Lady of the Rings

Sam's Birthday Surprise

2011-09-19T14:50:00.000-07:00

This year for his birthday, Bonnie and Kim had a special surprise for their Dad: The Great Penguin Encounter at the Salt Lake Aquarium! Since Sam had had so much fun feeding and petting baby bears a few years ago, they figured that little penguins would be just as fun. Since Penguins like cold, we were first equipped with some warm coats, and since penguins also are not potty-trained, we added some rubber shoes. We got some lengthy lecture about "don't touch, keep your hands to yourself". But we could do everything else.... but we needed to stay sitting down, and we couldn't walk around..... but we could still do everything else. What they really meant with everything else was, we were allowed to look, hear and smell, speak, take pictures (but only above bench-level), breathe and think. Wow! so many options! (Esspecially when we had primarily come to rub those cute penguin bellies and scratch them behind their ears and tickle them under their chins... so much for that. But it was still fun to watch them waddle around and bow to each other (a courtship ritual, a little odd, when they started bowing to the trainer) and yell at each other.

As soon as the door was opened, a whole bunch came in to check us out. During the 30 minutes we were in there, they freely waddeled in and out, taking a swim now and then and playing in the ice cubes the trainer had supplied.

This little guy proved why it was wise to wear those rubber shoes... he missed Sam by only a few inches.

There is Sam, very obediently keeping his hands to himself, but you can see how much we would just love to tousel their little feathers.

this one found an ice cube that he is offering to my bench neighbor

So, as we exited thru the gift shop, Sam found one he could love and hug and rub, and he had to come home with us. He named him Samson, after the biggest and fattest of the little bunch, the one who sometimes gets taken out and put in a room to himself at feeding time, because he is such a pig, that he won't let the other penguins have any of the fish, he wants them all!

After the Penguins, it was Party time at our house, here are some of our remarkable party guests:

Dacia and Baby Anna, Marti and Gwenny with an amazing, adorable new haircut, Andrew, Aaron and Jen,

Ellie and Anna, and of course Joe and Anya, but those two were busy elsewhere. Of course we served Ham, which was a joint effort, Sam picked it out, I stuck it in the oven, Marti perfected it with an amazing glaze and Andrew expertly carved it, then everybody pronounced it excellent.

Sam's next favorite occupation: cuddeling grandbabies. There were several cute ones available (we only have cute ones, by the way) so he was quite content. This little Andersen is gettin cuter by the minute. He is always so content. (Anna arrived screaming bloody murder, whereas Andersen was snoozing and then woke up smiling)

Time to unwrap some presents.

Then Marti presented her Dad with the most fabulous chocolate birthday cake ever! Yummmm

To round out the evening, Sam decided to get a start on taking our yard from looking like this:

to looking like this:

It took 60+ bags of bark mulch and took us most of the next day, but we think it was well worth the effort.

So come visit soon and see for yourself!

A thief in my backyard

2011-08-22T14:00:00.001-07:00

These pictures were taken out of my kitchen window and the zoom is a little strong, but this happened yesterday evening while we were chatting after dinner, when we saw the "cute" squirrel on the fence and wondered what he was up to. What is a little hard to see, is the white string he is pulling on, similar to the one holding up a pear tree branch. He pulled on it as hard as he could, and then he bit it off!!!

He did all sorts of aerobics to get at it, holding on just by his hind legs and tail, so he could get the maximum length of the string. Once he had it bitten off, he stuffed it into his cheecks and took off!! The little stinker, I tie up my fruit tree branches, so they don't break off, when they are so laden with fruit, and I was wondering where the one string had gone, because I was sure I had tied up that one branch. So now I know that I don't suffer from a faulty memory, but rather a thieving squirrel!

Happy Birthday to me...

2011-06-08T16:27:00.000-07:00

Look what I got for my birthday! A new Lawn ornament!!!! I am not so sure I like it, but Sam is quite determined, one more winter up here might do him in! We have been looking for something a bit further south for quite some time, and in April, it seems we found it. Of course I got the pictures in the wrong order again, so you get to see the inside first and then the outside, but here it is, the new Clark Residence a bit further south. And indeed the weather is much nicer there, we have been trying it out for over a month now and we definitely like it.

It is up on a hill above the Timpanogos Temple and the view is unsurpassed. Even from our bedroom. At night, with the lake and Saratoga Springs in the back ground, you could almost imagine you are in Italy at the Lago Maggiore, Sam prefers San Francisco.

Here is the kitchen, again, with an amazing view. The sweet Lady in the picture is Sam's sister Bev, who came to stay with us for a couple of days.

This is the living room. The double doors go to the deck and the breath taking view.

This is the back of the house, a bit earlier in the year, no leaves yet. There is grass and a few deer chewed bushes, no landscaping yet. Not even topsoil. So I get to start from square one.... again....

This is the front. The lawns look so much better now, because Sam has already worked his magic. I had asked for a truck load of topsoil for my birthday.... but that didn't happen.... they said, they didn't know how to wrap that properly. So I got trees and flowers, a shopvac and a wheel barrow instead. (and a few other very useful items) .

It still feels like we are on vacation when we are down there. I really feel sad about leaving IF, it is such a wonderful place..... for about 4 months of the year. Hopefully we will still be able to enjoy this summer, but I agree with Sam, one more winter up here and I am going to scream.

Happy new years.... here are a few firsts

2011-01-08T12:38:00.000-08:00

The first First: shockingly, NO pictures!
The next First: a sort of New Years resolution, but not really, because I am opposed to New Years's resolutions. They should be called January guilt trips, because they never really last much longer than one month.
So instead I thought I'd post in a spot readily accessible for me a few things I figured out in the last while, that would be good to implement. Here goes:

1. You cannot please all people all the time-- and you really shouldn't anyways.
If you can manage to please Heavenly Father, yourself and your hubby, you are way ahead.
2. Have an opinion, and make it a good one.
You don't have to necessarily share it, it is just nice to have one in case you need one.
3. Do not expect more from people than they are capable of, and then get mad at them, when they don't fulfill your expectations.
That goes esspecially for kids.
4. Be aware of the Ego.
Or you could call it the Natural Man. It is amazing what happens, when you become aware of him/her.
5. Be aware of the Moment.
The past is gone, the future is not here yet, the moment is all we have to live in. This is where we can create change, this is where the action is.
6. You can't get it ALL done NOW. Esspecially the laundry and the dishes.
So draw an imaginary line and then do some relaxing and enjoying.
7. Differentiate between the URGENT and the IMPORTANT. Prayer, Study and Meditation are important, rarely urgent, so they often get put at the end of the list. But remember, in the end, what you will take with you is what really matters.
8. There are certain colors that do nothing for you. So don't wear them, just because the outfit is cute or new.
9. You don't need everything that is pretty. So don't try to buy it all. And maybe some of the prettys of your stach ought to be tossed.
10.It is okay to throw things away. Really. Just because it is pretty (see #9) or special, or not used up yet doesn't mean you have to keep it.
I think I still suffer from a Mum who went thru the depression and who taught me well.
11. Your husband can't read your mind..... and all things considered, that is probably a really good thing. So tell him what you want.
12. Be genuinely interested in other people, it makes you a nicer person, but you are not required to fix their problems... they are quite capable.
13. Some things in life just "ARE" for no reason at all. Deal with it.
It makes no sense to waste energy on stuff that can't be changed, if you like it or not.
14.To love others as yourself, you have to first love yourself.
No, really, despising yourself does not count.
15. Love is not what we think it is. It is NOT indulging, spoiling or doing for them what they can do for themselves. But rather it is respect, kindness, compassion and forgiveness.
16. Be happy-- it's a choice.
17. Be grateful for EVERYTHING. And I mean everything. It is all part of the gift of life, and it all is there to help and teach.
18.There is a lesson in everything-- a lot of those lessons are about patience.
19.You can't only do what you enjoy, so find something enjoyable in all you do. ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING!
20.Doing your BEST usually is not perfection, but it is good enough for now.
21 Learning new things is great- then doing them is progress.
22.This too shall pass-- and that applies to both bad and good things.
23. Holding on to everything because it could come in handy some day is pointless:later, when you need it, you either forget you have it, or you can't find it.
24.Don't keep stuff you don't like. If you really don't like it, no matter how useful or practical it is, it will annoy you everytime you see it.
25.The currency of life is time- don't waste it, don't save it, but spend it wisely on things of worth: love more, learn more, and make wonderful memories.

There you have it. Now if I could just implement #21 first, I'd be way ahead of the game. Have a great new year with lots of memorable, joyful adventures.

A couple of rather boring months...(j/k)

2010-07-17T15:09:00.000-07:00

This blog definitely has a mind of it's own. It thinks I am done adding pictures.... actually, I had a few more I wanted to include. Oh well, better than yesterday, when it would only let me put one in. So, here we are on my birthday... or actually a couple of days before, when the Topherbugs came up to celebrate with me. That was really nice of them, and we had lots of fun. On my actual birthday, my hubby decided that a trip to Yellowstone was in order, seeing we had the very nicest weather so far this year (it wasn't snowing or raining and it was actually warm). Every time we stopped, he pulled another gift bag out of the trunk, and I got to open another amazing birthday present.... talk about getting spoiled. We came down to Salt Lake and got to babysit Gwenny. We went to dinner at Ikea, where Marti assured us that Gwenny really likes the Mac and Cheese.... yea, maybe she does, but this time she much rather had Grandpa Sam's Swedish meatballs.... as many as would fit in at a time.

Afterwards we went to see Dacia and Ellie, and Gwenny decided that Dacia was enough like her mommy, that she was considered "safe". So she insisted on being held and Ellie didn't mind sharing.

Back at our house, we had a whole bunch for a weekend visit. Alan installed a zip-line for Max, who can now roam the entire lawn without vanishing over the fence (we had to put a few "stops" in and shorten the leash) And Joe installed a swing for the little ones. Thank you again, you two, you are the best!

Professional swing-installer at work.

We had a surprise visit by a pajama clad construction elf named Gracie

Max, Grace and Anya exploring just how long that zip-line leash will go

Father's day surprises for the Sammy, with Alan and Co looking on.

Here is my personal make-up artist... please note her perch... is that the new way of getting closer to your customers?

Jen and kids came along to Las Vegas to visit Emily for a while.... it was hot, but still bearable, and we had lots of fun hanging out at the pool and just being together.

Thanks to Lowes we had a very fun Saturday morning with all the munchkins building very impressive Monster trucks.

Pure joy there at the finished product.

Emily came up to Utah to celebrate Alan's birthday, and the first thing she does, is run a 10k!!! Look at that totally amazing buff momma!

...while Dacia and I were very busy producing a cup cake version of mini sliders. It took a lot of imagination to come up with a cookie or candy version of all the different "Hamburger" ingredients. But we did a very good job and actually managed to fool somebody into thinking it was a real hamburger... he made a funny face when he discovered his error.

Here we are in the middle of the process: 1 yellow cup cake, cut in half, green-tinted coconut, a round piece of brownie, a yellow tinted square of fondant...frosting for mustard and a piece of taffy for the tomato.

real sesame seeds on top.... and the chips are the real thing.... could have fooled anyone.

Are you impressed?

Perfect temperatures in the shade of Dacia's backyard.

A quick stop at Marti's for a fun 4th of July dinner with the Enkes.

So, maybe not an all together boring couple of months..... and July is not over yet. Summers here are totally heavenly.... if they ever come. My yard is so green and lush, everything is in bloom and the fruit trees are loaded. Just sitting out there is a joy. If it would just last for another 6-8 months, there would be no complaints.....actually, there for a moment I thought that was it, because the next pics were so far down, but no, stop! there is yet more to come, so bear with me for a bit longer. Dacia and Joe and Ellie spent a couple of days with us on their way to a Brewer family reunion at the Tetons, so we drove up with them and hiked at Jenny Lake. Here we are at the Hidden Falls on the Snake River, admiring the pretty scenery in person, that thanks to Alan, graces my wall at home.

And here is my project from 2 weeks ago:

First, I got it all taped, then the fun began, I actually got it all done in one day.

I tried out a couple of different colors, and decided on the off white. Lucky for me, I had some paint in the basement, that with some other color additions, turned out just right.

And here is the finished project. The room looks so light, and so much bigger. I love it. I also thinned out the furnishings a bit, it looks a lot less cluttered now.

I also added some finishing touches by making new couch cushions and re-upholstering the rocking chair and a foot stool in matching fabrics.

Here is one of the newly upholstered chairs,

...and here are the others. Dacia, Joe and Ellie stopped by again on their way home from the Tetons. It seems Ellie can't grin without both of her parents snapping pictures of it. Here she is enjoying some watermelon.

And here she is trying out the slide.

Max got himself a favorite place in the flowers, from where he watches all goings on.

We are really getting our money's worth from our yearly national park entry ticket: Look who we met last Friday going thru Yellowstone!

This was only our third encounter with this bear. We had taken a different route, and were at fishing bridge on the big Yellowstone lake, when we saw a bunch of people looking and pointing at the ridgeline of the hills right behind the parking lot. We walked over to see what was going on, when a ranger very authoritively directed us the other way. That's when we saw HIM! but before I could get my camera out and a picture taken, he had disappeared over the edge. We walked around a bit, took a picture or two of the lake and got into the car to continue onwards, when we encountered a big traffic jam... because HE had resurfaced, and was crossing the street. I thought: great, now I can get a picture! but before I had the camera out and was ready to go, the ranger turned the siren on and the bear scurried away into the woods! foiled again! We made our turn and I kept checking the woods next to the road, and there he was again! this time I was ready! and now you can admire him in all his greatness.

This guy here was holding traffic up aswell. By the time we got close enough, he had had enough, and was heading back into the woods, but we still got a good picture of him.

It looks like this is definitely now the end. hope you enjoyed it, we sure did.

4 Years with my very sweet and loving Sammy

2010-04-07T07:29:00.000-07:00

Happy Anniversary to my most adorable husband! And thank you for four fantastic years! I decided to take us on a little trip down memory lane... starting with this past weekend:
Letting Max explore the yard added a bit of adventure to our lives... especially before we realized that he can indeed get back down from a tree excursion.

We did lots of travelling in the last 4 years, exploring all over the world.... I think this picture was taken in Rome

this one was at Blarney Castle in Ireland

This is on the Seine in Paris

with Big Ben in London

Shrink-wrapped in Buenos Aires

My sexy goucho in Argentinia

Argentinian Market place

We had fun birthdays together

And amazing Father's days

We had lots of family come and visit.... that was always the best!

There were new babies to cuddle and toddlers to play with; they all love Sampa

More trips... this one to Sam's origins in southern California

found my love in San Francisco

having lunch at Pier 49

An amazing Church history and American History tour

I highly recommend my sweet hubby as a tour guide... he knows all the interesting litte tidbits about church history

Sam's Birthday

showing off my new hubby to my Mummy in Germany

Sam never goes anywhere without a book!

Visiting my aunt in Salzburg

Discovering another shared favorite: The Oregon Coast. We have to go up there at least once a year, sometimes more often.

Newport

some of our favorite activites at the coast:

visiting the Lewis and Clark fort by Portland... being a Clark, we got our own private tour

Mount St Helens

Kayaking on the Columbia River

At the Falls in IF

Babysitting in the backyard

One of our favorite hangouts, Jackson Hole. They have the best Galleries there, and if time permits we have ventured into the Parks for great sight seeing.

Sam does know how to cook and I must say, those pancakes were yummy!

April 7th, 2006, what a fun day!

Getting our marriage liscense

I thik we were quite excited

Getting our new house ready

Sam got a Valentine's surprise in his office

I made him put up the for sale sign

we do like grand kids... can you tell?

we like them a lot!

We love to hang out with family and friends

Honeymoon part II at Coeur d'Arlene

with a quick trip to Spokane to see family

moving into our new home

one of our first meals there

Proud joint new home owners

Thank you for 4 wonderful years, Sammy! looking forward to the next 40 and beyond!

I love you with all my heart.

Gracie's birthday and other "stuff"

2010-03-28T19:13:00.000-07:00

It is that time of the year again, where I go totally crazy: making Easter dresses time. Total count: 7, but then it turned out that the stupid patterns are so messed up, and I inadvertedly made the ones for Grace and Gwenny way too big, so I guess I'll be making two more. Here is Mr. Max, exploring the great outdoors. I put this harness on him, and he just went limp and flopped over. It was too funny. He absolutely hates it. So we left the harness off and attached the leash to his collar. That was better, but he would dive under the bushes and we had to let go of the leash and I worried that it would catch on a branch or something. So Sam has been taking him out without a leash... he loves it. He races up and down the yard and tries to catch flies and has a great time. He even came back in the house when I whistled and called him and offered a treat.

May I introduce our "other pets". It seems a family of voles (Wuehlmaeuse) has taken over our back lawn. They dig little furrows under the snow, eating the grass roots. We are just so delighted to have been able to have made their winter more bearable. Next fall we will be prepared with "MOLE Vax... eh, Vole Max, I mean.

Ellie and Max had lots of fun together. They actually played together, sharing toys, easter eggs (Max knocks them down from the tables and bats them thru the house, I find them in the strangest places the next morning.) and kitty toys. Max would pounce on her from behind the curtains, and she would try to catch his tail, which he would move at the last moment, and then gently swish along her face.

Good thing she is so short, or she would have emptied my fridge.

Here she is again, trying to share some fun toy with Max.

Darling Emily, seeing that only the girls were getting new Easter dresses sent me a web site with a tutorial on how to make cute little sweater vests for the boys, using men's sweaters. Since there is no shortage of men's sweaters at out house... I got busy:

Max, checking out Ellie's lunch

Ellie checking out Max's bed. This is a great improvement. Before we had this nice cat bed, he would sleep curled up right next to my legs, if possible between them, and I was unable to move. Now he is contained and I can turn over in bed without running into a sleeping cat.

Oreos in Milk.... they are the best.... it must be in her genes, since this passion runs in the family.

Look! my Daddy dressed me and took me shopping like this! At least she was nice and warm.

This is what we did for Grace's 2nd birthday.... do we have to top this for her third???

The total Princess cake in the making. Having never worked with fondant, I was a bit concerned, but then I had watched Linda a couple of times making Kira and Kayla's wedding cakes, and when all fails, frosting covers a multitude of mistakes.

Yes, the thing actually has a draw bridge.

Alysia is rather handy with the frosting bag. Considering she had never done anything like that before, she was great. And we sure had a ton of fun with it. The only problem was moving the thing from Buggy's house over to Topher's parents house, where the party was.... There were quite a few speed bumps to navigate. But we made it without any problems.

The finished product, in all it's glory!

Alysia had all Gracie's favorites on the menu, and all the little kids loved it. Gwenny decided the spagetti were esspecially good.

Dacia brought some PJs for Ellie that had either shrunk or Ellie had outgrown them since she wore them last.... emergency measures were in order.

Our home teachers came to visit the other day and Max was totally intrigued by Kendall's cologne. He couldn't get enough of it and had to go for just one more sniff.

The other day when I was visiting with the girls, we all went to Ikea. We had lots of fun and spent all our money, and then Dacia found an isle where they had super cute sleeping babies for sale. Unfortunately she got the last one.... I had wanted one too, but she said she'd share.

yes, these are a little bit out of order, because I forgot to do last ones first.... oh well, they are still cute. Here is Grace, discovering that you can actually touch "kittymax".

Emily had decided that I needed some fun toys at my house for visiting grandkids. Grace was the first one to discover all the new neat stuff that we had bought. She was so excited about the fairy outfit that she actually wore it over her jammies and slept in part of it.

There you have it. We've been busy. We've had fun. Live is still great. Love you all.

Looks like someone is in the cat-house

2010-02-28T18:16:00.000-08:00

Max has decided that this is a pretty cool place to hang out and survey the living area. It is also quite safe from little critters.... that like to grab tails. Many thanks again to Alan, for building this. And here is one of those little critters.... many thanks to Emily, who said: You need to buy some toys for your house, so the grandkids have decent stuff to play with.... and we did! Grace was totally delighted when she dicovered the dress-up box and quickly turned herself into a fairy... she loved it so much, she slept in the slippers, and the next morning insisted on wearing it over her jammies.

Who? me?

How about some food for the cute baby....Topher's belated birthday /Valentine's dinner.

Will do tricks for food

Looks like Sam is more excited about the birthday present than Topher.

Grace discovers that you can actually touch the kitty

And love the kitty....Somehow Max seemed to be fascinated by her. He kept following her around the house.

Grace came out of the shower, wrapped in a towel. She started playing with Max, but had trouble keeping the towel in place. Finally she had had it, and in typical "flasher mode" she opens the towel, holding it in each had, and yells"NAKED!!!!!!" Max, in total shock, dives under the bed.... he is probably scarred for life.

Alysia's birthday dinner at Costa Vida before we all went to see Fiddler on the Roof at Hale Center theater. One of the best Fiddler performances I have ever seen. Lucky Dacia got to come with us. Sam and I had the car packed and were ready to leave that morning, just finishing breakfast, when his secretary called. Her father had passed away during the night, and she was on her way to Canada to the funeral... so Sam had to unpack his stuff and I got to go to SLC by myself, taking Dacia with me to the performance, whilst poor Sammy got to slave away at the office.

Dacia brought birthday balloons.

She also brought a very cute and happy Ellie

The next day we all met at Ikea for some much overdue shopping... I mean, what is a girl's get-together without doing some major damage to the check book?

We also had an early birthday lunch for Dacia. Grace was quite hungry and enjoyed her french fries.

Ellie had her after-dinner-nap in the shopping cart. (or: look what cute babies they sell at Ikea)

Yes, we did fill 2 shopping carts. Yes, we had great fun, and yes, I did leave for home about 3 hours later than I had planned. But it was worth it.

Here is Max, waiting for your phone call. Actually, I attached a jingle ball to the end of an old phone cord and hung it on his favorite hang-out. He had a lot of fun playing with that today.

I took some video of it, and tried to add it to the blog, if it worked, you can enjoy it,if not, I have to figure out other options... wow, I am actually getting amazingly computer savvy, totally digitalized.
Okay, so it is sideways... but it does work.

Reservations at the Max Hilton, anyone?

2010-02-07T08:42:00.000-08:00

I lured Alan up here this weekend. I wanted him to help me build a headboard for my bed. I had sent him a picture of what I wanted it to look like. But he wouldn't do it... said he needed plans... plans shans... I said, just start building, it will develop as we go, but he said that might work for Jared, but he needed plans.... So I settled for a cat tree. We looked at several on the internet and found what we liked, and thought would be doable. And we did it without plans, we just started and it developed as we went... I think it turned out great, see for yourselves: We started with a beam and fastened it to the ceiling beam, then added upholstered shelves.

Max did occasional building inspections... and made some suggestions.

He was very intrigue by step #4... it seemed to be his very favorite.... couldn't imagine why... I only poured catnip under the carpet... For a moment we were worried he might be afraid of heights, but he assured us that he was not.

He said there was something missing up here...

So I got busy with my trusty sewing kit and enclosed his lime-green cathouse in some more respectable colors and we attached it to the top perch....

... with a balcony of course. Max found that to be quite satisfactory.

All that was left, were some finishing touches, and we were done... only took us all day! But we sure had fun. I even made Alan cook dinner... he is quite the useful boy. I need to have him come more often.

Max made his final inspection and declared that it was nice and fit to live in.... and then decided to sleep in our bed anyways and to just ignore the entire thing.... so, since we invested so much time and money in it, we thought we'd rent it out....

The flowerpots were Alan's idea. I guess we could plant catnip in it, or something else to entice Max to come up and look at it. They are screwed in place, to avoid all unpleasantness.

On the road again....

2010-02-04T09:28:00.000-08:00

I got to spend a fun week with Emily and her 4 boys. Besides the wonderful weather (anything is better than 10F and a blizzard) the cute kids and their sweet parents, I got treated to the usual gourmet cooking of Emily's. (Which means I came back several pounds heavier than I arrived!)
We had so much fun together. I got to massage all 4 boys.... yes, Caden insisted on a "ssage" on the table his dad had built just for me, and both Jaxon and Gavin appeared stripped down to their underpants on the table and waited patiently for the lotion....
Emily took me to the temple, which was a great treat, and she taught me how to use the genealogy website and I got so many hugs and kisses from the darling little ones, it was hard to leave. I even got to help her sew, something I always enjoy doing with my cute daughters. On the way home we got to stop at Dacia's again, where we played with cute Ellie, and I got to spend the night, making quiet book pages with Dacia. What fun. She is such an artist. Ellie better be real excited, I have never seen a cuter quiet book, than the one Dacia is working on. Since I was on sewing detail, Dacia-darling made my choir treats for me (another one of Em's amazing recipes), which of course, were a super hit again. She cooked us a super nice dinner, I got to sleep in her bed.... the service is impeccable.

We met with Alan and the Topherbugs at a restaurant for lunch.... how nice was that! We even got to see Alan! And then we enjoyed the importance of being Ernest, Sam and my Christmas gift from the kids, together at Hale Center theater. A very fun day.

Some how that lamp in the background makes Alan look like the "Spirit of Christmas present".... Ellie agreed, the chicken quesadillas were excellent.

The cute Topher-Bugs

and the cute Dacia-Burrs.

Of course, no sooner had I thought:" how nice and clear the roads are for our trip home", and it started to snow. By the time we reached the pass it was a blizzard. Good thing we were driving our tank. By the time we were in Poki, it finally quit, just to catch up with us the next day in IF. I really miss the Vegas weather, and the cute kids there, and the cute kids in slc. It is rather upsetting to live so far away, just for a few deliriously lovely months in summer, when you all must come!

Look what i did on Saturday!

2010-01-19T09:57:00.000-08:00

I had been really tired of this ugly old brick wall. It makes the room so dark and it really dates the house. So I got oodles of paint-swabs and finally narrowed it down to two. Saturday was the day to start. Sam helped with the prep and then left to do some shopping and I got busy with the paintbrush. The first results were rather frightening, as it looked terrible and I started contemplating how to get it all scraped off. But then I took the small paintbrush to all the grout-lines and colored them in as well.... much better!

Then at the end I dabbed the whole wall with the darker paint and it looked really nice. Even Sam liked it.

We decided that we didn't like where the TV was, high up on the mantle. So he went out and got a little TV stand for it. It looks lots better there, and the picture is so much better too, since it is a flat screen.

Here is the finished project, all nicely tidied up. We are quite happy with it. The room looks so much lighter now. Next step: a new gas fireplace insert, but that might take a little longer.

A few weeks ago, Sam came home with this contraption for Max. He finally decided that it is rather comfy to sleep in now and then.

I really scrubbed and desinfected the fountain, because Max prefers running water, he always wants us to turn on the tub faucet for him, so now that it is clean, it's Max's favorite place to get a drink.

When we were taking down the last of the Christmas decorations, Max and Sebastian knew immediately what would make them look best:

Okay, all you cute family who might read this, it is no fun to post blogs and only get 2 measly comments. If you want me to continue this, you better leave a comment, or I am done.

The Bengal Boys on the Prowl

2010-01-01T19:21:00.000-08:00

We had a very lovely Christmas, with all sorts of kids and grandkids showing up. Grace was very helpful with the presents.

Even Adam and Brandi and their boys spent the night.

Bonnie and Aaron came for almost a week, on and off.

Marty and Andrew brought a very special Christmas surprise.

Grace really liked one of our little nativities... she stuffed it all in her shirt for easier transport.

She was totally delighted when Kenya and Amara showed up again, after having been gone for a few days.

Buzz Lightyear was a definite hit with her.

And she was a hit with Opa.

Matching PJ pants for the whole family.

Grace got a potty for Christmas.

Here are Sam and Marti's special Christmas presents

Meet Max and Sebastian, the famous "Bengal Boys". Marti brought them to our house on the 26th. We knew about them on the 22, when Marti told us that she was getting a Bengal Kitty. Topher looked it up on the internet.... they looked amazing, like little tigers in beige and grey. Then he read about them: they can get as big as small dogs, they are really nice to kids, they like water (they go swimming, willingly--- yes, we are having quite the time keeping them out of the bathtub), they will walk on a leish, they talk almost all the time, and they really like our company, which means they are usually underfoot. They are very sweetnatured and sooo soft.

They usually like to sleep on top of Sam.

Well, when Topher had finished, I knew I wanted one.... as did Sam. So we called Marti to see if hers had a brother or sister.... he did. Alysia came in really handy, she had a pay pal account. We had just finished paying for it, when somebody else tried to pay for it.... was that good timing or what??? I think we were meant to have this one. When it was all settled, Sam started grinning, and he hasn't stopped yet. I didn't realize a little kitty would make him this happy, or we would have had one sooner.

Marty and Andrewbrought both of them, when they came for Christmas. It was love at first sight for us. They took Sebastian home a couple of days later, and Max was all alone. He really got close to us then. I couldn't leave the room without him following me. He is a very cute kitty. We went to SLC for a few days and took him with us. As soon as Sebastian saw him, he gave him a bath! When we decided to go home a bit sooner, Marti decided we would be ideal to baby sit Sebastian while they went to NY, so we ended up with both of them again. They are both quite happy to be together again, they are like little shadows. And of course they have us totally wrapped around their little paws. Anything the kitty wants the kitty gets. I am waiting for spring to take him on a walk. I already have a nice little leish and harness for him. Sam said he'd come too!

The few days that Max was here by himself, he felt a bit lonesome for his brother, so he adopted the little stuffed tiger, that Amara had named 'fart"for some reason.

Trip to the Tetons with the TopherBugs

2009-10-17T15:26:00.000-07:00

The TopherBugs came to visit again and we took them to the Tetons on a beautiful sunny day. Here are some of our pictures...

Here are the beautiful snow-capped Tetons.

Sammy and Gracey staying nice and warm.

Grace got a ride in her daddy's backpack. Seems like she didn't really have to do any walking. Where can I get one of those backpacks big enough for Sammy to give ME a ride?

We hiked partially around the lake and Topher even pulled out is kite and flew it a bit. We kept trying to tell him to kite board with it, but there was no convincing him. Something about the water being cold...waa waa waa.

It appears after our long day of hiking and sight seeing, that everyone got pretty much tuckered out. Would you agree?

Germany!

2009-10-16T08:01:00.000-07:00

First off, thanks to the amazing Alysia for educating her mother on how to make a collage at picasa. We started at the very end of our trip, since that is the best way to assure that all the pictures are in order... and then we got tired of making more collages.... so I will blog the trip backwards, it looks like. Ah, well at least all the blogs will be in order once I get done, so if it bothers you, you can wait to read it until I am done posting everything. So here we are starting off with the last part of the trip. We flew into Munich from Rome, rented a car and toured GermanyWe got almost to the Chiemsee, and it was time to turn in for the nite. We found a really nice little Pension and got a very nice room with an amazing breakfast in the morning. The next day looked like lousy weather, and I was all worried already, but it wasn't long and all the fog had burned off and we had blazing sunshine and warm fall weather. We stopped at Prien, and tood a ferry to Herrenchiemsee, the 3rd of Crazy Ludwig's castles, this one was patterned after Versaille, because Ludwig was totally enamoured by Louis XIV. I think it is a lot prettier than Versaille. Sam loved it.
After that it was on to Berchtesgaden. What a georgeous place. All the busses to the eagles nest had left for the day, but we loved it anyways. Such beautiful scenery. Those mountains are the very best.We drove for a while on the DeutscheAlpenstrasse and just ohhed and ahhed all along the way. We made it to Linday that night and stayed in a nice little hotel just over the border in Austria.
Ulla was just back from her vacation in France, so we didn’t drop in on her until the next morning. Carolus apparently was not aware of our coming and acted very puzzled but friendly when I came to his door. After a little prodding he finally realized who I was and poor Ulla had to cut short her shower. But we had a lovely visit with them. Then we took off north-westerly to the black forest. Very pretty too. By 2pm we arrived in Offenburg and thanks to our trusty little GPS (thanks Joe) we pulled up in front of Klaus and Karin’s house. Manuela and her two sons came too and we had a great visit. Sam loves that part of my family too. I think they liked him as well. We finally had to say our good-buys and ended up in Trier that night.
The next morning, after consulting the map, we realized that we were just across the border from Luxemburg…. Yes, we did have to drive there and dang it, the gas was super cheap there, and we had just gassed up in Trier the night before.
After that it was Porta Nigra and a stroll thru Trier, a visit to Karstadt and the Trier Cathedral. Very nice and totally enjoyable.

We had asked at the hotel about the road along the Mosel river…. Oh, not more than an hour to Koblenz that way…. Yea right! 3 hours later and not even half-way done, we broke it off and headed for the freeway. It was very pretty, though.
We made it to Karen’s new and improved house by 8pm and were delighted how nice it looks. Patrick really dolled it up. We stayed at another cute little bed and breakfast and the silence there was almost deafening. Views of fields and woods and cute little villages. We spent the day with Karen and her cute family. Shopping for German chocolate (yes, you’re welcome) and other great stuff.

That evening we arrived at Oma’s house. She and Carlo were waiting and very excited to see us. We spent 2 days with them, enjoying their company, going downtown and riding the S-Bahn, the Bus and the Boats. Great fun, great weather. We even made it to church and were sad to see so few members there. But Karl Schmitt is now the Stake President and his son is in the Bishopric.

We got up at 4am on Monday, drove to the Airport, turned in our nice little Opel and commenced our 28 hour day, arriving at midnight in Salt Lake. Phew! What a day. But it was all nice and smooth, even customs was not as bad as last time and we made it home just fine. Dacia picked us up, Marti put us up and Alysia and Grace came home with us and entertained us for the week, and cooked for us too. Then Dacia and Ellie came for a week and cooked and entertained some more. Now Alysia, Grace and Topher are back…..What AM I going to do when I am back on my own???? Will I die of boredom??? Well, I am sure it won’t be long before we are off again, or someone else will come to visit. This is great, I love it.

Topherbugs visit, Kayla's wedding etc

2009-08-17T10:56:00.001-07:00

Here are the cute little Topherbugs that came for a long weekend of fun and giggles

The little Grace is very fond of Berries and soon discovered my Raspberry patch. It became her favorite spot in the garden.

Storytime with Grandpa Sam wasn't so bad either

I got to babysit her while everybody else went to the temple. When I handed her the strawberry for breakfast, she broke into a big smile and signed "thank-you". Could it get any cuter?

Of course it was not typical August weather, but turned rather cold... so what is a good Oma to do, but make some warm duds for the Gracie.

We also decided that she needed some more hair.... maybe we went a little overboard with the fertilizer here?

Feeding the Ducks at the River: one bite for the Grace, the rest is for the Ducks.

Look Mummy, there are more hungry ducks!

Alysia got very excited about cute little hats with bows on them, and spent a fortune buying some. So I showed her, how easily you can make those yourself. Needless to say, we spent the rest of the time making hats and bows.

Alysia made yummy chicken enchilatas for dinner. I think Grace really liked them.

She wanted to get every last bite.

And Raspberries for dessert

Our trip to Portland took a detour to Bend and Eugene first, so we could get a day at the coast. Can't go to Oregon without visiting the coast! The Lava fields between Bend and Eugene are truly impressive. The lovely rainforest further towards Eugene is even better.

Our day at the coast didn't turn out as planned... it was cold and rained almost the entire day. We got a bit damp, but that didn't stop us from frolicking in the surf. Here is Sam in top frolic mode.

And look what we found!!! A dead sealion!!! Sam was so excited he put on his sunday-best and had his picture taken with it. Thank goodness it was very windy, so we couldn't smell much.

And here we are at Sheila's house up to my eyebrows in flowers. Very nice flowers too. It took me all day to produce 1 bridal bouquet, 5 brides maids bouquets, 2 mothers' 2 fathers' 5 grooms men's, 4 incidentals and 4 arrangements and the stuff for the cake. It was great fun though, and I was sad to see the McKays running out of daughters to marry off so soon.

This is how the bridal bouquet started out

This is the finished product

This was towards the end of the day.... the last brides maids bouquet

And this is my super douper totally talented helper. She was so good, she would have taken over if I hadn't stopped her! She had lots of good ideas, and rather nimble fingers and actually produced some of the brides maids bouquets and corsages and did most of the arrangements. What a little jewel to have around. If you can't have an Emily, a Bug will do very well. But the Emily had already done her part. So to give credit, where credit is due: the Emily was in charge of the ordering process and working with the Kayla to decide what she wanted and then telling them how much and what to order. We couldn't have done it without her.

What we don't have a picture of is Sheila's neighborhood hedge and bush trimming service... I hope she will present all her neighbors with a bill for the fine job she did on her morning run... with scissors... when she took care of all this unruely shrubbery giving it all a good trim, so we had lovely greenery for the floral arrangements!

Here is the cute couple, now Mr and Mrs Conrad to you all... Kayla still looks a bit shell-shocked.. ups...I am sure Alan's pictures look better

Here they are in all their wedding finery.

And Linda outdid herself again with this magnificent cake.

The End.

Anya's Visit

2009-08-05T14:53:00.000-07:00

As you can see, Anya was rather busy, while she visited here. She was a super crafty little person.

Her most favorite activity was sewing. She designed these amazing slippers and then sewed one and is modeling it here. She also made all sorts of clothes for her pig. It now sports a ballett tutu , a blouse and a skirt. Of course, she also got her Oma to do some sewing, so she now has a new pink princess nightgown and a blue polka dot dress. All in all, if you are ever bored, invite Anya over and she will keep you hopping! And you'll have so much fun! we went to the zoo, jogging in the mornings, she is quite the trooper, she kept up with me on her bike.... Yea, I know, she rode circles around me, but aye, we were out there together. We went swimming and did lots of shopping and cooking and painting.

July happenings

2009-08-01T15:12:00.001-07:00

Baby Ellie's blessing. She wore a magnificent dress, fashioned and designed by our very own Kim. A masterpiece indeed, sure to turn heads!
The furry little critter on our patio was a visitor from the sanitation department, cleaning up after the birds, that always leave a mess after visiting the bird feeder. He actually brought a friend later on.

Emily and family came up from Las Vegas

Even though this looks like Marti saying: give me my baby back now! and Alysia responding: come get her, if you dare........ it was a really polite and loving exchange, and Marti actually offered Gwenny to Alysia to hold in stead of Grace who had stayed home for health reasons. The plan was to have Gwenny in the family picture and photoshop Gracy's face on her.... we'll see if it works.

It is strange to see Sam sitting there so peacefully without a book in his hand. Maybe it is because he is BEING lunch to Dacia's tame mosquitos that were having a feast during our otherwise nice luncheon.

Oh my goodness, if I had known how dorky I look with this hat, I would not have let Sam take a picture of me. The lovely Tetons, we visited to go hiking at Jenny lake and later to meet Allen and Alice for dinner at the Calamity Campground next to the Palisades dam. This time we came prepared with Mosquito repellent.

While peacefully sitting out on the patio one evening, I started contemplating the very messy looking flower bed. So, inspite of skirt and heels, I went to work and ripped it all out. The next morning Sam was a dear and turned the dirt for me, then we got 4 garbage cans full of bark chips, I thinned a few of the shade plants from other places in the yard, and voila! now it looks quite neat and orderly. I did most of the planting and mulch-spreading in a super downpour, but because of the convenient tree, didn't get very wet. Funny weather, we're having, but we are not complaining.

Girl's weekend in St George. We spent the first 2 days producing over 70 pair of earrings. Then the next two days we stationed ourselves at strategic points in Zion's National Park and sold them as native mormon crafts...(j/k)

Ellie thought it was great fun to have so many doting females around, there was always somebody willing to hold her.

Johnson Family Cottage Industries Flock shot

We talked Alan into trading his daughter for our Honda... I think it is a great deal. Our Honda was never this cute or appreciative when we took it places. And our Honda certainly didn't have any talent for art work.

Anya was a bit nervous about the goats, but since they didn't seem to eat any of the other little kids there, she finally decided that it was safe to pet them.

Fearlessly she put her head in the lion's mouth

And stood by the ferocious tiger. She had originally planned to sit on it.... but it was way too hot!

Here she is meeting the educational penguin.

Family reunion, Oregon trip

2009-07-07T13:19:00.000-07:00

Here we are in Eugene, Oregon with Sam's Brother in law and his wife. David and Pam had invited us to stay with them, and after going to church with them, we had a little excursion to the coast. Sam and I agree, Oregon is our very favorite State. You have Sam to thank, that we are not moving there tomorrow. He said NO, it is too far from you kids.

Somehow we lucked out and got a super day without any wind, but the bluest of skies and warm and just an all around perfect day that still had great waves.

If you leave your pantyhose on after church, there is no wading for you.... so I got to take pictures instead.

Foxglove and wild Iris. It was so lovely everywhere. It sure was hard to leave.

Look at that surf!!! I was sure Pam would get wet, but she was just out of reach of the pounding waves.

On Monday we started out in Florence and went south along the coast. This is one of those sleepy little coastal towns, waiting for the summer tourists to arrive... look, one is already there!

This dreamy forest was on a path from the road to the beach. It was even prettier than the picture.

California coast Redwood park, we ran into the guy with the Ax and his blue ox Babe.... he even talked.... so not cute, but Sam wanted a photo. That is him there, between the guy and his ax.

Look at what $5 can buy you! And this was the only redwood at the attraction, but I have always wanted to do that. No, that is Sam driving, I just took the picture and told him that he fit thru just fine.... with about 1" clearance on each side of the mirrors.

Two little boys and their favorite uncle.

Dacia didnt bring enough motorcyles, so Alysia got stuck on the non-motorized one.

Brrrrrrrrm..... at every opportunity.

2cuties at the lodge. Love that bow.

2 more cuties

I think they like each other.

Linda was just amazing. Surrounded by screaming kids, she kept her calm and got them all to settle down. Some of those little ones had amazing lungs and an almost super-human endurance.... My grandkids, of course, were models of sweetness and loving behavior. It might have helped that their moms were around.

2 of our amazing cooks. Great food, really, I gained more weight than I want to talk about.

Muir woods, north of San Francisco. As soon as we got close, the fog set in. But it was still really pretty and majestic.

Hey! where did my picture go???? All I was trying to do was decrease the space between pictures, and suddenly the thing is gone....so unless it shows up again somewhere you'll just have to imagine it. It was really pretty.

This is the famous Boardwalk in Santa Cruz, where Sam and his siblings hung out when they were growing up in Palo Alto. I think it was a fun trip down memory lane for him, and I was glad to be along.

This was on the pier in Santa Cruz. The concerned look on my face is, because I was worried about my nice new camera in the hands of a stranger.... hoping that she wasn't going to drop it.

These big fat sealions were all over the support structure of the pier. They must have hopped up there the night before, when the tide was high.

We went on south, ending up at Carmel, where we had lunch at the beach, enjoying the surf. It was in the mid 50 there and a bit foggy. Just an hour inland it was sunny and 95+. I remember the first time I was in Carmel was in 1972 with Helen and Mary and my parents and sister. America was still the total wonderland and carmel seemed almost magical. I still like it a lot.

Here is the picture of the little candy store, where Helen and Mary bought my sister and me a truly gigantic lollypop. No, I wasn't tempted to have another one. I think the same picture is in Kira's blog... just not with Sam in it. She is lucky, she lives much closer than we do.

We went on the 17 mile drive and enjoyed Pebble beach and the beautiful seashore in that area. The surf was up and I just love digital cameras.... you just snap away until you get the one you want. My dad didn't have that advantage, and still his pictures were totally amazing.... maybe that's where Alan got those photography genes.

It took me a while to figure it out, but I have a super-zoom on my camera (great job buying that for me, Bugs, great job researching cameras for me, Dacia) thus I can bring these sealions in real close... cool.

The lonely Cypress, the Emblem of Pebble Beach.

This is really wiered, and thanks to my super camera, I finally got the picture I wanted. On the freeway outside Sacramento right there in the river are all those huge WWII battleships. It is like a used car lot for battle ships. It looks impressive.

And as usual, at the start of the blog, I goofed again, putting my first pictures last.... but nontheless, here are the pics from my quick trip to Vegas. What would normally take 7+hours took only 1 1/2 hours plus a bit of a wait and some securitystuff, but seeing Emily and boys by plane sure has its thrills. Esspecially since they turned down the thermostat for most of my visit, and I enjoyed my window open during most nights. But by Friday it was in the 100's and definitely time to go home and enjoy cool Idaho with all it's rain for a night, before we left for Oregon the next morning.

We spent part of Thursday at a Sprinkler Park. The boys had great fun, esspecially when it came to a water fight with Oma.... they got me drenched, which felt very nice. Jaxon, however is in big trouble. He was in charge of applying sun-tan lotion to my back..... I still have a very odd looking dark brown triangle on my otherwise snowy-white back.... tsk, tsk. Which means he did a great job on the rest of my back. Thanks, Jaxon.

This is one of those other hardship assignments, Emily had for me: Accompany grandsons to Coldstone and watch them eat ice cream..... in the company of a gazillion other little tikes and their moms for a church playgroup activity. They were so excited as they all got to pick their very own flavors and add-ins and got this amazing spoon to shovel it in with.

Aren't they cute? Even Caden didn't find me too objectionable anymore and actually did not mind associating with me.

Here are two more very busy ice cream eaters.

The End.

2009-06-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

So I had a whole lot of cool pictures to post. I tried 3 times and every time it would not let me do it, so you will have a picture-less blog, until one of you figures out what's wrong and can help me figure it out.
This weekend is the first weekend back to normal.... and it is soooo quiet. Sam and I are ratteling around in our big house and it seems rather strange that there are no little ones around, no TV going, nobody fixing food.... could it be that we miss you all??? NO WAY! (j/k) of course we miss you, sillies. It had to be one of my favorite weekends of my life, having everybody here, having fun together and all getting along splendidly. You are the best. I don't mind having birthdays, if we get to celebrate them like this. Of course, it could have been even better, like real sunshine the whole time instead of the liquid kind, and everybody staying healthy, and no flooded basement.... we will aim for that next time; it would have been too perfect otherwise. So, hope you are all back home safe and busy planning out the rest of the summer. I would have more to say, if there were pictures to share. I am eagerly looking forward to the ones Alan took. Thanks again for coming, love you all.

Grace's birthday party

2009-03-18T20:33:00.001-07:00

A little Grace came with her Mommy and Daddy to have her birthday at our house. Her mommy made her a very cute birthday dress and a Lady bug birthday cake.

She was very excited about all her neat presents

But the very best was the little shopping cart that she could walk behind and push all over the place

Then it was cake time....

careful little samples first, but the tast was great, so soon we took bigger bites, cookie spots firtst

This cake is the very best, Mommy! I love it this much!!!

And doesn't it look just lovely in my hair!

We're baaack!

2009-01-21T18:18:00.001-08:00

Thanks to some fantastic planning on my part, we only have pictures from Montevideo and Buenos Aires.... All the other ones are on the other card that I took out of the camera and stashed in the cabin safe, since I was worried about pick pockets in Uruguay, and if they got my camera, at least they wouldn't get all my precious vacation pictures, so then I forgot them in the safe.... we are hoping to get them back somehow, but if not, we just might have to take that cruise again.... or not. We left on the 31st and spent the night in SLC. We flew to Atlanta the next morning and were surprised how short that flight is, if you don't have to stop somewhere else. Kim and Duane picked us up and we had a nice dinner and visit with them. Then it was on to Santiago, Chile. Sam had been there on his mission, and so somewhat knew his way around. We rented a car and took off for our hotel. Amazingly we found it without too much difficulty. I was ready to sleep for a while, with the all night flight and being really tired, but no rest for the weary, Sam decreed on a city tour now. We set off on foot and after a very long and hot walk, found our red double decker bus and were off. It was fun. Next day we located the Santiago Temple and went for a session. We got talked into staying for a sealing session, and that went well too, with Sam squeezing my hand when it was time to say"Si". He met a nice brother from another town in the locker room and invited him to ride with us, since we were going to his home town that afternoon. He got a free ride home and we had our free tour guide! We met his 2 sweet sons and even got to go to a baptism in his ward. The next day we had another tour scheduled to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. Very nice too. We paid close attention on which roads to take, so we only got lost twice the next day, when we drove to Valparaiso to catch our Cruise. We had a balcony cabin this time.... that was the very best, we'll never be happy with anything less!.
The cruise was great, I say more about it when I finally get my pictures... hopefully.
Our stops were Puerto Montt, Puntarenas, Usuaia, Some Glacier, Cape Horn, Falkland Islands, Monte Video, and Buenos Aires. In Montevideo we did a city tour. It appeared a lot more drab and poor than Santiago. Everything was grey, most buildings were just concrete and not much green, since they were experiencing a severe drought. Somebody needed to point out to them that they were sitting on one of the largest fresh water bays in the world, and that they could put that water to good use, irrigating their parched parks and lawns!. We were not too impressed by Montevideo; Santiago was much nicer. Our final destination was Buenos Aires. Total chaos. After collecting our luggage, everyone was pressing towards the street and the place where the taxis stopped. There were roughly 4 lines of people, and 2-3 taxis would back up and people would load their stuff and drive off. It took us a while to understand what was going on.... this worked on the" greased palm" principle. If you paid off the guy with the clipboard, he would direct the taxi to you and load your stuff in the trunk, then you paid him for the taxi ride. If you didn't pay him first, he'd direct the taxi to a different line and you got to stand there until you had it figured out.. .A lot of things operated that way in Argentina. So, we finally got to our hotel and found the room adequate, if not quite as nice as the one in Chile. We went to talk to the guy at the desk to arrange for a city tour, when we started talking to fellow tourists... they had just been out walking around, when someone on a motorcycle drove by and cut his Rollex watch off his wrist!!! Argh!!! The guy was lucky he got to keep his hand. I later learned that if a woman was sporting an esspecially desirable rock on her finger, they wouldn't hesitate to use wire cutters, to relieve her of her ring.... and her finger!!! I left all jewelry in the hotel safe! That's when I discovered the missing photo card. We walked around for a block or so, me clutching my purse and my camera, and feeling very scared. The city tour was nice. We drove all over town, saw the casa rosita, of Evita fame (don't cry for me Argentina), one Evita monument and all sorts of other stuff. I will label the pictures. The next morning, after we had enjoyed breakfast, (and I must say, they do know how to dish up breakfast in south America! Nothing like the stale sweetroll and tang deal you get in US motels). At any rate, we were done with breakfast, sitting in the lobby, waiting for the tour bus to pick us up, when Sam said: look who is here! There are several million inhabitants in B. A., a gazillion tourists, tons of hotels, and all the other variables.... but who would be right there in the hotel lobby, but my visiting teaching companion and her husband here from our IF ward!!! What a coincidence! After a short visit with them, our bus arrived and we were off to the Goucho Ranch. We really enjoyed that, it was the best part of our B.A. visit. The bus dropped us off at the hotel, we collected our luggage, they let us use a room for a bit to freshen up, take a shower and then the taxi took us to the airport. The nice taxi driver noticed that I was hyperventilating in the back seat and took the next exit and then stopped so I could get out and take pictures of the Buenos Aires Temple!!! that just so happened to be right off the freeway on the way to the airport. After that, we thought, nothing could go wrong... little did we know. As soon as we got to the airport, we were there around 6pm, our flight was at 11... we had tons of time, so we thought, we were confronted with the saran wrappers. They insisted we needed to have all our luggage saran wrapped, to the tune of $12, all credit cards accepted. After they were done, they applied a large rubber stamp to our foreheads that said: "Sucker". After over an hour in line, we finally got to the ticket counter to check in. "Sorry, two of your suitcases are overweight, that will be $150 for each!" No, we didn't pay, but it took tooth and claw to rip thru the saran wrap to dig out our dirty laundry and lighten the suitcases. Now we got to drag that around in our carry-on, how delightful. Come to find out that the weight limit from here to there is 60 pounds but from there to here it is 23 kilos.... and their scales were off by 6kilos... if we had gone to the counter nextdoor, we would have passed!!! grrrr! The flight was long and totally uncomfortable, esspecially, since the guy next to me decided my shoulder would be a nice pillow and when I tried to push him back to his seat, he took over my entire seat, until Sam bonked him on the head and told him to leave his wife alone.
In Atlanta we had 2 hours to catch our connecting fligt... no problem, we thought, until we got to stand in line to get our passports checked for over an hour and a half, then it was coustoms, immigration and security, and 4 tramstops and the wrong gate at the end of the concurse.... and a missed flight. And they all couldn't care less. Matt later told me that airline passengers are no longer customers, but rather all potential terrorists. After not getting on the stand-by flight, we finally got on the next one, so instead of arriving happily at 10 am in SLC, we got there after 4pm. tired and grumpy with partially shrink-wrapped luggage. Our mood did change when a very cute and pregnant Dacia picked us up and took us to Buggy's were a very cute and adorable Grace was standing up and making funny faces and a very delicious dinner was waiting for us! On the drive home, all I could think was: A hot bath and my own bed, Yea!. It was great fun, but next time we are going to drive to our cruise port!. Sam was talking about Europe... I guess the FJ can handle a frozen Bering Strait.

A bit blurry, but that's Sam and me doing the tango NOT.
90% of the Buenos Aires residents live in high-rises.

El Buco area. By the big Soccer stadium

La Casa Rosita, with the famous balcony

The Evita memorial

Since so many live in apartments, they have their gardens on the balconys! I was puzzled why so many people had pulled off the freeway to the green areas next to the roads.... having picknicks... but if you don't have a garden, I guess you take what you can get.

Here hare some spontaneous tango dancers. The dresses are rather... skimpy and the dance is very suggestive. It looks very smooth and artistic, but sometimes it looks more like it belongs in the privacy of their bedroom!

Our surprise visit with the Hanks in our Hotel.

The Goucho ranch horse show, and the lady that greeted us with wine (or tang) and hot empanadas... south american meat pies... they were really good, I had two. Sam was stunned, because he thought he would have to talk me into having at least one bite.

And here is the Sammy Cowboy on his nippy horse. It tried and sometimes succeeded to take bites out of other horses rear ends. Mine only tried to brush me off by going really close to fence posts and under low branches. I told him in no uncertain terms that I didn't appreciate that behavior and yanked on the reins.... I think he understood English, because he started to behave a bit better after that.

The buenos Aires Temple.... isn't it pretty!

Our amazing shrink-wrapped luggage. We didn't see the big "Succer" forehead stamp until it was too late.(j/k)

2008-12-16T13:27:00.000-08:00

Here we are again, welcome to the backwards blog, business as usual. Here are our christmas trees, I tried something different this year, and we do like it. This small one is the downstairs one with all the little ornaments from Rosi, and the ones I painted. The other one is the big upstairs one, with pointsettas and a cosy little place for our christmas elf.

After we delivered the kids to their very happy Mommy, we visited all sorts of nice friends and family. Sam got to hold all the cute babies, and I didn't because I have a cold... sniff sniff. Can't get rid of the stupid thing.

Yes, Grace had a tongue, and a really cute one at that.

Anya had piano lessons while she was with us, and was very proudly playing "Jolly old Saint Nicolas".

Does this look like Aaron might have missed his mommy and is glad to have her back??

Bathtime was always an adventure, I wondered sometimes who got more wet, them or me?

This would be the cute little Gwynneth, she was starting to smile at Grandpa.

Sam was a hit with the bedtime stories

And also was the supervisor for the magnificent gingerbread house. Not Graham cracker, mind you, real gingerbread, and the smell of it conjured up all sorts of lovely childhood memories for me.

Here is Nikolaus tag morning.... They woke up around 5 am, I heard them whispering, so I just told them to go back to sleep, it was still night time We didn't hear from them again until 9!!!!

Anya was a great help with the truffle dipping, not to worry all of those hands were washed, with soap and then sanitized. Truffles were great, thanks to Emily and her amazing recipes.

Anya and Aaron decorated my christmas tree. They also put up the village underneath. It really got interesting when the "Monster-Barbie" appeared and tipped over the houses!

We spent Thanksgiving in Atlata with Kim and her family. Of course, just for us, they had arranged for a record cold spell,with temps almost down to freezing! As soon as we left it got back up into the 70's. I got them all excited about Emily's super truffles and Beka and I made several batches for Kim to take to family and friends.... she called the other day to make some more, I think the family enjoyed them all gone, so there were none left to take to friends.

Before we went to Atlanta, we spent a few days with Emily and Kids. No rest for the weary here, she made us read stories (Sam) and put kids to bed, cook, shop, make truffles and hug cute boys. And she had the loveliest weather for us, we actually begged to have the IC turned on. It was a wonderful visit as usual. Can't wait to go back and escape our icky snow.

My goodness these pictures are in disarray, here is some more Nikolaus unwrapping going on.

And here is some more Atlanta visit with Kim and kids.

My printer, inspite of Joe's relentless patience and good advice, does not work. I just composed my Christmas letter, and now I can't even print it, so maybe this will be my christmas greeting to everyone. A very merry Christmas from the Clarks. We want to wish you all the very best for this holiday season and for the new year. We had a lovely year, if you check my blog, you'll get a scetchy idea of what we have been up to. (I am not a very regular blogger, since I spend all the exciting times with my kids and expect them to blog about it, besided they have much more time than I do;).

So here are some pictures of our recent adventures in Munchkinland. Anya and Aaron came to visit for a week and now I am hopelessly behind in all my Christmas preparations, but had so much fun, I wouldn't trade it for anything. One of those Aaron looks will wrap you instantly around his little finger, and Anya's sweetness with everybody, esp. her little brother will melt your heart.

2008-10-02T14:29:00.000-07:00

Sit down, take a deep breath, close your eyes for a moment, you are not hallucenating, this is indeed another blog here from me... I am doing fine, thanks for the concern. It's just after reading Emily and Jen's blogs I got a bit winded and exhausted and decided to take it easy today... so I just stayed at the computer and one thing led to another. I figured out why I wasn't able to upload more pictures on the last blog... I had dropped the upload window clear out of the computer. I found it later, when I closed everything up, it was all smashed and crumbled on my desk , I had to iron and glue it and then figure out how to get it back into the computer...j/k. Anywho (to speak with Dacia) here are the pictures I didn't get to include last time, and for good measure I included the ones from yesterday. On Tuesday Sam came back from his State Farm Class (he has to take all sorts of classes, that's why he is so dang smart! ) and decided there was no use going into the office the next day, since they would be updating his computer system and he would just be in the way. So, how about a last trip to the Tetons, and while we were at it, lets leave a little early and go to Yellowstone as well. It took a grand total of about 3 seconds to convince me that that would be a swell idea. So I woke up at 3:30 am and couldn't go back to sleep (must have been the excitement) so I finally got up at 4:30 am and found Sam on the couch reading... no wonder I couldn't sleep. I sometimes wonder if he really can't sleep, or if the book is just too exciting that he takes every opportunity to read. So I got busy and grilled some salmon for our lunch, did a load of laundry and started to organize my cookbook. Then I packed the cooler and made some awesomely delicious salmon sandwiches for our lunch. Sam turned on the music...who was thinking about sleeping now! Well, actually, I was. It was around 6 am now and I was really tired. So we did in deed manage to sleep until 8:30 and were on our way by 9. It was a glorious day and we were determined to have fun. We went past Island Park and Herriman State Park... remember? The fall colors were in full bloom, swing.... what are fall colors in??? But I was so busy on the phone with Emily that I didn't even think of taking any pictures.. Oh well, there were more to come. Yellowstone was lovely and before long we got to see 2 elk, a coyote and a buffalo. Most of the other animals must have been on leave. After working all summer long at photo ops for the tourists they had earned their vacations. Wonder where they went. At any rate, It was very lovely and we were not unduely pestered by the animals. We decided to take a different route this time, a little longer, but one we had not been on for a while. So we missed most of the geysers, but got lots of the pretty water falls. It brought back all sorts of memories of family reunions and trips past. We got to see Gibbon falls and upper and lower Yellowstone falls etc... They were still as pretty as ever. By the time we reached Yellowstone lake it got quite dark and cloudy and it wasn't long before we had several cloudbursts. Nice. All the smushed bugs got washed off the car. By the time we got to the Tetons, it was nice and dry again, and we went right to the Oxbow, where I got some pretty fall color pictures. Problem is, you gotta be there in the morning or the sun is all wrong. It was still pretty, but the pictures would have been better with the sun in the east. We went on to Jackson and discovered a couple of new art galleries we hadn't seen before and quite liked. Since I had thoroughly endulged myself for lunch... homemade zucchini bread and out of this world Salmon sandwiches yes, Emily, I will post both recipes in the recipe blog after I am done withthis one. I decided to go easy on dinner. So while Sam got himself a double burger at Wendy's I was going to have a yoghurt.... until he put that strawberry shake with whipped cream and a cherry on top in front of me... try at least a little, I brought 2 spoons... when I could see the bottom of the cup I realized that he had brought 2 spoons... maybe he had wanted some of this too??? Allright! I walked for almost an hour and a half this morning, okay? Well, that's it, I think I am out of stuff to say, so I might as well stop. Love you all lots.

Yellowstone river by fishing bridge, right by the lake. Sam said that half a century ago his very words here, he used to fish here and there were tons of fish.. this time there were none, you'd think he'd leave a few for later, greedy little bugger.

Here are the rest of the Oregon, Washington etc pictures. We spent a morning at the Portland Temple.

This is at the Parliament building in Victoria, Sam wanted his picture taken with Lizzy and Phil. I think he is the best-looking of the 3.
Here is our favorite beach in Washington: Ruby beach. Last time I got my feet soaked. This time it was Sam's turn.

Pat's birthday. We almost needed a firetruck to take care of the candles.

The totem pole is in Victoria, part of the museum exhibit. And that's all folks.

2. annual post... or is it already the 3rd?

2008-09-25T19:07:00.000-07:00

The sunken gardens

Japanese gardens Italian Gardens
Family pictures at Bonnie's
Ferry ride to Vancouver Island Sam's Birthday Museum , Victoria by night

Alysia said she wanted a new post and that people really read it. I seriously doubt that. But I will humor her anyways. Sam and I haven't been up to too much lately, just the usual travelling. The weather is definitely getting a bit more brisk, esp. at night. I will get really unhappy if my tomatoes freeze. I bought 5 plants at $3.95 a piece and so far I have harvested 5 tomatoes... that makes them a bit pricey. Zucchinis are doing great, as well as cucumbers and beans.

I have been exercising most days for the past 4 months, and it finally seems to be paying off, I don't get winded anymore when I walk up from the basement. After hearing that 84 year old Carlo runs after a bus and catches it.... I thought it was time I was less of a couch potato.

Last month Emily and I had a very enjoyable time at Education Week in Provo. Of course we had to deal with one major interruption on Thursday..... but little Grace and her new heart were well worth missing a day of classes! We even talked Dacia into joining us on Friday in the evening and it was even more fun with the 3 of us. Got to do that again and see if we can't recruit a few more to come, like Buggy and Jen next time.

Sam and I took off for a week to celebrate everybody's birthday, or so it seemed. We went to see Bonnie and family and celebrated Sam's birthday, then on to Linda's house to celebrate Matt's birthday, only he wasn't there, so we partied with Megan and kids and had a good time anyways. Then at the end of the week we went to Sheila's to wish Pat a happy birthday. In between we made it to Vancouver Island to see Victoria by night very romantic, Butchard Gardens still my very favorite, I got to see it twice, the 2nd time Sam read his book and I went alone and all the annoying people were gone! Sidney by the sea they have the most awesome art galleries and of course the Museum of British Columbia and the Parlament building which is lit up really cool at night and the very fancy Empress Hotel built for Queen Victoria's visit. I was always so impressed by Emily and Dacia's small print in their blogs... but see, I figured it out, I am awesome too now!

Sam and I like to just get into the car and go when we travel. Rarely do we make long range arrangements other than calling diverse relatives and announcing our imminent arrival. So we had a leisurely breakfast with Megan, and then mosied on to catch the ferry to Canada. We had some idea where, no idea when... someone said they sailed every two hours. Just for the heck of it, I gave them a call.... not every 2 hours, 2 sailings a day, and the last one was at 2 pm, we would need to be there at noon to get on.... considering that we were still about 4 hours away and it was already 11:30, I would say our chances here were slim to none... ups. Well now, there are other fairies but those would not take us to Canada, only ferries would. So I contacted choice # 2, leaving from Port Angeles... yes, there was one leaving at 5pm, and with reservations we needed to be there by 4:15.... no problem, we'd have time to stop for lunch! We almost missed that one too, the roads are a lot longer than they look! Thank goodness my blindness was temporarily interrupted to suddenly locate a freeway that went the way we wanted to go I had totally not seen it before and we were only about 1 exit away from it. So we charged ahead and skidded into the terminal at 4:18... without a stop for lunch, gas or even potty! But the beauty of a reservation is, you still get into the first lane and are one of the first to get on! The ferry ride over was perfect. The water totally smooth and the weather warm, so I hung out at the front of the boat "Bug" heisst das auf deutsch.... and watched for seals and enjoyed the wind in my hair. We had a lovely hotel room and even enjoyed the benefit of a fridge and microwave occasionally it does pay to plan ahead.

Getting back home was less fun. Peaches were ripe, pears were ripe and I was the only one to do something about it. Well, it's all canned and bottled and frozen now, and after a nice massage this afternoon, life looks good again. I'll throw in some pictures now, who knows where they'll end up, I am sure you can figure out what they are. Well, as you might have noticed, it did not turn out exactly as planned. All the pictures are at the beginning again, and in a totally jumbeled fashion, to top it off, I had several more pictures I wanted to add, but somehow the program won't let me, so you'll have to peruse our photo albums when you come to visit.

Home at last... for how long?

2008-07-16T14:43:00.000-07:00

Glacier

yellowstone New look for front and backyard

coit tower, San Francisco

Bonnie and kids back home in Moscow one of our babybirds in the backyard

snow on top of Logan pass at Glacier

Stanford University Redwoods

Fishermen's wharf, San Francisco
Golden Gate bridge Trolley in SF

Looking at this year's photo album, it seems we had a major trip for every month. I feel a bit exhausted, and wouldn't mind staying home for a while. The yard looks fabulous, esp. since Sam and I put in some real muscle in the front and back, ripping out whole flowerbeds and doing them over.

Of course, we did our monthly trip.... right after I got back from visiting with Emily in Vegas, I had a short week to recover and it was time to help Bonnie get back home. She had spent almost a month with us, having fun and visiting, but it was so much more hectic than we had planned, that she needs to come back soon, so we can do all the stuff we had planned but never got around to. So we drove to Moscow, in 2 cars, and then took the short cut thru Glacier and Yellowstone and the Tetons home. Glacier is still as lovely as ever, they had just opened the week before and were busy with road construction, lots of snow still at the top. It was so nice to see all the lakes and reservoirs full. And the wild flowers were just beautiful and so abundant.

I guess I never posted any pictures from our San Francisco Trip. It was great fun and we had the time of our lives. Sam had grown up in Palo Alto; and had an Aunt in San Francisco, so those were all his old stomping grounds and I had a superb tour guide. I was so impressed by Stanford. What a beautiful University. What a lucky guy to have gone to school there. I loved the Redwoods too. (Emily said it would be easier to do my writing first and then do the pictures... we shall see... well, the pictures are a horrible jumble... maybe I can add some sense to them.

Sam's Father's Day Gift

2008-06-22T15:53:00.000-07:00

Here is Sam's Father's Day gift from Marti and Bonnie. They took him to Bear World where he got to feed some baby bears. He wasn't so sure he wanted to but the video seems to show him having the time of his life. I've rarely seen him smile so much! Sam actually got to feed all 6 baby bears. the trainers put 3 blue pallets on the ground, turned off the electric wire and the 3 cubs hopped on and were ready. They each had 5-7 bottles of Lamb's milk (I didn't know lambs gave milk). And all the happy feeders got to rotate thru feeding one bottle at a time. Most of them were little kids, who were a bit reluctant to be so close to a bear. Not Sam. He was petting and rubbing them and really interacting. I almost wished we could have brought one home for him. The whole feeding took over an hour, so I think he definitely got his money's worth. It sure looks like this was the best Father's day gift ever. (I wonder how they'll top that one next year.) As you can see, Sam petted everything, even warthogs. I was a bit more selective.....the baby deer was my favorite.

After bear world Marti and Bonnie prepared a deluxe dinner.... Sam sure was happy (ham, twice baked potatoes and corn on the cob).

Mother's Day, Baby Blessing andSoggy Northwest trip

2008-05-28T08:20:00.001-07:00

These two got cut out of the middle for some reason. You'll know where they fit when you get there.

This is just an after-thought, of course it pops up at the beginning... These lovely Rhododendron were in bloom everywhere in Oregon in a riot of different colors. Almost like dogwoods in the south everyone had several in their front yards. I love them, even in the rain.

Part of the group that participated in little Grace's blessing. We did it at Alysia and Topher's Poolhouse, which was thoroughly lysoled beforehand and everybody had to desinfect their hands first and was not allowed to breathe on her. Grace was such a darling little doll that evening. She was wide awake and looked around and never said a peep. We had a little birthday celebration for Jared afterwards with authentic mexican piniata and all. Here is little Aaron, longingly eyeing the birthday cake.

Alysia with adorable Grace, dressed in a dream of a blessing dress made by her grandma Andersen. Emily and her birthday boy Jared.

We had a girls (and 2 boys) lunch special , Topher was kind enough to babysit his daughter and Buggy and I went and met Emily and Dacia in Am. Fork. Caden was a doll and Gavin was his usual self (very cute and silly). Somehow the stupid thing cut out a whole bunch of pictures, so now, of course they will end up at the beginning, oh well, you should be used to my very unprofessional blogging by now.

I Iwas invited to a Mother's day dinner at Jen's... by Emily. They all collaborated and fixed a super fantastic dinner with virgin Margaritas and the whole works. The kids misunderstood and ran thru the house proudly announcing: we're drinking alcohol !!!

Here is a majority of my cute kids and great cooks

Grandpa Sam is always very popular for reading books.

Here are the cute producers of this marvellous fruit torte. It didn't just look good, it also tasted amazing.

Aren't they all just adorable! Eat your hear out, they are all mine, and I even have several more, just as amazing and cute!

Now you know where they got it from......Baby Grace, of course!

Last week we visited Sheila for a big birthday bash . First we saw them all in Portland, then we played in the rain on the coast for a while, and finally we met up by Bend for more partying. Lots of fun, not very warm and rather wet. We actually didn't have to go that far, we could have had cold and wet right here in IF.
Here Sheila is unwrapping her birthday gift from Sam... some books, what did you expect.

This is a little Volcano in the Sunriver/Bend area. The day we got there, the weather was pretty good, so we got to go to the top of it, enjoy the super view and wander thru the lava fields.

Christi said this stuff is called Scottish Broom. I know it from Europe as Ginster. It was in bloom all along the Oregon coast and rather pretty.

We admired some rather noisy sealions in Newport by the harbour.

A spectacular view of the Oregon coast. Sam and I never get tired of it.

This one is for Emily, and she knows why.

Happy first of May in Idaho Falls

2008-05-01T15:06:00.001-07:00

May 1st in Idaho Falls, they had 6" in Pocatello this morning. I think Spring got cancelled.

Grace's room is almost ready for her, we spent last weekend painting polka dots and sewing curtains and crib stuff. Here are a few cute people holding darling Grace. I got to feed her, then Sam rocked her to sleep. We are quite the team

Marti's Andrew graduated in Mechanical Engeneering from Byu. We came to celebrate with them.

On the way back from Atlanta, we decided on a shortcut.... I-70 all the way to I-15, without the cutoff thru Price... Wow what scenery! I hadn's seen the San Raphael Swell in years. It was like being back in BYU Geology class on a field trip. Amazingly beautiful, even if it took us a whole hour and a half longer, it was well worth the extra time.

Spring in Atlanta, that was in early April, Sam took me to the local Botanical Garden, and we almost melted, that day, it decided to be 90 degrees, and 90% humidity. But the flowers were lovely.

On the way home from Dollywood (in the Great Smokey Mountains) we stopped at the Forbidden Caves and admired the upside down bats. They really looked stuffed to me, but the guide insisted that they were real ones, just sleeping now.

And here is Dollywood. Kim and kids just finished the 2nd or 3rd time on the "Raging- Rapids -get- totally- soaked" ride. Must be fun to go "squoosh, squish", with every step for the rest of the day, they couldn't get enough of it. Sam and I really enjoyed the international Dance Festival. We got to see the Mexicans, the Russians and the Irish.

Here is Baby Grace, fairly new, when I got to hold her for the first time.

So, it looks like I did it again, must be a slow learner. I got all the pictures in the wrong order, newest at the top, oldest at the bottom.
And I thought I was a total genious, after just having slaved over the quarterly Family News Letter, I thought, now wouldn't it be slick, if I just pasted that whole thing into my blog.... it all seemed to work, and then it told me to forget it, it was a bad file or something. So since I didn't feel to write this all again, you just get the abbreviated version, if you want to know more, read the family news letter.

Writing this and looking at all the pictures, I realized that Sam and I really have been on quite a few trips this year already. Blame it on the weather. Blowing snow and temps in the "- "range are just not our favorites. If they don't cancel spring and summer up here, we should stay put for a bit.... little Grace permitting.

another dreary February....lol

2008-02-12T14:22:00.000-08:00

(in spite of my numerous efforts to get the pictures and text together, the blog would not cooperate, so excuse the slightly off-set text)

January ended on a high note with Dacia and the Topherbugs coming for a weekend visit.
We got way more snow than we had imagined, so rather than languish in the totally white world of Idaho Falls, Sam and I decided to escape:

Sam looks good in orange, so there was nothing keeping us.

So, here we are on board the Norwegian Sun, leaving lovely Miami, for even warmer climes.

we got a rousing welcome in Roatan, Honduras

Here is a view of our cool cruise ship

Main attraction in Roatan: the Iguana farm, and again it was reiterated: tasts just like chicken. Actually the tour guide was way more impressed by the fact that this iguana farm also was home to 3(!!!) chickens!

How about a piggy back ride.

Or way up in a tree

Here is the local Roatan LDS chapel. Note the 8' chain link fence and the barbed wire on top.... they don't like it when their pews and carpet walks off.

The beaches and the water were fabulous. Wish I had that out my back door all the time. But the poverty was also there...

This is now Belize. We are walking thru the Jungle! I got a little souvenir from there. Some sort of bug bit me, and kept biting me even days later....

They had some cool ruins in Belize. It was almost too warm there, we both got a bit of a sunburn.

Next stop: Cozumel. We decided we wanted to visit some more ruins, since we liked the last ones so much, so we took a small boat to Playa del Carmen, and then a bus to Tulum. I have been there 3 times now and I still love it. Sam really enjoyed it too.

The sun came thru the window on the left for spring equinox, at the left corner of the big building for summer solstice, at the right corner for fall equinox and an other window not in this picture for winter solstice..... These Mayans were amazing. However, in a previous visit our mormon tourguide said the sun shone thru that window on April 6th... I guess we'll never know unless we go again on one of those specific dates.

The Promenade deck. We almost walked a mile! And we brought our exercise clothes, so we could go to the gym.....

The obligatory towel folding class. here we have a sitting elephant and a bunny.

Sunset over the caribbean, as seen from my seat in the dining room

Formal night. It is too bad you can't get a better view of my fancy new dress... it cost a fortune... (99cents at Ross)

Grand Stirrup Caye at the Bahamas, our last stop at NCL's private island. A fun spot for all sorts of water sports. We did some swimming and snorkeling, walked all over the place, and enjoyed the warm weather and the sunshine.

It was kind of hard to come back home, light snow in Chicago, and 2-3 feet of snow in our backyard!

January 2008

2008-01-23T14:18:00.000-08:00

This is a very different kind of Blog, called "a backwards blog" It needs to be read from the bottom up. New scientific findings have shown that reading up unstead of down stimulates the brain in certain ways, making you smarter.(Actually what happend is that I downloaded the pictures in the wrong order and it would be too frustrating to get them in the opposite order now. So, enjoy: Here are our parting views of the Oregon rainforest. It was totally beautiful

and we hated to leave, but Sheila and Pat were waiting for us. Everything was wet and dripping, moss covered all the trees and sometimes ferns grew out of the moss. Otherwise ferns covered the forest floor and every few miles we came across another little streamlet. How would it be to live here.... totally out of our price range, I bet.

Here are a few views of our favorite Oregon coast. We are madly in love with Arcadia Beach. Sam has actually checked on real estate prices: With ocean view: totally unaffordable. 10 miles inland: almost unaffordable. Would you ever come to see us, if we moved there? Seeing all that green and no snow was just so nice. We had been driving thru Portland the day before, and I had thought how much I would love to go and see the ocean.... a few minutes later Sam mentions how silly it would be to drive all the way out to the beach, but how much he would love to do that. I know why I married him!

Look at that amazing rainbow we came across, just north of Tillamook! I'll take rainbows over blizzards any day!

On our drive out to the coast, it got more and more sunny, and the snow from the coastal range got less and less until everything was just lush and green. Ahhhh. What a sight for winter worn eyes! Tillamook, by the way is the location of the famous cheese factory, you can watch it being made, sample it, have their famous icecream, and enjoy a hot lunch. Good clamchouder.

We spent a day in Portland with Christi. She had the day off and took us all over the place. We saw the famous Rose gardens (there were actually some hardy roses blooming, the huge park and all sorts of beautiful bridges, even the one the Golden Gate Bridge was patterned after. Christi is a great cook and has a formidable DVD collection. We had a great time with her.

My cold was mostly gone, and right before we left Bonnie's I got to hold little Zander.

The night before Linda, Heidi and Megan came to visit, as they were all in Moscow, celebrating Kalee's birthday.

Bonnie and Zander came home from the hospital on Saturday afternoon and needed some peace and quiet, so we got dispatched to take the 2 little girls to the local childrens science center. We all had a great time. Here Sam and Kenya are playing the irrigation pipes.

Amara is getting her face painted. She wanted a flower.

There was a cool place to read and play games, so grandpa got to read stories.

A visit to the hospital. Kenya and Amara with their new baby brother.

And here is little Zander in all his newness. Cute litte one with lots of dark hair. He turned out to be rather noisy.

While Bonnie and Aaron were in the hospital we got the full benefits of being grandparents. Grandpa's story time was a definite favorite. I have never seen 2 better behaved little girls... that is until their parents came back. Babysitting for just a few days has it's advantages, the newness of it doesn't wear off that soon and they are soooo good. It was fun.

Bonnie decided that things were a bit more urgent than originally thought, and we needed to come a day sooner, that, of course was right after a massive snowstorm. Roads were closed and a 1 1/2 hour trip took 3 hours, but we got through just fine in our little tank, and the countryside was truly beautiful. As soon as we arrived, she and Sam went grocery shopping, and then Aaron came and they went off to the hospital. Zander was born that night. 9lbs, 3oz.

Since we had the extra day in Spokane, we decided to visit the temple there. It is one of the small ones on the southern outskirts of the city. It was very nice to be there.

We had promised Bonnie to come to Moscow, when she had her baby. The plan was to leave on Wednesday, and she would have the baby on Thursday, but the weather was going to be really bad, so it would be safer to leave on Monday. Sam called me at 11 with this change of plans and expected me to be packed and ready to go in an hour. It took a little longer, but we left by 2. Since it is a little tight at Bonnie's, we decided to spend a couple of days with Linda in Spokane, which is just 1 1/2 hours from Moscow. We left with nice blue skies, and the roads were not too bad. Even Montana was clear. Once we got to the passes in northern Idaho, though, it was a totally different story. The area from Coeur D'Arlene on was total winter wonderland. And the whole time in Spokane it snowed as well.

This is Anita's house in St. George... Does that qualify for any citations Emily?

Sam's story time is always popular. And having a leg that accomodates 2 little tykes helps too.

Cute Caden helping with Christmas unwrapping

A crazy rabid squirrel.... what can I say

That was Emily there on my phone, so rudely interrupting Sam and my first Christmas in Idaho together. I guess she missed us, since we spent last Christmas with her. We missed her too, and were glad to be invited to visit with them later, stopping in Provo with Dacia and Bugs and their cute spouses.

My grandsons are cuter than yours! No arguments here.

Jen's parents flew in and out of Idaho Falls, separately.... which meant 4 trips up here. We cut it down to 2 with shuttle rides, but they still managed to get snowed in here with us, something we had fervently hoped for. So we were prepared with a turkey dinner and a real neat Christmas eve celebration with all of them, what a treat, and then we go to reminisce when Anya awakened us bright and early at 6 am with: Get up, get up, it's time to get the stockings!! Ah, Christmas morning with little kids, there is nothing quite like it!

Early on Christmas Eve, Sam's big Christmas gift was delivered. Since it had been snowing like mad all day, I felt it would be appropriate to let him have it early. Of course, I could have let him shovel for 3 hours, maybe he would have appreciated it even more the next day. But that seemed almost cruel. And he surely did appreciate it. Lots.

So, depending on whether you followed my instructions, this would be the beginning or the end of my blog. You can quickly test it, if you read it from bottom to top, you should be a ton smarter now.

A merry Christmas to all!

2007-12-16T17:31:00.000-08:00

It is a little over a week before Christmas, and my Christmas letter has been written, but not sent yet, I think I am doing well, considering that all the gifts to all 8 kids have been personally delivered.(Which means that they had to have been bought or made and wrapped previously). The house is as decorated as it will get, and thanks to Dacia, I even have 2 kinds of very yummy Christmas cookies (minus a few samples that went south with my able bakers).
So, I guess I am leisure to sit back and send everyone a very merry Christmas from the Clark residence. We have had a great and busy year, travelling here, there and Yonder. We especially liked Yonder. The weather was great there.
All 8 kids are now happily married, talk about a feeling of accomplishment! And Sam and I took very deserved vacations after the last two, to celebrate. In Early March we took off for Atlanta... we always call it driving to Atlanta, but we rarely go straight there. In Spring we took the detour by Nauvoo and enjoyed a Temple session in the new Temple there. Then we sailed thru Atlanta and landed in Orlando for a Disney adventure at Epcot Center (this time of year is super, no lines). Next stop was Key West. I had always wanted to drive on that cool highway along all the Keys to the end. It was as fantastic as I had expected it to be, just not long enough. But we had to be back in Atlanta for our grandson Daniel's birthday. Atlanta in Spring is absolutely wonderful. They have "weeds" growing there, that we cultivate as flowers, like Azaleas and Wisterias, Dogwoods and Red buds. Coming back here was a rather chilly awakening... no spring until the end of April.
For the summer we took several trips to Yellowstone and the Tetons, and the obligatory trips to Salt Lake and surrounds to see any number of kids. We had a family reunion of the Johnson Clan in September in the Yellowstone area, Bonnie moved to Moscow, ID later that month, and we went to visit them at their new home in connection with a trip to Portland for a niece's wedding and Sam's convention in Coeur d' Arlene. We actually managed to do a quick jig into the Olympic Rain Forest to visit a sweet brother in law and his family. In Fall we took a trip to Montana to visit some loving family in Bozeman and for a daytrip to the Billings Temple. We had a early Thanksgiving trip to Atlanta, (see the previous blog). Another early Thanksgiving family trip to St. George to be with the 4 Johnson kids and their families, where Emily and Alan excelled as the best Turkey Chefs ever.
We had our first snowstorm for conference weekend, which we did not like at all.
That pretty much wraps it up. So, all in all, we had a great year and we feel very blessed in every way.

This weekend Alysia and Dacia came to visit and to play. Alysia made a gorgeous wreath.

Dacia took a nap after making the most delectable chocolate cookies.

Alysia and I made fancy clay figures

This is our european themed downstairs tree with straw and wood ornaments personally imported from my Aunt in Austria

Here is my fancy Frog in the Wreath ornament once it got finished.

Dacia, the cookie chef par excellence, ...

and the dutiful cookie samplers (that could't quite make up their minds and needed "just one more sample" to be totally sure that those cookies were totally delectable.

My finished products: Frog in wreath, sledding bunny, bear in stocking and mouse on candy cane.

Alysia was concentrating very hard on her masterpiece, that turned at really cool.
So, a very merry Christmas to all of you, please stop by to see us for a bit (if you can catch us), be would love to visit. All the best for the New Year from the Clarks.

Back east trip

2007-10-30T10:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, since these 2 pictures just magically disappeared from the blog, I uploaded them again. The Liberty bell in Philadelphia and Alysia fashioning a fall/Halloween table runner at her visit for conference weekend.

We had a little snow storm for conference weekend. It took Sam and his brother 2 hours to shovel all this mess. Thank goodness it was gone by the end of the week. Since all the leaves were still on the trees, it created lots of power outages and a big mess of broken limbs all over.

Alysia and Topher came to spend the weekend and the computer just ate the picture, so just imagine it.
The following weekend we started on our big trip back east. It seemed to expand as we went along. Since we were driving by Chicago, Sam decided I ought to at least see a brief little bit of it, so we drove by the Navy Pier and along Michigan Ave. I was very impressed.

On Sunday we arrived in Kirtland and visited the Temple there. It was impressive, but also depressing. The reorganized church owns and maintains it, and we had to sit thru their little lecture, and just had to shake our heads on how much they have the whole thing watered down. According to them, Joseph had a "spiritual experience" that made him start the church, and after his death, the church split into 5 or 6 different groups, some going here and some there, they stayed put and had Joseph's son as their leader...i.e. they are the real ones. Their mission is peace and love and understanding in the world. phew.

The LDS visitor's center and sights were much more inspiring and enjoyable. Here is the Whitney store, where Joseph arrived and stated, Br. Whitney, you have prayed me here, now what do you want. This is where the first school of the prophets was organized and where the word of wisdom was received and where the Father and the Son appeared to several of the brethren.

Next Stop: Palmyra. We started out with a Temple session. This is one of the small temples, where you need your own clothes and an appointment. All the windows are stained glass trees, with a big one representing the tree of life in the celestial room, and a partially clear window in one of the hallways, by Prs. Hinckley's request, so you can see the Sacred Grove in the distance.

Here is the Sacred Grove. Things have changed so much since we were last there. There is now a large visitor's center and a missionary guided tour of the Smith cabin, Smith homestead and then you get turned loose on the sacred grove. We had it all to ourselves and really enjoyed the experience. We were told that some of the trees, might have been there since Joseph's time, also the gentleman that the church purchased the land from, told them, that he had always felt that this ground was special, sacred and had instructed his sons to never cut down any of the trees.

This is the Smith Cabin, where Joseph had the visits from Moroni. I was surprised that he shared the room with his 5 brothers, there were 2 or 3 beds in the room. It must have been a bummer for them to realize that they had slept thru some of the most important moments of history.

Here is the Hill Cumorah, there is a big visitor's center there at the bottom as well.

This is the Whitmer farm, where the Church was organized and where Pres. Kimball presided over General conference in 1980, it was broadcast from here. They had built a large 3-ward chapel with a visitor's center for the occasion, in a style that would have been popular, had the church remained in the area. It made me think of our decisions when we came back from Germany the first time. One of our options was Seneca Army Depot in the Finger Lakes Area. We probably would have met in that chapel. But we chose to stay in Alabama, and so Dacia was born in Huntsville, instead of upper New York.

Here is a view of the Erie Canal that is close by.

The Gradin Press in downtown Palmyra, where the first Book of Mormon Printing took place. We learned that it took 2 years to finish those 3000 copies. The printing took a mere 7 months, but the leather binding took up the rest of the time. A very labor intensive process.

The Martin Harris Farm outside of Palmyra, that got mortgaged as collateral for the BoM printing.

And here we are at Valley Forge, this was George Washington's headquaters. We learned that it took a German, to whip the American troops in shape! General von Steuben was the one.

After spending a day in Boston touring all the historic sights, we took our way back via the Boston Temple. It's really pretty. One of these days we will go back and do a session.

Sam decided that I needed to see Manhatten. So we took a tour once around the island. This here is the famous bridge from Kate and Leopold and Newsies. We also saw Ground Zero, which is a large construction site at the time, 42nd street, the UN headquarters, the Empire State building and Central Park.

Here we are in Philadelphia. It was a hassle. They moved us off the Freeway because of an accident and from then on it was everyone for himself.(where the heck did my picture just dissapear to, and why is "because" blue and underlined? I'd rather have the picture of the liberty bell! If it does not reappear, I will add it somewhere else.)

At any rate, our map did not show where the historic areas were downtown, and there were not road signs either, so we just kept driving, until Sam finally rolled down my window and hollered at the guy in the car next to me. He informed us that we were going in the wrong direction.... and then the light turned green, and he was gone. We finally did find it, and a spot to park, and hussled off to see the sights, because by now it was very close to 5pm. We saw the Liberty bell and then were off to see Independence Hall.... sorry no more tickets for today, come back tomorrow! So we just kind of drifted around the famous buildings, and took pictures, when Sam encountered a nice Ranger (with his fly unzipped) who was taking the last group of tourists just where we wanted to go, and he invited us to join them. So we did get to see where the Declaration of Independence was signed after all!

Next Stop was DC. We stayed with Sam's niece Elizabeth and her husband in Baltimore and realized that she is a Kindred Spirit. I had never met her before, but we talked for hours, like we had known each other for ever. How nice.

Sam and I looked at all the monuments the first day. So I finally got to see the Vietnam memorial, where we found the name of Sam's best friend who got shop by a sniper the first week he was there. (should have gone on a mission like Sam, and he could be still alive). Then we saw the Korean War memorial and the 2nd world war one. I had never seen any of them. It was incredibly hot and humid and I felt boiled in my own juices. The next day it rained and it just made things more humid and unpleasant. But it was still a great day. Elizabeth was our personal tour guide and she took us to 2 smithsonians (air and space and Natural History). Then it was off to the Capitol, where Marti had arranged a personal tour with Sen. Larry Craig's office for us. This was really cool. We got to ride a little train from the Senatorial offices, underground to the Capitol. So many stairs and corridors and hallways... and all are beautifully decorated with murals, pictures and all sorts of statues. Every State is alotted 2 and they have to be either marble or bronze. Utah's is Brigham Young and Mr. Farnsworth (inventor of TV). Next stop was the Supreme court, where we caught a tour, and then the Library of Congress. They all were so beautifully decorated, I was greatly impressed. We had parked at the Union Station, even that was really beautiful. Unfortunately we ran out of day, before we ran out of things to see, so we definitely need to come back. We did a session at the Washington Temple, this time without a power outage, Emily, and it was really nice to be there with Sam.

Now where did this come from? This is constitution Hall in Philadelphia. Silly blog.

We parked under the cherry trees at the tidal basin with the Jefferson memorial in the background.

Here is the Washington memorial as seen from the Lincoln one across the reflection pool

Sam, pointing out the name of his friend at the Vietnam Memorial

Here we are at the Capitol

Brigham Young in the Capitol Rotunda

The Supreme Court

The Library of Congress

Elizabeth and her husband took us to Fort McHenry in Baltimore, where the "Star spangled Banner" was inspired and written. I learned a bit more US history, like what the War of 1812 was all about. Those silly Brits, tsk, tsk.

Finally we ended up at Kim's house in Atlanta. Here we are with some of the grandkids in front of their home in Monroe.

We took a day and saw the sights in northern Georgia. Here we are at a Pumpkin farm, where we went on my very first Hayride. That was fun!

It would have probably been more fun with real horses, instead of a tractor, but hey, it was still great.

I just couldn't resist this one.... I think Sam is telling me not to take a picture of him, or, maybe he is singing the aria of the naked frog from the opera I'm cold. Who knows. The waterfall was really pretty, and the forest thru which we walked to get there was really nice too.

This is Helen, in Northern GA, the totally Ueber-deutsche little town. I really wanted some Apfel strudel, but they were all out. But they had all sorts of German Chocolates and other stuff for the most astounding prices, I may add, so nobody bought any.

To finish up our visit, we went for a session in the Atlanta Temple. It is not very crowded now a days, since they have new ones in South Carolina and Birmingham. But it was still nice to go.

After that, we headed back to IF. We actually made it in 2 days.... leaving at 3am in Atlanta and driving all the way to New Mexico the first day, and then the rest of the way the next day, with a quick stop in Provo/Orem and Bountiful to visit some kids. We were very glad to hit our own bed at 2:30am that night! Now we need a long vacation to recover! But boy! was it ever fun!

Mommy's ABC's

2007-10-08T09:01:00.000-07:00

A - Attached or Single:

B - Best Friend:

C - Cake or Pie:

D - Drink of Choice:

E - Essential Item:

F - Favorite Color:

G - Gummi Bears or Worms:

H - Hometown:

I – Indulgence(s):

J - January or July:

K - Kids:

L - Life is incomplete without:

M - Marriage Date:

N - Number of Siblings:

O - Oranges or Apples:

P - Phobias/Fears:

Q - Favorite Quote:

R - Reason to smile:

S - Season:

T- Tag Three:

U - Unknown Fact About Me:

V - Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animals:

W - Worst Habit:

X - X-rays or Ultrasounds:

Y - Your Favorite Foods:

Z- Zodiac:

september activities

2007-10-03T18:02:00.000-07:00

Sam had a birthday and several of our sweet kids came to celebrate with him.

Marti came up to celebrate her birthday with us, and to go to the Idaho State Fair with us. Of course we picked the very hottest day of the year to go again! But it was fun.

Idaho State Fair, how did they get those huge things in here, I wonder.

No, she doesn't look like me in this picture, but, isn't she cute?

Sam and I went to Bozeman Montana for a long weekend and spent one day visiting the Billings, Montana Temple. It is one of the smaller Temples, but one number larger than the smallest ones. It sits kind of out in nowhere, but a very pretty setting with some yellow cliffs in the distance and residential areas all around.

We had some time to see some of the mountains in and around Bozeman. Debbie's parents and a sister live there. We were their guests and they showed us all around. It is a truly beautiful area, only problem is, it is as expensive as Park City and their summers are even shorter than ours.
The following weekend we had a fun dinner with all the kids in Bountiful, since Emily was in town. The babys were so cute, so I handed Alysia the camera to take some pictures. She did a good job, as can be seen in the following pictures. She was totally unauthorized to scroll thru all the pictures on the camera, though.... thats when this one was discovered and quickly passed around to everybody. We had not said a word about Sam's new boy-toy that he had gotten the day before. Yes, he is hugging his new FJ. So far it has only been driven in and out of the garage and frequently visited and drooled over, but it is in an accessible stall, for when the kids come and want to test-ride in it. (sorry, no test-driving for little kids, only for the big kid)

Baby Caden is getting bigger and cuter by the minute

Emily and Gavin are pretty cute too!

Yes, Anya did enjoy her chocolate pudding

The next day we visited Marti and Andrew in Provo and took a ride up to the BYU campus to visit the bookstore.

We were very offended that it snowed on us on the way back to Bountiful!
We enjoyed a fun early dinner with the Topherbugs and Topher's parents at our favorite mexican restaurant, and then did a quick stop at Emily and Jared's Clinton house where everybody was busy renovating.

Happy October

2007-10-03T15:44:00.001-07:00

Look at me! I still exist...and you thought I was gone for good

2007-08-13T09:41:00.000-07:00

Please note the flying fish here

help! the lions are coming!

Alan the master photographer in action at Marti's Wedding luncheon

Some of my darling family

At the Bountiful temple with Sam's kids

Newport Beach

remember this house?

We had a great lunch here....remind me to give you those little rootbeer barrel candies I picked up for you

Life has been a bit hectic lately, besides, blogging is not really my thing, I just do it to please Emily.

We have been busy since my last entry. First we had Marti's wedding with 2 receptions, one in Pocatello and the next day in Sandy. They ended up on the 2 hottest days of the year so far, but we totally lucked out. In Pocatelle, half way thru the reception, we got a storm, not too bad where we were it was very sheltered, so we just got the 20degree temp drop; and then in Sandy, we got a torrential downpour right before the reception, but then the rain stopped and the wind blew everything dry, and by the time the reception started, it was lovely.

We took of with Kim and Sara right afterwards on our way to southern Cal, where Sara had a competition for some Highschool stuff. Unfortunately it was the night of the big fire in Central Utah, so we got to go on the 89, since the I 15 was closed, landing us in St. George around 3am. We stayed with Sam's Sister Anita, who is starting to get used to our coming at unusual hours. We got to CA the next afternoon and were delighted with the nice hotel room Emily had found for us. We spent the next week having way too much fun. We went to Seaworld, The San Diego Zoo, Tiuana Mexico (lots less tourist, since you now need a passport and a huge long line to get back into the US). The San Diego Temple, the new Newport Beach Temple and the LA Temple, to the beaches and of course to Disney Land. What a blast.

After that we had some peace and then it was off to the family reunion at Harriman state park. It was so good to see and rub everybody. I had a good time visiting with everybody and rubbing a bunch of them the right way. The food was excellent, the company was great, the accomodations were very good (thanks to Sheila) and we enjoyed ourselves very much. After that all of our kids decended upon us and had a blast. Sam and I got a taste of what it would be like to run a bed and breakfast, and decided that that would not be one of the things we would consider to do after retirement. It was very nice to see everybody, though. It got a bit crowded and hectic when a number of Sam's kids came aswell to stay with us. Bonniewas moving to Moscow, ID and was temporarily homeless, so she and her family stayed with us for a few days, while Sam, Aaron and Andrew moved everything up there. When the boys got back we got Sheila and Pat for a while to stay with us while they attended a niece's wedding.... And just so things wouldn't get too boring, I decided to twist myself into a pretzel at Yoga and totally put out my back. I have been in agony ever since, until Sam finally had had it and talked to one of the Doctors in our ward. This nice gentleman put me in his truck and drove me to the hospital, across the street from the church and administered a steroid shot, and now I can live again. Life is actually pretty good again and I am looking forward to visiting the great Northwest to be at Kira's wedding and visit Bonnie and visit Linda and go to Coeur D'Alene and maybe go to Glacier and to Butchard gardens......and go home and crash. Life hasn't been boring since I married Sam! The year is only a little over half over and we have already filled one photo album!

Okay, since blogs w/out pictures are boring, here are some pictures, you can figure out what they are.

Now don't you wish you hadn't pestered me to post another!

2007-06-29T11:35:00.000-07:00

Alan's Birthday at Topherbugs

Aaron had a good time, it looks like, while Jen is dodging the drool.

One of our babies. I found him on the bottom step of the patio making a racket. When I came out to take his picture, he hopped off.

Man, it's hot in here! Could someone pass the iced lemonade please?

Baby batch #2.

Mom and dad are busy feeding the little ones.

Buggy made lucious fruit pizzas. Great Birthday

party!

I never realized that you could literally "suck face". But here is a very good example, expertly executed by Joe and Dacia! Great Job!

And for the fashion conscious among you, here is Joe modeling the newest in late summer wear for the discerning gentleman.

Have a great week! Life is still great. I have a blast working in the yard in the mornings until it gets too hot around eleven, whe have had some sweltering heat here... I think it almost got up to 90! This more than makes up for the miserably cold winter!

Yellowstone with the topherbugs and other fun stuff

2007-06-16T18:42:00.001-07:00

Attempt #2: With Alysia's help...I've actually gotten some pictures on here now and I haven't thrown the computer out of the window yet. Awesome Alysia!

Here is a picture of the beautiful flowers Emily sent me for my Birthday, Thank you again! They are still looking fairly pretty, even a week later.

We had a lovely Birthday party at Alan and Jen's
house. We had an awesome Crepe Buffet. Everybody showered me with gifts. And I now have a bike that I enjoy riding around, with a super comfy seat. (Thanks to Aaron, my brakes are functional too now)

Thank you Alan and Jen!

This is me being stylish and glamorous! Getting lost in all my millions of gifts from my doting husband.

This was a really cute picture of Aaron that Alysia took. From my Birthday party again.

And here we are with the TopherBugs in Yellowstone. This was the big bus/van that the park rangers used to take tours around the park.

Sam took off Friday, and we met everybody in the Park.

And then we had a serious problem with a body in our trunk!!

She said it looked comfy and just climbed in. Her husband joined her later, but those photos aren't appropriate for public viewing...so we closed the trunk. hehe. But they found the "Open" button on the inside...it glows in the dark! So, luckily, they're still with us.

Here is Old Faithful when it erupted. It wasn't half as impressive as I remember.

And...we could hardly find it!! There weren't any Japanese pointing it out for us!!

Sammy wouldn't listen, and got too close to the Buffalo. Luckily he did not get speared.

No comment. Beautiful....geyser.

Alysia hi-jacked my camera....and took her own photos of what SHE called "pretty scenery"...personally, I think MY husband's is the prettiest scenery. tee hee hee

Alysia and Topher tried every spot in the park, to see which spot kissed best. Her Andersen in-laws found a new slogan for the two of them..."been there, kissed there". Fits quite perfectly.

This is Jenny Lake. My husband is pretty darn cute. Doesn't he look happy!! Well, ok, so maybe he doesn't look happy. Pictures are deceiving though. He really was happy!!! Promise!! We're still working on the "cheese" part...he doesn't really get that that's when he's supposed to smile...

And this was a parting shot of the Tetons with pretty Spring flowers that were in bloom everywhere.

Alysia was kind enough to type this, because I am way too slow for her. She also pretty much wrote what she wanted on a few occasions, so I don't take responsibility for it. She gets all the credit too.

first attempt-- Yellowstone Park with the Topherbugs

2007-06-16T13:26:00.000-07:00

So, here is my first attempt at posting. Emily explained it in detail and I took notes.

Yesterday we met the Topherbugs at West Yellowstone and spent the day with them, looking at Geysers, mudpots, mountains, waterfalls and wildlife. We had superb weather and a great day.

I Want to Play, Too!

2007-06-12T11:19:00.000-07:00

Look... mummy has a blog now, too! She wanted to update us on her life, or lack thereof, so check back often and leave her lots of nice comments!