Having a 'Grand' Time in Utah and Texas.

This past week started with a pair of red chairs.  Dad said we should have picked them up last week as they went so well with the two theme, but alas ...

We drove to Salt Lake to pick them up and stopped at DI to look for a metal shelf that I could use in the yard at Treasures, which we actually found.  Dad managed to fit in the two chairs, in big boxes,  a round metal patio table and the 6 foot tall shelf.  He's so good.  When we got home Dad hauled them up to the garret on his own, which was an adventure in itself.  

As soon as they were in place he sat down and promptly fell asleep,  it was hard work.

 That night we met up with Becca and Brady et al at Mi Ranchito in American Fork.  

On Tuesday morning I left Dad behind doing yard work, while I headed to the point of the mountain to meet my crafting group at Kim's house.

This is Jan heading the craft table ... I sat opposite her at the end.

This is the whole group.

This is my patriotic decorative piece that I made that day.   Jann brought Bluebelle Icecream Cartons for our bases, that she bought while vacationing in Texas last year,

 Here are all the projects made by each of the members of the group.

When I got home Dad had cleaned out the other two grow boxes, yeah him.

I worked on Wednesday, and then when I got off work Dad picked me up and we headed to the Pizza Pie Café in Orem to help J. Scott's family celebrate his great grades for his final term of the year.

We all had a great time ....

When we got home, we got busy turning on outside lights so that we could get our two last grow boxes planted.  Dad planted squashes, cilantro, swiss chard and cucumbers.  I filled my box with cutting flower seeds like Giant Zinnias, and Astors, and Bachelor Buttons.  Then I put in two kinds of marigolds plantsaround the edge.

Inside I washed up the tea set I'd brought home from work.  I'd intended to make the crumpets and English Scone, but was just too tired.

The next morning I made up the blueberry scones, and the crumpets, and set the table with the tea set, and  other tea accoutrements. 

At work we had this beautiful organ come into the mall, and Richard was able to pump it and play it all while standing. It was pretty impressive.

This is the beautiful tea set that I've had for sale at the mall for four years.

Here are the ladies of the club...

On the left is Stephanie, whose been serving as an activity days leader and has therefore been missing book club, for years ... so fun.

I cleaned up after the tea party, and put the tea set in the dishwasher to be washed and packed up the the next day for its immigration to Texas.  Dad had gone to Krista and Josh's gender reveal party in Lehi.  Dad had just met Josh's grandfather that day as he worked a substitute shift at the temple.  That was fun for Dad of course ... BTW the baby is a girl.

On Friday we packed up and headed out.  We drove all of Friday and slept in Albuquerque, before driving all day Saturday and arriving in Pottsborro Texas around 6:30. 

 This girl and her siblings greeted us with much excitement and many hugs.

 Here's a little tomfoolery as we got ready for church the next day.

William is our master builder, as you see.

At church Emily played the organ, as she does every other week, so we sat with Sam and the kids.  Then I went with her to Primary where she has just started as the chorister.  She was very fun to watch.

After church the kids combined effort to give Grandpa a world class mauling.

 Then there was popcorn and a movie ... family style.

Then we went outside and watched the trains go by while playing some new trivia game on line that Emily and Sam have been playing.  They first became aware of it when Sam had to negotiate with students who wanted to play it during school.  I guess school teachers end up being hipsters, by association. (Emily is hoping to bring the whole family on board to play for the reunioin.)

A little later we got a call from Becca asking for the location of grandma and grandpa Perkins graves.  She later sent this picture. 

Lasts of all I looked out the back door at twilight, and saw dozens of fireflies.  Emily said it was their first for the summer season, how cool is that? Happy Memorial day weekend to all. 

Fun Times Two

This was a crazy week of twos.  No idea why, but nearly everything happened in pairs, couples or doubles.

It started with two funerals, of two great ladies.  One of them is Jane Johnson who we got to know  when we were in the Payson Fifth Ward, she is truly an elect lady, and a Texan two boot. The other was Marva Loy Eggett, who I will tell you about on Twosday.

I had an appointment with a doctor first thing that day ... at 8 to get my PMR under supervision.  But when we got there ... we found that the appointment was next week.  

We headed home and worked on the garden house as Dad's cousin Christie, on his mother's side was coming to visit and wanted a tour of the house and especially the garden house.

Then we met Trevor who treated us to all you can eat Sushi, yum, for my birthday.  Delicious, and fun getting to chat as well.

On the way home we went to two men's furnishings stores and bought Dad a two pant suit to replace the two suits he wore out on our mission.  Because we mentioned buying a two pant suit hoping it would work out on our next mission, they gave us not 2% off but ten times that.  Yeah Mr. Mac.

That afternoon we headed to Jane Johnson's funeral, only to find out it had been held the previous Saturday.  I felt bad about that because I love Jane. Years ago I prayed that I would get to visit teach her, and was called to do so, for five years.  The self proclaimed, non hugger even hugged me the last time I went to visit her ...

That, not surprisingly brought my cancelations for the day to two. 

 Then we met Ben and Hannah for dinner to celebrate my birthday, this time at Café Rio.  I felt bad, though, because poor Ben was suffering from an awful migraine, and had not wanted to disappoint me.  What a good guy to show up anyway, so that I would be taken to eat by my sons two times that day.

Eva had her Wax Museum that night, and went as Audrey Hepburn, I wished I had been able to see her in person, but doesn't she look great ....

and two days later Eleanor also put on some makeup to bring the number of my painted lady grands to two, what else.  Eleanor was pretty creative and used sidewalk chalk for her new look!

Above is Nina with her two daughters, Mindy and Sarah, at my friend Marva's funeral.  Marva and I met at DI and yard sales several times before we realized we were related when we went to a shower for one of Nina's children.


It was on Twosday that the two of us went to celebrate her life, number two of the great ladies who had just passed away.  Marva was also from Payson, well, Spring Lake, a sort of suburb of Payson.  As it happens, she is My Sister-in-law, Nina's Sister-in-law, so in a round about way she's my sister.  She is also an elect lady.  She had a concussion 33 years ago that lead to life with Parkinson's.

I love that the program said 'In Celebration of ' because that is just what it was ...

We ran two errands before heading home ....

 Where we met up with Dad's cousin Christy, on his Mom's side.  We gave her a tour of the house and the garden house and we had a lovely chat.

That night Dad went to Trevor's to help him with a sprinkler head, as Trevor continued his hours and hours of work getting ready for sod.

I got in a little light reading while he was gone.

 On Wednesday I walked with Ginny at 6, as she had doctors appointments in the morning.  Then Dad helped me load up the van with metal items from the garage that I could sell in my outside booth at Treasures.  It took a big chunk of the day to get things unloaded, washed and priced.

Dad worked an extra day at the temple on Wednesday to prepay for the day off he'd need when we go to Texas, along with his regular Thursday shift that made for two temple shifts.

He also ran into two couples on Wednesday, that he hadn't seen in years  ... one was the Hartzells who served with Emily on her mission, the other was his cousin Kathy Cerenzie and her husband.  He would see Kathy again on Friday, for the second time in a week.

On Thursday I worked day two for the week.  I finished up pricing a few items in the yard, and then priced junk jewelry from my private (way too large) collection.  I also collected addresses of relatives, after not being able to find my most recent Christmas journal, nor being able to find and print my extended family mailing list from our computer.  arggg .... did you notice?  Two fails ... but in the end with phone calls, IMs, messenger messages, and google, I got most of them.

 After work I went to Nell's where the two of us addressed Brittney's baby shower invitations, that Nell had designed.

Meanwhile Dad helped Trevor as they continued to flatten the yard, to prepare it for sod.

 Here's little miss Penny using two of her best skills, artistic and cleaning.

On Friday Dad and I were up early and ran three errands (the antique mall to break up two particle board bookcases no one wanted, even for free, to DI to try to find some metal shelves I can display stuff outside at the mall, and groceries shopping for the tea party I was about to give.)  I know three, it kinds of makes me want to disavow one of them.

When we got home, Dad vacuumed, and put away a few odd things, while I made food for tea.

 This is Kathy, cousin number two to visit this week, she's Dad's second cousin on his Dad's side (the blond) and her friend Tina, who I met is Hoytsville years ago as they held a wonderful flea market there.  The others are their friends with whom they share a monthly outing.  This month it was touring my house and garden house, I decided to throw in a tea party, since there was to be a royal English wedding the next day.

First they toured the house. Here are two of them in our former master bedroom, now our large guest room.

 when I went to get out my tea cups and saucers, I found that not just a lot of my cups and saucers had been kidnapped and taken to Idaho, ALL of my tea cups and saucers had made the trip.  Fortunately I had just unwrapped my demi cup and saucer sets that I've been collecting to do granddaughter teas, and those, along with the cup and saucer that Brittney gave me as a gift when she and Spencer were engaged, I had just enough.

As soon as the house tour and tea party were over, Dad headed to Pleasant Grove to help with the sod that had been delivered.  Here is Trevor's family hard at work.

When he got home Dad put on Sense and Sensibility, as we were to go to the play the next day, to help him follow along.  Thus we got to enjoy this Jane Austen story two times.

 That night my cousin Debbie's daughter got married. Debbie's Dad Brent is shown above, he is my first cousin, and the son of my favorite Aunt, Helen.  He and his wife Darlene are in their eighties.  Don't they look amazing?

The second wedding, was Prince Harry to Meghan Markle.  I had to get up very early to watch it.  In this picture you can see Meghan's mother as she looks on during the ceremony.

 Dad was off early to help finish laying Trevor's lawn, along with several other family members.  He messaged that they were done around 9:00 but he never came home ... It was his second day laying sod.

 I finally called him and he told me that he had gone to the ward sod party.  We have one of those, 'help build your own house' subdivisions, and the ward, including Dad had turned out for his second  sod party for the week, where they worked together and did 5 front yards.

Then we were off to see Reagan in her dance recital.  Doesn't she look like a princess?

 Then we headed to Orem for dinner with our two favorite friend families, the Heuers and Moes at Milagros before going to see the play at the Hale Center Theater.  It was Sense and Sensibility the story of the relationship of two sisters ....

Sunday we drove to Morgan to see two of our favorite returned Finnish Missionaries, Rick and Lynn London report their missions.  It was fun to visit with other Finnish Missionaries as well.

 Here's Dad with three generations of the Wade family.  You may recall that President Wade was his mission president and that Brynn Parker and Faye Wade, on Dad's right, served with us when we were in Finland.

 I loved the Finnish wall hanging that Rick brought home from his first mission.

and here we are with the two couples who flew home with us, the Londons and the Vests.

It was a lovely day, and we enjoyed driving home along the back of the Wasatch mountains. Dad even took a short tour up into the Uintahs, just for fun.

It was a great week full of double goodness, and we loved it.