HALLOWEEN 2010

We got back from Oklahoma on Friday night in time to go grocery shopping in preparation for our FAMILY HALLOWEEN PARTY on Saturday afternoon. We had the festivities early as everyone had other parties, activities, trick-or-treating etc. We had 24 in attendance. Some came in costume, and as you can see from the pictures, Jory and Candace take the prize! I had camera troubles so the pictures are poor...too dark without the flash but too washed out with it. I didn't get a picture of everyone, and some of the ones I got were without their make-up and final touches. Nevertheless, here they are:

Jory

Candace

Mason (Napolean Dynamite)

--and that is his own hair

Tanner

Landon

Brooklyn

The VanWagenen Family

Jill

Kaden

Natalie

Ashlyn

Katelyn

Brynlee

Jayse

Ashley

We had a Halloween feast. Each family brought some gross food items. Barf-E-Qs were served with many appetizers and side dishes. I think everyone enjoyed the meal...except maybe Brandon. Excuse the poor pictures, and again, I didn't get a picture of every entree.

Tending in Oklahoma

We flew to Oklahoma City on Thursday, October 21st to spend time with our Okie grandkids while Ty and Jodi went on vacation. They flew to Miami and joined other Rove Pest Control managers and wives for a cruise. The cruise ship had some problems and they were delayed in Miami for so many extra hours that the trip itinerary had to be changed. Instead of Grand Cayman and Jamaica, they had to settle for Key West and Jamaica. This trip ended up being over Jodi and Ty's 6th anniversary. They brought back some neat souvenirs.

We had our share of problems...4 kids, 5 and under, with diarrhea, vomiting and runny noses. Most of the throwing up came during the night and all over pajamas, sheets, blankets, stuffed animals, dolls, mattress pads, the floor etc. After the first episode and spending the day doing clean-up and laundry, we thought things were under control. Then the other three kids puked all over their beds and belongings the next night. Reed had to take the larger items to the laundromat while I spent the day washing at home. We, again, got the beds taken care of and then we had a bedwetting incident. And the drama continued with the kids for 5 days, then Reed got sick, then I did. I'll spare all the disgusting details.

We got tired of kid's videos and TV. I started to hum Baby Einstein music. We went on a couple of rides around the area and to the Oklahoma City Temple. We baked cookies and played outside. Reed and I refereed numerous kiddie conflicts and tried to keep everyone happy. We changed many, many diapers, did mountains of laundry, read stacks of books and gave lots of baths.

Owen, 5, is in Kindergarten. He is really smart and a big help. We rely on him a lot. I have to say that Abby, almost 5 months, is the most happy, easy-going, low-maintenance baby I have ever been around. It would be nice to be so pleasant and smiley all the time. Such a good baby! She is a featherweight but very strong and active. Miles, 3, and Olivia, 2, are handfuls and can be very strong-willed. They kept us on our toes but they took long afternoon naps so we could regain some much-needed sanity. We are just too old for this! Now WE need a nap and a vacation! We flew home on Friday, Oct. 29th.

Ben's Homecoming

Ben is back from the Oregon Eugene Mission and spoke in the Cove Ward today. He did a great job! He is starting a job tomorrow...laying carpet in the Provo Temple.

After sacrament meeting we went to Ron and Jodie's home for a really great feast. Thanks to them for a wonderful time! It was great to visit with so many family members. My better half was busy in the YSA Ward and couldn't attend. I went with Robin and Andrew.

We had a quick 'sibling' picture...Ron, Me, Jean, Marilyn and Kent. We missed Marsha. Marilyn and Gary only have a month left of their Family History Mission in SLC.

We went on tour of Kent and Deb's 'great and spacious building.' Saying it is really nice is an understatement. Most of the sheetrock is done, the intricate brickwork has been started on the back and there's lots of custom designing, personal touches and attention to detail...even has an elevator. There are nice views in every direction. They plan on moving in around February.



Bryan graduates from the Corrections Officer Academy on November 17th.

Andrew's surgery was postponed for a week or two. He was put under anesthesia and everything but the doctor couldn't do the surgery due to scar tissue constriction.

Owen received a physical fitness award at school. Way to go!

Jodi has lost 50 pounds since Abby was born. I'm proud of her.

The Johnsons went to Hogle Zoo and the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum in SLC. UEA break was on Thursday and Friday.

Ramblings

We have been bottling tomato juice at least once a week for the last 5 weeks and did more this morning. Reed eats lots of cucumbers, tomatoes and radishes. Due to a frost when our fruit trees were in blossom, we got precious few pears and peaches. Those that were left were slow to ripen, but fresh peaches in October have been a real treat. Reed has been sharing cantaloupe with Courtney and took a prized peach to Hailey.

We enjoyed conference. During the Saturday sessions I tackle household jobs while I'm listening or watching. We went for a ride during the last session on Sunday and listened along the way. We went up Logan Canyon to Bear Lake, along the west side of the lake to Ovid, then down Emigration (Strawberry) Canyon. The fall colors in Logan Canyon were muted, lack-lustre and disappointing, but the colored leaves in Strawberry were pretty.

On our way home we stopped in Cove to wish Ron a 'happy birthday.' He invited us to eat with them, so we got treated to a nice meal with the family. Dan has completed his requirements for graduation and is back at home. His area of study was in surveying. The family was excited that Elder Milligan (Ben) would be home from his mission on Thursday, Oct. 6th. Ron has (finally) been making great strides in landscaping his yard, mostly in the back. It is looking great. He has a nice patio and a 'beach' by the pond. Nighttime lighting and croaking frogs add to the ambiance. We didn't drive up to Kent's new home under construction, but his 'mansion' appears to be coming long nicely.

ATK (Thiokol) had another round of layoffs...426 this time. The Bishop under whom Reed serves as 1st counselor, was one of the latest 'victims.' Reed wonders about the status of many of his friends and former co-workers. Another layoff is planned for January.

Bryan is at a Corrections Officers Academy in Sandy. This week he had to be sprayed with OC (pepper spray), something he'd never want to experience again. He lived to tell about it, however.

The Schvaneveldts flew to Florida yesterday under the guise of attending a dental convention. With UEA/Fall Break next Thursday and Friday, the kids only have to miss 3 1/2 days of school. According to Facebook posts, they are having a fantastic time.

Last week a member of our Nibley ward, Reo W., died. He grew up in Salt Lake and was friends with Thomas S. Monson. One or the other of them (Reo or Pres. Monson) was 'best man' at the other's wedding reception. President Monson came to our church to speak at the funeral. The mortuary used an old classic restored hearse. Reo was ward clerk and would walk up the aisles counting how many were in attendance at sacrament meeting. I always enjoyed seeing what tie he was wearing. He had several ties for every season and holiday. One time I told him I liked the ties he wore. He said that his wife (deceased before we moved in the ward) had made sure he had a wide selection of ties for every occasion.

Last Monday (4th) was the first week that the students in our YSA ward were invited to come to the homes of the bishopric for Family Home Evening. I decorated for fall, cleaned the house thoroughly, stayed up late making pumpkin/chocolate chip cookies, cut up veggies, chilled some apple juice, made a couple of trips to the store and had everything set out and ready. The 'mother' of the group called a half hour before and said they weren't coming. Oh well. The other counselor had a large group at his home.

On Monday (11th) after my DUP meeting I am going to American Fork. Andrew is having surgery on Tuesday. If I can't find a sub for the temple, I will probably be back by Thursday. Reed is staying home as he has a mid-week bishopric meeting and a bus run to make. He also has garden stuff that needs to be taken care of before we go to Oklahoma to tend the Hawkins kids the following week. After unseasonable high temperatures, we have had a week of cloudy skies, rain and cooler temperatures. It has been a nice fall and I hope we can hold on to it for a while longer.

With 5 daughters, 5 sons-in-law and 19 grandchildren, our family is made up of 31 persons. We have numerous family birthdays in some months, a couple of days even have duplicate birthdays, but October is the only month without a single family birthday! Nevertheless, Jodi and Ty's wedding anniversary is in October. This year it will be anniversary #6! They will be on a cruise while we tend their 5 year old, 3 year old, 2 year old and 5 month old. Wish us luck! And speaking of October, there are 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays this year. Supposedly that only happens every 823 years.

We went for a drive up by Porcupine Dam. At this time of the year we were obviously too late for the fall colors or the salmon run. The thing of interest was the Ruby Pipeline that is going in to transport natural gas from Wyoming to Oregon (I think). We were headed up when all the workers in their big pickups and dualies were headed down at the close of day. We noticed license plates from several states. The roads that have been put in to facilitate this project are incredible and much more extensive than we had thought. We drove part of the way up one of the roads. We wonder what will happen to the roads once the pipeline is put in.

So long for now. My camera card is full. I've got to download some of the pictures or dump them.

Random Bits

These are our hot-air ballooning certificates that I forgot to put on a previous post.

We stopped by to see Brandon, Jill, Courtney, Hailey and Natalie staining their new pergola in the northwest corner of their backyard. They have a great view of the valley below.

Our YSA Stake had a carnival last Monday. Each ward was responsible for a food/treat and an activity. Our ward did cotton candy. It was quite a hit. Hundreds and hundreds of young single adults...quite a sight!

The only 'free' time we had together this week was during the day on Tuesday. We went fishing at the dam. We limited out within about a half hour. We weren't ready to head home so I dumped the fish from the live well back into the water and we just kept catching and releasing for another hour. We couldn't keep the fish off our lines! We didn't even slow down or stop trolling, just reeled them in and lifted them into the boat without a net. Both of us usually had fish on at the same time. It's too bad they didn't have any size to them. Then we caught our limits again and went home. We kept two smaller fish for supper and gave the rest to a neighbor. It was a beautiful, warm day. We have been breaking records for high temperatures...can't complain about that!

We are very busy with little time to relax. Our days and nights are pretty much scheduled for us. Maybe that is better than being bored? I don't know. Reed has had quite the adventures driving buses so far. He is driving some 'special needs' kids as I write. I am taking a break from church work for a few minutes. He has another meeting tonight. For someone who is not a 'meeting' person, he sure attends a lot of them. And for someone who hates to wear dresses, nylons etc., I am now wearing them three full days a week. It is nice working in the temple, though, and I enjoy seeing so many good friends and acquaintances. Last week two people we served with at Heber Valley Camp attended. One day it was Jeanette Hawkes and another day, Merlene Ellington. (Hal Jeffs, another HVC missionary who served with us, died last week) I get my exercise in the temple...one day I counted 24 flights of stairs that I went up or down during my shift.

Catching up on family birthdays since the last bunch: Tanner turned 10 on August 21st, and Owen was 5 on August 24th. Candace had a birthday on September 13th. Jill and Brooklyn (2) shared a birthday on September 17th. Back 33 years ago, I came home from the hospital with Candace on Jill's 3rd birthday. Robin was between them in age and turned 16 months the following day.

We survived having Aubrey, age 16 months, for 9 days and 9 nights while Robin, Andrew, Ashlyn and Katelyn were in Florida. We're getting kind of old for that! We took Aubrey to Salt Lake to meet her family when they flew in on Monday morning. Andrew's surgery has been changed to October 12th.

We will be having groups of kids from our YSA ward come to our home for Family Home Evening, on a rotating basis, twice a month beginning next Monday, Oct 4th. General Conference is this weekend. Yippee!

Mini vacation, miscellaneous

We stayed at the WorldMark Resort in Midway on Thursday and Friday nights. We visited some of our old haunts like the 'Dairy Keen' (home of the train) and 'The Hub.' Because we couldn't attend the Heber Valley Camp fall openhouse on Saturday or the missionary reunion Monday, we visited the camp on Friday. We rode all around and walked challenge courses 3 and 5. We saw quite a few deer. A new RV court is being constructed. We checked out our staining job on the cabins in Camps Smith and Esther. They still looked good. Lots of aspen trees were dying. Aspen leaf spot or some kind of bug? One of the missionaries said he thought they were dying where fill dirt had been pushed up the base of the trees for a foot or so such as in the construction of the trailer court. Surprisingly, Legacy Lake still had a little water in it. We went through the outlet stores in Park City. Since the condos have two bedrooms and two bathrooms plus a murphy bed, we ended up having Robin (since she lives the closest) bring Ashlyn and Katelyn for a swim, movie, and to stay overnight. We had to be in Park City early Saturday morning for our long-awaited and overdue hot air balloon ride. That was really neat...pictures are in the previous post.

I wish I had some info to pass along about each family member, but unless I hear about it, I can't do that. I'm not trying to give more attention to some and leave others out.

Ashlyn (6) was excited that she is in the Drama Club at school and had tried out for a part in a play and got it! She wants to join the Chess Club. Ashlyn just finished reading 'Charlotte's Web.' She learned her times tables during the summer. She swims like a fish and is always cheerful and happy.

Andrew had just returned from a business trip in Cleveland, Ohio. He enjoyed a side trip to Kirtland to see some church historical sites. He has been having two weeks of chemo alternating with one week off for some time now. He is scheduled for another surgery on October 15th so for something fun before that, the Burkhardts (all but Aubrey) are going to Disney World. She gets to come to our house from the 18th to the 27th.

Jodi and Ty are going on their first cruise in October. We are flying out to Oklahoma to tend the kids. This will be the first time Jodi has been away from the kids except for when she has been in the hospital having another one. Ty was a counselor in the bishopric in their ward in Tulsa and was released when they moved to Oklahoma City. He has once again been called as a counselor in their new ward. Owen is in Kindergarten and Miles is in preschool. Jodi just ran her first 5K race since having kids and did well. I enjoy the things that Jodi reports that Owen says and does. He's not only smart, but funny too.

Reed completed all the requirements to be a substitute bus driver. It was quite a long, drawn-out and involved procedure. He still has 8 hours of inservice training and 6 hours of CPR/First Aid training. He has been called to fill in several times in the next couple of weeks. Tomorrow he drives kids on a field trip to Guinavah, up Logan Canyon. Saturday he drives some of the runners in the Top of Utah Marathon from Merlin Olsen Central Park to Hardware Ranch, where the race begins. It will take 45 buses to get them all transported. Next week it will be school routes. Unfortunately, when I am at the temple, Reed is home. When I am home, he is at church or doing bus related things. We wish our schedules would work out so we could do something fun together.

So far there are seven girls in our YSA Ward by the name of MacKensie...and some just named Kenzie. Each one spells it differently. Staffing the ward and attending the gazillion meetings are very time consuming and stressful. Reed has been at the church for 12 hours each Sunday and spends a couple of nights a week there too. That doesn't count all the time he and I put in at home. I have been keeping track of our 'church miles.' So far this month we are up to 250! Between learning the names and faces of 150 students right now, I am trying to put a name to each of the 80 or so workers on my shift at the temple. DUP has just started up for the year too. I'm a caller and secretary/treasurer for our camp.

The garden has been doing well except our tomatoes are slow in ripening. From the corn we gave Jill, she was able to cut 150 cups of corn cut off the cob, then bag and freeze it. Instead of putting the time, effort and expense (pectin, sugar, containers etc.) into making blackberry jam and then just giving it away, we have also been giving Jill our blackberries so she can do the work and reap the rewards. The cantaloupe have done great but Reed kept finding some still on the vine that were half eaten. Voles were responsibile for the damage. We have had frost on the roof and grass a couple of times so far. We are not ready for cold temperatures. July was the only month it did not snow in the mountains surrounding us. I took pictures of fresh snow on June 11th and again on August 30th.

Our Balloon Adventure

Preparing the balloon:


Partially inflated balloons. They're 8 stories high!


Inflating the balloon:

And they're off!

We did a touch-down on the water

A frozen foreground with ski runs on the mountains catching the first rays of morning sun.

Our reflection in the wetlands. The marsh is covered with frost (the greenery isn't over-exposed)

My favorite picture of one of the balloons identical to what we were riding in. It had just done a touch-down in the water. A picture perfect day!

Aloft over the Park City area. The balloons caught different directions and strengths of air flow depending on the altitude. The wind is the only steering mechanism. The pilots were skilled in making use of breezes to maneuver the balloons from the launch site to a landing site several miles away. They landed with precision.

A llama drama taking place on the ground below. A baby llama is standing guard over its' dying mother. So sad. I hope someone came to rescue the baby.

The cleared areas devoid of sage brush were used as parking lots during the winter olympics.

Flyin' high!

A frozen golf course below

No one out golfing yet

Our balloon casts a shadow

Gorgeous views! Jordanelle Reservoir is the body of water. In the center of the picture a quarter of the way up, "P C" (for Park City) is written on the hill or little mountain. We launched in the shadows at the base of the hill.

The Great Salt Lake is the blue strip at the base of the skyline above the mountain ridges.

These baskets hold up to 11 people...a pilot and 10 passengers plus 3 propane tanks. Each of the three balloons that went with us had a pilot and 8 passengers. That was tight enough.

Not a cloud in the sky!

Looking up inside of the balloon. The tops had smiley faces on them.

A cold morning at the launch site (32 degrees!) We wore coats and stayed warm. The sun felt good and the heat from the blasts of gas helped also.

A big THANKS to Kim, Jill, Robin, Candace and Jodi who gave us this balloon adventure as a gift! One more thing on my 'bucket list' has been fulfilled!