for a great variety of breeds and dogs of varying sizes to compete on. Also very interesting. And there were vendors and food and demonstrations of various kinds all day long. After a while we went back and watched three more competitors of the sheep trials and then finished for the day. I got home at about 4:30 in time to do three more batches of grape products. So it was a busy day and lots of fun.

First week of school and trip to the cabin

The first week of school has passed and we are now moving forward to the second week. Erika and I work in entirely different parts of the school, I’m in the Counseling Center and in the main building, Erika is in one of the twelve portables that we have mounted in the parking lots outside of the building-six on the north side of the building and six on the south side of the building. We will have to work hard to ever see one another. We won’t be bumping into one another by accident, that is pretty certain. I talked to Erika today and she has had a good start. She likes her students and feels good about her situation. She is adjusting to the things that are really differ between South Jordan Middle School and Corner Canyon High School. We operate on an A day B day schedule with 90 minute class periods. She used to have eight class periods a day, now she has four class periods per day, so she sees her students only every other day. Interesting and different. In the Counseling Center we have just finished our last and second day of schedule changes. We think it will be our last day, but if my experience holds true we will be changing schedules for another four days, until Friday. But we are starting to get back to a regular stream of activity I hope. Paul is continuing to improve, albeit slowly. He had his first doctor’s visit since the surgery. The doctor showed him the photography taken during the surgery. (I had seen these same pictures on the day of the surgery, but Paul was too groggy to appreciate them on that day and so he has seen everything that I had previously seen. He is making good progress, but he still has to stay in the sling, and still can take prescription strength pain killers for another two weeks. He has some controlled physical therapy, but he can’t use or move his shoulder for another month. He went to work for a couple of hours today, but he still isn't up to full days of work yet. We drove up to the cabin this past weekend. Our primary reason for the visit was to see that the horses were doing okay. I am happy to report that they are doing just fine. We got there at about 10:00 p.m. on Friday night and it was very dark when we got to the pasture. But the horses were really excited to see us, galloping around in the dark in happy dashes. They did calm down to eat the grain that Paul gave them. We had talked a lot about this trip. I suggested that we take the Jetta and I do the driving. But if we arrived to find the horses in need of transport for any reason, we couldn't pull the trailer with the car, we would need the truck. I don’t drive the truck, but Paul felt by Friday that he was well enough to take on driving the five hours it takes to get there and he successfully achieved that, though he was quite uncomfortable by the time that we arrived. He wasn't able to take his normal pain killers, because you aren't supposed to use heavy equipment or drive while under their influence, though from my point of view he seems entirely in control of himself even when he is under their influence. Nevertheless, he didn’t take any of his prescription and so he was ready for some when we got to the cabin. Everything at the cabin was in good order as well. On Saturday morning the two of us headed to the pasture to see the horses in the daylight and to check on the fences. I’m afraid I turned out to be a rather poor fence repairer in terms of hammering skill. Paul is unable to hammer at this time, so we walked the fence together and Paul pointed out the problems and showed me what to do and I was supposed to nail in the missing staples as my primary function. We did have to replace a couple of posts and I probably hammered in about 25 or 30 staples, fortunately the fence was in pretty good shape. It has been very rainy in Island Park this summer and August has been rainy, too. Everything is still really green. It rained hard on Friday night during the night and was raining when we got up in the morning. But lucky for us the rain broke after we had eaten breakfast and we were able to walk and repair the fence before it started up again. The horses were happy to see us again in the morning and followed us for a while when we were repairing the fence, but lost interest in following us when we got to the third side. The pond is full to capacity and there is plenty for the horses to eat. He are lucky that they are such good self-care animals, because this time would have been stressful and difficult if we had had to feed them twice a day in Midvale. We plan on visiting them again in two weeks and taking them home in a month, so we will go up there twice more in the next month. It was cool at night and we hope that we can go until the end of September without snow or at least not too much snow. We were able to have a visit with Connie, but we didn't see Ralph. He was in Rexburg moving his furniture and stuff out of their old house. Connie told us the new house isn’t ready yet, so she may be staying in Island Park for a few weeks. We didn't see or talk to Ralph, but had a nice visit with Connie. Emily and her children we also at the cabin this weekend and we had a nice chat with her as well. The swing set has been set up in the yard, and already shows signs of use. It is behind the west side of Ralph’s cabin so Connie can watch the children swinging from her bedroom window. She said it is fun to watch them. You saw that the fire pit has been moved from the south side of Sara and Jay’s cabin to between their cabin and Ralph’s cabin. Jay did a really great job of sinking and finishing it. They also set a lovely walking path between Sara and Jay’s cabin and Ralph and Connie’s cabin. It has some rocks, but it is mostly disks of wood counter sunk flush into the ground. And it looks terrific. Emily told us that Sara had worked really hard on it, with wood in the earth the discs may rot out in time, but for the moment it certainly looks nice. We are looking ahead to beginning our barn next summer and so we are now looking at barns that we run across to see what architectural features we might want to incorporate in our future building. As we were driving home from Island Park we admired a number of barns from the road, but also stopped and looked at a couple as well. We had one kind of silly experience. We stopped at one barn, turned off the truck and got out to walk around the barn and Paul commented on a buzzing/humming noise. I didn't know what he was talking about. Paul thought it might be a pump of some kind there at the site—we got in the truck and drove to Petersboro where we walked around the property. We are making some tentative decisions about where we want to put the house and the barn. Even though it is a long time until we build a house, where we build the barn will affect where we will be able to build the house later, so we are trying to think it all through now. It is still a process. Anyway, we arrived turned off the truck and I got out and went to the bed of the truck to get my boots and I could hear the buzzing/humming noise that Paul had talked about. I said to Paul, “Listen to this noise, do you hear it?” He could and it was the same sound he had heard when we were stopped before. Was it a pump in the truck that was operating even when the truck was stopped? Would could it be? Paul walked around the truck trying to determine the exact location. It didn’t seem to be coming from the underside of the truck anywhere but in the bed---Paul lifted out his own bag, which was a soft, gym style bag and it was obvious that the sound was coming from his bag. He opened it and discovered that it was his electric toothbrush that apparently was bumped on in the back and was humming away in his bag. We were very glad that it was nothing serious and there is nothing wrong with the truck.