Movie Nights

With Janene flat on her back, we are getting to watch some movies we have never seen. We watched a movie called The Bachelor that compared unmarried men to wild mustangs. Our RS Prez, who is a wonderful woman, devoted entirely to her calling, she brought over about twenty movies. The next was a Tom Hanks film called BIG. It was a cute film that made you think how important it is to have a childhood but also that you don't want to go back and do it all over again. It would help if you had a TV Guardian to watch it. Our favorite (so far) is this Sidney Poitier movie called "A Patch of Blue". I recommend this movie to anyone, but especially to our kids. It gives you an idea of what it was like to grow up in the 50's and 60's, although the lives portrayed are anything but what my life was like with kind and loving parents who taught us that all of us are children of God. We have more in store for us including chick flicks from our RS Prez. They include Shall We Dance, Return to Me, My Fair Lady, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Must Love Dogs, Miss Congeniality, The Family Man, Tuck Everlasting, Sabrina, and Chocolat. Any suggestions on which to see next?

Clawfoot Girl is Home

These beautiful feet belong to my bride. They are pretty crooked. Now one of them is pretty beat up. The doctor cut one tendon, lengthened another, and cut the bone to her big toe up high and then screwed it back together with a plate.

Seems to me like that would have to hurt, but here is Janene on the way home from the hospital calling all of our kids to let them know she was finished with her surgery. So far, so good. We will see what the next two or three days have in store for us.

Goodnight, Mr. Garden

In the middle of the growing season, our garden looked like this.

Yesterday, we put the garden to bed for the season. We pulled up all the old plants, saved the last of the fruits and vegetables, and plowed everything under. We had some fun making a garden salad. You take all the unripe plants and put them in the food processor, vines stalks and all and make this huge salad. I even made a pesto and cilantro relish with just a touch of rotten apples. Of course you have to have an eight horsepower food processor (chipper shredder) to make this work. Next year we will have lovely compost to help the rest of our garden grow.

All we have left is our little English garden with our Brussell Sprout trees and our red cabbage. I'll probably have to scare off Peter Rabbit to protect the last of this year's crop. This has been a productive year for our garden. We are just finishing off our last melon, and we have the squash and potatoes all stored in the fruit room. It looks like Janene will get one more batch of chili sauce out of the tomatoes and peppers that are ripening in the basement. We have really enjoyed growing our own food and having enough extra to share with our family and friends.

Masonic Work

OK - So I will never malign a brick mason again. This week, in my spare time, I have been re-laying the bricks on the front of the house under the new windows. Prior to this, I was found complaining that the bricks along the side of the window were not even or level. Once I started putting in the new bricks, I realized how hard that is do do. After all, the bricks aren't all exactly the same size. And the mud - the mud is just a mess. How can anyone get it exactly right?

I had the same thoughts about plumbers. You know the old saying "The only two things a plumber needs to know is that $%*! flows downhill and payday is on Friday". That thought went up in smoke the first time I tried to solder a fitting to a piece of copper pipe. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stop the connection from leaking. Maybe I can retain my disdain for lawyers. Do you know any good lawyer jokes?

More from Conference

 I thought I would post the other two links to songs we sang in General Conference. There are some good pictures of Janene in there. You can hardly ever see me, but there are some good ones of Adam Gerber, David Landon, Diana Rogers, and some more good friends like the Haddocks, Thiriots (and their Uncle Lawrence), Kyle Wilson and Reed Hunter. Thanks to Chad for showing me where to find these.

http://broadcast.lds.org/genconf/2009/10/20/GC_2009_10_202_KnowThisThatEverySoulIsFree___eng_.mp4

http://broadcast.lds.org/genconf/2009/10/20/GC_2009_10_212_IKnowThatMyRedeemerLives___eng_.mp4

Obama's Windows

Here's some pictures of the windows President Obama helped buy for our home. Yesterday Janene and I installed the new windows in our living room. We made kind of a mess. We had to remove the sheetrock to get the old windows out and then cut them out of the frame with a sawzall since they were nailed in behind the brick.

We had to remove some of the brick because the new windows are smaller than the old ones so they don't have to be tempered. Of course, it didn't help that the bricks were falling down anyway. The new windows will go well with the new siding we installed earlier this summer. I will get to learn how to be a brick mason tomorrow as we lay new bricks. Well, they aren't really new bricks. We saved old bricks that match by burying them in the back yard under the redwood stairs.

Now it's time to get them out. We are glad we saved them. It would be hard to match this old brick. The windows are low-e, argon filled and are supposed to be very energy efficient. That is how we got President Obama to pay for 30% of the cost. I hear there is also a Questar rebate, but we haven't figured that part out yet

.

Even though the house was a mess, we still had our grandkids over for Nathan's birthday and root beer floats. We also got to spend some time with little Ben. (Someday we will probably call him Big Ben) For now, we are glad he's little, cute and snugly

Video of Janene and Robin in the Conference Center

 I stumbled on this video of us singing in General Conference. It was on You Tube. I'm a little embarrassed to admit I was looking for talking cat videos for my sisters. Somehow, this video came up. I must be a cool singin' cat.

Let Zion in her beauty rise.

Long Lost Disneyland Photos

Hey Brooke!
I found that picture we took in Toon Town.

Oops! Wrong trip. Sorry

More about Tucson

Ok, so you know that we were in Tucson. We had some fun there. Here we are at the opening reception that had a western theme. Our grandsons are going to end up with some of our regalia. Why were we smiling? We had just eaten some incredible food. The chefs at the Marriott really know their stuff. And -- Josh from work looked pretty funny with his cowboy getup. ( We didn't know at the time what we looked like)

We went on a jeep expedition in the Sonoran desert with some new friends. Our guide was Chris (shown here holding the coyote skull). She was a newbie to the job and we had to teach her how to take the Jeep out of 4-wheel drive, but she really knew all about the desert plants and wildlife. We went with Edna and Zeev from Israel. If I closed my eyes, Edna sounded just like one of our other friends from Israel. Her accent was just like Dina's.

We spent quite a bit of time with Peter and Michael from the island nation of Barbados. They told us about their lives in Barbados and Janene really wowed them with her stories about being a beekeeper. I think we scored big. We got an invitation to visit them in Barbados and see their business and sights around the island.

I just had to put up a picture of one half of the big and spacious building we got to stay in. You would think this was our summer palace in Babylon, the way we were pampered and spoiled. I especially liked their shower head. It sounded like a jet engine when you turned it on. I think I have bruises on my back from the water pulses. And then we had to come home to our dribble head. We love our home, but sure wish we had more than 25 pounds of water pressure.

Tucson Vacation

Janene and I get to go to an industry convention once every year. Last year we went to Florida. This year we visited Tucson, Arizona. We always stay at a very nice Marriott resort. Marriott's Starr Pass Resort is located in the Tucson mountains with this canyon view behind the resort.

Janene and I went for an early morning walk in this canyon and had the whole canyon to ourselves. It seemed that no hotel guests wanted to be out among the coyotes, rattlesnakes (18 different varieties) and cacti. There were tons of saguaro cacti all over the place each one, just a little different from the next. We saw cactus wrens with their nests inside the cactus. Janene stared down a coyote for a while.

We took an afternoon break from the conference sessions to visit the San Xavier del Bac Mission. This mission was begun in the 1600's with this building being completed (not the right word since the east tower was never finished) decades before the Declaration of Independence was written. We have a tendency to forget that the Catholic Church founded missions all over the southwest when Mexico was part of the Spanish colonial empire long before the earliest settlements in Plymouth and Jamestown.

The interior of this mission was incredibly ornate in the baroque fashion, all hand crafted with crude hand tools at the farthest reaches of the Spanish civilization. The cement and plaster was made with a kind of glue made by boiling down cactus and squeezing out the juice as an additive that has held the cement together for the last 300+ years. We were there at the same time an Indian family was celebrating a wedding. All the bridesmaids we dressed in brightly colored homemade dresses and the altar boys were dressed in brilliant white clothing. This building is a brilliant beacon on a dusty desert plain.