Quick weekend to Florida!

Last week Michael had a conference in Orlando for Friday and Saturday so I went down with him for a big of R&R. It was nice, I relaxed and did a lot of reading and unwinding.

We stayed in a brand new Hilton near Disney. We were on the 12th floor.

Here's a view from the motel looking over to Orlando. I have to say, driving through Orlando to our hotel I don't think I've ever seen so many motels in one place. I wonder how many motel rooms are in the Orlando area!

We actually spotted the Orlando temple from our room and so I did a zoom in on it in the distance.

I was able to see Kevin and Bonnie and kids for a while. We went to a Disney shopping area. Isn't little Kathryn cute! She is growing so fast and sitting up now. She's a good natured baby.

Andrew's smile is always on his cute little face.

I always enjoy seeing the kids and they love to pose for pictures!

Of course one reason they wanted to go to this shopping area was the Lego store! The had some huge figures out of legos around. . .

. . . like this dragon in the lake!

. . . Or Indiana Jones!

. . . and the huge robot

The kids also enjoyed the dinosaur store with the animated dinos . . . but Andrew was scared of them.

It was fun to spend the day with them.

They seem to get bigger every time I see them.

Aren't families wonderful!

My ring . . . all new bling!

In April, Michael and I will have been married 35 years. That means in January of 1975, I received my engagement ring. Last December, I noticed that the diamond seemed to wiggle a little. Afraid of losing the diamond, I put it in a jewelry box until last week when I decided to take it to a jeweler to see.He confirmed my fears stating that he was shocked it hadn't fallen out. Almost all of the points that hold it on were all worn. . . in other words, after 35 years I wore out my ring. He took it and put a new mount in it and then rebrushed the ring. I got it back on Thursday and it now looks as new as when I got it. I can't keep looking at it. I know these pictures can't give the story, but it is brand new, sparkly and probably will last another 35 years!

February 2010 snow!

We got about 4 1/2 inches of snow last night. This is our biggest snow in quite a few years. It started about 3:45 Friday afternoon. I decided to do an hour by hour documentation of the snow increasing.

We woke up to completely blue skies and beautiful scenery this morning but the wind is blowing and it's
very cold.

Maybe winter is about over. . . here are some ducks that flew in and landed on the pond!

Super Bowl Sunday

Sunday was 34 years since I was a mother so that means that Eric and Ryan had a birthday. For their birthday, they wanted a Super Bowl party. We had it over at Eric and Tracy's so they could put the kids to bed on time.

Since they have a small TV, Michael brought one of our larger HD TVs to hook up to their HD antenna! They were excited for a few seconds thinking that it was a birthday present. . .but it was only there for the game!

It was fun and we had tons of goodies to eat. Their new couches were also comfortable. I think we enjoyed the commercials as much as the game.

Of course, the kids were cute! Haily had to sit on my lap and eat a lot of popcorn.

CPW CLASS . . . or a gun packing mama!

On Saturday, Michael and I took a Concealed Weapons Class at the Spartanburg County Emergency Services area.

It was a cold, wet day and the course was 8 hours (we were there 10) with part of it in a classroom and part of it on the shooting range that the police in the county use to practice on.

I was really worried about shooting. Michael used our 9 mm and I used a 22 pistol that we borrowed. I have a hard time racking back the 9 mm. We had to shoot 50 rounds and get at least 35 in the target area. We moved backward about 5 feet after the first 10, 5 feet after the second 10, etc.

Michael had a huge hold right in the center of his so they couldn't count his but didn't see any misses to he got 50 out of 50!

I actually only missed one!!!!! We also had to take a 50 question test at the end and we each missed 1 so we passed. Now it will take about 4 months to get a concealed weapon permit. I doubt we will use it but we learned a lot about guns and gun safety so that was good if we are going to have guns around.

Dad has moved again!

We took a short video of dad's birthday and I thought I'd post it for family and friends!

The day after I got back to South Carolina, he had a fire in his apartment by putting his wallet into the microwave to dry it. . . . so the place felt he needed more care and we had to move him. We were pretty discouraged. Renetta and Rich (my heroes) went to see a place that had a higher level of care area but it was a small placed all locked up and the people were not very communicative to each other. We felt bad as dad is a lot higher functioning than that. So she felt impressed to look at another place near Salem, Oregon about 15 miles from their home. It was beautiful with a view of Mt. Hood from the window and a lot of trees. It all fell into place like he was supposed to be there and it was actually cheaper than where he was and after an evaluation they did not think dad needed to be in a higher level of care . . . just not have the use of a microwave!

Renetta got some movers to help her and Rich kept dad busy last Monday and they moved him into his new place and had pictures up before he even knew he was moving. It's all worked out. Here's a preview of his new place:
and view of Mt. Hood from his living room window:
and a view of Salem:
He seems happy with his new home and doesn't realize he's moved away from Forest Grove. He always loved to travel and when mom and dad retired, they traveled a lot around the US. I guess moving three times in a year is his 2010 version of traveling!

Ice on the tree

This morning, the sun is out and I opened the door long enough to take this picture of ice glistening on the tree in the sun. We have a solid sheet of ice on all of the roads. Our multi-Stake Conference broadcast was changed to 1:00 pm but we decided not to travel the 20 miles to church to watch it. It's not going to get above freezing until late today.

I have to admit, I loved this weekend with everything coming to a halt and being able to be at home and putter around at a much slower rate of life!

Dreaming of our summer garden

I don't know if you can tell what this is, but it's a diagram of our yard and garden. I've wanted to do this for a long time. The round circles are fruit trees we've planted and the squares are our raised beds. The big square is our soon to be greenhouse and the raised beds on the other side of it are beds we plan on building this spring to increase our garden size.

I've wanted to have a plan so I can track what we plant in each garden bed so I can rotate plants and document how things do. The first 12 raised beds are our berries.

Last year we had such a wonderful garden and ate out of it daily. The fresh food that we grew organic is so superior to what you buy and I know there are no preservatives in what we ate and canned. I didn't document the pounds or bushels but I hope to do that better this year.

January 2010 snow and ice

Today is a great day to stay indoors and keep warm and just relax and do some things I never get a chance to do! Here in the South, if we get anything frozen, everything stops. This is more ice than snow and they don't have any equipment for the roads. I was supposed to speak in Stake Conference tonight but that has also been canceled and the Saturday night one will be in two weeks so I guess I have longer to worry about it. I do have my talk ready though!

The great Oregon fire!

I don't know how I could forget this big event from the trip. We were enjoying our time with Rich and Renetta one evening when we started smelling some burning, melting plastic and had a smoky feel. Rich went downstairs and found the top of their new gas furnace had flames and part of it was melting. Rich was able to get the fire out but in the meantime, Renetta called the police to ask them to send someone from the fire department to come and check things out. They live in a 100 year old, historical home in Monmouth. A few minutes later, we heard sirens and two trucks and the fire marshall pulled up at the curb. They quickly blocked the street as if ready for a big fire. A fireman came in and checked things out and helped turn off the gas and made sure all would be well until they could get the part replaced.

Renetta went out to thank the fireman so I took her picture. She put her arms around two firemen but couldn't because they had big tanks! Doesn't she look cute in her PJs!
Seriously, Renetta has made dad's life so enjoyable and she makes sure all of his needs are taken care of. I don't know what we would do without her care for him. We sure love our family.