Santa Train

Today I took Preston and Abby on the Santa Train (aka the Heber Valley Railroad). They both liked seeing the cows, sheep, and horses out the window of the train.

They were also very excited whenever the train blew its whistle.

Neither one of them seemed to be thrilled with Santa himself though. Preston started crying when Santa leaned over to talk to him, and after Santa had passed us and gone on to the other children, Abby said "Santa is not very nice." When I asked her what she meant, she said "He didn't bring me any presents. He was supposed to bring me a kitchen."

So I guess Santa was a failure.

But they both loved the candy canes.

Giving Thanks

It was fun to get together over Thanksgiving. We missed having Jeff and Rachel with us, but it was fun to see everyone else and spend some time together.

We are so thankful for our wonderful family! What a blessing families are!

All of our married children went to their in-laws homes for Thanksgiving day. We got together the day after Thanksgiving at our ward building for a Field/Baardson/Jones family gathering.








Here's the whole group:

I need a maid (or a wife)

Wow, I'm hungry! I would really love to go home from work to a hot and delicious home cooked meal. Wonder what the chances of that happening are?

Labor Day

On Labor Day Dave, Bekah and I went riding in the mountains at Strawberry Reservoir. It was a beautiful day for a ride, and the scenery up there was amazing! Too bad we forgot to take a camera! Bekah even saw a huge bull moose while she was waiting alongside one of the trails.

In the evening the kids came over for a barbecue.














And this last one was the Saturday before Labor Day. Preston came over to show off his new Halloween Costume. He makes a VERY scary looking dragon, as you can see:

Better than movie stars

Usually I don't like working on Saturdays at my store. There are so many other things I'd rather be doing. But this Saturday I had two customers come in who made working all those other Saturdays worthwhile.

When we owned the antiques store in Millbrook, we used to get some celebrities stopping in - Mary Tyler Moore, Liam Neeson, some guy from The Doors, whose name I could never remember, Anthony Hopkins, to name a few.

Anyway, my visitors on Saturday here in Heber made all those celebrities pale in comparison.....Elder Jeffrey Holland and his wife Pat paid a visit to my store!! I just about fainted when I looked out the window and saw them coming up the stairs! They were really nice and visited with me for a little while, and bought a couple of lamps.

SIGH.....so much better than movie stars.

Rachel and Jeff's visit

We had a great time with Rachel and Jeff when they paid us a visit in July. It was so fun to spend time with them. We love them and miss them!

South Dakota trip in a nutshell

Bekah and I got back last night from our trip to South Dakota for the Allred Family Reunion. We had a great time - here are a few of the highlights:


We drove all day Tuesday to get there (about 15 hours total). We saw a lot of this along the way:






We stayed at a camp owned by the Catholic church. It was a great place!



It was so fun seeing my mom, brothers, sisters, in-laws, nieces, and nephews:



The traditional marshmallow fight is always a highlight of the week:


Bekah and I did some sightseeing on the way home:

First stop - The Mitchell Corn Palace, America's Destination. All the murals and the decorations on the outside are made of corncobs and cornhusks. Strange, but interesting.





Second stop - the Badlands. Very interesting and even weird. Felt like we were on the moon, or something.





And of course, we couldn't go to South Dakota without stopping at WALL DRUG. Yes, in all capitals - on every one of the 200 billboards we saw across the state. (You can see how happy I am that we finally made it.)


Then it was on to Mt. Rushmore,



Independence Rock,

Martin's Cove,



and finally - home sweet home!

It was a wonderful trip. I loved spending all that time with Bekah and renewing friendships and love with extended family - what a great blessing a good family is! And seeing all those terrific sites! What more could you ask of a vacation? (a little less time behind the wheel perhaps?)

Road Trip!

Bekah and I are heading off tomorrow for our first ever mother/daughter road trip! Yep, we'll be making the trek from Heber City, UT to Irene, SD for the Allred Family Reunion. (What, you've never heard of Irene, SD?!)


Should be lots of fun, and hopefully we'll get some good pictures of all the exciting things to see along the way (sagebrush, prairie dogs, Mt. Rushmore, Mitchell Corn Palace, etc.)

Oh yeah, it's going to be exciting!!

My new goals

Dave and I work at the Provo temple every Tuesday morning. The women's shifts are organized in 2-month stints. That means that the coordinators for the shift come up with a schedule for each worker that covers the 5-hour shift. My schedule for the past two months has looked like this:

5:00 - 5:20 Prayer meeting
5:45 - 7:30 Follow the 5:50 session
7:30 - 8:00 Work at the veil
8:00 - 9:00 Work in initiatory
9:00 - 10:00 Name issue

I have really loved working in the temple these past 10 months. It has been an awesome and uplifting experience. During the past 10 months, I've had all kinds of different shifts, but this current one has been my favorite. I think it's been my favorite because I have gotten to recognize and meet a lot of the regular patrons who come in faithfully.

These regular patrons are so inspiring to me because they are ALWAYS there! Faithfully. Every single week. I would have to say that about 75 percent of the patrons on the early session are the same every week, and the other 25 percent changes weekly. In initiatory, there are probably 5 or 6 women who I have come to know by name because they are there every single Tuesday. One of them is Sister Gordon. She's just the cutest, sweetest little old lady (and I love her cute curly white hair!). She gives me a huge smile every time she sees me walk into the initiatory booth. I just love seeing her. There are other regulars who I recognize by face. I am inspired every Tuesday when I go to the temple and see these wonderful, faithful women.

Another one of my favorite patrons is Sister Hendricks. Sister Hendricks attends the 9:30 endowment session every Tuesday. She comes during the time I'm working at name issue, so I get to see her there. Her granddaughter brings her and attends the session with her. Sister Hendricks wears a hearing aid, but other than that, she seems perfectly healthy and spry. The other day, after I had helped Sister Hendricks and she was on her way, one of the other works told me that Sister Hendricks is 105 years old! And that she's been coming to the temple faithfully for as long as that worker could remember.

Wow! What an awesome example of enduring to the end in faithfulness! I think it is so inspiring to see these women come to the temple regularly - come snow, rain, good days, bad days (I'm assuming they have them too!) - whatever, they are there.

My goal is to become as faithful as these wonderful women are in their temple attendance.


(P.S. On a side note - my other goal is to live to be (a healthy) 105 years old. If I can do that, it means that I'm not even middle-aged yet!)

Memorial weekend fun

We had the kids over for dinner on Sunday, and afterwards we took Abby and Megan to the park. The kids all had fun playing on the toys:

(I always knew Nicole would be a good mom)

Motorcycles and marshmallows

Last weekend Dave, Bekah and I went with Jake and Nicole to the Cherry Creek desert race near Delta. We camped the first night on a VERY dusty pit row, and the next night we moved to a more scenic campsite with more trees and slightly less dust.

Besides cheering Jake on, we enjoyed some riding on the almost endless trails in the area, roasted marshmallows, and just had fun together

Supercross

On Saturday we attend the Salt Lake Supercross. It was a lot of fun to watch these super-talented riders. I always have to wonder how their mothers feel watching them do triple jumps. I'd say they've earned a few gray hairs!

I know this is a blurry picture, but it was hard to get an action shot with my slow camera. This is a little like "Where's Waldo" - can you see the two riders up in the air? You have to kind of look up in the stands.