Ap-Pair-Ently

Well, well, well, here we go with another week.  These three have the honor of kicking off a week where everything seemed to happen in pairs, oh the irony.  Eva and her Dad are registering at the Onion days race, you can see by the numbers that Dad registered a while ago, and he was thrilled that they chose to come and race ...

Davin's family had also preregistered, so all eight of these ran the soggy race together.  It had rained all night, and let up in the morning, just to start again and continue throughout the race ... a real bonding experience for all. 

This pair of Trevor's kids are hanging out in the parlor ... Eva is using the little dog like a heater; she was pretty chilled after the race.

Next it was time for breakfast.  We had pancakes, sausage, scrambled eggs, watermelon and orange juice.  

It was super fun to have a pair of good friends come and sit by me at the parade.  On the left is Scott's cousin Jerry who lives in her folks' house in the ward, and the other is Sister LeAnn Newman who serves with us at Mosida. 

And here is LeAnn with her husband, Rod, and her granddaughter, in the front. 

It was cool enough that Trevor came in and gathered blankets ... this pair share a red plaid blanket.

It was fun to have Nell's Uncle Bob come to the parade.

The grands were great at cheering the parade.

I think everyone snuggled Rosie, Trevor and Nell's dog at least once. Isn't this snuggling picture of Bri and Dave a cute one? 

Ande here's a pair of Eli's.  The shorter one is Dad's cousin Jerry's, grandson. 

A colorful picture of Eva snacking.

I love this picture of a pair of grands out in the street enjoying the parade.

It was Davin's 15th year reunion, but not having gone to the reunion, he chose not to ride on the float, still he was feeling the need, and ran out and joined this entourage for a few minutes.  He had us all laughing.

Not too many floats this year and even fewer marching bands, but here are a pair of floats with beauty queens we enjoyed.

and here's a gang of grands.

Here I am with Jerry.  We were so pleased that she and her family came to sit with us. 

Grands definitely having a good time.

And here's one of the triplets, as we call them, all born withing 6 weeks of each other. 

This pair stayed safely behind the fence.

And here's a pair for you ..., a pair of Daves. David Blaney, Davin's High School bestie, did ride the reunion float, but when he saw our Dave at our house, he jumped off the float and the two had a nice personal reunion, 

and another pair, Jerry and her daughter, Melanie, who actually lives in our ward boundaries, but whom we had not previously met. 

and a pair of worker bees.

Trevor and Nell's uncle Bob putting the bench back on the porch.

And next ...

After the tidying up was done, Trevor's family, Becca's family and we went up to El Tapatio for an early lunch.  So, yum. 

Dad and I shared the sea food stuffed pineapple and had enough for dinner the next night too. 

Then we went across the street to the last day of the library book sale, one of a pair of book sales that I went to and took pictures.  In the last hours of the sale, they had dropped the price to $3 for a grocery bag full, that's about a dozen or more books.  How handsome is this nerdy pair?

A pair of Daddy, daughter book searchers.

A Pair of sibling book searchers. 

A girl and her pair of a pair of goodies. 

It all makes you want to pose like a statue!  Well, it made Trevor want to, anyway. 

On Tuesday it was off to Mosida, here we see several pairs of missionaries, the Smiths, the Gurrs, the Newmans, and the Hardman's.

The Perkins, Elder Brimhall, the Marvins and the Crumps.

Here's Dad toting a hand cart as they put varnish on the second 40 carts.

The girls, of course, worked weeding, here are Sister Newman, Sister Gurr and Sister Marvin.

Sister Smith and I were hunting Goat Head Puncture Weeds in the gravel, and then snuck away for a bit to go to her house for some garden produce to share for lunch.  This is her she-shed.

Her back porch. 

A bench her talented husband built from a found headboard ... Blake is one talented man. 

Her decor is just adorable. 

So of course, I took more than a couple of pictures ... here's the beautiful Julie herself. 

After Mosida, Dad and I drove up the back of the lake to attend his Sister-in-law Wendy's mother's funeral.  Aren't these a couple of handsome men?  The funeral was lovely and using a recording of Wendy's Mom playing the piano, Bev was able to accompany her granddaughter's singing at her own funeral. The little girl is your cousin Katie's middle child.  Katie spoke in the funeral about her fun grandmother. 

On Wednesday Katie Oldham Jensen came and put up a new fleaology sign she had made.  How fun is that?

At the mall on Wednesday, this man came in looking for this particular cookie jar.  His ex-wife has been searching for it for15 years.  I loved that he actually found it.  I also love that, even though they are divorced that he kept looking for it.  There is so much good in the world. 

I got off early from work so I could attend this dinner at the stake president of the Goshen Stake's house, who administers Mosida.   This is LaVern, LeAnn and me.  Dad had gone to a barbershop practice and missed all the fun. 

Here we have The Lathrops, Gurrs, Marvins and Hardmans. 

Rod Newman and Ron Crump.  It was a lovely get together, with a sort of a testimony meeting at the end that was so lovely, one hardly noticed the mosquitoes nipping at your ankles as the sun went down. 

On Thursday, Dad was off to the temple, and I was off to work.  I love working with Nikki on Thursdays.  Our friend and fellow dealer Mary came in to tell us about a new fusion bookstore in Orem.  So, after work we met there to check it out.  How is it fusion, you may ask, it has both new books and old books.  They were having a grand opening sale, which meant getting used books, buy one get one half off.  I found a lovely leatheresque  copy of Wuthering Heights, and an Ann Tyler book that I have not read, which is a very rare book indeed.  This by the way was the second of the pair of book sales I attended this week. (Yes, this is the Nikki who climbed into the dumpster last week, the very one.)

The store name is 2nd and Charles. It on University Parkway in Orem.

We all celebrated Kai's birthday on Friday ... He's now a ripe old 21.  How crazy is that?  He's the second of our pair of 21-year-old grandsons!

This little mushroom was growing all by its lonesome in the grass at the little beach where we launch our Kayaks.  It was just me and Ann this week, but just as much fun as always.  I love it. 

After Kayaking, I took our friend Karl to work at DI, and then did some shopping there myself. 

Dad worked on and off all week putting up the last section of this wall and cutting away the wisteria to do so.  He finished it up on Friday.  What a huge pile he had to take to the dump. 

... and here it is after he pulled it out at the dump. 

I had priced some stuff while Dad was fighting with the wisteria branches, and when he got done, we headed north, where I put the items into The Grove.  Jenn has really outdone herself with her displays. 

Isn't the top shelf of reels and camera's a perfect mix in with the Halloween, with the orange film boxes?  It kind of suggests horror movies to me. 

The orange and black umbrella was just perfect. 

Then this pair of pairs hooked up for dinner at Cafe Rio, and then we saw Gran Turismo. Jeff's a huge racing fan, and we both really enjoyed the movie.  Thanks for the heads-up, Jeff.

On Saturday the Utah Utes played Baylor in Wacko Texas and these two young U of U graduates were there to see Utah win, 20 to 13.  Sam had driven over from his home in Bonham Texas and my nephew Jared had flow down from his home in home in Salt Lake City.  Unfortunately, they would not have even recognized each other if they had seen each other, but we're proud of this pair of Ute fans.

On Saturday morning I went to an estate sale I had previewed and where I had helped the estate daughters with prices, after Nell suggested me to them.  Nell works as an associate Librarian, and the gal I worked with on pricing is the Librarian at Penny's school   It was so fun when I was there finishing up my second round of shopping (I'd previewed and suggested prices to them on Tuesday after the funeral, a bought a few things then).

Then Trevor et al headed to Salt Lake to walk in a Suicide Prevention walk, in honor of our Ben.  You may see that Darby, who told us all about the walk, was there too. 

Here's a pair of my kids remembering and honoring their brother Ben. 

I think it's a great cause. 

On my way back from the estate sale I stopped at the flea market at the Town Center Mall.  As this gentleman and I were Venoming at the same time, the dealer commented that we essentially have the same name, Paul and Paula, yep definitely a pair. 

and at our second of a pair of Utah College football games for the day, Trevor and Penny get to hang out with Dad once more. They played the Southern Utah University and the score in BYU's favor was 41-16.  

Dad got home from the game in time for us to head north to a pair of weddings.  At the first we meet a cousin of the bride who routinely makes balloon bouquets for weddings she attends.  I thought that was a darling thing to do. This reception was in Fruit Heights. 

Here she is with the bride, and appropriately, a flower girl.

Dad and I with Steven Koch and his bride Robin Coffelt.  They both served in Finland with us.  We extra love it when that happens. 

We also ran into Nate Kester and his girlfriend Suzanna. He also served in Finland. 

Then it was off to Britton Stanley's reception just five minutes further north in Layton.  He's from California and got married there two weeks ago.  It was fun to meet him and his bride, who as it happens is a triplet. 

Here we are in the obligatory picture. 

Here we see Samantha and Spencer Wooley, Logan Perkins, Bryatt Stoker, James Phelps, Adam Griffin, Tanner Carter, Handsome (Chase) Kimball, and us. All but Samantha are Finnish RMs. 

Here we are with Alyssa Plant and her boyfriend.  We've met him at several of these receptions this summer.  Both of the back yards were amazingly nice.  This one had a huge tent with draped fabrics that was stunning. 

Today I got to sub in primary and we sang happy birthday to President Nelson, who celebrated his 99th birthday yesterday. 

and perfectly for our blog them this week, we had a pair of students, 

and a pair of teachers ... me and Tina, my Thursday walking partner.

and that's a wrap, finishing up with a picture of 3 of the two pairs of pears Kathy A. gave me when we worked Wednesday.  I chose 3 green and one ripe ... now I have 3 ripe pears. How's that for a conundrum?