Baby Van Joins the Family

 Here we go again, another week goes into the history books, well, our blog history anyway.  On Monday Dad worked outside, while I worked inside.  Here he is painting the 'cannon ball' he made on Saturday by pouring cement into a glass light fixture globe, embedding chain inside.

Here it is, pretty cool eh?  Clever, clever Dad.

This is why he made it, so we could have a self closing feature on our side gate. We'd seen one at the Waddley Farms at the wedding reception the previous week.  I love it.

 Meanwhile I was busy making a hostess gift for the next day.

 Here's a bit of assemblage art for Back to School.

 Since Dad had oil based paint on his brush, and would throw it away, he decided to paint the railing around the apartment stairs, and the shutters above them too.

 I, meanwhile, was bagging up my hostess gift for Kimi, and 

 Then I spent several hours working on my craft room.  Its actually almost there.  I am so excited and hope to be able to show completed pictures next week.

 On Tuesday I was off to our summer art group tea party at Kimi's house.  Everything was lovely, though there were only 7 of us in attendance, with so many people out of town at the moment, we managed to have lots of fun.

This watermelon sorbet was delicious, I know because I had a bite.  Its made from frozen watermelon blended with sweetened condensed milk.  Yum.

 Here's the whole gang showing off our pinky fingers. Such fun and talented ladies.

 When I got home, I saw that the man of the hour had been hard at it, painting the french doors onto the balcony.

Then it was Wednesday, you get this picture because it was the only one I took on Wednesday, sort of a place marker.  I worked, and Dad did a few little honey do s around the house, like anchoring the towel holder in the main floor bathroom and replacing a sprinkler head, he even trimmed my craft room door, after fighting it for 20 years.  My hero, and Darby's hero too, because her dishwasher was leaking and he ran over and fixed it for her.

 On Thursday, Dad headed off to the temple for a shift, while I went to work.  I made a new batch of my hang tags, and sold a few before the day was over.

I also found this cute bee boy in the yard at the antique mall, and got him to add to my busy bee garden house decor.



When I got home Dad said he'd been texting with Spencer and he and Brittney were at the U of U hospital, preparing for the birth of their baby.

We went ahead and made dinner, then drove up to the U, Getting there around 9:30 P.M., where we waited and visited with the Okadas, mainly Brittney's sister Angela and her Dad Peter.


The baby was born about 10:40, and Kathy Okada joined us in the waiting room.  She had been in the delivery room, but had been tasked with not telling us what the baby was.  About 11:00 Spencer came for us and we got to go in and see our new grandson, Van.

 Here are the happy and tired parents. They had been laboring in the hospital since 2:00 A.M.

 On Friday, I worked on my craft room for a while  and Dad did a few misc chores.

Then we were off to the hospital again to see Van.  We got to wear masks whenever we were in the hall, to keep the ward sterile.  Aren't we all cute.

Van was having problems with his blood sugar, and he was in a special treatment nursery, with an IV pumping glucose.  When I was in there, just one visitor at a time, they were taking his temperature, then taking blood for a sugar count, etc, so I didn't get to hold him.

By the time Dad had his turn he got a few minutes of bonding time.  How sweet is he?

 Then we hurried home to meet the Kews for the Salmon Supper.

We all enjoyed the meal though we did get slightly rained on before our meal was complete.

 Afterward we went over to the Kews and watched Coco, one of the few movies we still wanted to see that came out during our mission.

When we got home, we saw on facebook that Kai had gotten his learners permit.  Brittany seems pretty excited about her role.  Not!

 Saturday I took this picture while out garaging with Dad's cousin Kathy.  It was so fun to go junking with someone who has similar tastes and to get to know her better.  She's about Dad's age, and lives in Elk Ridge now.  We ended up by going to the Spanish Fork Farmer's market.  Yeah, I found delicious sour dough whole wheat bread.  Does it get better than that? and local tomatoes too.

Later that afternoon we headed up to Elk Ridge to Jerry Mason's house to celebrate Jerry and Jack's birthday.  Here they are with Dad, and it was so good to see Jack doing so well, despite the fact that he was in the hospital until Thursday.

 Jeff and Robin met us there, which made it even more fun.  Here are Jeff and Scott with Amy, Jerry's wife.

 Here are Robin and Jeff with the twins.

 I especially love this picture I stole off Jerry's FB page.  We met both couples when we moved into our Orem ward.  Jack and Shamane moved out within a year, but Jerry and Amy stayed long enough so that Jerry was Dad's councilor in the bishopric.  They are mirror image twins, one is left handed and one is right handed.

 We headed out in time to meet up with these super fun people to see Annie at the Hale Center Theater.

 Sunday morning I got to have my first Y W Presidency Meeting.  Starting at the left is Cheryl Phillips, President, Bonnie Harmon First Counselor, Caisha Echols Second Counselor and me, as Secretary, which is a first for me.

Dad and I taught primary, and I laughed when I saw this picture on IG, because Dad taught the same lesson, and though we didn't have a huge picture of Goliath, we did measure out his height on the floor and Dad lay down to show the comparative height, while a boy in the class named David  also laid down, since he is probably about the height that the famous David was at the time.

 Here we see our David tying his tie into a bow in honor of Dad.

 Spencer posted this picture of Van with the IV in his head.  Poor little mite.  We hope he gets to go home soon,

 Here we get to see Van with his eyes open for the first time.  Isn't he beautiful?

Then tonight Dad was in the mood to watch the movie, Rudy.  We loved watching it, and when I googled pictures of the real Rudy, I found this one, which is him on the right, after his baptism into the Mormon church last year.  How cool is that?  I loved it.  We also watched a DVD of Glen Beck's conversion this week.  That was fun too.

So that was our week.  Of course Van's birth was the highlight, and changes our family forever.  We are so happy to welcome him as grand child number 21, and as he helps us even the count, with 10 grandsons and 11 granddaughters.  We love him already.