Smith Reunion

We headed to the Indianola area for Sean's family reunion today.  The place we normally go (Soapstone) was still covered in snow since we are having an unseasonably cool Summer this year.  So, Sean's Uncle Bob and his family have a cabin that they volunteered for us to go up to.  Parking was a bit crowded and there isn't a whole lot of shade (good thing there were some awnings), but it was still fun to be with family and visit.  Travis had to work and wasn't able to go with us.  Trevin had a blast sliding down the hill on his behind side with his cousins.  Tyrel hung out with the adults and played with the babies.  I'll have some more layouts later, but here is my first one with McKynlee and her first Cheeto courtesy of Uncle Sean.  Oh, and he has already started brainwashing her with his favorite quetstion for all the nieces and nephews....."Who's your favorite uncle?"  Then as soon as they start talking, he teaches them to say "Uncle Sean"

Cleaning the nursery closets

Trevin got up to walk with me this morning at 6:30.  We took the long way around the block and then headed to the church.  I needed to clean out the nursery closets before Sunday and he wanted to help.  I must say, they look much better!  One of the bins has pretty much the whole bottom missing, so I'm going to need to go get a new one, but everything is sorted and pretty much in it's proper place.  I think we probably got about 30 minutes of walking in and then I pulled weeds for another 1/2 hour or so but then the sun decided to come out from behind the cloud cover and it got kind of warm. 

I got a few pictures while we were walking and then took a couple more in my garden while I was weeding.

Grandma Evers

When I got home from my walk this morning, I got a call from my brother Greg saying that our Grandma Evers had passed away this morning.  She has been suffering a lot over the past couple months and I'm glad to see that is over, but I will miss her.  She was a wonderful woman and taught me many things.  I did this layout for her birthday of my memories of her.  I don't remember if I posted it then, but even if I did, I'm posting it here again now in memory of her and the great person she was.

If you want to read what it says, you can go to this post HERE and my continutation of thoughts HERE.

Love you Grandma!

Pictures from my walk this morning

Here are the pictures I took on my walk today.

View from my house towards the Northwest

After I finished my 1/2 hour walk, I pulled some weeds in my flower beds.  My lavender is finally blooming.

and I have little tiny baby grapes on my grapevine.

I had one single strawberry, but I ate it instead of taking a picture of it.

Our morning walk

Even though we don't live near each other, Heidi and I are walking together in the mornings, just not in the same town.  We check in with each other each day to see how we did.  She has been taking awesome photos on her walks, kind of making it into a game so it doesn't seem like drudgery.   I decided it would give me a good chance to use my camera in manual mode and get some practice in, so when Trevin and I walked this morning, I took some pictures around the neighborhood.  It was kind of fun,  I just need to remember to stop and take the picture instead of trying to take it while I'm still walking.  In other words, I had some blurry ones.
My walking partner for the day, looks like he just got up huh!

This is the Cloward's flag as the sun was coming up this morning

 Flowers in the yard of my neighbor Susie across the street

I love all the flags in the Frandsen's flower beds.  They live on the opposite corner of us and they have these flags in all of their flowerbeds. 

Haystack across the road at the clowards, slowly disappearing as they haul it off in trucks 

 My neighbors the Johnsons out for a walk this morning.  They had what looked like cross country poles they were using to walk with.  They were faster than we were because we were taking pictures.

 Trevin took this picture while I stopped at the house for a potty break in the middle of our walk.

Shooting BottleRockets

My mischeivous husband took a trip to Wyoming way back when he was a scout (27ish years ago) and bought some "illegal" fireworks (for Utah that is).  He didn't use them all and had them in a sack that his mom found about 6 or 7 years ago and she brough them to us.  We have had them in our coat closet and pulll one or two of them out to shoot on New Years Eve every year.

This year, Utah changed it's law on fireworks, and while some of those are now legal, I'm pretty sure that bottle rockets still are not, but he brought them out anyway to teach his boys.  He finds it fun to hold them in his hand until they are almost ready to shoot off and then throws them in the air.  The boys got brave and decided sparklers were too boring and wanted a try at it.  They were so funny because they were worried they would wait to long and would hurry and throw them without paying attention to where they were throwing them, so they ended up going up and coming part way back down before they would shoot off.  I had to keep covering my head as I was afraid I was going to lose it whenever Travis threw one.  They finally got the hang of the timing and did pretty good at the end.  Trevin, luckily, just put them in the bottle and lit them to shoot off from there.  Then they got adventurous and would wind the wicks of several of them together at once and put them all in the bottle and shoot a whole bunch at a time.  Once the bottle fell over and one of them fell out and into the firepit.  You've never seen the 5 of us run for cover so quickly.  Luckily, the ashes in the firepit extinguished it and it didn't shoot off.

There were also some fun spinning things that whirled around really fast.  The boys would each pick a color and put them all together and light them all at once and whichever one whirled the furthest from the center starting point would win.  They had tons of fun!  Sean's comment, "Now this is what teenage boys should be doing."

Delta High School Class of 1986

25 years, WOW!  I can't believe it has been that long since I graduated from high school.  I LOVED high school.  I had such good friends and so many great memories.  I was so sad that day that I graduated because I knew I had many friends that I would rarely or never see again.  I've attended most of my reunions, and others in my family think I'm weird for doing that, but I really miss my friends and loved catching up with them and their lives.  Facebook has made it better over the past couple years as I have been able to keep caught up with those that post there and share information.

Keith Johnson, Studentbody President, was in charge this year and he contacted me a few months ago to set up a Facebook page for our class to start getting names and contact info for the reunion.  I also volunteered my brother and sister in law to do the food and they did an awesome job.  There was no way I could finish the 1/2 a beef that was on my plate even though it tasted awesome!  They also did salad, rolls, baked potatoes, beans and they had carrot cake or chocolate cake with ice cream for dessert.  We sat with Gary Callister and his wife and Todd Neimann and his wife during dinner.  It was fun to catch up with some old friends.  I was also able to chat with quite a few of my old friends and I had a great time. 

I know it wasn't fun for my non-rabbit spouse, but I'm glad he humored me and came along.  He chatted with Todd's wife while we were both making the rounds chatting with everyone else.  Thanks honey!