Progress on the Barn, Trip to Hagerman's Cowboy Poets and Muscian Gathering, Visit to Twin Falls Temple

This weekend Paul and I drove to Hagerman, Idaho for a Cowboy Poetry weekend. This event has been going on for nine years, but this is the first time that Paul and I have attended and for being in a small town in a rather remote area of Idaho, it pulls in some high caliber performers and some respectable crowds. Paul was assigned to the evening show on Friday night and three sets during the day on Saturday. The logistics of this event were complicated by the fact that Paul wanted to do some work on the barn during the day on Friday. He took a personal day and went to Petersboro first thing on Friday morning. I went to work and then got off at 11:15. I drove to our property and was able to see the progress that Paul has made on the construction process. He has been preparing the footings and putting in the fourteen support beams. He finished the first three last Saturday and on Friday he had put in two more while working alone through the morning. I arrived at about 1:00 and got a tour of all his hard work, helped him pack up the tools and we headed off. It was about a three hour drive from Petersboro to Hagerman. I was personally interested in going to Hagerman because I wanted to go to the Twin Falls Temple during some free moment during the weekend. Paul knew that Hagerman was in the same area as Twin Falls, but didn’t know exactly how far away; he knew they were both in the Magic Valley area and so I expressed a desire to disappear during part of the event to go attend an endowment session in the temple. This was an area of Idaho that I knew practically nothing about, but it was really an interesting and geographically diverse area. We drove directly to Bliss, Idaho where we were staying in the Amber Inn Hotel. Bliss is 8 miles north of Hagerman and pretty much a tiny, tiny community. After checking in we drove to Hagerman—we were on the upper level of the Snake River Valley plain there, but dropped into a really interesting valley when we got to Hagerman. There were black lava rock formations on one side of the valley and smooth, green rolling hills on the other side. Bliss is right on Interstate 84, but Hagerman is off the main drag. Hagerman had three venues for their Cowboy Poetry and Musicians Gathering. They were an American Legion Hall, the Division 1 High School Gymnasium/Auditorium and a good sized enclosed Flea market building where they had set up a small sound stage. Paul performed in both the Legion Hall and the Auditorium. They had ticketed events on both Friday night and Saturday night and open/free to the public sets on Friday all day and Saturday all day. Paul performed on the Friday night show and afterwards many of the performers gathered together at the house where one of the bands was staying for visiting, camaraderie and a jam session. Between going to bed late, in preparation for leaving the next day, and working a half day and driving to Petersboro and then driving on to Hagerman and sitting through a three hour program, I was just exhausted, but the social hour and jam session was in Hagerman and our hotel was in Bliss. So I suggested to Paul that I just stay in the car and take a nap while he went in and jammed and fraternized. I was so tired that I fell sound asleep and slept for the whole time, about two hours, that Paul was jamming with the other guitar players. He had a really good time, sharing ideas and techniques and stuff with the other musicians and I caught up on some badly needed rest. In the morning we headed back to the venues and Paul did a set from 10:00-11:00. He had one at 12:00-1:00 and another one from 2:00-3:00. I didn't see the last two sets because I got in the car and headed off to Twin Falls. It was about 30 miles away. I didn't know how long it would take to get there and actually find the temple. I was unsure whether the temple would stick out and be visible or whether I would have trouble finding it, but I had googlemaps to help me and I really had very little challenge finding it. I could see it as I got off the freeway exit and I followed my directions, but could see it the whole time, too. This temple has very specific session times. One session every two hours-- so even though I arrived at about 12:00, I had to wait until 1:00 for the next session. This is a relatively small temple, but very pretty. The locker room and endowment rooms are on the second story, I suppose the baptistery is on the main floor somewhere, though I did not see it. The temple does not have a chapel, so patrons are ushered right into the first endowment room, which has a beautiful mural of the Shoshone Falls and the mesa landscape. Really quite wonderful. Because I had a considerable wait, I was really able to study and enjoy it. This temple has a two room endowment set-up and then passage into the celestial room which was also very lovely. I had a nice time and was glad that I had gone to the trouble of making time for this visit. I drove back to Hagerman and connected with Paul, who had been awash in cowboy poetry and music all day long. I got back at about 4:00. He wasn't performing in the Saturday evening show and kind of wanted a break. So we went back to our hotel, Paul changed out of his cowboy performing clothing and we went off for a date night. We drove back to Twin Falls, had dinner and stopped to see the Snake River gorge scenic view point. Then we went to see the new live action version of Cinderella, which we both enjoyed very much. Sunday morning at nine o’clock there was “Cowboy Church” which is a non-denominational Christian-ish meeting with poets and musicians performing their more “religious” pieces. That was a pleasant diversion and there were some very nice pieces of poetry and songs. Then at 10:00 we attended our LDS meetings at the Hagerman ward building. And then we got in the car and headed home. We had to stop in Petersboro to pick up the truck—we had gone in separate cars up to there and so Paul and I drove the last hour and a half separately. We had a very nice weekend, and now it is time to launch into a new week. I was trying to finish a book for my book club last Thursday, so I didn't get anything done except read in the evenings last week, this week I want to get back down in my sewing room, get some work on my quilts done and finish my ironing….. another week has begun.

The Petersboro Barn, Eleanor's Visit, ACT and another weekend trip upcoming

It’s a new week and it seems a long time since I wrote last, but it only has been a week. We had a very busy and fully occupied weekend. Paul has been working with intensity on the barn the last few weeks, preparing the materials and hauling them to Petersboro. This past weekend he started putting the barn up. He left for Petersboro early on Saturday morning with the goal to put up three of the upright poles (three of the fourteen perimeter poles. This was a huge step because it means it has really started. Paul came home exhausted, dirty and very happy. I won’t see the results of his labors until Friday when I will be there to witness the work he has done. This is exciting because we have been thinking and imagining this barn for a long time, and now it is finally coming together. My weekend was occupied with a visit from Eleanor. She came on Friday evening and stayed with us until Sunday evening. She is not quite three and half yet, and so bright and lively and interested. We had a lot of fun. I had organized a whole series of activities which I thought she would enjoy and we did do a lot. We started out the morning visiting and feeding the horses. Then we headed to the Dollar Store, where we picked out a couple of small gifts for cousins, Jonathan and Andrew, --and a little something for Eleanor, too—The idea was to make a package for them and send it to them, a gift from one cousin to her other cousins. She picked out some little wooden vehicles, cars, and fire truck and monster trucks. We hope our Ukrainian cousins like them. There is a young couple that lives next door to us with a daughter exactly Eleanor’s age and while we were playing in the pack yard, Matt called to me and invited Eleanor over to play with Adri. They played outside for a little while and in Adri's playroom, too. Eleanor had a blast with a “new friend.” Erika and Jono came over for lunch—and brought Ollie (who promptly ate a pair of Eleanor’s carelessly discarded socks—fortunately coughing them up on Sunday). Ollie is the most adorable dog in the world—such a nice disposition, pleasant and genuine. We all love him. While Erika and Jono were here we painted pet rocks. Eleanor made a really nice card for Jonathan and Andrew and after Erika and Jono left we packaged the card and gifts into a box and took it to the post office for shipping. We also made stops at the local pet store (a super easy zoo experience) and the library. We also had to make a second trip to the pasture for the evening horse feeding. On top of everything else, both Paul and I were giving lessons in Sunday School and Priesthood on Sunday so in the evening there were lessons to prepare, but we had a really fun time with a very responsive three year old. We had a great time. Sunday we had a family dinner at my parents’ house and that was where we made the exchange with Eleanor back to her parents. Peter and Kortney were looking for a last getaway before the baby comes and while Kortney is still capable of taking a hike. They went to Canyonlands for a hike with Kortney's brother and sister in law. They has a great time, too. Peter called in the evening and they had finished their hikes, and were having dinner somewhere out in the countryside before heading back to Utah County. It was nice for them not to have to worry about coming home super-fast to pick up Eleanor on Saturday evening. This week I administered the ACT and I was pleased that I didn't have to void any tests or kick any students out of the administration. I have been doing this for a long time now, and have gotten pretty good at organizing and ordering it. I am no longer the site supervisor for Brighton High School, and Corner Canyon is still too new to be a site, but I expect that I will be doing it there into the future sometime. Paul and I are heading to Hagerman, Idaho, to attend another Cowboy Poetry event, Paul is taking Friday off to go to Petersboro to work on the barn. I will leave work a little early and meet him there—we will drive up to Idaho together. Paul is performing at the Friday night show, and during the day on Saturday. I hope to get a bunch of handwork done, and also attend an endowment session in the Twin Falls Temple. It should be a fun weekend for both of us.

K.C.'s Wedding, Cowboy Rendezvous in Hyrum, Building the Barn

In January I bought a membership at a gym close to our house. I have been a walker for years, but I was feeling like I needed a little work on strength and muscle training. I worked with a trainer for a couple of weeks getting some counsel on what weight machines I should be working on and at what weights. I told her, I am not a body builder, I don’t want to be aching all the time from straining too hard, I don’t want to injure myself in any way—what should I be doing. And she worked me through a series of fitness machines, arms, core, back and legs. And so I am going to the gym about four or five times a week. It is one of the things that is taking up some of my time. I am not losing weight particularly, and I don’t look remarkably different, but I do feel like I am not quite as creaky as I used to be. I still have some regular aches and pains, my knees are never going to be the youthful joints they once were, but I feel like they and hips are a bit looser than they used to be. I am also doing about a half an hour each visit on the elliptical machine. In the beginning I was using muscles that were unused to being moved in the way that elliptical machine works, but now I hop on and do about four miles an hour for half an hour while watching the news on the big screens in the gym. I try to get there after work and before dinner, but I have gone in the evening, too, which takes a big bite out of my evening. Anyway—I am trying to stave of the ravages of time and keep myself limber-er, at least. We are beginning to work on the barn in Petersboro in earnest. I use the word we very loosely. Paul has already done a lot of work and I have assisted him a couple of times. The vision changes regularly. In the beginning I had hoped to have a cute little “get-away space” in the loft where we could stay after the barn was built but before the house was finished. Paul ordered some plans that had a real apartment in the loft, a really fun, cute apartment, but kind of more than I thought we would ever have in a barn. Then he made some inquiries at the time he was applying for a building permit and found out that the way our property is zoned there can only be one residence on the property—if there is a “residence” in the barn, then a house can’t be built. So then we abandoned the idea of an apartment in the loft. However, in contradiction of the zoning—we might still “camp” from time to time in the loft, there just won’t be a living room, dining area, kitchenette and bedroom. There will be a blow up mattress and maybe an electric frying pan—so there. It is still a really attractive possibility for us and watching Paul work out the details of the building, doing prefabrication on the back patio and hauling materials to Petersboro has been interesting to watch. We have a member of our ward who is an engineer, specializing in steel and Paul has consulted with her several times about the steel pole framing that he is working on. He has been up to Petersboro many times digging holes for the concrete footings and doing other preparation work. I have a sense that this is really going to happen. Whatever we end up with in the loft, remains to be seen, but we will have a very impressive barn—a place for Paul to keep his stuff; it will be big enough for the surrey and the two sleighs, and the tractor and a workbench, hay and a couple of stalls for the horses. We are really excited about it. This month sometime we are also graveling the driveway—at least the approach from the road onto our property. We graveled a little section a couple of years ago so that Paul could drive the truck and trailer onto the property, but to meet code the grade can’t be any steeper than 10% so we will be requiring some significant fill to achieve that mild a grade compared to what we have now. We bought a permit to do this, but it has to be completed in 60 days and we are already 30 days in, so it will have to be done sometime this month. Paul and I spent last weekend in Hyrum, Utah—the other end of Cache Valley from Petersboro. The events that we attended in Hyrum were held in a lovely, big high school that services that end of the valley, called Mountain Crest High School. The event that we attended is an annual event called the Cache Valley Cowboy Rendezvous: A reunion of Cowboy Poets, Western Music & Artisans. It has been going for five years, and Paul and I have attended for the last four. It is a very impressive event with two ticketed concerts with headliner artists and three other stages with many cowboy and western musicians and poets. The community of cowboy poets and musicians is relatively small and so these events are a way that these various performers get a chance to visit with each other and see what one another are doing. We have become very friendly with a number of these performers. Paul did ten and twenty minute sets throughout the evening on Friday and during the day on Saturday. On Saturday evening, there is a family dance with Western and Western Swing music. We have attended it a couple of times, but chose to go out to dinner and make it an earlier evening this time. There is also a large vendor area, where artisans of various stripes can hawk their wares. There is always an interesting assortment of things to buy. Last year, I bought a simple food slicer from the Pampered Chef booth—(not really a western vendor, but did a brisk business anyway), but this year I didn't buy anything. I settled in at the Elkhorn Stage audience, and did handwork and listened to a morning and an afternoon of performers. In the late morning we bumped into a couple we know from Back Country Horseman in Salt Lake City, who had heard about the gathering on the Community Corner segment in the TV news, and also a blurb in the local Tooele paper (where they live) and decided to come and check it out. We sat through some sets with them and then had lunch in the cafeteria where another vendor had set up a Dutch oven and chuck wagon lunch. It was fun to visit with them and have someone to have lunch with. One of the headliners for this gathering was the Bar D Ranglers—(not to be confused with the Bar J Ranglers from Wilson, Wyoming—although there are some remarkable similarities in the two groups). The Bar D Wranglers are a western music singing group from the Bar D Chuckwagon Suppers in Durango, Colorado. The group has performed for over 2.5 million guests at their Durango location as well as countless other stages and venues around the United States. The group began performing at the Bar D Chuckwagon in June of 1969 and continues the tradition nightly throughout the summer months. When the Bar D Wranglers take their show on the road, they perform the classic cowboy- western music for which they are so well-known, as well as award-winning instrumental and comedy songs and crowd-pleasing stories that will delight the entire family. They were wonderful musicians and one of the guitar players is a champion flat picker and did a couple of amazing solos during the course of their concert which Paul and I attended on Friday evening. Gary Cook, this guitar player, also hosted a flat picking guitar workshop on Saturday morning, which Paul attended. For Paul, it was an incredible experience—this guitar player was such a virtuoso in the flat picking department and really a consummate musician that Paul felt it was well worth his attendance. There were about twenty guitar players in attendance and half of them were guitar players who were performing artists at this rendezvous—they all wanted to attend his workshop, pick up a few tips and hear about his experiences. Paul did a really nice job in his sets. He now plays the guitar and then talks over the music as he presents his poetry. It is very pleasant to have the musical background to his poetry and he is careful about the music he selects to go under his poems, so that they blend nicely together. I enjoy listening to him perform. His performances have evolved over time since the first days when he just did poetry without music. He has really enjoyed playing the guitar the last couple of years. While we were in Hyrum he reconnected with a musician friend of ours named Clive Romney. He is actually a relative of mine, sort of. His wife and I are second cousins on the Gates side, but we see him much more at Western gatherings of different kinds than we do in family settings. Anyway, he is a serious musician and plays the guitar very well, and as he and Paul chatted, they came to an understanding that Paul would take a few lessons from Clive to improve his level of guitar playing. He had his first lesson with Clive on Monday. Clive’s focus, at least with Paul, is for him to learn to read music instead of just read guitar chords—since he already knows how to read music (those 11 years of piano lessons paying of big time now) this has been an easy transition. This week he has been practicing playing the guitar from notation, and it is coming easily. Clive points out that if you know how to convert notation to guitar playing, you can play anything, not just stuff that has guitar chords, which is so true. Anyway, playing the guitar continues to be a very satisfying outlet for Paul. We were really happy that so many family members were able to come to California to join with us in celebrating K.C.’s wedding and festivities. Neither K.C. nor Elizabeth, nor any of their immediate family members live in California. They chose Oakland because Elizabeth’s grandparents do not travel anymore and she wanted them to be a part of her wedding. The Oakland Temple is huge, and very pretty and in a lovely setting with a huge stake center and a visitor’s center. The ceremony was very nice and it was some kind of wonderful to see K.C. married and so happy and in love. We had a nice time on the temple grounds visiting and taking photographs. Even though the exact mileage to the luncheon and reception center wasn't that far, it involved crossing the Bay Bridge and took more than an hour. K.C. and Elizabeth were organizing their wedding from long distance and most of the people who were attending were also coming from long distances, so they decided to use the same venue for both the wedding luncheon and the reception. The sit down luncheon was from about 1:00 until 2:00 and then at two o’clock there was a reception. For those of us who went to the wedding in Oakland and then came to the wedding luncheon, the reception was just sort of a continuation of the luncheon, although the caterers changed the luncheon food, to reception food on the buffet table. (K.C. and Elizabeth chose not to have an evening reception because they didn't want to infringe on Valentine’s evening for guests who might want to celebrate that evening rather than attend a reception.) The guests who came to reception portion of the afternoon, were primarily friends of K.C.’s who he knew from the four years he lived in San Francisco, members of his Young Single Adult Ward, people he worked with at Accenture when he was employed there, people he knew from high school, BYU and MIT who had moved to the San Francisco area. There was not a reception line, K.C. and Elizabeth just mingled and visited with these other young adults who they knew. I did not know most of them myself as they were people K.C. knew from his adult life away from home. I had some interesting conversations with members of Elizabeth’s family who I had not met until that day. I had nice conversations with Marilyn, Rob and Cindy and members of my family who had joined us that I don’t get a chance to visit with very often. Many of us found this format very relaxing. Frequently, there is a certain amount of moving around during a wedding day celebrations; one goes from the temple to a wedding luncheon and then everyone is hustled out at a certain time to move to another venue for a reception later in the afternoon or evening. This didn't happen in K.C. and Elizabeth’s case because both events were in the same place and the same caterer provided food for both events. I thought everything was so lovely and simple and calm. Of course, we were very happy to have K.C. and Elizabeth get married, so that anything would have seemed lovely—but I felt it was a beautiful day in every way. We have had contact with K.C. several times since the wedding and everything is going well for them—I do feel sorry that this month K.C. will head off for Korea and leave Elizabeth behind for a few weeks, but they will be getting together in Korea soon. It was a very happy day and we really enjoyed ourselves and were very gratified by the strong support that we received from siblings and family members on both sides of our families.

Christmas, Post-Christmas, Bibliobabes and K.C.'s Wedding

Another holiday season has drawn to a close, but I feel like this year the festive feeling will continue as we are looking forward to K.C. marriage and celebration and there are still many pleasurable activities that are in the works. We had a nice, relaxed Christmas. Philip and Camille celebrated in Kiev and K.C. celebrated in Oklahoma City, but Peter and Kortney and Erika and Jono were around for some of our activities and we enjoyed celebrating with them. We have some traditional activities—when the weather permits (and this year it did) Paul brings Rory to our house and we have surrey rides. This year he had promised one of our neighbors rides for his grandchildren on Christmas Eve—so he brought the horse home at about 3:00 p.m. and my parents arrived at about 3:30 p.m. We gave the Heath grandchildren rides and then took my parents and me on a ride as well. When that was over, he took Rory back to the pasture and I finished getting dinner ready. (This year it was just the four of us—Erika and Jono do Christmas Eve with his family and Peter and Kortney wanted to start their own Christmas Traditions at home so they did not join us either.) So it was really relaxed and quiet. We have a neighbor who does a very extensive light display which is synchronized with music and while Paul was taking the horse back I took my parents in the car to see this. The neighbor, Paul Pohlman, broadcasts a set of five songs on a very short band radio signal. You tune your car radio to the coordinates which he indicates on a sign in his front yard and a very elaborate light show blinks and moves in beat and time with the music. It is really fun to watch. He has four colors of lights, which run around the roofline of his house, around his windows, on his trees, in freestanding arches in his yard, mounted on his roof, very impressive. The turn on and off in color runs and color combinations—lots of variety really complex and intricate. A must see at Christmas time—I had already experienced it several times—I took Eleanor to see it one evening when she was staying with us—but it was new to my parents and we enjoyed it together. We had dinner with my parents when Paul got back from returning Rory and feeding the horses, and then enjoyed a quiet evening visiting. It had been perfect weather, but during the night a big storm blew in and we had about six inches of snow on Christmas morning. It was very magical because it was our first real snowstorm of the season. Paul went out very early to feed the horses because he was worried about getting around in the snow, but all went well. And it snowed steady most of the day and into the next day. Christmas morning Erika and Jono arrived as well as Peter and Kortney and we had a big Christmas breakfast and a present opening session. It was a really pleasant. With fewer people there were fewer gifts and so it didn't seem like a big gift orgy and there were many thoughtful and generous gifts. The big surprise for me this year was a multi-layered gift that was initiated by a purchase made by Erika. Sometime before Christmas Erika found a used sewing machine table for a very reasonable price and purchased it. She got Paul to pick it up in the truck and the hid it away in the carriage house. Erika envisioned setting up a sewing room for me with this new sewing table. She got Paul to take me out to dinner and to a movie and she marshalled the troops for a big furniture moving extravaganza. While Paul and I were dining and enjoying the newest film version of the musical, Annie, (which we both enjoyed a lot—it was soooo cute), Peter, Jono and Erika were moving the things out of the basement room which had been a sewing/storage/junk room. There were two free standing closets that I used for tablecloths and toys respectively and two bookcases with open shelves on the top and a closed cabinet on the bottom, which were partially sewing stuff and books and scrapbooks and other junk. The sewing room also held a large power machine that Paul bought for himself when he was working on some leather stuff for the horses. He refinished it very nicely, but it filled a lot of space. Jono and Peter carried the closets up to K.C. room on the second floor and moved the power machine into Philip’s room. They set up the sewing table and moved the bookcases into new positions. They set up my old machine on Philip’s old desk which needed a place when they moved the power machine into his room. And Paul bought me a new sewing machine to go on the “new” sewing table. They all ushered me downstairs on Christmas morning to see my new dedicated sewing room. It was quite the amazing experience to walk in and see all the changes and this new wonderful space. I was entirely speechless and found the whole experience awesome and unbelievable. That was a very special gift from all of the players. Since Christmas we have slowly been making some other changes. Modifying the spaces that had been altered. We decided not to keep the two free standing closets; they have been dispatched to the Deseret Industries—we loaded them into the back of the truck and Paul dropped them off on Tuesday. We created a new and improved tablecloth closet out of the armoire in our bedroom and I sorted through all my tablecloths and washed and examined them and decided which ones I wasn't going to be using anymore and gave some tablecloths and some napkins to the Deseret Industries as well. I am in the process of converting K.C.’s bedroom to the grandchildren’s room. It already has twin beds in it and I got two smallish bookcases one is for games from (the now given away) toy closet and one for children’s books. The large toys like Fisher-Price sets and things like that will go into one of the two regular closets in K.C.’s room. I’m in the process of organizing and sorting through that stuff now. We gave about fifty books to the Deseret Industries in the same donation drop off—we are working at purging things slowly, but surely. It gives me a great lightness of being to clear out stuff we no longer use that it taking up space in our house. I still have a few things that need to be sorted through in the basement, but it is looking really nice. My sewing room has become what Paul calls The Kathie Cave. I have two sets of shelves and cupboards for my sewing stuff, a new sewing table and machine an ironing board and a cutting table all in the same place. It is so nice to have this great place to work. I am looking forward to working on my many projects. I wanted to have the house cleaned and Christmas decorations removed before I went back to work on Monday, January 5th and I was hosting my book club last night on January 6th and wanted it all put away by them. I started decommissioning the decorations on the 29th and spent two whole days undecorating and cleaning. When everything is in total disarray as it is when undecorating, I pull out all the furniture and vacuum underneath and wipe down the window ledges and baseboards and generally clean up everything so that it seems quite wonderful when everything is back in place and clean and lovely. I finished on the night of the 30th. I also took the opportunity this year to sort though and purge more of my Christmas decorations. I gave some to Erika, and gave a box of stuff to the Deseret Industries and threw away some old worn out things. It has been a good year for getting rid of stuff and donating to the D.I. I love having the house decorated for Christmas, but I love that feeling when everything is put away and it cleaned up and back to regular life too. It is a happy moment either way. As previously mentioned last night was the January meeting for one of my book clubs. I like hosting the Christmas party but it is very good motivation for putting up my decorations and getting my house ready for Christmas. Hosting at the beginning of January is also good motivation for getting Christmas removed and the place ready for January entertaining. We had twelve women at our meeting—which is a lot even in a large space. The host is responsible for selecting and then leading the book discussion and providing refreshments, which over the years has taken on more of a light dinner. I made a fabulous quiche—Leek Lorraine using the last of the ham that I got from Corner Canyon as my Christmas bonus. (Paul and I have been eating it since Christmas Eve. It was very good.) The book that I chose this month was Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I chose it because Garcia-Marquez is a Nobel Prize winning author whose books appear on all lists of must read books and I had never read anything he had written. Paul read his book One Hundred Years of Solitude years ago but I was negligent in reading his works. Frankly, I didn't much care for the book itself, the story line, but there was some interesting and imaginative writing and it did lend itself to a lively discussion. More than just the book, though, this is a very wonderful group of women, quite diverse in almost any category you can name, large spread of ages, marital status, education, work, experience, interests and ….it makes for some very dynamic interpretation of almost everything. We laugh a lot and enjoy one another. I’m glad that I am a part of this group. We are looking forward the most at this time to K.C.’s wedding. I am working out the details on a block of rooms in the Courtyard Marriott in Oakland. I have spoken with a sales representative and she is supposed to be sending me a contract. We are getting a better (though not particularly great price on the rooms.) This will be such a fun weekend. I’m looking forward to this with lots of anticipation.

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.)