Sick Little Girls and Enjoying the Arts!

 On Monday my day started with my cute visiting teachers, Denise and Rebecca, Denise brought Whitney's baby, so that was fun.

Then I did some blogging, and visiting teaching myself, before heading out to meet Dad at Becca's new place to help wash walls, and strip wallpaper.

 Its kind of cool that this eternal truth was found hidden underneath the wallpaper ...

The five of us kept at for several hours!

On Tuesday, after walking with Ginny, I headed to Salt Lake, where I met Dad for lunch with our Salt Lake ward at a restaurant that Dad used to take his high school girl friend to. That was interesting.

Then he headed back to work and I did some junking before meeting Arlene at the Jordan River Temple for a session, and Zupa's and a nice long chat fest afterwards.

Dad, of course, also spent a chunk of the day at the temple, as it was his regular shift at the Provo Temple.

About 7 I headed south, ending up in Highland at Robin's...

where I did some uploading of pictures to 'Find a Grave', which was part of Ben's Eagle project.  It was actually pretty fun!

 When I got home, I had a blog post to do, so I spent a few minutes looking around my craft room for an idea, and saw my orphan salt and pepper shakers, and then the black globe and thought, hmm, 'small world', I can do something with that.  Yep, quickie post.

 Wednesday and Thursday were work days. On Wednesday we were pretty on edge because Emily had called to say that after taking Bekie to the doctor to have some bruises checked out, they had sent her to the hospital ... for transfusions, as they had found that she had virtually no platelets.

After work Brittney and Spencer took me out for Mexican, which was fun. and took my mind of the stresses in Texas.  Spencer and Brit would be leaving in a few days to go to Korea for a semester of Grad School for Brittney and on line classes for Spencer.  Its pretty fun to share this dream with them!

 On Thursday I took a couple of painting projects to work on for flea.o.logy ... then after work I did some reading in the Joseph Smith Papers, and then watched some Big Bang Theory with Dad, which we have been doing a lot of lately.

We were still thinking a lot about Bekie, but getting pictures like these did alot to calm our fears.

On Friday morning she got out of the hospital with a good platelet count.  The transfusion had helped a lot!

I, meanwhile, did some garaging for a couple of hours before meeting my friend Keith at his house to take some pictures for a blog post.  I frequently love things he brings in to sell, and he often likes my items as well, I knew I was going to love his house.

 Afterwards I went to the DI in AF for a couple of hours, before going home and doing my blog post about his house.  Then Dad and I headed to BYU where we went to the art museum for their Pakastani quilt exhibit with the Kews.

 We saw the original of this painting that we had seen in several homes in Provo at the home tour last year.  I think I mentioned that the artist lives in the ward where the home tour was ... I Love It!!

I also happened to see a book in the gift store called The Art of Royal Nebeker ... yep, my cousin Rye, how cool is that.  I wanted to buy it, but it was full of abstract nudes, my least favorite art.  Terry Kew tried to talk me into it, saying that when she was in the Graphic Design program at BYU that they painted nudes, so its good!    Its really not that I'm  small minded ... I just don't like them.  Maybe someday.

 Here we see the hubs contemplating the 1000 triangle quilt ...

After the exhibits at the Museum, which included an amazing traveling show of movie costumes for period movies ... which I beyond adored ... (no pictures allowed, :-( )  We went to Malowi's Pizza in the Riverwoods ... it was amazing good, and for every meal they sell, they provide a meal for a child in Africa.  Does it get better than that?

 Then on Saturday morning I was off with my book club, the Elk Ridge one, to the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City.  We normally stay for three days and see 5 plays, but this year we all had too many things going on to be able to find a week that worked for more than half of us ... thus we did a one day trip and saw Sense and Sensibility that was done as a comedy.  Pretty fun take on the classic.

 Dad's Saturday was mostly no fun and all work ... he mowed the lawn for the first time in a month, since he found his blood clot, which, btw way is much better and he's been doing some running too.

He did a couple of fleaology projects for me before heading up to Becca's where he did some babysitting, which was the best part of his day.  Such a good grandpa and husband too!

 On Sunday we headed to Pleasant Grove to see Scott ordained a Deacon ... we were not alone, as you can see.

Afterwards we all headed over to Trevor and Nell's for lunch and a birthday celebration for the August Birthdays ... (and two July birthdays I had missed)

 Eva was sick in bed, and getting her birthday present, even a month late, seemed to cheer her up.

Adilyn got her month late gifts as well ... love her practical method of seeing what was in the bag.

 Then these four shared a birthday cake and song ...

Scott seemed pretty happy with his card written out by grandpa ... and his set of Harry Potter Collector Stamps ... he even made a very funny joke ...

There was a stylized cell phone on the front of the card, and he said, "Hey thanks for the phone Grandma" ... giggles ... then as he opened the card and money fell out he said "... and the money to pay the bill!"  I thought that took some pretty quick thinking!

Below are some fun shots of the party.

 Ben brought gifts for everyone and here we see Scott opening his ... it was full of candy ... he was so happy!

Sorry this one was so fuzzy, darn back lighting, but I loved it and thought I would share it anyway.

... but when the party guests start to snooze, you know the party is over ...  Spencer and Brittney left early Monday morning for Korea, Becca took them to the air port .... they will be missed .... But we get them back for Christmas. Hurrah!

Concerts and Movies and Fairs, oh my!

 Its Monday and we are still in possession of Brittany's children ... of course we tried to get her boys hang out time with their correspondingly aged cousins ... which led to a movie at the Sticky Shoe  in AF.  Dad got off early to meet us there and then got to watch Charlie in the lobby.  I did tell him how 'How to Train Your Dragon II' ended though.  :-)

Afterwards we invited ourselves over to Trevor and Nell's for an hour and a half because we were meeting Eszie at 7, and she lives in north county too.

 Briahnna had just dropped off lunch to Davin, and dropped by too, so we got to see their kids too, which is always a good thing, as you know.

 Here we are at Maui Chill for our Eszie date ... Kai's grape ice turned his lips black, which was kind of funny.

Charlie loved the little plastic beach chairs, in fact she wanted to take one home and headed out the door with it ... Kai said "She didn't choose the thug life, the thug life chose her."  I know, I've heard it before,  but never in a way that struck me as so funny.

 Cutest thug ever!

 On Tuesday, Ashley was back from a disc golf vacation to Idaho to celebrate her birthday, so we met Becca and her kids there in Orem to help Ashley celebrate her advancing years. :-)

I got to see Ian's purple room for the first time in person, which was fun.  And I also got to run Kim and her friend to the mall ... boy does that bring back memories.

 Ashley showed us the cook disk bag that Andy gave her for her birthday, that was awesome.

 ... and here they are all are, post pizza, of course.  (A funny side story, the day before I had picked up Little Cesar's for everyone at Nell's and knew that Alex wasn't that happy with the dinner choice, so before ordering lunch on Tuesday I asked him if he would rather we got Kentucky Fried Chicken, and he said, "You can order pizza, Grandma, apparently I like it now."  Which made me laugh, I guess after he ate the pizza on Monday he decided it wasn't that bad.)

Home time later shows how much fun Brittney and Spencer had coming up and sharing the grands with us this week.

Dad worked his temple shift that night and we didn't see him until late.

 Here we see some sibling time.

That night I put together a small shadow box room for my blog post, which I always enjoy.


I even made tiny books as details.

 When Dad got home later, it was time to hold Charlotte until she fell asleep.  She struggled with falling asleep without her mom the whole time she was here, but I got so I looked forward to the evening holding time while watching us some Big Bang Theory, and actually missed the ritual Saturday and Sunday nights, after we took the kids to their Bauchan's house Saturday afternoon.

On Wednesday I went to work, and Dad took a day off to be with the kids.  He also had them on Thursday, when I worked again, and took them swimming to the Payson pool, which he said is a lot nicer than he realized. 

On Thursday evening, after work, he watched them all some more, as I ran off to book club with Ginny, it was in Springville, so on the way back I stopped to get some fresh ginger for a recipe for noodles that Kari Best had posted on Pinterest that I wanted to make.  While there I also picked up some green peppers for the pico I was planning to make ... thank goodness they were on sale!!

BTW have you heard the joke that Pinterest was invented by men to trick their wives into trying new recipes and getting their houses organized and cleaned up? 

 On Friday, Dad was back to work and I took the kids to the County Fair in Spanish.  They had a large Lego Display, which I knew the boys would enjoy ...

 Then after checking out the farm animals,  I took them over to play in the bubbles, which they loved.

 This is what the ball pit looks like, in case you were interested.

 Charlie even enjoyed watching them!

 That night Dad had made plans to take Trevor and his kids as well as Britt's kids up fishing at Payson Lakes, unfortunately the water level was down a bit, and they caught no fish ...

 But they managed to have a good time playing with cousins they don't see a lot! (Thanks to Trevor for proving the pictures!)
While back at home had I made the noodles with the grated ginger to be a side for the expected trout, and even talked Brit and Spencer into hanging around to enjoy it ... alas, the noodles were up graded from side dish to main dish, and I loved my basement dwellers keeping me company that evening!!

On Saturday I was off early to Spanish for some garaging and food shopping.  A stop at the farmer's market there proved the prices to be about the same as the grocery store, so other than more green peppers, which were a cheaper, I picked up the rest of my groceries at Macey's.    

Then I had to get natural gas for the van in Springville and decided to stop and redo the display I am in charge of in the North Building.  I was there a couple of hours, but still got home just after noon.

I made some potato salad to take to our Picking and Grinning event in the old SL ward, while Dad got the kids stuff packed up and out to the car. Then we headed north to deliver Britt and Mike's kids and car to Bauchan's house before heading to ....

 Picking and Grinning at the Larrabee's estate that evening.  Its so fun to see old ward members and to get a chance to catch up.  The young woman here is Earl Dorius's (far right) grand daughter Kenzie Hall who was on American Idol last year.  It was super fun to hear some solos and also hear about her experience on the show.

Afterwards we drove to Jordan Common to see the movie Barb's been anticipating for a few weeks.  We had wanted to go a couple of weeks ago, and it wasn't in wide release yet, playing only in a few other states.

Its called Magic in the Moonlight, with Colin Firth, and was set in the 1920s in the south of France, mainly with people from England, who had lovely accents.  There was fun honky tonky music, and the movie was charming.

Barb got our tickets ahead and brought lots of friends and family, as you can see not everyone in the world was anticipating this movie.  It was so clean it should have been PG, and even Jerry Gearheart liked it. Yeah!  Kylie brought a date, and Eric Moe was Robin's date as Jeff had a game group that kept him away.  As always its fun to get away with these folks!!

I had my lesson to give on Sunday morning and spent from 7 to 10 doing the final bits, mainly deciding what I needed to leave out.  The lesson was on Proverbs, and I'd read about half of them getting ready to give the lesson, and was surprised how much I loved them.  They are thought to be written by Solomon in his prime, when he was famous in the all the world for his great wisdom, you know his hey day, before he started marrying women from other cultures, who worshipped other gods, and who pulled him away from his devotion to God, bringing about his downfall?

Anyway, the lesson mainly ended up being about the difference between getting knowledge and getting wisdom.  The main difference seems to be in one's relationship with God.  If its one of humility, and honoring God, you can become wise, if not, you become arrogant and proud.  Very interesting concept, I thought.

That evening Spencer and Brittney came up and helped me make stuff for Cafe Rio salads ... Spencer made the pico de guillo, and Brittney pulled the pork.  I made the dressing, and Dad got home just in time to eat, from one of two audits he did that day.  Later he talked me into walking up the park with him for the band concert, which is usually fun, as long as I have a book to read.  Of course its always fun to see friends and neighbors from all over Payson.