The Rest of November

Mom and I decided to take a little overnight trip to Annabella to visit Cindy and fam. Michael came home from SUU (with a friend, above, in red--a cousin to our Lifferth neighbors in Springville), so we were there for his birthday party.

John and I went to our writing group at Charlotte's house. She is working on her contribution for the book about Gene. I hope she writes her own book as well. I have video of her telling a story from their adventures on a mission in Samoa--two married 19 year olds--Gene using a machete, hitting a wasps' nest, and slicing open his thumb--very funny (after the fact, of course).

John and I went to the BYU/USU basketball game. I kept missing the plays because I was too busy looking at the fans. It was sort of fun to hear them berate the refs: "Oh come on! Come ON! Ya think so? Oh really?" and so forth. John says when Uncle Bob is with him the comments from the stands are considerably more salty.

I went to The Farm with Rob and the babes. They love Tena's airplane even in the snow.

We visited the tack room with Grandpa:

and walked around the farm yard:

We went up the lane to see if the pond was frozen enough to slide on.

It was a lot of fun to watch the fish beneath ice clear as glass:


Grandpa tests the ice. Crack! Nope, not safe yet.

We walked with Grandpa up the hill to help feed the cows:


Later, John and I went with Rob, Colette, Johnathan, Betsy, and Ethan to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point.

Ethan liked this dinosaur which was just his size:

Here he tries on his dinosaur face (and shows his beautiful teeth).

Johnathan and Ethan check out the dinosaur foot.

Johnathan plays in the sand and water place, which is a big hit with the kids:

Massive shark:

The Utahraptor is pretty creepy:

I can't believe I took no photos of Thanksgiving. We (John, Chris, and I) ate here with Mom, Dad, Grandma Gene, Rob, Colette, and Johnathan (Nicolle flew to Ft. Worth for her mom's birthday and to help her sisters drive back with a car). John did a great job with the turkey, gravy, and stuffing; Chris did the potatoes; Mom brought salad, relish try veggies, and pumpkin pies; I did rolls, cherry pies, apple pie, lemon meringue pie, and chocolate cream pie, and whatever else. Colette set the table. When I talked to Dave he said he was disappointed that we only had seven pies for nine people, not 1:1 as we've sometimes had in the past. Oh well.

News of the (whoops! past two) Week(s)

We were all set last weekend to spend a night at the sand dunes in west Juab County, but reports of freezing nights scared us off, despite John pish-poshing our pampered city-ness. So instead we met up in SLC for the afternoon before Chris' All-State Choir concert at the tabernacle. Rob, Betsy, Ethan, and Amy came with us to Temple Square and surrounds to look at the flowers and the new construction at City Creek. In the end the flowers were a bit scanty, having just been pulled up for the spring bulbs to be set (I presume), but the visit was still fun.

We spent some time in the two visitors' centers. When Betsy asked Ethan who this person was, he shouted, "JeeJee!"

John was very civilized and appropriate...

..until the urge for a nap overwhelmed him...

...below, in the most public spot in Salt Lake. "Would you lie down on the steps of St. Peter's Cathedral in the Vatican?" I said to him. "Or on the floor of the Taj Mahal? This is just the same." He is shameless.

It was fun to spend time with the kids.

I think maybe my pretty new blue and teal scarf was not quite as cool as I thought it was. No, the scarf is OK, it was the rest of me. Sigh.

Betsy, Ethan, and Snoopy. Snoopy has his own sign. Ethan talks and talks, orally and with his hands (ASL). Maybe we'll learn sign as he does.

Ethan and Auntie Amy:

Rob at one of the new fountains next to Deseret Book at the new City Creek development. While there we saw John's new book (one of a collection of essays on Fathers).

Betsy, Amy, Rob, and Ethan skipped out on the concert, but that was OK because we got to sit by Liz and Alan
and Tana and J.Lynn. In fact we ate dinner before the concert at the nearby JBs with Tana, J.Lynn, and Shane, who was also singing.

They wouldn't let us take photos during the concert, so this one was taken beforehand, and about a third of the choir is missing. J.Lynn took pictures and video during the afternoon practice session, however. Here is a video of part of one of their songs. Pretty impressive!

J.Lynn took this photo of Chris. Liz and Alan's Frost is bottom right.

We did our writing group the next day at Charlotte England's cabin. I took my camera but forgot to take photos. We have been participating in the writing group for twenty years now.

This week was my first chance to swim since surgery (since a long while before that, actually. A side effect of endometrial cancer is that you're not so comfortable swimming). Anyway, it was great! I don't know why the pool is so underused in the evening, but there have only been four or five other people in the pool whenever we've gone. I think it has helped get me off my metabolic plateau. I've now lost 41 lbs. Even though my blood sugar is still above normal, it's much better than it was right after surgery. We'll see how it progresses. My blood pressure is usually between 110-125/70-80. I went to visit mom and dad at the farm on Friday and all we talked about was medical stuff. I am now officially Old.

Several of us, including Sergene, went to see RED on Saturday. Extremely silly. I've still got a crush on Bruce Willis though. Then John, Sergene, and I went to see The Magic Flute at BYU. Here for your listening pleasure, is the Queen of the Night.

Into October

John, Sergene, and I went for a picnic at Nunn's Park today between conference sessions. Thanks to Mary Ann J. for the picnic basket--isn't it cute?

The reds are not as red as usual, probably because of the lack of rain this month. We're supposed to get rain starting tonight and continuing all week, however.

Yesterday the three of us drove the Alpine Loop, starting in American Fork Canyon, and ended up having sandwiches at Sundance. I forget how breathtaking that drive is (I also forgot my camera).

Friday John and I took off for Detroit, leaving home at 4:50 a.m., in hopes of catching a connecting flight to either Manchester NH or Burlington VT so we could go visit Janet and her husband John P. Unfortunately, by the time we didn't make our standby flight to Manchester, we also realized that we wouldn't be making any other flights, including flights through Atlanta or NYC, flights to Boston and drive 3 and 1/2 hours, or any leg of any flight home on Sunday. So we waited around for the perfectly open flight back to SLC that evening. While in the airport John worked on his computer in peace, I walked from one end of the (interminable) terminal to the other end and back for my exercise, we had a nice Mexican lunch and a nice sandwich dinner, and we each got to watch our separate movie in the relatively roomy bulkhead seats on the way back, so it wasn't a total loss. In fact it was at least mildly fun.

But we decided that our best use of Rob's free flight perk (or is it perq, for perquisite? I never know how to spell it) is to decide when we have flexible time and then look around to see which direct flights to whatever city are open on the day we want to leave and on the day we want to come back--and by open, I mean at least 30 unsold seats. That leaves a lot of options but requires us to be a little more flexible and spontaneous than we're used to. Then if we don't make any of the flights, we just go out to lunch in Salt Lake and drive home. Easy!

The other nice thing in our lives right now is refinancing into the new extremely low mortgage interest rates. Just when I was starting to panic at my inability to save $1K per month for my share of the family budget when we're in England next year, we looked into refinancing our mortgages, and discovered that we can move from 5.5% on our main mortgage and from 8% on our second mortgage to a combined rate of 3.37% and drop our monthly expenses by about $1K! Whew! And if we pay a couple hundred of that directly into the principal every month, we'll be debt-free even faster! I don't know why we didn't think of it before, except we're both financially sub-literate. The only trouble is we have four separate and mutually exclusive ideas for that extra money every month. Or maybe I mean overlapping. Four separate places to spend the same money, anyway. So we'll probably still go bumbling cluelessly along as usual, but with a little more financial flexibility.

I'm still doing well with my fitness and diabetic eating program, although it's harder to not eat more carbs since John has started making bread. I know, isn't that great! He's already taken over the drying and bottling of produce from the garden (I'll have to take a picture of our fruit room), but now he's taking up baking! He made his first batch--five loaves--of whole wheat bread today, and it's delicious. And he cleans the house at least as thoroughly as I do and does his own laundry. Soon the only homemaking advantage I have will be that I can (and do) make a better bed. I don't mind.

Tomorrow we're having his birthday party by eating out at a Korean restaurant and coming home for angel food cake with 7 Minute Frosting. Yeah, yuck, but he loves it.

Shakespeare in Cedar City

We took a little one-night/two-day trip to Cedar City and saw Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, and Pride and Prejudice. Janet was the one who arranged it, leaving John P in Moab and driving over with her giant placid dogs, Lily and Sheba. We stayed in the usual Quality Inn. "Quality!" said Grandma Gene. "They advertised and told us it was one king and two queens!" but it was one queen and two regular sized beds. We (including Grandma Gene) went swimming twice. We saw plays in all three theaters. Our favorite was Macbeth in the Adams Theater, very spooky, bloody, and dramatic. And short. And what woman couldn't appreciate Lady Macbeth and the Weird Sisters as expressions of her own darker side. And the perils of counting on prophecies to plan one's life. I had forgotten (or I was struck again anyway) by the prophecies borrowed by Tolkien for LOTR--the moving trees and "shall not be harmed by man of woman born."

It was great to see Janet. We promised to come visit them in Vermont in October.
We're planning to make our short trip to Costa Rica next week. I haven't had time to think about it, but John and Nicolle are going to talk about and work on the possibility of another wilderness writing Study Abroad program there. That would be fun!

Happy Independence Day

We had a fun holiday over the three day weekend. John, Rob, and Chris decided to hike Timp Monday morning, but were turned back by the glacier (because Chris had slip-on canvas shoes--although I remember the girls climbing mountains in flip-flops). John said, upon his return, "I am officially old," and slept for a long time.

B&B came down from Salt Lake for a BBQ, which we ate indoors because it was hot outside. But afterward it was nice to sit on the lawn in the shade.

Ethan does not hold still long enough to take his picture:


Amy on the bridge in her garden:

Rob picks raspberries:

Chris in his 19th Century look:

Chris and Amy watch Ethan, always the main source of entertainment:

Getting ready for fireworks:



Jamison was here for part of the time, but is good at avoiding photos. We missed Nicolle and the babies, who are still in Ft. Worth with the Ashtons. Colette's 5th birthday is coming up, and we're planning a party!