Building the Barn--Early Mother's Day celebrations

Paul and I spent another Saturday in Petersboro working on the barn. Paul has done hours of mental gymnastics in the spiritual creation of this barn and amazingly it is coming together. He has already purchased glue-laminated beams to go at the top of the upright supports and the plan for Saturday was to raise these big—heavy beams up 10 feet to rest on the supports that we have been putting in place for the last month. And these are heavy, I couldn't quite figure how the two of us were going to lift beams that are about 12 lbs a foot and are up to 27 feet long. Somewhere around 250-300 lbs each. And with all due respect to me—I am a mature woman, who is not a body builder at all. But Paul had it all figured out. We had heavy duty nylon slings and he had gotten a couple of chain hoists and some poles that were two feet taller than the support beams and between the two of us and the chain hoists and the slings we were able to pull the beams up higher than the supports and then lower them on to them with remarkable ease. Once we had them up on the supports, then Paul got on a ladder and made fine adjustments while I easily raised and lowered the beams so that Paul could maneuver them in just the right spots. It was quite a miraculous activity. We were able to do a 56 foot stretch along the whole northern side over the course of the day on Saturday. We were able to manhandle the beams on the ground with the aid of two hand trucks. All in all it was a very successful day. We still have about three more long days to get all the beams in place, but the system works and the process is moving along. Good on Paul—good on us. We had a family party Sunday night. We had the standard 11 guests, Paul and me (of course), my brother Stephen and his son, Steve, my parents, Erika and Jono (and they bring their “puppy”—who is over 50 lbs now—but I didn't count him in the guests because I didn't have to set a place for him at the table) and Peter, Kortney and Eleanor.) It was essentially a Mother’s Day dinner. My mother will be out of town with my dad next week, so I decided to do a dinner this week instead of next week, and that actually made it better for my children who will then be available to have celebrations with their mothers-in-law on the following Sunday. We had a fun time. I try to have some kind of amusement in addition to dinner for family events held at my house, and sometimes we also play some kind of commercial game as well. This week, I had a game that was a feat of skill game. We divided into teams—including Granddad (age 93) and Eleanor (age 3). There was one team member from each team who sat on a chair at the front, and the rest of the team members lined up in front of the chair. The two team members who were sitting on the chairs each put on a baseball hat, which I “frosted” in shaving cream. Each other team member was given ten mini marshmallows and the goal of the game was to toss as many marshmallows as possible onto the hat and have it stick onto the shaving cream. (I also understand that it works with Cheetos cheese balls—though I think they would be messier because of the loose cheese dust that would fall on everything.) It was surprisingly more difficult than one might expect even though the distance was less than three feet, but it was actually a game that my aging father and my little granddaughter could both play. We had ten players who each had ten marshmallows – five per team and the winning team managed 33 marshmallows, while the losing team had 24. But everyone had a good laugh and it was fun.

Barn, Weather, Sewing, Computer and WMA Meeting

Another week has passed, and we actually have something to show for it. Paul went up to Petersboro on Monday after work and put in the last of the fourteen outer wall supports on our barn at our property there. This was a proud moment because this means that that first big step is completed. It also means that we can move on to other steps. This is actually quite exciting, we can see this project moving forward. There is so much more to do—it will go on for a long time, but it is moving and that is gratifying. We are having really interesting weather here; Mother Nature is having a hard time deciding which season we are in. Paul mowed the front yard on Tuesday and I did the back yard on Wednesday (and Thursday—I ran out of gas on Wednesday and then finished up on Thursday after I got some more gas—(There was a minor disaster associated with that. When I put the gas can onto the back seat floor there was a significant spurt out of the tiny air intake hole, which totally fumigated our car with gas, gas vapors and gas fumes. We are still in the process of airing out the gas smell.) We didn't really have lush grass to mow—but it was starting to look a bit shaggy—a few green high growth patches in the midst of low scraggly places. The great thing is when you mow-everything gets leveled off and looks so much better. We had two days of steady, consistent rain, which really improved the looks of everything, and then when I looked out the window on Sunday morning, there was snow on the ground—not inches, just a skiff, but enough so that you could actually see that it was snow. Kind of amazing when we have had such a snowless winter, to suddenly have snow after all this time and late in the season. It seems like some kind of injustice that we didn't really have much of a winter in Utah and now to be having an on again off again winter in April. I have been trying to get down to my sewing room a bit every day. I have some sewing projects that are almost finished and I just want to get some of them totally finished up. I have had a number of quilting projects that I have been working on, and I wanted to get a couple of almost finished tops finished up and the backs ready to go so that I can take them to the friend that does the long arm work. And I am plugging away on my jean quilts, too. I haven’t wanted to cut more squares than I need, and so I started putting the squares together so that I would know exactly how many more squares of each size I would need. I am now back to cutting before I continue sewing again. This project is also starting to take shape. Anyway, I got three tops and backs ready to go to the quilter this week. Two of them are lap size and one is sort of a short twin (the width of a twin but not fully long enough to really be a twin). This week I will buy the batting to fill them and then off they go to the quilter. So that is a feeling of accomplishment. Of course when they come back then they will need to be bound—so it isn't really over yet, but there is also light at the end of that tunnel. And so on we go…. I got a happy email from K.C.’s wife, Elizabeth, this week. She was writing on the plane between Hawaii and Japan, on her way to Korea. She has finished the semester at the University of North Carolina, has closed down her life there, and was on her way to join K.C. She sounded excited and glad to be starting her new life with K.C. and we are pleased that they are together again. K.C. has finished his time at Samsung Off-Site training and is now a real part of the Global Strategies Team. So it seems that their life is starting in earnest in Korea and he seems very happy to have begun. We are very pleased and proud of him and all he has done to get himself to this point in his life. We are already planning to go to Korea for a visit next summer as we are going to the Ukraine this s summer. Among other interests this week, I got a new computer. I have been using the same laptop for about the last seven years and in the past year I had to have it repaired twice and when it failed the third time, I took it in and had all my information transferred to an external hard drive and then went without a computer for a little while until Paul took me to the store on Thursday and had me pick out a computer of my choice. I decided to go with a Dell. Paul thinks it looks ridiculously big since it has both a keyboard and a 10 key number pad on the base, but I am really happy with it. It has Microsoft 8.1 as the operating system so I am actually having to learn how to navigate its features which have changed or been added, but it is going to be great to have a new computer. Saturday Paul and I decided to go on a horse ride in the afternoon. Paul was shopping and gathering some items for his next trip to Petersboro in the morning and I was sewing, but at 4:00 we headed off to the pasture. When we got there and looked to the south it was just black with storm clouds rolling in and Paul said—“Let’s give it up, we will for sure be caught in the cold rain.” We didn't even hook up the trailer. Paul fed the horses, we ran a quick errand and before we got home it was raining. We were sorry to miss our horse ride, but so happy not to be in the middle of Dimple Dell in the cold rain. Last night, we attended a bi-monthly meeting of the Western Music Association. This is a group of cowboy and western musicians that we know from Paul’s various performances over the year. Paul joined a couple of years ago, but we haven’t regularly attended their meetings; this was the second we have attended. It is a very nice group of people. There is a “business portion” at the beginning, then a pot-luck dinner and then a jam session. I had sort of forgotten about the pot-luck portion of the event until Sunday morning and hadn't really purchased ingredients for anything. So I really had to be creative on Sunday morning. I had to make something that would stay warm for an hour while we drove to Weber for the meeting. I ended up making a quiche and here is the part that I am most proud of. I didn't have a large quantity of the vegetables normally found in quiche—spinach, broccoli, etc. But I did have a bag of chopped salad greens. So I just put them in the bottom of the quiche. There was some cabbage and a few match stick carrots, though it was mostly chopped lettuce. I really wasn't sure how it would turn out, but it worked, smelled great, (was helped a lot by the cheese and eggs and chicken)—and was eaten enthusiastically by the populous so I was happy that it came off okay. I prepared it so it came out of the oven just as we were leaving, and I wrapped it in a couple of towels and then put it in an insulated bag, and it was still quite warm when I unpacked it when we got there. So that was a success. Paul also performed well in the jam session with many compliments on his performances. The jam sessions are really interesting and inclusive. The performers all sit in a circle and then move around the circle each performing something, a poem or a song. If it is a well-known number, the group joins in playing their guitars and singing along. It is very friendly and congenial. We had a nice time.

Book Club, Cowboy Poetry and the Barn in Petersboro

This week passed in a flash. Actually it seems that my whole life is passing like a flash. It seems hard to believe that we are already the 20th of April. We are now in the final six weeks until graduation so it seems like the wheel is spinning faster than usual and everyone is a tiny bit more hysterical than it was six weeks ago. Our lower performing students are not realizing that if they don’t finish make-up work they will not graduate and parents and students are now desperately wanting to see their counselors in the hope that the counselor will be able to wave their magic wand and sprinkle fairy dust everywhere and solve the problems that the student has created for him/herself. Ah, the joys of the end of the year. On the flip side of that, Paul and I will be hoping on a plane in less than two months to go to the Ukraine. When we bought our tickets last August it seemed like the time would never come and now here we are able to see that this trip is really going to happen—and fortunately for us the political turmoil and fighting has calmed down and we look like we will be able to go there safely as well. Oh, Happy Day!! This week I got two quilts that I have been working on ready to go to the quilter. That is a big milestone. And I can get back to working on my jeans quilts. They somehow got pushed to the side after I began working on them and they are in bits and pieces throughout the basement. I have squares in the open area counter spread all around, and more pieces of jeans in my sewing room. I want to get moving on all of it this week and see if I can make some progress. Thursday this week was one of my book club meetings. This is the book club that Erika also belongs to, and the meeting was at her house. This is the first time that she hosted. She chose a book she hadn’t read—one that she learned about when she was taking a literature class at BYU-I. The class members all bought it, but as the class progressed, they ran out of time to read this particular book and she was curious about it and wanted to read it, so she chose it as her book for the month. The book is The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It was a Pulitzer Prize winning book written in 2000 by Michael Chabon. It was a long book about 800 pages, and it had a lot of interesting aspects to it. The book opens in 1939—and sort of follows the mid-century, being an epic in nature. It follows the “Golden Age of Comic Books” as the two main characters are comic book developers, developing and writing a fictional comic book super hero called THE ESCAPIST. But it also follows their own lives and their successes and struggles. The story of families separated and fleeing the oppression and invasion of Nazi Germany is covered in this story among other side stories. When I think about the ideas that were developed in this book, and the things I learned because of the historical aspects of this book, I think it is quite impressive. However, I really didn't find this book to be gripping, or a page turner, or even that engaging. It was very wordy and long and I was really glad when I finished it. And I thought to myself over and over—this book won a Pulitzer Prize? ?? ??. It is interesting though, that when a group of people gather together and talk about a book new insights come out and I enjoyed an engaging and interesting discussion of this book after the fact. I invested a lot of time in its reading and so I felt like it paid off in the lively discussion that we had lead by Erika. Incidentally, pretty much as a group everyone shared the same opinion, that it was interesting and full of information about a period (midcentury) and a subject (The Golden Age of Comic Books) that was enlightening, but all of us thought that it was not necessarily worthy of all the acclaim it received, such as… “published to "nearly unanimous praise" and became a New York Times Best Seller,[1] receiving nominations for the 2000 National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. In 2006,Bret Easton Ellis declared the novel "one of the three great books of my generation",[2] and in 2007, The New York Review of Books called the novel Chabon's magnum opus.[3] Friday evening we drove to Mapleton where Paul performed cowboy poetry for a private party. It was a dance club and the Western and Square Dance evening is one of their annual events. The event committee organizes a catered dinner and entertainment and then they dance. The group who attended wasn't particularly big—there were about sixteen couples, but they were fun and enthusiastic. And they came dressed in western attire, mostly prairie skirts and blouses and not the gingham square dance dresses that I expected. Paul performed for about a half an hour, reciting poetry and accompanying himself on the guitar. A woman he works with joined him with her dulcimer for one number. We were provided with dinner, too. And we sat at the same table with Wayne Crawford who was the square dance caller. He was an interesting fellow—has worked as a caller for the last 40 years. Paul did a really nice job It is interesting and gratifying that Paul is being asked to do these kinds of events. He is getting to be known in the area as a performer who is willing and can do performing in these small venues as well as in the large cowboy poetry and music gatherings. Saturday morning Paul and I both headed off to Petersboro for a day of work on the barn. Paul has worked there several times since the last time we put in a day together. It is really coming together. There are fourteen concrete footed uprights that have to be installed and we have finished thirteen. There is just one more to go. It is very interesting to see the barn take shape. We got three of the uprights put in on Saturday. We arrived there at about 10:00 and worked until after seven pretty much steadily—stopping for about 15 minutes for lunch at about 1:30. Paul does most of the work. I hold stuff and steady things and move things around, and generally help, but this is really the “Paul Show”—it represents his experience, understanding, and expertise. It is a function of his ability to see his ideas clearly and then put them into a physical reality. Rather amazing really. The next step will require scaffolding and he is starting to get that ready, too. I’m excited to see this all come together. It will be a work in progress for a while, but Paul didn’t expect to be this far this soon—we have been able to take full advantage of the fact that there has been practically no winter in Utah this year.

Trip to Loveland, Denver Temple Visit and Theodore Roosevelt and the Teddy Bear-The Colorado Hotel in Glenwood Springs

Paul and I just returned from a long weekend in Loveland. This last week was my spring break from school and we left on Thursday and came home on Sunday. We drove to Colorado by way of I-80—miles and miles of barren land. We left at about 3:00 p.m. and once we got out on the road, Paul began to feel the food poisoning effects of a shrimp salad he had eaten for lunch. By the time we got to Laramie, he could go no further and we got a hotel room where he spent the night in various degrees of digestive distress. We arrived on Friday morning and Paul did begin to feel a little better as we spent time there, but was still pretty queasy most of the time we were there. I had wanted to try and do a session in the Denver Temple, but Paul didn't feel up to the drive, the session and the drive home—I looked up to find that the Denver Temple very conveniently had sessions every half hour on Saturday, and so I determined to leave at 6:30 am and try to make an early morning session. My googlemaps directions told me that I could make it in 1 hour and 17 minutes. It actually took 1 hour and 20 minutes. I arrived without incident and without any serious traffic issues and was at the recommend desk at 7:55. The temple worker told me that I was too late to make the 8:00 session, but gave me a tile for the 8:30 session. I headed to the locker room, got changed, got a new name and went to the chapel. It was about 8:02 and the 8:00 session was just leaving the chapel, so I was able to make the 8:00 session after all. I finished, headed home and arrived back in Loveland at 11:30 a.m. I was very pleased that everything had gone so smoothly. Paul’s mother doesn't effuse over the Denver Temple and says the traffic to go there is terrible, but I found the temple to be very beautiful, and this weekend the grounds were fabulous with a profusion of tulips in every bed. I found my experience there positive in every way. When I got back to Loveland, Richard had arrived and he and Paul had a nice visit, we all had lunch together, and we got a full report on the comings and goings of all of Richard’s family. A lot going on with nine children. Not having very happy memories of the trip across Wyoming to come to Loveland, we decided to travel home by I-70 which is an hour longer, but better scenery. This was the first time that I have traveled on this road and it was very picturesque compared to I-80. It was interesting to drive through Breckenridge and Vail and compare them to Park City. We were surprised by how many hotels were right along the freeway rather than the ski-in/ski-out hotels which are so popular in Park City—like the Marriot where Holly has stayed or Westgate where we stay. They were pretty areas though and there was still skiing going on. The lifts were running and we could see skiers on the slopes. Colorado seems to have gotten more snow than Utah from what we could see. We also stopped at Glenwood Springs. We have talked off and on over the past few years about taking a get-away in Glenwood Springs and we wanted to stop for a few minutes and take a look at what there was to see and what it offered. We went into the Colorado Hotel—which Paul’s mother had told us about and where they have that delightful gift shop full of stuffed bears. (She has a bear in their Loveland home which they purchased there.) There is a display case with a teddy bear tea party in progress, which was very cute and tasteful—and a placard of the story about the origin of the “teddy bear”. This is that story which was on a placard in the display case and also in the hotel brochure: PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT In 1905, Hotel Colorado became the temporary home for the President of the United States and his assistants during a three-week bear hunting expedition. Already a fan of the state of Colorado, Roosevelt stayed at the Hotel Colorado on multiple occasions. On a three-week trip in January 1901, the Vice-President hunted mountain lion on the Keystone Ranch near Meeker. It was reported by his guide that Colonel Roosevelt hung over a cliff to shoot a wounded lion between the eyes. Roosevelt’s first trip to Glenwood Springs delighted him so much that he returned year after year. According to legend, the world's most irresistible toy, the teddy bear, received its birth at Hotel Colorado. To cheer Theodore Roosevelt after an unsuccessful day of hunting, Hotel Colorado maids presented him with a stuffed bear pieced together with scraps of fine material. Later, when he did bag a bear, his daughter Alice admired it saying, "I will call it Teddy." The term caught on and became the name for the world's most popular toy, the Teddy Bear. I was interested in this version of the story because I had just read a long and very comprehensive history of Theodore Roosevelt and his successor William Howard Taft and that was not the version that was covered in this very thorough study of his life. So I thought that I would do a little research and see if I could find any other references to the Colorado Hotel and the hotel maids that made him a “teddy bear.” First I searched on the internet and found this history of the Teddy bear. History: A 1902 political cartoon in The Washington Post spawned the Teddy bear name. The name Teddy Bear comes from former United States President Theodore Roosevelt, who was commonly known as "Teddy" (though he loathed being referred to as such). The name originated from an incident on a bear hunting trip in Mississippi in November 1902, to which Roosevelt was invited by Mississippi Governor Andrew H. Longino. There were several other hunters competing, and most of them had already killed an animal. A suite of Roosevelt's attendants, led by Holt Collier, cornered, clubbed, and tied an American Black Bear to a willow tree after a long exhausting chase with hounds. They called Roosevelt to the site and suggested that he should shoot it. He refused to shoot the bear himself, deeming this unsportsmanlike, but instructed that the bear be killed to put it out of its misery, and it became the topic of a political cartoon by Clifford Berryman in The Washington Post on November 16, 1902. While the initial cartoon of an adult black bear lassoed by a handler and a disgusted Roosevelt had symbolic overtones, later issues of that and other Berryman cartoons made the bear smaller and cuter. Morris Michtom saw the drawing of Roosevelt and was inspired to create a new toy. He created a little stuffed bear cub and put it in his shop window with a sign that read "Teddy's bear," after sending a bear to Roosevelt and receiving permission to use his name. The toys were an immediate success and Michtom founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Co. At the same time in Germany, the Steiff firm, unaware of Michtom's bear, produced a stuffed bear from Richard Steiff's designs. Steiff exhibited the toy at the Leipzig Toy Fair in March 1903, where it was seen by Hermann Berg, a buyer for George Borgfeldt & Company in New York. He ordered 3000 to be sent to the United States. Although Steiff's records show that the bears were produced, they are not recorded as arriving in the U.S., and no example of the type, "55 PB", has ever been seen, leading to the story that the bears were shipwrecked. However, the story is disputed - Gunther Pfieffer notes that it was only recorded in 1953 and says it is more likely that the 55 PB was not sufficiently durable to survive until the present day. Although Steiff and Michtom were both making teddy bears at around the same time, neither would have known of the other's creation due to poor transatlantic communication. By 1906 manufacturers other than Michtom and Steiff had joined in and the craze for "Roosevelt Bears" was such that ladies carried them everywhere, children were photographed with them, and Roosevelt used one as a mascot in his bid for re-election. North American educator Seymour Eaton wrote the children's book series The Roosevelt Bears, while composer John Walter Bratton wrote an instrumental "The Teddy Bears' Picnic", a "characteristic two-step", in 1907, which later had words written to it by lyricist Jimmy Kennedy in 1932. Early teddy bears were made to look like real bears, with extended snouts and beady eyes. Modern teddy bears tend to have larger eyes and foreheads and smaller noses, baby-like features that enhance the toy's cuteness. Early teddy bears were covered in tawny mohair fur. So that is the version that is the explanation on the internet when I searched for the origin of the Teddy Bear. This is also the version, more or less that is found in The Bully Pulpit, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism. Doris Kearns Goodwin. Chapter 10 “That Damned Cowboy is President” page 320. Here is the quote in that book about the coming of the “Teddy Bear.” With each passing month, the president’s hold on the American people grew stronger. “It is very curious,” Roosevelt told his newspaper friend Joseph Bucklin Bishop, “ever since I have been in the Presidency I have been pictured constantly as a huge creature with enormous clenched teeth, a big spiked club and a belt full of pistols—a blustering, roaring, swashbuckler type of ruffian, and yet all the time I have been growing in popularity. I don’t understand it at all.” To Bishop, the reason was perfectly clear: “All the cartoonists at heart liked him, and there was seldom or never anything bitter or really unfriendly in their portrayals of him; they were uniformly good natured.” Caricatures even transformed his failure during a mid-November bear hunt into a triumph, conjuring an image of the president steadfastly refusing to shoot a small bear furnished for the occasion. As renditions of the original Clifford Berryman cartoon proliferated, the bear dwindled in size until he appeared as a tiny cub, prompting toy store owners to market stuffed bears in honor of Teddy Roosevelt. Soon the Teddy bear became one of the most cherished toys of all time. Except in the brochure from the Colorado Hotel, I could find no reference to the Teddy bear coming from the hunt in Colorado or the hotel maids or anything else associated with that visit. I don’t know what the real history is, the hunt in Mississippi predates his hunting trip in Colorado—so maybe the “teddy bear” was already on the radar when he visited there and the maids just continued the legacy. In this day of information and internet access, it is harder to preserve legends that are not based in fact. There are always people like me who are checking and rechecking the truth of a story—kind of like what happened to Brian Williams. But the Colorado Hotel story is a good one. Paul and I think that we would like to make a quick trip to Glenwood Springs and stay overnight in that jewel of a hotel. There is also an involved set of stories that the hotel is haunted. Even though it may be haunted, Paul and I think it would be great to spend a night in the hotel and go to the hot springs/pools during the stay. On Saturdays—a woman from the historical society comes to the hotel and gives a 40 minute tour of the building with lots of its history. (She charges $8.00 a person, but I think it would be worth it.) It would be a fun little weekend get-away. We thought we would try to do something this summer maybe. We looked into taking the train, but the train would take twice as long as driving and it would leave Salt Lake at 3:30 in the morning. That kind of takes the fun out of taking the train. But even without the train ride it would be a good time.

Paul's Birthday Celebrations

Paul had an important birthday on Sunday. He felt about as blue about turning 60 as I felt in November when I passed this barrier. I wanted to launch some kind of celebration for him, something that he would feel comfortable about. I invited Peter, Kortney and Eleanor, Jono and Erika and my parents and brother and his son to join us for dinner, and then I tried to think of some gifts that would be interesting to him. We had a conversation the evening before his birthday where he asked if I had gotten him some item (this was after I had completed my shopping… and I said—“you have never even mentioned wanting this!” --Mostly, when Paul wants something he just buys it—so I am left primarily with buying gifts for him that I think that he might like—or things that I want him to have, or things that will just end up in the garbage bin….). Anyway, I wanted to find some gift giving idea that was more than just regular, because after all this was his 60th birthday. 60 is a special birthday, and I wanted to give something to Paul that showed I had put some thought into it. So I did what any 21st century wife might do—I looked at gift suggestions on the internet and I came across a website of a woman whose father-in-law was turning 60 and she and her husband wanted to do something a little different—so I used her idea and modified it for Paul. Their idea that it would be cool to investigate the headlines of 1953 (the year the birthday person was born) and link those headlines up with some appropriate and nice presents. I thought it was a great idea and so I found a website with the major, worldwide events of 1955—Paul’s year of birth. After some research, and reading a LOT of random facts-- I picked out seven events that I thought I could use to associate with seven gifts. As I looked through all (more than 100) events for that year on the website, I kept brainstorming presents they could link to that I thought Paul might like. I enlisted Erika and bounced ideas off her and listened to her suggestions. I wrote the headlines down on tags that looked like luggage tags with some little explanations that explained the relationship of the headline to the gift on the reverse side. After that, I headed off shopping with a VERY specific shopping list to get the gifts to match the headlines... • MARCH 1955: A young Jim Henson builds the first version of Kermit the Frog. March 29, 2015--You may think of Kermit as a plushy stuffed animal—here is another plushy item to comfort you. (Gift was a new bed pillow.) • April 12, 1955: The Salk polio vaccine, having passed large-scale trials earlier in the United States, receives full approval by the Food and Drug Administration. March 29, 2015--Vaccinations are just one way to promote good health and it is important to look for many ways to protect ourselves. (New farm and work gloves) • July 18, 1955: Disneyland opens to the public in Anaheim, California. March 29, 2015--From the Matterhorn, to Mickey Mouse—Walt Disney made his mark, did you know that The Mickey Mouse Club also started in 1955 and that Lady and the Tramp was released? (Disney licensed candy and Tobleron's with Matterhorn logo.) • July 18, 1955: The first nuclear-generated electrical power is sold commercially, partially powering the town of Arco, Idaho. March 29, 2015--Nuclear generated electricity started in Idaho—and there are other things that remind us of our Idahoan Heritage. (Potato chips, instant potatoes and Idaho Spud) • August 27, 1955: First edition of the Guinness Book of Records is published, in London. March 29, 2015--Many people find the Guinness Book of World Records fascinating reading—others choose to read drivel, nonsense, and twaddle. Here is thinking of you-- (Bathroom reader-joke book) • September 10, 1955: The long-running program Gunsmoke debuts on the CBS-TV network. March 29, 2015--There may not be any smoke involved in this gift, but there will definitely be a gun. (Gift certificate for a new Framing Nail Gun) • December 1, 1955: In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refuses to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger and is arrested, leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. March 29, 2015--In Sandy, Utah, Paul Kern is given a special seat—to be used on the Petersboro property, leading to restful reflection during barn building. (New folding camp chair) On Sunday, everyone arrived for dinner at about 6:00 p.m. Erika and Jono now come with their dog, Ollie, who is just as cute as can be. We all adore him. And he is a very sweet, mellow, dog—who will be huge sometime in the future, but is still a medium sized dog now—much bigger than when they got him. We had appetizers and dinner to much jolly laughter and visiting. When we finished dinner, but before the birthday cake and ice cream dessert--- we retired to the living room where I had set up a gift station. The gifts that others had brought and the pile of seven gifts from me—were set up in front of the fireplace door in the living room. From the mantle, I hung a large paper on which I had copied a poem that Erika and I worked on together. We all read it aloud as a chorus-- 60 years since he arrived Thought we’d go back to ’55. To see what happened in the year That our Paul Reinhold did appear. The world was changing, quick and fast And Paul, he sure would see it pass New inventions; all things change! At times it must’ve seemed quite strange So back we’ll go-and we’ll revive, Some gems from 1955. And then we began to open the gifts—it was fun and interesting to think about the things that happened in 1955. And some among us remembered details about events and ideas that occurred to them as we discussed various things. Paul reminisced a little about his life experiences. It was a good time. I don’t know that Paul “loved” every gift, but I think he knew that I had put some thought and effort into them, and so that was a good thing. The children had also gotten him interesting and thoughtful gifts so it was a well-rounded evening. Opening gifts turned out to be quite fun and entertaining for everyone. I got one more thing for him that wasn’t a part of the 1955 series. When we moved back to Utah from Europe, as I bought white shirts for Paul, I had the cuffs monogrammed. I had been doing this for years and a couple of years ago, I stopped buying them from the company that I had been ordering them from and so I stopped having them monogrammed. In all these 17 years, no one had made any comment on them—and so it didn’t seem a big deal to stop. Then suddenly this year in about a month’s time two different and quite disparate people commented on one of the shirts still in rotation that was monogrammed—Paul report this to me, and I thought maybe I should go back to the monogramming again. So I did buy him four new, white shirts with monogrammed cuffs. (Paul actually thinks white work shirts are a very poor birthday gift—but these are quite nice shirts, I am using a new, and better shirt company now and they do a super job.) After the gift extravaganza, we went back to the dining table for cake and ice cream. I made a chocolate brownie tort for his cake. It was a Rachel Ray recipe that I modified to be gluten free and I wasn’t sure how well it would work, but it turned out very rich and chocolaty and everyone liked it very much, especially nice with ice cream. So generally, it was a jolly evening with lots of activity and a house full of people and a celebratory atmosphere. Happy Birthday to Paul!! We are gearing up for a big Saturday in Petersboro, Paul has engaged an older woman to help him on Saturday—and hopes with her help to get five beams in place. It will be a busy Saturday, but real progress will be possible with the two of us working together. We are looking forward to our trip to Loveland the next weekend.

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.