Week After

I don't know what happened to the letter of the week after the reunion.  I thought I wrote it... but it's not here. I'm going to put this as a place saver in case I have it. If not here are the highlights:

• Ordered a computer for Tom's birthday. Josh wanted it ordered in pieces so he could put it together. He did... I think.
• Did the final reviews on the eToro financial book. Deborah finished editing it and now its in their court.
• Worked on a new white paper for an initial coin offering (ICO) for a blockchain company that wants to promote legalized cannabis.
• The cucumbers are producing like crazy and the beans are coming on.
• Thursday we drove to Nauvoo for the wedding of a ward member on Friday. It was a delightful wedding in the Nauvoo Temple.  Tom performed the ring ceremony at a reception dinner later in the day. We also went to the temple the evening before and the morning before the wedding to do more work for our kindred dead.
• We drove home on Saturday. A younger sister from the ward drove up with us and so it was nice to have company.  The hotel we chose was dated, smelled too much of air freshener, but had comfortable beds.
• Sunday I had a Stake RS presidency meeting. I also learned that I would be in charge of the upcoming auxiliary training since the president who was to do it would be released. So I spent time organizing that.  I also spent time pondering and praying about a new counselor for my presidency.

REUNION!!!

Oh! What a glorious family reunion! It was so nice to see everyone. Each family pitched in and created wonderful food. Ricky Patton especially made such delicious guacamole. Jonathan said, "This is so good my taste buds are doing a happy dance!"

Monday was the morning service project. It took fewer people than anticipated to move the bridge. So we had more volunteers that weren't needed. The "come along" did a lot of the work as they tied it from tree to tree and moved the bridge back into place.

After lunch all the sibs and Jim went to visit mom. We practiced a few songs to sing to her. One of them was a lullaby that she used to play on the piano after all of us kids were in bed, "Sleep my child and peace surround you all through the night." It was emotional for me as I realized the song had come full circle from mom lullabying us to us lullabying the mama. It made it hard to sing. Susie said I couldn't think about it, I just had to sing it... and don't look at Mom. We did "The Lord bless you and keep you," with a 7 fold amen. And "Lift Thine Eyes." Sally joked that we were singing three songs, but she only knew two of them. The tenor on the Amens was very tricky for her.

We visited and sang the songs. Mom seemed to be doing better, but not her cheerful self. After visiting her, Cynthia and Jim went back to the reunion to work on dinner. Steve, Sue, Sally and I went to look at rehab centers for mom. It seemed best to have her go into one to get stronger and healthier before she flew back to California as she was not doing much walking at all yet. We liked the first place quite well. We went to visit two more, and decided that the first place was best.

We were looking forward to Ricky's pulled pork sandwiches but we were late for dinner. We got a text that all the pulled pork was gone. We were so bummed! We spent the next half hour trying to repent of bad feelings. The feelings were unjustified. They had saved back three little sandwiches for us. It was delicious and enough and I were happy!

Tues was a rainy 4th of July. 22 of the reunionites went off early and ran in a 5K race. They all did well and had a fun time, although the uphill ending was challenging. The youngest of our runners was under 10, I think, and Tom was the most senior runner of the 144 runners, except for one 73 year old.

I gave a class on cryptocurrencies in the afternoon and we had a talent show in the evening. Some people went to see the fireworks display. It was too late for me.

 The talent show.

It was fun to see family members teaching other family members. A group of interested teens surrounded Steve Horman as he taught about fishing. Crocheters listened and learned from Deborah and Kathy. Some of Sally's kids taught exercise classes in the morning and Aaron offered a night sky class with his fantastic telescope. Kristy's class on personalities was a big hit and others enjoyed Dan's class on wills and trusts. Kristy also offered several archery classes.

Kristy brought some large Legos and they entertained kids for hours. They built towers up to the ceiling. They had to climb on stacked chairs to reach the top parts. Others occupied themselves with Lincoln logs. We brought the plastic beads you arrange on pins and then iron to melt them together. Every day kids, teens and adults were at the bead table where large pans of beads covered the table. We melted together creations of stars, dogs, circles, names, trucks and cars and all kinds of other creative things.

One afternoon the kids did bubbles. One day they had water fun with water balloons, slip-and-slide and kiddie pools. While the weather got hot during the day, it cooled off for evening events. And although they said ticks were bad this season, I only heard of one person getting a tick. That's a miracle.

Kids went swimming most every afternoon. Some went to ride the paddle boats. I mostly stayed inside. We worked on jig saw puzzles and chatted. We finished two or three puzzles. Then Mom wanted us to do the puzzle she brought. It was a 1000 piece puzzle of impressionistic houses and trees. Wow! Was it hard. Truly the puzzle from hell.

 Every piece put in was celebrated as a victory. We finally got most of the houses put together, but not the central tree and dabbled sky. When it was time to put it away so we could leave, I thought we could donate it to the retreat center. Sally said, "I'm throwing this thing out. No one should have to go through that!" I was easily persuaded.

We planned pancakes and muffins for breakfast. Wednesday was Sally's family's day for food and it was a great choice. They looked at all the leftover food and said, "We can use this!" They made breakfast burritos for breakfast with leftover baked potatoes, bacon and unused tortillas and eggs. They whipped up relish trays for lunch and dinner and used up extra broccoli, carrots, celery, and ranch dressing. That went along with the potato salad and worst (hotdog) dinner.

Tom brought some clocks for Steve to work on.  He was explaining what needed to be done to this clock work.

Wednesday night everyone helped clean up. We did the last clean up on Thursday morning and were out by 10:30. Various family members had gone to visit Mom during the week. Tom and I visited with her on Thursday on our way out of town. She'd been moved to the orthopedic ward. Along the window ledge we counted 30+ cards the kids and grandkids had made for her plus a few store-bought ones. The nurses said they'd never seen so many cards before for one person! That's our Mama! We love her! She got moved to rehab later that day.

We drove home and got home about 7:30 pm. We stopped at the orchard and bought a lug of peaches. Then we had to unpack suitcases, extra food, the blankets, towels and sheets we'd brought etc. We had piles of laundry to do! And Rebecca sent some of her laundry with us as well.

So Friday we spent unpacking more and doing laundry and folding sheets, towels, clothing, etc. I also picked up the pieces of the copyediting of the financial book and researching Initial Coin Offering (ICO) white papers. Rebecca and crew arrived later in the afternoon and the fun began.

Saturday I drove with a friend to Harrison to be with her as she went to a hypnotist. It was an interesting experience and I learned a lot, even as it took up the whole afternoon. Tom and Rebecca worked on making 4 batches of peach jam. That should keep us in jam for the next five years. I went to bed early again. I think I have some sleep deprivation from the reunion I am still recovering from. 

We are not doing choir practice through the month of July. It feels a bit odd coming to church close to 10am instead of 9. We had good speakers. I may post some notes I took from one of the speakers about Satan's tactics and how to combat them. Tom had BYD and had about 20 teenagers in the discussion. Rebecca made peach cobbler on Saturday night and Callie made a cake. So that plus ice cream kept them happy.

It's been a great week with many happy memories.

Crazy 'Week

This was Reunion Prep week. It should be in all capital letters. We had a lot of the work done, but the food was killing me! Sally was a big help. It would have been a bigger help if I had known how to use the tabs on Excel better. There were some hidden tabs and I thought Sally had left off the produce and bread. I worked to recreate it… a duplicate effort.

Tom worked on projects he wanted to finish. We rented a slave. Aaron came to spend the week with us. He was a hard worker but he still had a hard time keeping up with everything Tom was doing. They moved wood, chopped down a tree, mowed yards, cut up downed limbs and I don’t know what all else. Aaron mastered the riding lawn mower. It’s zero turn and has a learning curve. But he did a great job.

I was trying really hard to finish up the book on finance. It had all gotten approved and sent to the copy editor— Deborah. Now she had tons of questions for me. Our goal was to get it done before the reunion… but that didn’t happen. Deborah got to chapter 9. I’m still back on the edits of chapter 8. In the meantime, a former client asked for a white paper to launch his cryptocurrency and he wanted it NOW. I had to say, sorry, I can’t do it until after the reunion. And then the book people asked for a two-page synopsis of the book. And someone was supposed to get a complex sales project to me the first of the month. I am not sad he is slow and I have not seen it yet.

We hired a house-sitter to take care of the chickens and cats and garden while we were gone. Our neighbor does a great job, but occasionally chickens die on her watch and she’s traumatized when that happens. So this time we decided to spare her…even though she’d be delighted to help. Our garden has been generous with cucumbers and some zucchini. Our zucchini plants typically produce for a while then suddenly shrivel and die when insects attack. However, we added a lot of horse manure and compost to the soil this spring and the plants seem very vigorous this year.

Tom and I left Thursday afternoon and drove to Jonathan and Kristy’s house. We took the truck and the trailer. We packed bedding and games and all kinds of stuff. And as we were driving down the road we thought of a few things we forgot. On the other hand, there were many things we remembered to bring.

Friday we left Jonathan’s and drove to Costco’s in Kansas City. We arrived about 10:30 and nearly 4 hours later walked out with $1500 in food. We went to the reunion site and unpacked all the food. Then we went to dinner and to Aldi for smaller items and those things Costco didn’t have. We finished unpacking the food at about 9pm and went and crashed at the hotel. We got up pretty early the next morning and made a run to Walmart for the last items. I’m sure we overbought on some things, especially ground beef. And no doubt we underbought on some other things. But we shall all be well fed.

Saturday we didn’t get to the reunion site until nearly 11am. Then we worked to organize the food by meals. We at least got breakfasts and lunches organized and other meals labeled.

About that time we got a phone call from Sally that Mom had fallen and broken her hip. It happened about 6pm on Friday night as they were touring Liberty Jail. While Sally was solicitous and hovering, Mom still lost balance and fell on the cement. They called an ambulance and she went to Liberty Hospital. They gave her excellent care and she had a hip replacement on Saturday morning. The surgery went well, but all surgery is tough on the body. Mom’s a trooper and she seems to be recovering as well as can be expected. People have been driving over to visit her.

Families started trickling in about 1pm and continued arriving up until 8pm. The Arkansas Fox family was in charge of dinner on Saturday night. It was a little tough as it was Sally’s recipe. She’d planned on being here to help, but she was at the hospital with mom. However, a few phone calls answered all our questions. We started dinner late as we were getting people settled and answering questions. But lots of people pitched in and we had ample food! Our night was Rigatoni. We made a separate gluten free pan for Kathy and Jillian and watched to make Kera’s meal soy-free.

It was an exhilarating and exhausting day, but I slept poorly that night. Sunday we were up early for an 8:30 church service. It was fast Sunday, so that made breakfast simple for many of us. Some went to the early service, some to a later one. Steve and Kathy drove 1.5 hours to an old ward they’d attended and they were well received. Some went to visit Mom, some shopped.

We had Taco Salad for dinner— the Sue Fox family was in charge. We also had pictures in the afternoon and games after dinner. Also lots of toy playing, lego tower building, a marshmallow/spaghetti tower building contest, jigsaw puzzles and conversations.

It’s great to see kids of a same age but from different families having fun together. And there were many adult clusters of conversation. Then you have the melt-bead table with kids from 3 up to adults making designs. These are tiny beads that are put on pegs and then ironed to melt them together. It is meticulous work and yet these little kids persist and make amazing creations.

So far, a fun time is being had by all.

Deborah Visit

This week's highlight was the visit by Deborah and children and reunion prep.

Deborah arrived on Monday before dinner. It was fun to get hugs from the children. We also tracked Rebecca's process as she packed up in Iwakuni in preparation for her move. Kera and I had been going back and forth on activities. We sent emails to others and worked on getting the activities finalized. By the end of the week, most of the activities were slotted and leaders found.

Tuesday Tom and Deborah and a few kids went to Ozark Salvage in Thayer (about 1:10 min away) to buy unfinished cabinets for her rental house.  They came home and she sanded them for a while. Tom had a class at the prison that night and a little later, Deborah and I went to a Relief Society activity. It was on exercise and yoga and really quite enjoyable.  There were a lot of yoga exercises that could be modified for chair yoga. We did that first, and then those of us capable went on to do a little floor yoga. I made some healthy date/cashew/apricot bar for refreshments for the evening.

Wednesday Tom and Deborah worked on the cabinets. They discussed the merits of stain vs paint, and decided to go with white paint.  The insides of the cabinets had some of the reinforcement pieces made from some laminated wood that DID NOT want to accept the paint.  They should have been heavily sanded.  We'll know better next time. But the cabinet fronts turned out very nicely! Deborah continued to work on them on Thursday and Friday. Alas, they are in our garage and the car is not. I don't know when Tom plans to put in the kitchen in her little house, but certainly not before the reunion.

Rebecca successfully packed up, sold their car, and flew out of Iwakuni to Okinawa. They will look into housing and see what might be possible before they fly out for the reunion. This week I learned that my second counselor in the Stake Relief Society presidency has moved from the stake. I will need to find another counselor, so I have been pondering that.

We have one chicken that is determined to sit on eggs. Alas, our eggs are not fertilized so it would be futile. We've snatched eggs from under her all week. But I started searching for fertilized eggs and Sunday a ward member brought some to church and after church Tom tucked them under her. I hope she's a happy hen now.

Kera had planned to come up for a few days at the end of the week to visit and leave Aaron here for a week to work.  However, the zillion things she needed to do overwhelmed and so on Friday Tom drove to meet her half way and exchange prisoners... er… Aaron and stuff. We had cleaned out a very nice bookshelf with doors on the bottom portion. We did that to make room for our "pie" frig.  When we have lots of kids here, the refrigerator can't hold everything, so we finally decided to get a smaller one for down stairs. Now the lower kitchen has all the appliances it needs.

Sarah had been planning lots of fun things to do with Aaron, so she was disappointed that she only had a few hours overlap with Aaron before they headed home. It was fun to have Deborah's kids here. They are really very caring, self-sufficient, and smart children. 

Saturday and Sunday were stake conference. We had good speakers. A lot of it was about family history and teaching our children about our ancestors. One suggested a matching game with family members.  I thought it might be fun to make a game matching pictures to a family tree with all our members.  If I can get photos, I'd like to try this.

Fox week

We had decided that our computers needed some help. They were slow and froze up and made us grumpy. So Tom had one of our young adults come over and look them over. He said they only had 4 somethingorothers of RAM and needed more. So we ordered 2 8gig cards. We figured we could do one 2 and one 8 and we'd improve from 4 to 10. Alas, Tom's computer would not accept the new card. It would only accept a Lenovo proprietary card. So he was stuck with 4. But I got upgraded to 16! After all, we couldn't let a card go to waste.

My work has quieted down a bit. I'm wrapping up the financial book. The potential Marketing biography got put on a back burner. The Real Estate whole life investment book is iffy. One person thinks the other should pay for it. He doesn't think he should. So I put on my best sales effort and told the guy all the good things that would come from owning and being an author of the book-- expert status, prestige, and respect. Having clients pre-sold and thoroughly understanding the concepts so we will spend less time teaching and persuading and more time selling and earning. He said he'd think about it.

I have one guy who is supposed to send me a creative brief and then I'll get started on writing some sales letters for him and his book. Last week I wrote an open letter about an initial coin offering for a medical marijuana cryptocurrency and this week I should be doing a press release for a self-directed IRA that promotes real estate investing. When I applied for that job, I told Tom, "If they don't hire me, they are just stupid." I knew the pool of copywriters with experience in both of those areas was pretty thin. And they did call and set up a time to talk. The contract should be coming through. However, it always seems like sure things... aren't always sure. I have a couple of other projects that looked promising at one time.

This week Sally and I got together and I think we have the food for the reunion pretty well ironed out. And Kera and Jonathan & Kristy have been diligent in putting together activities. We will be emailing out a draft of the activities with requests for some people to step up and help out with some of the events.

Tuesday Tom and I went blueberry picking. Fortunately the day was overcast for a while and pretty cool. We got two gallons and called it quits.

This week was girl’s camp and Wednesday Tom drove out to girl's camp for the evening's dinner and fireside. He always brings treats. Muddy buddies (or puppy chow) this time. (Chex cereal covered in chocolate/peanut butter/pdr. sugar) They were well received.

Thursday we went to look at two houses as possible candidates for flipping. One was really more of a tear-down candidate, although the lot was spacious and lovely-- ideal for a triplex. The other looked nicer on the outside, but had been badly neglected. I saw possibilities. Tom saw a LOT of work. So that one is unlikely too.

Friday we left about 7am to go to the St. Louis Temple. It was our ward temple trip. We didn't go in the van because we had a young woman taking out her own endowments on Saturday. So we arrived on Friday, did a session and sealings and then went off to find a Sprint store so Tom could get data transferred from his old Galaxy 4 phone to a new to him Galaxy Note 5.  Mission was accomplished after about 90 minutes. Of course we had to eat at 5 Guys; it is tradition.  And there was a Trader Joe’s just down the street…then on to our hotel and to crash. Saturday we did more sealings, initiatories, and two sessions. We were the witness couple as the young woman went through, so that was nice. 

We returned home on Saturday about 9 pm. It was a long two days, but we got a lot of work done and it felt good to be there.

This week Deborah will visit. Then Kera will come toward the end of the week and Aaron will stay with us until the reunion. In two weeks we will see each other... or most of us will! Let's hope we have everything organized by then.

Whirlwind Week

I forgot to tell you that I went to Oregon and went to a pot party. A bunch of Savannah's friends were getting together to learn how to use an instant pot.  It's kind of like a pressure cooker/crockpot combination.  They had 5 or 6 pots there, all plugged into one extension cord, so they must be pretty energy efficient since they didn't blow a breaker.  We had rice, General Tso's chicken (pronounced TeeSo by the woman explaining the process.) New York Cheese cake, spaghetti squash,yogurt, hard boiled eggs, and maybe a few other things I can't remember.  I was impressed with how easy it was to cook the squash and how the hard boiled eggs came out of the shell easily.  The cheese cake was also tasty.

 This is the control panel on the pot. It can saute, slow cook, make yogurt, and pressure cook.  I'm thinking one of these needs a home at our house.  Tom was less certain until Adam and Savannah made chocolate lava cake in ramekins for dinner the next night. This picture must have been a picture of Adam's.  Tom added chocolate sauce and icecream, but didn't pollute it with whip cream or caramel sauce.

 We enjoyed our time at Adam and Savannahs.  We got to go to the temple twice. We visited Adam's office and got shown around and met his staff. By good fortune, See's candy store is just behind his office, so we went there as well.  One morning we painted the bedroom we were staying it. You know how the paint chip is different than the way it looks on the wall? Yeah, that was the color it had been painted. Savannah wanted it toned down, so we painted it the same color as the living room- kind of a soft green.

It was fun to interact with the children. They each have such outgoing personalities. And they are really very well behaved children. Piper loves playing dress-up.

 We also read stories, played on the trampoline, and introduced the littlest two to the knee bouncing game "This is the way the lady rides..."  We spent some evenings with Randy and Geneve and sometimes Grandma Apodaca.  The time seemed to fly by and Wednesday morning Adam took us to the airport to fly back to Kansas City. It was a faster trip back- fewer flights, less layover time.

We drove down to Jonathan and Kristy's house and got there about 6:30.  They were busy prepping for the trek the next day. We got introduced to how to milk the cow and which cows needed watering. Miri fed the bottle lambs.

By 7:15am the trekkers were off on their adventure.

Truman is the boy on the left. He is the son of Kristy's sister's husband's brother. He came to stay for a month or so and has been fitting in well. Katie also came up to join the family for a few weeks and went on the trek.

This was the week we closed on our house.  So the closing paperwork awaited us at Jonathan's house when we arrived. We signed it and on Thursday Tom and David made the trip to Mountain Home to deliver the paperwork and collect the check. Also to cancel the insurance, turn off the power, and find out about taxes we'll need to pay on it. He decided the lawn could live a few more days without mowing it and so came back that night.

I was happy about that. I really appreciated his help milking the cow. They have an automatic milker, but you still have to clean and sterilize everything. Fortunately cow and calf are very docile and easy to move around. As long as the cow had grain, she was happy to stand there and be milked.

The kids that stayed behind were really easy to be with. They did their chores and enjoyed screen time.  They read and put together jigsaw puzzles. Emily really has a good eye for puzzles. Miriam was great at organizing the kids and helping them get their work done. David made sure everyone obeyed the rules and Zackary just went around being happy.

Miriam had done such a good job of cleaning up the kitchen, I just couldn't see getting it dirty again! So when Tom and David were gone, we went to McDonalds for dinner and had ice cream cones afterwards.

I had a few dribs and drabs of writing work to do, but also managed to read two books during the flights and at Jonathan's.

The tired crew came back from Trek about 3:30. We got a review of the journey. Good, but hard. Pretty good food. They had great families, some families struggled with less-fit siblings who weren't able to work as hard.

We left for home about 5pm. It was hard to walk into the house and realize that we'd left it 12 days before at the same time Miranda and crew left. It was actually pretty neat, and it was nice to sleep in my own bed. It's just a little puzzling to pick up the pieces again. Oh, yard to mow, garden to weed, flowerbed to weed and organize. Reunion to finish planning, jobs to reach out to... or not. Friends to greet at church and pick up on the threads of their lives.

Tom had Bishops Youth Discussion today and asked me to help with the lesson as we discussed topics on the drive home.  So this morning I put together my thoughts. I got to choir practice late... and found out we were singing today. Oh. Good thing the music was pretty familiar.

We had great talks in Sacrament meeting. One brother spoke of how he came to join the church and the blessings of reaching out to lift and help others. A sister spoke of listening to the spirit. The Sunday school lesson was on "Seek Learning, even by Study and Faith." It was interesting to hear comments on how faith increased our ability to learn both religious and secular things.

Now Tom is off to help a homeless woman. She was in a shelter a few weeks ago, then got an apartment, abusive husband moved back in. She got kicked out of the apartment and is now homeless again.  How do you help someone with unhealthy friends, poor decision making abilities, and no money? What is the most effective way and the best use of resources?

It makes me grateful for families who love one another and great parents who raised us with good decision-making skills. "There, but for the grace of God, go I."

Looking forward to the family reunion!

It's a new world!

Every day seems like a new life this week.  We began Monday at Mountain Home with Miranda and family and their friends visiting us.  They did a great job of cleaning up after themselves and getting beds stripped and re-made before they left.

Tom and I spent time trying to finish chores, pack and do everything we needed to do before we took of as well. I went out to buy more cat food so there would be enough while we were gone... and missed saying good-bye to some of our company. Tom went and mowed empty rental houses so they would be okay until someone moved in. He also decided our house needed mowing and learned how fast he could actually mow it with the zero turn mower. I guess if you don't try to get close to the fence and trees you can really zoom through the lawn.

We sent the kids on their way and then packed up and left, hoping we had not forgotten anything truly essential. We had not printed out our flight itinerary, but bless the smart phone, Tom had the email available to review, get the confirmation number and get boarding passes.

We drove to Jonathan's and Kristy's and spent the night there. It was fun to see their newly renovated house. It has some nice touches and looks beautiful! I'm sure they are happy to be back in their house. There are still a number of boxes to unpack and stuff to find homes for. I think boxes arrived Tues or Wed, but they took off Friday and Saturday to go camping and get away from the stress of getting it all done.

Tuesday after visiting a bit, we drove to the Chihowa Resort to have another look a the reunion sight. We checked out the grill for Ricky who will do the pulled-pork, and I looked at the stack of muffin tins and realized we could have muffins in the morning. And while they don't have 9x13 pans, they have a gazillion of the ones that are larger. Now to convert recipes. We found the play equipment a bit sparse, but the rooms for sleeping larger than I remembered.  Big enough for pack-n-plays or even a queen air mattress for those who want more than twins. Distance between the two lodges is about 400 feet, about 200 feet to the fire pit, and maybe 300 feet to the lake. All the sports fields are right outside the main lodge, except the archery range. It has targets... maybe some bows... don't count on much there.

We asked about doing a service project. As we were talking about the trail around the camp, he mentioned that a bridge had been washed downstream and needed to be recovered or rebuilt. So we hiked the path to look at it. It was solidly build: 8" diameter poles 25-30 feet long with 2x6 planks on the top. So all you brilliant, innovative family members, how can we move it 50-100 feet upstream? Can't get a tractor in there, it's woods. No electricity out that far.  Dad suggested come-alongs. I suggested dismantling and re-mantling.  Tom says that might create some damage.

Then we went on to Costco and checked out prices and products.  I could not find the large block cheese there, or bread, but we tracked down most everything else.  It looks like we might be able to buy food on Friday and take it to the resort if they do not have a group there at the time. I think the time is currently open.  So, is there anyone who would like to help us schelp food at that time?

We dined and found our hotel. We'd paid a little more for park and fly, but I was unimpressed with the Econolodge. It was long on economy with a bed with a close kinship to plywood. However, we got to the airport on Wednesday in plenty of time and spent the next 12 hours traveling to Medford and visiting delightful Dallas and Portland on the way. I got a little work done in the airports and Tom finished a Percy Jackson book.

It's been fun to be at Adam and Savannah's. They have darling children that are well behaved. Tom thought he might be helping with a shower/bathroom remodel, but some plumbing needed to be done first.  So he and Adam just finished clearing out the space. They also hung some security screen doors so they could be open at night for more ventilation.

Friday night Tom and I went to the temple and did a session. Saturday morning Tom and Savannah and Randy Spencer ran a 5k early in the morning. They all said they had good times according to their watches, but the official time keeper that used chips to determine finishers broke. So I guess no one got prizes. 

Then in the afternoon, Denali got baptized.  It was a nice event with many of her friends in attendance. Both her grandmas spoke, and her siblings gave the opening and closing prayers. For little kids, they did a great job. We celebrated by getting Panda takeout and the Spencer's and grandma Apodaca came over for dinner.

 Kids playing in the MG while pictures were being taken.

 Adults playing in the MG.  Randy took me for a spin in it on the way home from the baptism.  I got to see pear orchards and some of the outskirts of town and he got to drive on more windy roads.

 After dinner there was a little gift giving and some riotous playing with the wrapping paper.

It's fun to be within walking distance of church. We drove to church in the morning, but walked back home. It's a nice ward, with good lessons.