Melethwen's Memories

2012

2012-01-29T18:30:00.001-07:00

Wow. Four weeks into 2012 and I haven't even written one blog post about the new year yet. It's been a hectic four weeks. I hope that isn't an indication of how this entire year will go.

2012 started out well. As seen in my last post, we spent a fun New Year's Eve Day with family, celebrating a belated Christmas together. Then around 6:00 that evening Dylan, Ed, and I checked into our hotel room.

We got a nice suite of rooms at Springhill Suites in Chandler, just south of west Mesa. ($50 through priceline.com, which I thought was a good price for a last-minute room on New Year's Eve.)

My only complaint would be that the bed was not very comfortable. It was much too soft, causing Ed to roll toward the middle and me to cling to the edge!

We didn't spend too much time there, though. After about an hour, we went to Carl's Jr. for dinner. That's my favorite fast-food restaurant, which has no franchises in the White Mountains, so it's a real treat for me when we visit Mesa. I love their Super Star burger served as a low-carb lettuce-wrap.

Dylan makes a figure eight with his sparkler.

After dinner, we went to my sister Karla's house to see in the New Year with her family and ours. After 31 years in Arizona under strict NO FIREWORKS laws, the laws have finally been relaxed a bit, and our kids got to enjoy the sparklers like we used to love as kids in California of the 1960s and 70s.

Jaycee carefully tries out her sparkler.

Dylan and his sparkler.

Analyce, Chris, Dylan, Sarah, and Celesta in the smoky aftermath.

Karla's son-in-law Scott bought up all the legal fireworks on the market and put on quite an exciting show for us in the driveway. So did several of Karla's neighbors (in their own yards). It was a blast!

So we've survived the first month of 2012. To hear some tell it, we'd better make the most of this year since the Mayan calendar supposedly predicts the world is doomed to end on December 21, 2012. What do you think? Personally, I think there is only so much room to carve dates on a rock!

The Mayans did an incredible job of calendaring 5,126 years of astronomical events(beginning in 3114 BC), and their "13th cycle" will indeed end on December 21, 2012 (which may be off by 60 days to 100 years, depending upon which "expert" you listen to). Still, as brilliant as they were, the Mayans were mere humans working with limited space!

Nonetheless, I intend to make the most of 2012...just in case! It will be a year of great things. It will be Chris and Sarah's first full year as a married couple, celebrating their first anniversay on July 30th. Dylan will start high school as a freshman in August, meaning I'll get to have one of my children at my school again for the next 4 years (I've missed that.) Jacob will return from his mission in California in November, just a little over 9 months away! And after Jacob returns home, the greatest event of all will happen: Ed and I will go to the temple to be sealed for eternity to Sarah, Jacob, and Dylan. I have looked forward to that day for many, many years.

I wish a wonderful 2012 to you and yours, too, filled with the most wonderful blessings you can imagine!

Christmas on New Years Eve

2012-01-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, on the afternoon of New year's Eve, our extended family gathered in Mesa for our annual family Christmas party. As always, we enjoyed several fun hours together and made great memories.

Here are some pictures from that day, starting with the posed family shots:

31 Dec 2011: My dad Myron (age 77) and my step-mom Kathy (age 67)

with Kathy's grandson Aiden (6 months old)
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31 Dec 2011: Our parents' 3 oldest children: Karla (age 51), Mary (age 57),

and LeRoy (age 52). Our two younger brothers were unable to attend.

Jeff (age 50) was recently in the hospital with a painful kidney stone,

and Darryl (age 48) lives in Missouri. He visited us in July, though.
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My family: Dylan (age 14), me (Mary), and my husband Ed.

My older son, Jacob (age 20), is still serving his mission in northern California.
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My daughter Sarah (age 22) and her new husband Chris (age 33).

You may notice a few sweaty bodies and ruffled hair. These pictures were taken

at the end of the day, after the men and most of the teens had spent hours playing

basketball and football.
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My brother LeRoy with his wife Lori and their two children,

Nate (age 15) and Katie (age 13).
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My sister Karla with her 5 youngest children (out of 10 kids altogether):

Brianna (age 20), Julien (age 14), Gabrielle (age 11),

Addison (age 7), and Mariah (age 17)
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Karla's #1 child, Jeremy (age 29), with his wife Cami and their children,

Jaren (age 3), Makayla (age 2), and Analyce (age 5)
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Karla's #2 child, Genevieve (age 27) with her husband Scott and their children,

Max (21 months old), Jaycee (age 4), and Brooke (age 6)
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Karla's #3 child, Josh (age 25), was not able to attend.

Karla's #4 child, Elyssa (age 24), with her husband Ross
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Karla's #5 child, Celesta (age 23) with her current beau, Joseph
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Karla's #7 child, Mariah (age 17, also seen in Karla's group photo above)

with her current Beau, Hector
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My step-sister Becky with her husband Dylan and their children,

Dale (age 3) and Aiden (6 months old)
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That's all the family who were in attendance. We sorely missed Jeff and Darryl's families!

And now here are the candid shots from the party:

Karla cuts up both 6-foot sub sandwiches.

With 36 people at the party, we all provided plenty of food!
*

Ed and Ross visit over sandwiches, chips, and salads.
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Lori, LeRoy, and Nate enjoy lunch together.
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Jeremy and Cami soak up a child-free moment together.
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Celesta and Joseph bond over the sub sanwiches.
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Hector and Mariah enjoy a moment.
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Sarah spends time with the two men in her life, husband Chris and brother Dylan.
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Scott has fun with his daughter Jaycee.
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Scott and Genevieve's 21-month-old son, Max
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Jeremy and Cami's daughter, 2-year-old Makayla.

She'll always be Great-Aunt Mary's Elf-baby!

The family gathers in a circle and the gift exchange begins.

Makayla chooses a gift from the children's pile.

Genevieve chooses a gift carefully from the adults' pile of presents.

LeRoy weighs his options before deciding to steal the game Cami had chosen!

Karla is happy with her new windshield washer!

At the end of the evening, several of the men break out the toy helicopters

they'd received for Christmas. Ed has a great time trying it out.

Jeremy (a real-life rescue helicopter pilot), Hector, and Chris

also have fun with the 'copters.

We all had a blast! We hope next year to see the faces we missed this time. Until next Christmas...

Christmas 2011

2011-12-26T13:48:00.001-07:00

Another Christmas come and gone. All those presents under the tree have been opened, admired, played with, and put away to be enjoyed again later. The houseful of friends and family have departed. The big holiday meal has been digested (urp...well, mostly) and the sweet treats are now leftovers. I'm always a little sad when it's all over.

Thank goodness I have all these pictures to remember it by!

As the only child still at home, Dylan insisted that Ed and I hang stockings this year, too, so his wouldn't be the lone stocking on the hearth. Santa filled them with some good stuff!

25 Dec 2011: Me with my good buddy Gwen!

The best blessing of the holidays is the opportunity to spend time with friends and family. After attending church in the morning, Ed, Dylan, and I enjoyed exchanging gifts and sharing a big holiday feast (prepared by Ed) with our son-in-law and daughter Chris and Sarah; Ed's mom Caryl; and our close family friend Gwen.

Ed also enjoyed a long talk with his son Hans, who lives in Illinois with his beautiful wife Pam. And the highlight of my day was a 2-hour-long phone call with my missionary son Jacob in California!

25 Dec 2011: Chris and Gwen

In fact, most of these pictures were taken during Jacob's phone call as we took turns talking to him. Dylan was so excited to talk to his big brother that he had the phone in his lap for 20 minutes, waiting for the phone to ring at the agreed-upon time. Then he handed the phone to me briefly, and from there it went to Gwen, then Dylan, then Chris, then Sarah, then Ed, then Caryl, and then finally back to me!

I insist upon having the final time with Jacob, and I also take the biggest chunk of time. I am his MOM, after all! Everyone else spoke anywhere from 5 minutes (Caryl) to 20 minutes (Sarah), for a total of an hour. The second hour was all mine, and I cherished every moment.

25 Dec 2011: Sarah and Gwen

Actually, just before we hung up, Jacob asked for a final quick word with his younger brother. I heard him admonishing Dylan to work harder and do well in school. I was certainly happy to allow him to share that particular message with his brother!

25 Dec 2011: Chris and Dylan

After dinner and gifts, we settled in to watch the DVD of Tangled, a Disney movie about the Rapunzel fairy tale which Sarah received from her husband for Christmas. That's always been my favorite fairy tale: "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair..." Very cute movie, too!

25 Dec 2011: Ed's mom Caryl

After the movie we enjoyed some pie and cake before Chris and Sarah returned home, taking Dylan along to spend a few days with them. Now Ed and I have the house all to ourselves for a couple of days!

25 Dec 2011: Diego gets a new Christmas sweater.

25 Dec 2011: Sarah brought over a Christmas cake;

I had no idea my daughter was so creative!

25 Dec 2011: Speaking of creative, after watching Tangled Dylan decided

he had to braid my hair. Sarah said I looked like Legolas from the back. Cool!

I'm sorry that I somehow missed Ed during all the picture-taking (although I'm sure he is quite relieved that he got missed!). He spent so much of his time in the kitchen whipping up our feast, he just wasn't in camera range (unless you count him in the background of the photo below...).

And when I gathered up all his gifts today to get a shot of them, I intended to pose Ed with his presents, but he was gone by 8:00 this morning. As so often happens, he has been gone for hours helping neighbors and friends repair their cars and trucks. He is very service-oriented that way, and I love him for it. But still, no picture.

25 Dec 2011: Dylan with his gifts.

And now, here are the traditional gift photos. Dylan's favorite gift was the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 video game for Xbox 360 from Ed and me, and a 3-month subscription for Xbox online from Chris and Sarah. He also received an M&Ms candy dispenser; a tool box filled with his own set of tools; a Kung Fu Panda 2 DVD; a Christmas tie and a Santa hat; glow-stick bracelets; a puppies calendar; a box of chocolate-covered cherries; and the ever-popular gift of underwear!

Ed's gifts

Dylan gave Ed a new, larger toolbox, and Chris and Sarah gave him a crystal cube with an elk laser-etched inside it. Ed's mom gave him a very old mini-lantern that Ed's great grandfather used to use to light his way to bed each night. From me, Ed received a compost crock (to store scraps for your garden's compost pile, but Ed will use it to store the table scraps he feeds to our chickens every morning); a music CD called "Facing Future" by Israel "Iz" Kamakawiwo'ole (featuring "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"); a computer game called "Civilization" (which I suspect Ed will trade in for new boots or some ammunition); a calendar featuring pictures of white-tailed bucks; a box of chocolate-covered blueberries (just had to try those!); and two of his favorite treats: peanut brittle and honey-roasted cashews.

Gifts for our whole family

We also recieved several family gifts. Jacob sent us a 3-D wooden wall hanging of two bears that I simply fell in love with! I've always admired those and secretly longed to own one! Jacob also sent us some seashells and rocks he collected from Samoa Beach. I miss my home state of California! Ed's mom gave us a cookbook with sugar-free recipes and our friend Gwen brought us a can of rolled chocolate luxury wafers. Chris's mom, Brenda, sent us a beautiful, heavy, Paula Deen pie plate. Ed is already dreaming up recipes to bake in it!

Mary's gifts

As for me, Dylan gave me an electronic Monopoly game. I'd never heard of such a thing, but apparently there's no monopoly money; it's all on a debit card you put in the debit card machine! Sarah gave me a beautiful new Willow Tree figurine called "Forget-me-not," which is the 14th figurine in my Willow Tree collection. I love them! Ed gave me a travel bag for makeup that's really cool. It opens up (see below) so you can hang it on the bathroom door or mirror and have all your makeup and bottles and such right at hand. He also got me my favorite, sugar-free Ross dark chocolate bars, only available online and not-so-cheap. Can't wait to use a few to make some of my famous MacTurtles!

The makeup bag opened up.

Lastly, Ed bought me a Clear-play DVD player and a 3-year subscription for Clear-play services online, which is actually more of a family gift. We've both wanted one for a long time.

Ed's favorite movies tend to be R-rated, which we both choose not to watch. So he misses out on a lot of the crime dramas he loves. Occasionally, some movies in my favorite genres, science fiction and fantasy, are also R-rated and I have to pass them up. With Clear-play, you can download filters which can be used to modify the language, violence, and sexual content from any DVD you watch. And you can adjust how much is removed from the movie.

For instance, neither of us is too disturbed by violence that is integral to the plot, so we would set it to remove only the most graphic and gratuitous violence and leave the rest. On the other hand, we would set it to remove all nudity, graphic sexual situations, and offensive language. Hopefully there will still be something left to watch! We look forward to trying it out.

We hope your Christmas was also filled with family warmth and all the good things your heart desired!

'Tis the Season

2011-12-22T21:52:00.001-07:00

22 Dec 2011: Today's continuous snowfall.

It has been snowing heavily all day. It's supposed to snow another 6 to 10 inches tonight and 2 to 4 inches more tomorrow. Looks like it's going to be a white Christmas!

22 Dec 2011: A freshly cleaned living room...aaah!

Did you know that today was the "darkest" (aka "shortest") day of the year? Tomorrow our daylight hours will gradually begin to lengthen again. I spent the day cleaning house, but I didn't mind. Our little home seems extra warm and cozy when it's snowing outside and there's a Christmas tree inside.

It's just one of the many things I love about the Christmas season.

I love watching the pile of gifts grow under the Christmas tree as we get them wrapped or the UPS driver leaves packages on the front porch.

3 Dec 2011: On the highway heading home.

It's crazy, I know, but I love the cold weather and the snow. I love how fresh snow sparkles when the sun comes out, and I love how the trees look like they've been dusted with powdered sugar.

10 Dec 2011: A view of our area from Porter Mountain.

I love living in the mountains, surrounded by forests. When we went to cut our own Christmas tree, Ed chose to take the scenic route, which led us to the top of Porter Mountain and the spectacular view below.

3 Dec 2011: The ward Christmas party was well-attended despite 2 feet of snow outside.

I love attending the ward Christmas party each year, seeing our friends from church and enjoying good food, music, and family fun.

The ward Christmas party wouldn't be complete without the Nativity performed, with song and scripture, by the adorable Primary children.

3 Dec 2011: my son Dylan is the 7th young man from the left,

joining in a performance of "Believe" from The Polar Express.

A song performed by the Young Men and Young Women (youth ages 12-18) is also a must!

I love the big Christmas concerts that are important events for our family at this time of year. Dylan performed on bass with his junior high orchestra, and Sarah continues to perform with White Mountain Symphony Orchestra. I never miss any of their concerts, but the Christmas ones are extra-special.

6 Dec 2011: Dylan on bass at his Christmas concert.

10 Dec 2011: White Mountain Symphony Orchestra in concert.

14 Dec 2011: Our church youth return from caroling.

This year I loved being involved with the Christmas activities for the youth of our ward. In fact, my Beehives (the 12- and 13-year-old girls) were in charge of the caroling activity last week. We had more than 30 participants and lots of fun.

While the kids were driving from home to home, singing their chilly hearts out, my advisor Gina and I stayed at the church to prepare hot cocoa and treats for their return.

By the time the youth returned, they were ready for a hot drink to warm them up! They also had fun making pretzel snowmen like the ones in the picture above. (I think the two on the right look like the Blues Brothers.)

15 dec 2011: My first period class brought enough food to feed a small army!

Finally, I love the end-of-the-semester parties in my classes as the year comes to a close and both teachers and students look forward to a 2-week break from school!

'Tis the season, and I love it!

In Search of the Perfect Tree

2011-12-18T15:45:00.001-07:00

10 Dec 2011: Pines, firs, and aspens in the forest near Green's Peak.

When my two older kids were small, their dad and I used to go into the forest to scout out and cut our own Christmas trees. Sarah is 22 and Jacob is 20 now, so that was a very long time ago.

It was always an adventure, including the year we were almost stampeded by a herd of elk running through the clearing where we were cutting our tree. When I say the ground was quaking and the trees were trembling, I am not exaggerating. I had no idea how huge elk were until we were nearly trampled by them.

Mary's very own Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

This year Ed and I decided to venture out to cut our own tree. Why pay WalMart $50 for a tree when we could get a permit for $15 and select our own fresh tree from the forest surrounding our home? A week ago we headed up toward Green's Peak, about 30 minutes from home, with permit and chainsaw in hand.

I'm happy to report that we were not even remotely threatened by elk, although we did come across several hunters scouting for them. I think Ed was a little disappointed. As for me, I felt that hiking uphill through a foot of snow was adventure enough at our age!

Ed told me to pretend like I was cutting down the tree. Yeah, right.

I'd never even held a chainsaw in my hands before that day!

We found a couple of cute white fir trees, but then we hiked up a little higher to make sure we didn't see anything we liked better. That's where I found an odd little tree that somehow captured my imagination.

Many years ago, someone had cut off the top of the tree and left a good-sized stump (the permit states that you cannot leave a stump bigger than 6 inches tall). Against all odds, two new trees had grown out of the stump, becoming a sort of double-tree. I'd never seen anything like it.

Ed cuts my tree, leaving a nice small stump.

The more I looked at it, the more it grew on me. I tried to tell myself that it was too "unique" to be a Christmas tree, but I couldn't help myself. That tree was a survivor and somehow I could just see it covered with my treasured ornaments.

Seeing my expression, Ed asked warily, "Is this the tree you want?"

I answered, "I think so. Do you think it's too weird?"

"Yes," he replied emphatically. Then he sighed. "But I'll cut it for you if you're sure you want it."

Ed carries the tree back down to the road.

I wasn't 100% certain about the tree, but somehow it "spoke" to my heart. Ed doesn't get what I mean when I say things "speak" to me, but sometimes they just do. Almost like a recognition or a shared understanding. That tree felt like it was waiting for me.

Ed had to hike back up the "road" a ways to get the truck to where we were.

This week has been quite busy, filled with the usual Christmas activities, and the poor tree spent a couple of days in the back of the truck, a couple more on the porch after snow began falling again, and then a few days unadorned in the living room.

Our double-trunked tree in the living room, awaiting adornment.

We purchased new Christmas tree lights on Wednesday, and when Dylan and I returned from a caroling activity later than night, Ed had the tree nicely lit up. I love the soft glow of Christmas tree lights!

A close-up of where the new trunks grew around the original cut near the base.

On Friday we finished the last of our semester finals and school was dismissed for two weeks of Christmas break. Hooray! Yesterday, Dylan and I finally dragged out the boxes of Christmas ornaments and made our tree beautiful. It was just as perfect as I'd envisioned that day in the forest.

It is very different this year. In past years I had all three of my children helping me decorate the tree, and we sorely missed Sarah and Jacob.

Ever since my kids were babies, my tradition has been to buy each of them a dated Hallmark ornament each year, something that fit their personality or interests for that year. But this year newlywed Sarah's box of ornaments has a new home on a Christmas tree in Chris and Sarah's apartment. With Jacob away serving his mission in California, we didn't open his box of ornaments, either.

Somehow, though, Dylan's, Ed's and my ornaments were just enough to do our double-trunked tree up right. I think our odd little tree ended up just where it belonged!

Snow Day

2011-12-03T12:17:00.001-07:00

School was cancelled yesterday, for which I am grateful since I had parking lot lunch duty and there was a foot of snow on the ground! It has continued to snow since then and is supposed to snow until tomorrow, another 5 to 11 inches. We're up to 2 feet deep already.

These are some pictures I took around our house yesterday morning. Today it's twice that deep, but I haven't been outside yet. Maybe I'll post more pictures later, but for now here's how the winter wonderland outside our house looked yesterday.

The oak tree branches were bent low by their load of snow.

We've been very blessed. We were awakened twice in the middle of the night (about 2am Friday) by the brilliant flashes of transformers exploding. Several of our friends and neighbors were without electricity all day yesterday and into the night, but we only lost power for a few minutes. Ed says we must be right on the edge of a different grid.

We had no Internet all day and experienced several brief brown-outs, but that's a small price to pay for all this beautiful snow and the needed moisture it brings.

The chickens' fenced yard became a cave!

It started snowing again while I was taking pictures.

The fallen fence behind our house.

The oak trees at the side of the house.

A canopy of branches above the greenhouse.

Dylan's basketball hoop filled up with snow!

The Great Truck Search

2011-11-26T14:34:00.001-07:00

In June and July 2012, we hope to take a very long family vacation to New York. It's in the planning stages right now, but if it works out, it's going to be great!

We'd like to drive cross-country to Norfolk, Virginia, and spend a few days with Ed's brother Ken and his wife Eloisa. From there we'd like to head north to New York City, stopping along the way to see the sights in Washington, DC, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

After spending two or three days sightseeing in New York City, we'd drive on to Upstate New York to spend time with Ed's family and friends from his youth. It will be especially exciting for Ed's mom Caryl to reunite with her mom, Margaret, and her siblings. I look forward to seeing all the places where Ed spent his childhood, including Niagara Falls.

Finally, along the homeward route we'd like to stop and see the historic sites of our LDS Church, such as Palmyra, New York; Kirtland, Ohio; Nauvoo, Illinois; Council Bluffs, Iowa; and Far West, Missouri. After a short visit at my brother's home near Springfield, Missouri, we would turn toward home at last.

That's if it all comes together as planned. At this point, it's still more than 6 months away.

Our 1996 Ram 3500 and the fifth-wheel trailer on the right.

My husband has been giving a lot of thought to our transportation. We plan to haul our fifth-wheel trailer along with us so we won't have to worry about hotel rooms, but the cost of gas for our 1996 Dodge Ram 3500 one-ton diesel 4x4 truck is horrendous, especially when hauling the fifth-wheel. I shudder to think how much the cost of gas for such a long trip would have been!
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So Ed has spent the last few months researching our options, and he decided we needed a newer, more efficient truck for the trip. The fuel will still be costly, of course, but definitely better. Several weeks ago he began the search for his dream truck: a 2006 Dodge Ram 2500 three-quarter ton diesel 4x4.

Our room at Holiday Inn on November 12th.

His search eventually led us to the Phoenix area. Two weeks ago we drove down to the Valley to check out a truck that looked like a good deal. We decided to make a weekend of it and booked a hotel room for Saturday night through priceline.com.

I always get good deals by using priceline, but sometimes it's a surprise to learn exactly how great those deals can be. While we were checking in, a woman came in and told the other desk clerk she didn't have a reservation but needed a room. She explained that she had a AAA card and asked what the rate for the room would be if she used the AAA discount. He looked it up on the computer and told the woman her discounted rate would be $104 per night, not including taxes and fees.

Ed and I looked at each other and smiled. We'd paid just $45 for our room!

The truck that had brought us to the Valley was located in Fountain Hills, belonging to a husband and wife who owned a bicycle shop in this upscale community. It was a beautiful shade of blue, in almost-perfect condition, and it had all the bells and whistles.

After some soul-searching and debate of pros and cons, we made an offer. At the last minute, the husband admitted he wasn't sure he wanted to sell it after all. (Huh?!) It seems the wife decided she wanted to buy a camper that their smaller truck didn't have the power to pull. They promised to call us when they made their final decision.

Blue Ridge wears the purple and gold.

Luckily, the weekend wasn't a total loss. We went to the high school football championship quarter-final play-off game in Phoenix and watched our team, Blue Ridge High, humiliate the opposing team 41 to 14.

(In fact, the final championship game is at 3:30 this afternoon at the Skydome in Flagstaff. As usual, year after year, it has come down to Blue Ridge versus our arch-nemesis, Show Low High, which happens to be the alma mater of several of my nephews and nieces. Ed has gone to Flagstaff--about 2 hours away by car--with friends whose son is on the Blue Ridge team. I look forward to getting Ed's updates via text!) [9pm Update: Blue Ridge prevailed, winning 35 to 14! We are the new state champs!]

On Sunday we stopped by my sister Karla's house in Mesa and visited for about 4 hours before we headed back toward home. Ed had heard of another truck he wanted to look at, so about halfway home we stopped in the tiny mountain town of Strawberry, near Payson. This truck was white with a nice matching camper shell. Although its options package was more basic, it was in perfect shape and had 15,000 fewer miles on it. On the drive home, Ed decided he definitely wanted it.

The next day, Ed called the guy and told him he'd decided to buy the truck. Imagine Ed's disappointment when the man said he'd just sold it to someone else. Ed was getting frustrated and wondered if "someone" was trying to tell him not to get a new truck, but we decided not to worry about it. If he was meant to have a new truck, everything would work out. The right truck would come along at the right time.

Ed and his new baby outside the bank just minutes after making the deal.

It happened sooner and closer than we expected. Just a few days later, Ed learned about another truck being sold by a cop in nearby Snowflake. Ed made the 30-minute drive to check it out and came home enthusiastic about it. Again, the truck was perfectly maintained, and this one had even more bells and whistles than the first truck had.

There was, however, a catch: the cop had a 21-year-old brother, and their dad was thinking about buying the truck for him. It was very frustrating, but we decided to wait patiently and let things work out the way they were supposed to. Two days later we got the call: the dad had decided not to buy the truck, so it was ours if we wanted it. Ed wanted it!

The old and the new trucks in our driveway today.

Yesterday we headed to Snowflake to attend the temple with Kyle, a friend of my son Jacob, who recently received his call to serve a mission in Argentina. We arrived in Snowflake 30 minutes early and met the cop at his bank. Soon the papers were signed, the check was deposited, and the truck was ours to take home.

Ed was right. It's a really nice truck that handles beautifully. Just perfect for a long trip to New York!

The fifth-wheel trailer, the 1996 Ram 3500, and the 2006 Ram 2500.

Regionals

2011-11-24T10:06:00.001-07:00

16 Nov 2011: Dylan (age 14) in front of the George Gardner

Performing Arts Center after the big concert in Holbrook, AZ.

My son Dylan made the regional orchestra this year! After weeks of daily practice at school, Dylan and other classmates headed to Holbrook, our county seat about an hour's drive away, for a full day of rehearsals. That evening Ed, our son-in-law Chris, and I drove up to Holbrook to watch the final production. (My daughter Sarah stayed at home to fight off a cold.)

Dylan is on the far right side of the stage, the 3rd bass player from the right.

The regional music festival features the best singers and musicians from many school districts throughout the northeastern section of Arizona. We were treated to selections by a choir of 160 junior high students, pieces performed by about 60 orchestra students, and numbers played by about 60 band members. These kids were amazing!

Dylan is 3rd bass player from right.

I didn't find out until the next day that my niece Emma also performed at regionals, singing in the choir! It was such a huge crowd (both the choir and the audience) that we never saw her. She was also unaware that we and Dylan were there that night. Dylan was quite bummed out that he and his cousin spent a whole day on the same campus and never saw each other.

Fitting Dylan's bass into the back of our small car was quite a trick!

It was quite a night! I'm so proud of Dylan and the way he works hard to develop his musical talents!

Into the Frying Pan

2011-11-11T18:43:00.000-07:00

Just a quick entry for anyone who was curious about our strange Mutt and Jeff eggs, which Ed fried up this morning.

The tiny little olive-green egg (which, oddly enough, was exactly the size of a green olive) is visible at the very top left of the pan. It didn't really have a yolk, just some yellow swirls. Ed ate that one and said it was good.

The huge brown egg did indeed have a double-yolk, which you can see in the center of the pan. I ate that egg as well as the normal-sized egg below it. Yesterday we actually got a second big, long brown egg almost exactly the same size and shape as this one, so we must have one hen who likes to produce extra extra large eggs!

In fact, today Ed collected a total of ten eggs! We have ten hens, so that means they are all laying now! Before today, we never got more than five in a single day.

I don't think Ed had the frying pan hot enough before he cracked in the eggs, causing them to spread out so milky-looking like that. I'm afraid it didn't appear too appetizing to me. I told him I'm going to do the frying tomorrow morning. I haven't had a chance to cook any of the fresh eggs yet. I want to see if they cook up any differently when I fry them the old-fashioned Butler way, in plenty of hot, bubbling butter!

The Long and the Short of It

2011-11-09T17:56:00.001-07:00

I know, I know. You're probably thinking, "How many more eggs can I stand to look at!?" I don't blame you, but I just had to share the latest anomalies in our crop of eggs.

The two center eggs, turquoise and tan, are the typical size of most of the eggs we collect. As our hens mature, their eggs have become consistently larger, about the size of eggs sold in the store as "large."

We went about 3 days without any new brown eggs, until yesterday. That's when Ed found that huge brown egg on the right. I have honestly never seen such a big, long egg before! The amazing length is even more obvious in the photos below.

Then Ed found the tiny little olive-green egg today. He almost missed seeing it in the straw. It's about the size of a robin's egg, maybe only slightly bigger. I had no idea it was even possible for a chicken to lay such a tiny egg!

Ed says he's going to cook the huge brown egg and the tiny green egg tomorrow morning. He's curious to see if the big egg has a double-yolk. (One of our regular-sized eggs last week did have a double yolk.) He's even more curious to see if the teeny-tiny egg has a teeny-tiny little yolk inside.

I think putting the eggs into a typical egg carton really highlights the differences in their sizes. The lid won't even close all the way when the giant brown egg is in the carton!

And that's the long and the short of it!

Gone, Gone, Gonzo

2011-11-08T19:27:00.000-07:00

31 Oct 2011: Gonzo 3 days before he was butchered on Thursday.

These are the final pictures of our rooster, Gonzo, taken 3 days before Ed killed and plucked him. I think he was beautiful, despite his misshapen beak, with those tall green-black tail feathers and long neck feathers so fine they were almost like hair.

Gonzo with an acorn he'd scooped up with the bottom half of his beak.

I wanted to keep some of his feathers, but Ed said they weren't any good after he plunged Gonzo's body into boiling hot water to loosen the feathers up for plucking. That made me sad.

Good-bye to Gonzo, our Silver Laced Wyandotte rooster.

After growing up on a farm and watching his grandfather butcher hundreds of chickens, Ed had thought it would be no big deal to butcher our own chickens when the time came. That was not the case at all. As an avid hunter, Ed has also killed many game birds in his lifetime, but somehow this was harder. He was a bit traumatized by the experience and told me he never wants to have to kill any more of our chickens. But he knows the time will come when he must.

Ed estimates that Gonzo weighed about 4 lbs.

Thankfully, Ed took care of this while I was at work, as I'd asked him to do. I told him I'd be okay if I came home and Gonzo was simply gone. And it was fine, although it was a little shocking to look in the refrigerator and see Gonzo's carcass looking just like any whole chicken you can pick up at the grocery store. Everything that made him the rooster we knew was gone.

5 Nov 2011: Roasted chicken stuffed with rice dressing.

So Ed prepared and roasted a chicken for us last night, and he was delicious. Isn't it funny how we never refer to a chicken dinner as him or her? I think I always kind of assumed that all chickens sold in the stores were hens, but I guess they can be either.

Meanwhile, our egg count keeps rising. We eat at least 3 eggs per day, sometimes as many as six, yet we now have more than two dozen eggs in the fridge. Typically, we find about 4 eggs per day. Ed thinks we may be able to sell our fresh eggs someday soon. I didn't believe it was true, but the fresh eggs really do taste better than those sold in stores. Even the texture is different, less rubbery and more tender.

As you can see, the Easter Eggers are leading in egg production! The brown eggs are a bit slower coming, but then we do have 6 Easter Egger hens and only 4 of the brown egg-layers (thanks to two of them turning out to be roosters!). This has been quite the learning experience for our family!

A Memorial

2011-11-06T17:20:00.000-07:00

This morning we attended a very touching memorial for someone our family hadn't known for too long. My son-in-law Chris's step-dad passed away almost two weeks ago. After a long fight with cancer, Bruce Anderson left this world on October 24th.

Chris and his four sisters share the telling of their dad's life story.

Chris has a good relationship with his natural father, but Bruce is the man who was in Chris's home and in his life everyday from the time Chris was only two years old. Bruce had two teenage daughters when he met and married Chris's mom Brenda. Brenda had two small children of her own, Chris and his sister Sara. Together, Bruce and Brenda had another child, Chris's younger sister Lori.

My daughter Sarah and a relative of Chris's perform a duet

while Chris's Uncle John holds the music flat against the breeze.

Bruce was a great outdoorsman and loved nature, so it seemed only right to have his memorial outdoors. It was held in the backyard of their home, which holds so many things Bruce created and built. He was quite a craftsman.

Some of Bruce's grandchildren and grand-nieces and -nephews sing "I Am a Child of God."

We were hoping for continued unseasonally warm weather for today, but after yesterday's snow it was quite chilly. In fact, there was still snow on the trees. But there were several fire pits burning in the yard to ward off some of the chill, and the cold did not detract from the beautiful spirit.

Chris shares some memories of his step-dad.

Dylan and Sarah at the back of the crowd, listening to Chris's comments.

Bruce had many loving family and friends who will miss him.

In happier times: Bruce with Chris and Brenda at Chris's birthday party.

Sarah and Chris met one year ago this month. We met Brenda a couple of times soon after their engagement in February, but we didn't meet Bruce until the end of March, when we attended Chris's birthday party in their home. We've had several opportunities to visit with Bruce since that day. What a good man he was and, I know, continues to be. God be with you, Bruce, until we all meet again.

The Week in Review

2011-11-05T09:38:00.000-07:00

2 Nov 2011: The ghostly image of a doe.

It's been a full week, and here are some highlights:

31 Oct 2011

Monday night was Halloween, of course. With only one child left at home, I wasn't sure whether it would be much of a haunt, but it turned out okay. Dylan never has been one to wear a costume. Even when he was a small child, his older siblings wanted to dress up to the hilt, but I was lucky if I could get Dylan to wear a tee-shirt with "Trick-or-Treat" written on it. This year was no different. He decided to spray his hair green and draw himself a mustache with my eyeliner pencil. Good enough.

31 Oct 2011: Chris texted me this picture of Diego

as Karate Dog on Halloween!

Dylan and a bunch of his friends (most of the members of his Teachers Quorum at church, in fact) went to the annual haunted house put on at the nearby fire station as a fundraiser. It's the most popular haunted house on the mountain! Dylan reports that it was actually scary and they had a blast. After that, the guys went to one of the boys' homes and hung out until almost 9:00. It was a school night, after all.

1 Nov 2011: Jeff arrives at the surprise party for his 50th birthday.

Tuesday was my little brother Jeff's 50th birthday. His wife Dana set up a surprise party for him at a Mexican restaurant where, upon his delayed arrival, he was greeted by a room packed with family and friends. It was a lot of fun getting together like that. And the Mexican food was good, too!

Dana, Jeff, and 4-year-old Callie, the youngest of their 13 children.

As Jeff pointed out, we only have one more sibling to hit the 50-year mark. Our baby brother, Darryl, is still only 48.

Jeff's birthday cake.

The candles are lit! Dana, Jeff, and the cake.

On Wednesday night, Dylan and I went to Mutual (youth group). When we were leaving the church afterward, Dylan spotted a couple of deer on the church grounds. We see a lot of wildlife in our rural area, but it's unusual for deer to come that far into the town. As our car neared them, they crossed the street and we followed them, camera at the ready. It was too dark to get any good photos, but the ghostly one at the top of this post came out pretty cool!

5 Nov 2011: Snow-covered pine in front of our house.

And finally, last night we had our first real snowstorm, the kind that lasts all night and sticks around for awhile. We only got a little over an inch at our house, but I heard they got six inches in Flagstaff.

5 Nov 2011: Snow-limned oak branches in our front yard.

There was one more big event that took place on Thursday night, but I'll save that for the next blog post...

The Wedding Luncheon

2011-11-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

30 July 2011: Callie, Chris the groom, Dylan, Sarah the bride, Makayla, and Celesta.

The wedding luncheon was an informal affair. Just some homemade eats to share with the wedding party, out-of-town guests, our close friends, and our beloved family members.

As you can see, we fed a good-sized crowd!

The meal was nothing fancy, but I spent 2 days preparing it! We had the makings for tuna salad and ham-and-cheese sandwiches, along with homemade pasta salad and potato salad. We also served potato chips, tortilla chips with salsa, and cheese-and-crackers.

30 July 2011: My 4-year-od niece Callie and my new son-in-law Chris!

We expected the luncheon to last only an hour or so, but we all had so much fun visiting and relaxing together that, before we knew it, it was almost time for the ring ceremony and reception to begin! We had to tear ourselves away to finish up the last minute tasks before the rest of the guests began to arrive.

My sister Karla and my husband Ed share a special moment.

My step-mom Kathy, my dad Myron, my sister-in-law Dana,

and my cousin Sandra and her husband Albert.

Chris's Uncle John and Aunt Linda in the front. Beyond Linda are

Chris's mom Brenda (Linda's sister) and step-dad Bruce.

My niece Genevieve with her son Max and my niece Brianna.

My niece Elyssa and her little sister Addison.

My niece-in-law Cami, my niece Mariah (the photographer),

and my nephew Julien.

My nephew Justin and three of his sisters: Elsie, Emma, and Brinley.

Next up will be the ring ceremony, but I didn't take any pictures at that event. So that post will have to wait until we get the remainder of the wedding pictures from our photographer. Stay tuned!

Chris and Sarah's Wedding Day

2011-11-01T19:40:00.002-07:00

30 July 2011: Newlyweds Sarah and Chris Kinsky just seconds after coming

out of the Snowflake Temple following their temple sealing.

Everything was as prepared as we could make it when we left for the Snowflake Temple on Saturday morning, July 30th. The wedding was scheduled for 11:00 a.m. and the guests had been informed to arrive 30 minutes prior to that time. Sarah had spent the early hours of the morning with her buddies Emmi and Tahna, both of whom are certified cosmetologists, getting her hair straightened and styled, her nails done, her feet pedicured, her makeup professionally applied, and her eyebrows waxed (ow!).

30 July 2011: Chris and Sarah Kinsky, now man and wife,

in front of the Snowflake Temple's fountain.

Chris and Sarah were to arrive at the temple an hour before the ceremony, and as Sarah's escort, so was I. It's a 30-minute drive to Snowflake from our house, so Sarah and I jumped into the car just after 9:30 and headed north to meet Chris and his escort at the temple.
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30 July 2011: Mother-of-the-Bride Mary and her husband Ed

with newlyweds Sarah and Chris.

We were about 15 minutes late, but I think the temple workers factor late arrivals into that hour, because everything went smoothly. Chris and his best friend/best man (whose name is also Chris) were whisked away to dress in their white temple clothing, while Sarah and I were taken to the Bride's Room to get her into her wedding gown.

30 July 2011 - Sarah's bridesmaids: two of her best friends

Emmi and Tahna, and her cousin Celesta on the right.

After all the guests were seated, we were brought to the sealing room where Chris was nervously awaiting his bride. The beautifully decorated room was so filled with family and friends, it was standing room only! More than 50 of our loved ones had joined us.

Sarah's bridesmaids admire her engagement and wedding rings.
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A friend and member of the temple presidency, President Kent Rhoton, performed the ceremony. My husband Ed and Chris's best friend Chris acted as witnesses. However, before he began the ceremony, President Rhoton spoke words of advice and encouragement to the bride and groom. It was very moving.

Celesta mourns her lack of an engagement ring while the others show off their rings.

You may recall that Tahna got married just 4 weeks before Sarah's wedding,

and Emmi got married exactly one week after Sarah!

The sealing ceremony itself is not very long, but it is deeply meaningful and beautiful. When it was over, Chris and Sarah were married, not only "until death do you part," but for time and all eternity. The concepts of celestial marriage and eternal families are among the most important doctrines of our religion.
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The bride and bridesmaids model their elegant flip-flops.

Photo and caption by my amazing photographer niece, Mariah Brinkerhoff!

After the sealing, the bride and groom were hugged and kissed and otherwise well-wished by each of their guests. Then Sarah and I returned to the Bride's Room to get her ready for photographs outside the temple. Emmi and Tahna joined us and rearranged Sarah's hair with her tiara and veil.

30 July 2011: Sarah and Chris share a kiss while the bridesmaids look on.

Almost everything went smoothly. But there was that one little glitch where the photographer (my niece Mariah) got lost on the way to the temple and we had to keep the bride and groom inside until Mariah arrived nearly 30 minutes later!

30 July 2011: Sarah's mom Mary joins her and the three bridesmaids,

Celesta, Emmi, and Tahna.

It all worked out perfectly, though. We had a good time staging various pictures on the temple grounds in celebration of this wonderful event in Chris and Sarah's lives.

30 July 2011 - Kissing couples: mom and step-dad of the bride, Mary and Ed;

bride and groom Sarah and Chris; and mom and step-dad of the groom, Brenda and Bruce.

(Photo and caption by Mariah Brinkerhoff.)

The sky over the temple was sunny and blue, but off in the distance dark clouds were threatening. Late July is the middle of our monsoon season, filled with almost-daily downpours, so we knew there was a chance we'd get rained upon. Yet the sky above us remained clear and bright while we took the final pictures, packed up all our stuff, and got into our cars.

We weren't more than a mile away from the temple when the skies opened up and a heavy rain began to wash over us for the remainder of our drive home. It was Sarah's wedding day miracle!
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Little brother Dylan (age 14) hugs his sister Sarah (age 21) in her bridal finery.

With Sarah married and Jacob on his mission, Dylan has become an only child at home!

30 July 2011: Most of the family who came for the wedding.
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30 July 2011: Most of the guests who came for the wedding.

(A few people left the temple before our lost photographer arrived!)
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30 July 2011: Chris and Sarah Kinsky start down the path of life together.

30 July 2011 - Mothers of the bride and groom: Mary and Brenda

30 July 2011: Sarah's step-dad Ed and her cousin Julien waiting outside the Snowflake Temple.

30 July 2011: Two cousins, Dylan (age 14) and Julien (age 13).

Dylan is actually older by only 2 months and 3 days.

From the temple, we headed back to the church in Lakeside to get everything ready for the luncheon. But that's a topic for my next post!

Ready for the Reception

2011-10-31T18:51:00.000-07:00

30 July 2011: Sarah and cake artist Charla with the amazing Puppy Love Cake!

When it comes to discussing the reception, we must begin, of course, with the wedding cake. Our good friend Charla Crossman had offered long ago to make Sarah's wedding cake when that far future day came. Sure enough, Charla was as good as her word and created the perfect wedding cake for my daughter!

A close-up of Sarah's wedding cake.

Sarah and I looked at many different styles of cakes for several weeks. The formal, tiered wedding cakes were beautiful but didn't really suit Sarah's carefree style. So we thought about being more creative, choosing a theme that really showed who Sarah is.

Sarah's cute kissing puppies cake top.

Charla created the veil and I made the top hat.

Naturally, anyone who knows my daughter knows what a huge animal lover she is. Even as a baby in her stroller at the park, she went crazy with excitement over every passing animal. As a toddler, she had to hug every stranger's dog. She was fearless. To this day, she wants to adopt every stray and love every unloved pet, and she still plans to become a veterinarian technician someday.

Charla made the doghouse, the signs, the rocky streams, flowers,

grass, paw prints, and so on out of edible fondant. I think it's gorgeous!

In the end, we chose an animal theme for Sarah's reception. We started with her favorite animal, dogs, and we picked out the kissing huskies for her cake top. We were very fortunate that Hallmark was selling retro-style "kissing" salt and pepper shakers at that time!

As we gathered ceramic figures of dogs to display on the guest tables, we decided to use both cats and dogs since our family has always had at least two or three cats and dogs as pets ever since Sarah was three years old. Eventually we added rabbits to the mix, as well, because we've also had pet bunnies since Sarah joined 4-H Club and began showing rabbits at competition in 7th grade.

The cake-and-punch table is all set up a few hours before the reception begins.

We'd planned to arrange more lavender and white flowers around the base of the cake,

but we ran out of both time and flowers! We agreed it looked fine this way, though.

The table for the guest cakes and lemonade fountains

is also all set up before the reception begins.

We were fortunate to be able to cut costs on the guest cakes by re-using two of the large sheet cakes from our open house in May, when Ed and I were sealed in the temple. My friend Crystal had made us three huge, gorgeous sheetcakes (white cake with raspberry filling, yum!), but we only used one of them. So, after our open house, we'd immediately wrapped the remaining two cakes in 3 layers of wax paper, plastic wrap, and aluminum foil and placed them in our deep freezer.

Charla cut one of the sheet cakes in half and stacked them

to make this tall, personalized guest cake.

There they stayed, frozen solid, until the morning of Sarah's wedding. Then we removed them from the freezer and delivered them to Charla, who scraped off the old frosting and redecorated them for Sarah's reception. They came out beautifully, and they were still quite scrumptious! These were the cakes we served the guests until later in the evening, when Sarah and Chris cut their official wedding cake.
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Charla cut the other sheet cake in half to make two separate cakes

decorated with puppy paw prints.

As guests entered, they signed the guest book at this table.

Of course, the rest of the cultural hall had to be decorated, as well. We'd reserved the church for the entire day on Saturday, but after my sister Karla and her kids arrived from Mesa on Friday, we decided to decorate the building on Friday night. Besides our family and Chris's family, we also had several friends from church show up to help out.
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I was amazed how quickly the work went with so many willing hands. I distributed copies of the instructions and floor plan I'd sketched out and, before I knew it, everything was in place! It was incredible. In less than 2 hours, it was done. We returned early on Saturday morning to complete a handful of tasks that couldn't be done earlier, but that's it. Sarah's wedding day was simpler and more relaxing for having gotten so much work out of the way the night before.

Originally this was going to be the backdrop for the receiving line, but somehow

we ended up not having a line. We were just too busy to get it organized, I guess.

However, that left Chris and Sarah (and the rest of us) free to mingle with their guests.

It was still a nice backdrop for other activities, such as dancing and tossing the bouquet.

What had begun as an overwhelming task soon fell into place, as these things always do, thanks to the efforts of so many. One of my biggest worries had been finding a backdrop for the receiving line. As it turned out, there was no receiving line (which worked out well), but we still ended up with a lovely backdrop.

My sister Karla loaned us Christmas lights and a picket fence (which was actually made long ago by my sister-in-law Lori and has adorned several family weddings); friends of friends loaned us a wrought iron arch; and the McNeils, Cochenours, and Westovers loaned us a wreath and plants, as well as greenery, flowers, and lavender cloth to drape over the arch and fence. I'm so grateful to all those who made it happen for us!

Actually, setting up the backdrop was one of the best parts of that Friday night. The men voluntarily took on that task, but we women saw the need to help them, shall we say, adjust their completed project to fit our vision of how it should look. That led to a lot of good-natured challenges and teasing fun.

The men also set up the 12 guest tables for us (with 7 chairs at each table), and then we ladies followed along to drape the tables with white and lavender tablecloths. Atop each table we placed a mirror tile with a glass vase set in the center, containing a single lavender rose. Finally, on each mirror and surrounding each vase we arranged ceramic figures of little puppies, kittens, and bunnies. The tables turned out to be so cute and so very Sarah!

There was much, much more to be done, of course, other tables to be set up and activities to be organized, but I'll share those photos when we get to the post about the reception itself. Now, though, we have finally arrived at the main event. Tomorrow's post: Chris and Sarah's wedding!

Wedding Work

2011-10-30T21:08:00.000-07:00

The flower girls' baskets for Chris's nieces, Morgan and Keri.

As of today, my daughter and son-in-law, Sarah and Chris, have been married exactly 3 months! I guess it's finally time to begin sharing the Big Event, which I will do with a series of posts over the next several days.

The wedding planning begins, of course, months before the actual event takes place. I had figured I'd have plenty of time, since school ends in May. I would have all of June and July to prepare for my daughter's wedding. So we began small, purchasing the cake topper and other various items we'd need.

Sarah's toss-away bouquet.

With only a very small budget to work with, we knew this was going to be a do-it-yourself affair as much as possible. I'm pretty artsy-craftsy so I wasn't too concerned in the beginning. Then I started making long, long things-to-do lists for myself, for Sarah, and for Chris. It didn't take long before the sheer magnitude of this undertaking began to overwhelm me!

The hard-to-find roses for the bouquets.

What I didn't expect was that preparing the wedding flowers would be the task to consume most of my time. First of all, I had no idea how difficult it would be to find lavender silk flowers to match Sarah's wedding colors of lavender and white. We bought nearly all the purple flowers we could find here on the mountain, but there were nowhere near the number we would need for all the bouquets.

The large bridal bouquet surrounded by three bridesmaid bouquets.

Sarah's plastic-protected wedding dress is in the background.

We finally drove to Mesa just 9 days before the wedding and found exactly what we needed. Unfortunately, once we got home we discovered we still didn't have nearly enough. I texted my niece Genevieve, who lives in the Mesa area, and she somehow found more than 30 more of those lavender silk flowers to send us. By now, we were cutting it close!

Sarah's bouquet with sparkly lavender ribbon.

It all came together in the end. I made Sarah's silk bridal bouquet, the toss-away bouquet, the flower girls' baskets, four corsages, and nine boutonnieres. I also tied ribbons on about twenty vases for more flowers. It all took about two weeks. Due to the difficulty in obtaining the final lavender roses, I wasn't able to do much on the bridesmaids' bouquets until the night before the wedding. By then I was rapidly losing steam. Thank goodness my sister Karla arrived the day before the wedding. She and her married daughter Elyssa worked on the bouquets late into the night, finishing them up for me. Karla, Elyssa, and Genevieve are my heroes!

Four corsages, for me, Chris's mom Brenda, my step-mom Kathy, and Ed's mom Caryl.

To the right is Sarah's bridal veil, scattered with little white "pearls."

Furthermore, we almost waited too long to order Sarah's wedding gown. We had spent months looking at different dresses online. There were several Sarah liked, but we were nervous about getting a good fit without being able to try it on. She finally chose one and ordered it six weeks before the wedding, only to learn that it would take seven weeks to arrive! However, after Sarah paid quite a few extra fees, they finally guaranteed she would receive the gown a few days before the wedding.

Nine boutonnieres for the groomsmen, dads, step-dads, and grandfathers.

Neither Sarah's dad nor Chris's dad made it to the wedding, so we didn't use them all.

Thankfully, the wedding gown actually arrived 5 days before the wedding. Other than the sleeves and skirt being too long, the fit was perfect! Luckily for us, our friend and neighbor, Barbara Badger, is an accomplished seamstress, and she did a beautiful job of hemming the skirt and sleeves. Barbara and another good friend/neighbor, Sarah Clark, made our three bridesmaids' skirts for us, as well. We are so blessed by our friends!

Preparing many, many vases to adorn the tables at the reception.

Gradually, as we entered the final weeks before the wedding, everything began falling into place, as I'd hoped it would. There was only one big task left to conquer, and that was the wedding invitations. We planned to send them out about three weeks before the wedding. In fact, we planned to hand-deliver all the local invitations in order to save on the cost of stamps. However, we faced a huge obstacle when the time came to send them out.

Our bed became "Reception Planning Central" during July.

It wasn't because the invitations weren't ready. Far from it. I planned to make the wedding invitations myself, so I started working on them with plenty of time to spare. In fact, I was very excited about this particular project. Our amazing amateur photographer friend, Eugene Prestwich (aided by his lovely wife Wyndie), had taken pictures of Chris and Sarah at the Snowflake Temple back in May, so Sarah and I began by selecting one that would make the perfect backdrop for the invitation.

After much trial and error, I was able to fit all the information into the open spaces on the picture, adjust the colors correctly, figure out the computer tricks to get the lettering to look right and print correctly onto the photo, and then print out more than 200 invitations on glossy photo paper. I thought they came out well, if I do say so myself! (To see the invitation, click here.) Now all we needed to do was get them delivered. Or so we thought.

The kitchen table was taken over by invitations for a few weeks.

There was just one thing holding us up. Because Chris had been married in the temple to his first wife, from whom he has been divorced for almost eight years, he had to obtain written clearance from the First Presidency of our church in order to be married in the temple again. We knew there would be no problem obtaining this clearance, but we also knew it could take some time as the paperwork moved through the proper church channels. Chris started the wheels in motion back in March, just a few weeks after their February 17th engagement.

By July, we expected to receive the letter from the First Presidency at any time. We watched the mail everyday, but it still hadn't arrived when it came time to send out the invitations. Another week went by and we were becoming very nervous. Eleven days before the wedding, Chris, Sarah, Ed, and I met to make a decision. We'd been praying hard for guidance, and each one of us had felt impressed to go ahead and deliver the invitations, and trust in God for the rest.

It was an absolute leap of faith, but we did it. All of the invitations were safely delivered one week before the wedding. I was still an anxious mother-of-the-bride, but I should have trusted more. The clearance letter arrived five full days before the wedding. It was a huge relief! Now we could relax (not!) and complete our final preparations as we headed into the final days before Chris and Sarah's Big Day.

Next up: Setting up the wedding reception!

Three Summer Weddings

2011-10-29T16:33:00.000-07:00

6 Aug 2011: Sarah Carter Kinsky, Emmi Gardner Hatch, and Tahna Beal Peterson

on Emmi's wedding day.

I'm gearing up to finally share Sarah's wedding photos. However, I really cannot jump right into Sarah's wedding without first showing the whole summer wedding theme that seemed to dominate the Summer of 2011!

As I've mentioned before, Sarah has 4 best friends: Emmi, Tahna, Brandy, and Kristin. By a happy but unexpected twist of fate, Sarah, Tahna, and Emmi each found their "Mr. Right" around the same time and then planned their weddings to all happen within a 5-week period! Tahna went first, getting married in the Snowflake Temple on July 1st. Sarah was next, getting married in the Snowflake Temple on July 30th. Emmi finished up the trend with her marriage in the Snowflake Temple on August 6th.

9 July 2011: Spencer and Tahna Peterson at their wedding reception.

So let's begin with the reception of Tahna and her sweetheart Spencer. Although they were married on Friday, July 1st, they opted to put off their reception until they returned from their honeymoon cruise to Mexico. Which explains why the bride was wearing a sunburn under her wedding gown! They held their reception on Saturday, July 9th.

I love the back of Tahna's dress!

It was so interesting to see how completely different each wedding reception was. Despite their very close and long-standing friendships, each young lady has her own unique personality, and their receptions were quite reflective of their individuality.

Tahna and Spencer do the garter thing.

I think Tahna's reception was the most informal. Originally Sarah and Emmi were going to be among her bridesmaids, but at the last minute Spencer and Tahna decided not to have bridesmaids or groomsmen at all. They had no receiving line, but instead spent the evening circulating among the guests and visiting. Spencer performed a cute, funny-romantic lip-sync for Tahna, and they took part in dancing to the Chicken Dance, the Macarena and other group dances with the more daring guests. It was a fun, entertaining evening.

Spencer and Tahna's wedding cake.

Tahna's colors were deep red and dark silvery-gray. Her square gift-box wedding cake and funky bouquet (with feathers, buttons, and beads among the red roses) were very much in keeping with Tahna's carefree and unconventional style.

6 Aug 2011: Hal and Emmi Hatch at their wedding reception.

Emmi's wedding reception, on the other hand, was the most formal of the three receptions. This may be because Emmi is her parents' only daughter, whereas Tahna is daughter number seven (and still one more to go). I think the actual reason is that Emmi is a real girly-girl who has been planning her wedding since she was about nine years old! (I am not kidding.)

Emmi and Hal enjoy their first dance as a married couple.

Hal and Emmi had a full contingent of groomsmen and bridesmaids, including Sarah and Tahna. They also had a reception line that was very long and lasted most of the evening. Both Hal and Emmi come from large extended families whose origins are here in the White Mountains.

Emmi tosses her bouquet.

Even though Hal and Emmi weren't free to circulate the way Spencer and Tahna were, they still injected fun and good humor into the evening. For instance, Hal read aloud his recollection of the day he and Emmi met. Each time he mentioned her name, he pronounced it in slow, deep tones: "Emmi Mikelle Gardner." It got a good laugh each time!

Hal and Emmi's wedding cake.

Emmi is the first person I've known to have four colors for her wedding. I believe the colors were cream, pink, gray, and black. The bridesmaids did not have matching dresses, but were instructed to wear something with one or more of those colors. Sarah wore a pink shirt with a black skirt, and she wore a gray corsage.

I thought this dessert table was very classy.

Ed and I particularly enjoyed the Good 'n' Plenties and black licorice!

Another table laden with four flavors of specialty cupcakes.

6 Aug 2011: Dylan Carter (age 14) and his sister Sarah (age 21).

Newlywed Sarah was one of Emmi's bridesmaids. She'd been married just 7 days!

6 Aug 2011: Mary and Ed at Emmi's reception.

We'd only been married for 14 months ourselves!

Next up: preparing for the wedding of our only daughter!

Twenty-Two

2011-10-28T18:50:00.001-07:00

My baby girl turned twenty-two yesterday. I just don't know where the time is going. Everything is whizzing by so fast.

Just one year ago I was boggled that she had turned twenty-one, but she was still living at home. She wasn't dating anyone. Both her brothers were living at home. For me, it was bliss.

Jacob had recently received his mission call, and we were talking about Sarah moving to Mesa in a year or so to attend college, but it was just talk then. I really couldn't wrap my brain around the fact that one day all three of my children would no longer be safely gathered under my roof each night

Ed baked Sarah's cake and I decorated it. Twenty-two candles!

It's reality now. Sarah met the man of her dreams and is happily married. Jacob is living the missionary life in northern California. Poor Dylan now gets way more parental attention than he cares for.

Dylan and Chris wait for Sarah to blow out her candles.

Nonetheless, I am very blessed. Jacob is growing so much on his mission, and he writes every week without fail. Dylan is a 5'11" tall 14-year-old who still loves to give me rib-cracking bear hugs and cuddle with me when we watch TV together.

And Sarah still likes to spend time with her mom. In fact, she and her friend Brandy invited me to see a movie at the theater with them tonight. (We're both husband-less tonight, since Ed and Chris decided to spend the night at Chris's remote mountain cabin, to winterize the cabin and check out the elk and wild-turkey hunting prospects in the area.)

So I'm a lucky mom. My kids may be moving on in their lives, but they haven't entirely left me behind!

The First Easter Egg

2011-10-23T11:59:00.001-07:00

23 Oct 2011: A pretty, speckled Easter Egger egg between two brown eggs.

No, I don't mean the first Easter egg in the world! But this morning when I went out to feed and water the chickens, I found this blue-green egg lying just inside the door of the hen house. It's the first egg that one of our six Easter Egger hens has laid!

This one is actually our fourth egg since the first brown egg arrived on Monday. Unfortunately, when Ed showed me the second egg on Tuesday, we accidentally dropped it as it went from Ed's hand to mine. Then it was nothing more than a scrambled egg on the driveway gravel.

The first three eggs were all brown. A couple of people have expressed doubt that we'd really get blue and green eggs from the Easter Egger hens, and I was beginning to wonder myself. Until this morning! Now we know we can look forward to a colorful supply of fresh eggs!

Successful chicken farmer, Ed, with Crysta or Sally

(still can't tell those two Black Australorps apart)!

UPDATE: This evening (just a few minutes ago) Ed and I went out to take care of the chickens. When Ed checked the nesting box, he found two more eggs, one brown and one blue-green! That's three eggs in one day. Our little chicken farm is on a roll!

The two eggs on the right are the newest ones.

If we hadn't broken one earlier in the week, we'd have exactly half a dozen!

Not Lost in Translation

2011-10-22T10:41:00.001-07:00

Chinese character for "Student"

As a teacher in Arizona, I've had plenty of opportunity to work with students whose first language is Spanish. While I'm by no means fluent in Spanish, I know enough of the language and culture to communicate with these students fairly easily.

Then, in August 2010, a new freshman joined my class. Shumin had lived his whole life in a rural area of China, but when his mother married an American he came to live in the United States. I think he had been here about a week before school started. "Good morning" was his entire grasp of the English language.

He gradually learned more useful phrases, like "See you later" and "I don't know," but most of his freshman year was spent watching me with a benign smile and a blank look on his face. He was always cooperative and pleasant. He just had no clue what was going on around him. He used his little handheld translator and I used online translators, but changing English letters (which represent sounds) to Chinese characters (which represent ideas) was rather less than helpful to either of us!

Kong meets actress Ann Darrow on his island.

Shumin returned to my English class this August as a sophomore, and I was immediately impressed at the progress he'd made over the summer. There are still many gaps in his knowledge of our language, of course, but he is now able to have meaningful conversations and, for the most part, follow directions and comprehend what I'm teaching.

It's when we do written assignments that I really see the vast differences between our two languages. Unlike Spanish, in which the sentence structure is so similar to ours, the phraseology of Chinese is quite different from that of English.

This week my class watched the most recent version of the film King Kong. When we finished, I discussed how the tale takes place during the Great Depression and introduces us to starving young actress Ann Darrow. I pointed out how a series of events set her on a path that completely changes her circumstances by the end of the movie. For instance, when her seedy comedy theater closes unexpectedly without paying her the wages she is owed, she meets a shady director who only hires her because she fits the size 4 dress he'd acquired for his movie's main character.

Chinese character for "Gorilla"

Following our discussion, I gave the students this writing prompt: "Describe the events that changed Ann Darrow's life."

I always look forward to reading Shumin's essays. Not only is it fun to see how he translates his Chinese thoughts into English, but I also enjoy getting a glimpse of how he experiences the world around him without completely understanding everything he hears. Here is the rough draft of Shumin's paper:

Chinese character for "Love"

"The story start is the very difficult to live time. People no money to use and they not have food to eat. So they want to go something to make money. So they decide to the island. In the etc. they to go through and came at the island. The island have very dangerous thing and animal because the island is very old island that it is have too much things. Like strange animal they eat people. So the people came in, you will be death.

"In the island Ann Darrow’s met King Kong and the story was afoot. They came to the island and they meet the King Kong. The people for famous and then they pick it to our work. The King Kong want to find the girl named Darrow’s, and the people think it is a dangerous animal so they kill his. So the girl can stop it. So King Kong is death. That’s is very moving movie. So that movie is tell us you need to like animal. Animal is our friend."

Chinese character for "Girl"

I'm pretty sure he used his translator to find words like "etc." and "afoot." And because the writing prompt has the "-'s" (apostrophe plus "s") at the end of "Darrow," Shumin obviously thought it was part of her actual name rather than a possessive form. Also, I don't know how clearly he understood the prompt because he didn't stay on topic very well.

Nonetheless, I was touched by the theme he found in the movie and I gave him very high marks for his sincere effort. It's true, sometimes we learn more from our students than anything we teach them.

At Last, Cole Slaw!

2011-10-20T19:07:00.001-07:00

Only 4 cabbage plants survived to adulthood. All 4 of them began the process of curling their leaves into a tight little ball. Unfortunately, only one of the plants successfully produced a nice little head of cabbage.

Yesterday Ed chopped off the little cabbage head, washed it thoroughly, and presented it to me right before dinner time. So I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

It was delicious! Not only that, but since I'm the only one in our house who likes cabbage, I get to enjoy a dish of cole slaw every day of the coming week!

A Good Egg

2011-10-17T19:23:00.000-07:00

We have our first egg! It's a good thing that Ed watches where he steps when he walks in the hen house, because there it was on the ground when he went out to feed and water the chickens this morning. One careless step and it would have been a scrambled egg!

Ed built the hens a nice nesting box up on a shelf last week. They like to sit there and relax, but it remains to be seen whether they will actually lay eggs in it. This egg was on the floor beneath the nesting box.

Of course, there's no way to know which hen produced the first egg. They were all hatched the same day, so they're the same age, but we have 4 different breeds of hens and they may mature at different rates.

We do know it wasn't Percy or Gonzo, our two roosters. We also know it wasn't one of our Easter Eggers--Buffy, Lucille, Kate, Maybelline, Nadia, or Cocoa--because Easter Eggers lay blue and green eggs, not brown.

Therefore, it had to be one of the four remaining hens: Prissy, Lacey, Crysta, or Sally. Ed and I are betting it's Miss Priss, the Barred Plymouth Rock (Percy's sister). She's always been the most precocious hen in the flock.

It's such a cute little egg, dwarfed by the large white eggs we buy from WalMart! All 4 breeds of our chickens are supposed to lay large or extra large eggs, so this bitty thing is slightly disappointing. But our hens are still young, not even 5 months old yet, so maybe they'll get better at it with time. Plus we only started giving them the "Egg Maker" feed last week.

It's just one teensy-weensy egg, but we hope it's the start of something great!

Moonshine

2011-10-15T15:51:00.000-07:00

Ed, Dylan, and I went out to Dillinger's for pizza last night. Well, I'm no pizza fan, so I ordered ravioli. Anyway, when we came home afterward, I looked up and saw the most incredible sky, with an almost-full moon glowing between strips of clouds. Naturally, the camera does not do it justice, but I'm sharing anyway. Enjoy!

Callie Jayne Does the Macarena!

2011-10-13T21:36:00.001-07:00

Back on July 9th we attended the wedding reception of Sarah's good friend Tahna, who is also the adopted younger sister of my sister-in-law Dana. At the reception they had lots of music and fun songs for group dancing, like the Chicken Song and the Macarena.

I caught my sweet 4-year-old niece Callie doing the Macarena along with the best of them. Watch this video of our adorable little miracle, and you'll see that she truly has recovered from the terrible accident that nearly took her life 3 years ago!

[I can't figure out why the video clip has no sound, because the original works fine. Anyone out there know how I can fix this?]

Unexpected Apple Tree

2011-10-12T17:05:00.001-07:00

11 Oct 2011: Ed checks out the apple "bush."

Since we had Monday and Tuesday off from school this week, I decided we needed to spend Tuesday morning raking up the fallen pine needles from the last batch of storms. As I raked around the huge bush by the fence (see above picture), I found a small red apple on the ground. I was a little irritated, wondering who was throwing perfectly good apples into our yard for us to clean up!

Soon I found another little red apple closer to the bush. Just then, Ed came out of the house. I asked him, "Why do you suppose we have these apples in our yard?" He matter-of-factly replied, "Because that's an apple tree, honey."

Our apples!

Huh? I was flabbergasted. When we bought this house in July 1993 that bush was tiny and scraggly, only about half as tall as the 4-foot fence it was growing against. As it got bigger and bushier, it coiled tightly through the fence, and trying to control it caused us all kinds of grief. In the past, it never produced any fruit that I was aware of. It was just a bush that I occasionally thought about cutting down. Wow, do I feel silly!

Ed, on the other hand, knew it was an apple tree but figured it would never bear fruit because of the giant pine tree hovering over it. As you can see in the top photo, the pine branches completely block the tree's growth and prevent it from getting all the sunlight it should receive.

So we were both surprised. We sampled the apples and found that despite their small size, they were sweetly delicious! Now Ed is making plans to prune the apple tree and clear away as many of the hovering pine branches as feasible. Next year we may have a nice crop of apples!

11 Oct 2011: Dylan's friends, Elijah and Justin, helped out

with the raking and hauling of pine needles.

11 Oct 2011: My son-in-law Chris and my son Dylan took care of

sweeping pine needles off the roof and cleaning them out of the rain gutters.

11 Oct 2011: My husband Ed feeds branches, leaves, and pine needles

into the wood chipper to go into the compost pile for next year's garden.

He has a huge pile to chip up before the serious snow begins!

Silver Sisters

2011-10-11T13:56:00.001-07:00

The table at the entrance to the luncheon set the Halloween theme.

Once a month, the women's organization of our church--the Relief Society--puts on a Silver Sisters luncheon for the, shall we say, more experienced ladies in our ward. No one is really sure what constitutes a "Silver Sister." When I asked around, some said they thought it was reaching the age of 60, some thought it was 55, and a few thought it might even be 50. However, everyone agreed that no one really cared. Just come and enjoy!

11 Oct 2011 - The ladies at my table: Eileen, Susan, Carol, Elenna,

Caryl (my mom-in-law), and my buddy Gwen. (That's from left to right.)

I've never even thought about attending the luncheon since I work every day during the week. However, my mother-in-law has been attending the luncheons, so I decided to join her there this morning. After all, I am 57 years old now and, although there's not much silver in my hair yet, I am certainly "experienced"!

The ghostly decorations at our table. And chocolate, too!

The timing worked out well since this was Fall Break weekend, giving me 4 days off. I got to spend the morning raking leaves and pine needles from the front yard with my children. Tomorrow I go back to work and start the second quarter of our first semester.

Adorable toads-in-a-cauldron decorations at another table.

More cute decorations at another table.

Even dessert was decorated with tiny colored fall leaves. Adorable!

I cannot wait till I can retire and have my days free to participate in these types of activities! Ed and I are plotting together in hopes that I'll be able to retire when Dylan graduates in 2016. I just might be able to bear 4 more years of teaching!

Good-bye, Garden

2011-10-08T13:29:00.000-07:00

7 Oct 2011: Snow falls on our newly denuded vegetable garden.

Ed came home around 5:30 yesterday, after taking his mom to do some shopping. We immediately headed out to the garden to take our last harvest of vegetables because we knew the first freeze of the season was going to hit last night. And it did.

7 Oct 2011: Snow begins to collect on the bean stalks.

No sooner had we started plucking the last of the green beans, chili peppers, and tomatoes than it began to snow in earnest. Not the light snow we'd experienced earlier in the day, but the kind where the sky goes gray and the temperature seriously drops. My aching fingers were so frozen that I kept dropping the tomatoes because I couldn't feel them in my hands anymore!

Snow gathers on the now-empty tomato plants.

Plucking the last of the ripe tomatoes was easy, though there were enough to fill three baskets. Their blushing color was easy to see on the plants. It was much harder to see all the green tomatoes hiding among the greenery, but they had to come off. Ed says he has a secret for getting the green tomatoes to ripen, so we should have plenty of tomatoes for the coming weeks.

Snow on my cabbages.

Well...we didn't harvest everything yet. Ed thought my cabbages should be okay for a few more days. (Can't wait to enjoy my made-from-scratch cole slaw!) He's also leaving the onions in the ground for awhile. They're supposed to be hardy enough to withstand the cold. But everything else is done until we replant in the spring.

7 Oct 2011: The rotten tomatoes went to the chickens, who love tomatoes

but weren't sure they were worth braving the cold snow to eat!

7 Oct 2011: Our entire Anaheim chili pepper harvest for this year.

The tomatoes, red or green, were brought into the house for a bath in bleach-water to kill any bacteria picked up from the soil. Then they were laid out overnight to dry. There were so many tomatoes, they totally took over our kitchen! Ed already gave away a bunch to our neighbors this morning.

7 Oct 2011: Ed washes tomatoes and layers them on the counters.

More tomatoes on the counter by the stove...

...and still more on the window counter!

Besides the vegetables, we also had to bring in all the houseplants that enjoyed living on the porch throughout the warm summer months. They would never have survived the freeze, either.

More houseplants take refuge on the hearth. I never had indoor plants until I married Ed!

Dylan's spider plants were left out during a freeze this spring and they both died.

Then this one surprised us by reviving, and it's putting out new plant shoots!

I wish I could promise you that this will be the last of my garden blogs, but there are still those onions to dig up and that cole slaw to be made...

First Snow

2011-10-07T16:57:00.000-07:00

Today we had our first snow of the season. It wasn't a huge snow and the temperature stayed bearable, around 40 degrees, so it wasn't much to brag on. Nonetheless, after 21 winters here in the White Mountains, I still find there's something magical about that first snow.

7 Oct 2011: My little red Vibe in the school parking lot this morning.

There was some light snowfall still going on when I drove home from school, but most of the snow came down while I was at work, heavily at times. That's why these pictures were taken at school. As you can see, the sun came back out and not much snow accumulated. Not even after more clouds rolled in and more snow fell.

I took my pictures during the long breaks between classes, since today was the last day of the first quarter and we were on the midterm exams schedule. On my way back to my classroom, I found these art students painting a mural on the wall outside the orchestra/choir/theater classroom. Pretty cool, huh?

Family Photos I Forgot

2011-10-03T18:13:00.003-07:00

20 July 2011: Our dad Myron (age 76) with his oldest child (that's me, Mary, age 56)

and his youngest child, my brother Darryl (age 48). In all, there are five of us siblings.

July was quite a busy month, planning for my daughter's wedding and all. So busy, in fact, that I forgot to do a post on our visits with faraway family! So here they are, without further ado!

My youngest brother Darryl came all the way from his home in Missouri with his wife and daughter to visit us for several days. I hadn't seen them since our trip to Missouri in July 2009, so it had been two whole years!
*

20 July 2011: Darryl with his firstborn (my niece Brittany, age 22) and his wife Tamera.

20 July 2011: My nephew Justin (age 27) and his 3-year-old son Aiden,

otherwise known as "Bubba," stopped by to visit with Darryl's crew on their last night in town.

The morning after these pictures were taken, Darryl, Tamera, and Brittany headed back to Missouri. That same morning, Ed and I loaded into our car with Sarah and her then-fiance Chris and headed to the Valley to finish up our wedding shopping.
*

21 July 2011: My brother LeRoy (age 52) with his wife Lori,

their son Nate (age 15) and their daughter Katie (age 13).

I'm not sure what's up with my brothers and their closed eyes in these pictures!

While we were there, we arranged a visit at the home of my brother LeRoy, the number two child of us siblings. I hadn't seen his family since our 2009 Christmas party (they were ill and unable to make it to the 2010 party), so it had been a whole year-and-a-half! After our visit, we all went out together for Mexican food at Chevy's. I almost forgot to take pictures, so we took some in the mall parking lot!
*

I might add, these were the first opportunities for these two brothers to meet my new husband!

21 July 2011: Chris and Sarah (ages 33 and 21) with Sarah's dad, Mark (age 43).

Speaking of meeting people, Chris hadn't yet met his new father-in-law-to-be, so while we were in Mesa we stopped by to let Chris and Sarah spend some time with Sarah's dad, Mark. They seemed to hit it off well, but Mark always was easy to get along with.

While we're on the topic of family photos, here are some fun pictures of Jeff and Dana's youngest 8 (of 13!) kids. These were taken sometime in June.

June 2011: My nephews Marcus and Burke (ages 19 and 15)

are the two youngest of my brother Jeff's five sons.

Marcus is now serving an LDS mission in the Argentina Resistencia Mission!

June 2011: The ladies, my nieces (the youngest six of Jeff and Dana's eight daughters).

Standing in back: Elsie and Haley (ages 17 and 10).

In front: Emma, Hayden, Callie, and Brinley (ages 12, 9, 4, and 7).

June 2011: My miracle niece Callie Jayne, 4 years old.

June 2011: The whole group together!

Shattered Glass

2011-10-02T12:30:00.000-07:00

On my way home from work on Wednesday, I stopped by the post office to drop some mail in the outside mailbox. I rolled down my electric window, slid the mail through the mailbox slot, and pressed the button to bring the window back up.

The window stopped when it was only halfway up, and refused to go any further. I noticed the glass had slipped out of its correct position, so I decided to leave it alone and have Ed look at it when I got home. I drove the remaining two miles home and went into the house.

I'd been in the house only a few minutes, standing in the kitchen quizzing Dylan about whether his homework was done, when I heard the sound of a small explosion. I glanced out the window just in time to see a shower of blue-green glass falling like glittering rain around the driver-side door.

It wasn't until later that I realized how blessed I had been to make it all the way home before the glass shattered. Most of the glass blew into the car, landing on the driver's seat where I had been sitting. Ed says it would have sliced me up good. Although it is "safety glass," I found out while cleaning up the mess that the edges of the pieces were still quite sharp. Thus I am very grateful to my Heavenly Father for watching over me and keeping me safely in His care for another day.

Graham Cracker Temples

2011-09-29T18:29:00.000-07:00

Back on July 31st I received a new church calling. I'm now serving as the second counselor in the Young Women presidency. Young Men/Young Women is the organization that serves the youth of our church, ages 12 to 18. As members of the YW presidency, the president, first counselor, secretary, and I plan for all the young ladies of that age group, but as second counselor my specific responsibility is for the Beehive class, made up of the 12- and 13-year-old girls.

28 Sept 2011: Members of our Beehive class.

Together with my two advisors, we teach the girls gospel lessons on Sunday and on Wednesday evening we help our Beehives plan and carry out activities that are spiritual, service-oriented, or sometimes just plain fun. In the two months I've been serving in this calling, I've had a great time! The girls are so much fun to be with.

28 Sept 2011: More of our Beehive girls.

Last night we had fun making little temples out of graham crackers, vanilla frosting, a variety of sprinkles, and some gummy worms one of the girls happened to have with her. As you'll see from the following pictures, they were very creative. (Although I must apologize for the fuzzy photos. The battery on my camera was too low, so I had to use the camera in my phone instead.)

After their little temples were constructed, we played some LDS trivia Jeopardy, which is what those colorful, egg-shaped buzzers on the table were for. The girls pressed their "egg" when they thought they knew the answer, and the same colored egg as the first to buzz in would light up on my table. The game was a blast. Those girls are very competitive!

The Beehive who made this temple (above) asked me to be sure and note that

she was trying to recreate the Switzerland Temple, but ended up with a "tent" by accident!

I think it's beautiful, so white and pure and glittery. I love sparkles!

I've longed to be involved with the Young Women program for decades, literally. In my teenage years I was a part of that program myself, back when it was called MIA (Mutual Improvement Association). As a young adult in the mid-1970s, I helped out in the church library on MIA night, assisted with youth activities like girls' camp, occasionally substituted as a teacher, and even served briefly as the secretary. However, that was more than 30 years ago, so this calling was long past due. I'm so happy that it finally came around again!

Autumn Garden

2011-09-25T18:55:00.002-07:00

25 Sept 2011: This afternoon's harvest.

Autumn has arrived. The evenings are crispy and the mornings are shivery. The temperature is in the low fifties when I drive to work at 7:20. Being new to the world of gardening, I wondered how these changes would affect our vegetable garden.

25 Sept 2011: Ed sought out the ripe tomatoes after we got home from church.

Two of our tomato plants have died, but the other six are hanging in there and continue to produce loads of beautiful tomatoes. I now understand why the task of canning was invented, so the surplus could be enjoyed throughout the winter months. Ed regularly gives away tomatoes to our neighbors and friends.

Ed was convinced our 4 Anaheim chili plants wouldn't produce anything before the first freeze, but I'm happy to report that they are all putting forth lots of lovely chili peppers. I can't wait until they are big enough to harvest and enjoy!

The bean stalks stopped producing beans for a week, but when the weather turned chilly they suddenly began blooming again. We are slowly finding more beans on the plants. However, as you can see in the photo above, the leaves are beginning to die. So are the cucumber plants in the foreground.

Sadly, our cabbages were attacked by some unknown invader, which chewed little holes through all the leaves and stunted their growth. They are dying off without having completed the development of their cabbage heads.

Well, one head of cabbage does remain. It's very small and Ed sprinkled it with insecticide to stop the plague of aphids that moved in after the other invaders went away. Neither Ed nor Dylan care much for cabbage, so when it's ready for picking I plan to wash it really, really well and then make myself a big bowl of fresh, homemade cole slaw!

We still have some nice cucumbers, but I think their days are numbered since the plants are starting to thin out and turn yellow. We also have a nice, long row of onions that Ed says will be safe even after the first freeze, so he's waiting to harvest them then.

My husband feels his first garden in the White Mountains was a failure (he has major plans to do it differently next spring), but I think we've had a beautiful season. We will continue to enjoy it until the first frost comes along to finish it off. I hope that is a long way off!

By the way, yesterday morning Gonzo found his voice. He crowed and crowed for the longest time!

Two Roosters in the Hen House

2011-09-20T21:47:00.000-07:00

17 Sept 2011: Our two roosters, Gonzo and Percival.

Gonzo's sister Lacy is visible between them.

How did I miss it? Two weeks ago, Ed and I were outside watching our chickens when I suddenly realized it: Gonzo is a guy! In the picture above you can see the difference between him and his sister Lacy. He definitely has a comb and wattle. She definitely does not.

I looked back through older photos of the chicks. At 2 months of age, Percy's comb and wattle were becoming noticeable, arousing our first suspicions that there might be a rooster among our 12 hens. Gonzo, on the other hand, did have a little more red on his head and under his chin than his sister, but the difference wasn't remarkable. Besides, when looking at Gonzo our attention was drawn mostly to his oddly twisted little face.

17 Sept 2011: Gonzo at almost 4 months old. Despite the top half of his beak

being so twisted off to the side that the top and bottom don't meet, he manages to eat

enough to be the second largest chicken in the hen house, outsized only by Percy!

However, when I looked back at my last blog featuring Gonzo (on August 28), it seems pretty clear that he was developing all the characteristics of a young cock! Perhaps Silver Laced Wyandotte roosters (Gonzo) just take longer to develop male characteristics than the Barred Plymouth Rock roosters (Percy).

As far as we know, Gonzo hasn't begun crowing yet. That may be because Gonzo's beak is so badly deformed, or it may be because Percy already does enough cock-a-doodle-doing for three roosters (luckily, no neighbors have complained yet). Gonzo has become quite aggressive toward the females, though, asserting his maleness.

In general, Percy has so far tolerated Gonzo's attempts to subdue the females. There have been a couple of incidents, however, when Gonzo mistakenly went head-to-head with Percy himself and was immediately put in his place. Not only is Percy much larger than Gonzo, but he had been ruling the roost for a good month before Gonzo figured out he was a cock, and Percy has no intention of stepping down.

17 Sept 2011: Gonzo's petite sister, Lacy, another Silver Laced Wyandotte.

I think her black-tipped silver feathers are beautiful!

In 4 days our chickens will be 4 months old. We hope the females will start laying eggs in a month or so. We also hope to have no more surprises in the form of unexpected roosters. It would be nice if the remaining 10 chickens are the hens we originally thought all 12 would be!

It's funny to remember bringing home a dozen little balls of peeping fluff. When Sarah gave Gonzo his name, I protested that Gonzo is more of a boy's name, but it did seem to fit his strange little face, so the name stuck. Now that we know he's a rooster, no name change is required!

This story has a bittersweet ending, though. It looks like Gonzo will be the first of our chickens to wind up in the crockpot. Ed says it won't be long before Percy will injure or kill Gonzo. Only one rooster can rule the roost, and Percy has already gotten his job down to a science. He's very protective of his females and is great at quickly ushering his ladies into the hen house at the first sign of danger. He keeps them inside until he's checked the perimeter and decided that all is well.

Besides, in a year or two we plan to raise more chicks. If Gonzo's deformity is the result of a birth defect, we won't want his genes passed on to our chicks.

Now that the time has come, Ed is a little saddened by the prospect of having to slaughter the first of our chickens, even though we both agree that it's going to be necessary soon. Still, it is the circle of life and part of our family plan to become more self-sufficient. And that is a good thing.

Flying High

2011-09-13T17:24:00.000-07:00

5 Sept 2011: Ed and Mary beneath a World War II bomber.

And now, to continue the saga of our romantic Labor Day weekend getaway...

After spending a leisurely Sunday at the resort, we were up bright and early Monday morning to check out of our condo and drive back into Tucson to visit the Pima Air and Space Museum.

I loved this sculpture at the entrance.

The first thing we did was take a tram ride around the outdoor exhibits. It lasted about an hour and 15 minutes. Our guide, an elderly veteran, was quite knowledgeable.

Ed on the tram with an A-7 Corsair Navy plane in the background.

Ed was in his element. He knew almost as much about the planes as the guide, and soon they were in deep discussion.

We saw a lot of interesting planes on the tram ride. This was Air Force One for both President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson. I think this must have been the plane on which Johnson was sworn in right after Kennedy's assassination.

One of the first things Ed found after we arrived was this F-4E jet. It was built in the 1950s and flown during Vietnam and then for decades after that during the Cold War. This particular one was one of the Thunderbirds, performing in the #7 slot.

Here's Ed with the F-4E jet. This type of plane means a lot to him because it's the kind he worked on when he was a mechanic in the Air Force from 1980 to 1984. It brought back a lot of memories.

Ed with a World War II B-17 bomber.

Ed gets into the belly of the B-17 bomber to check it out.

There were several huge hangars filled with planes and memorabilia from various eras. This is Ed in the hangar featuring space exhibits.

I thought this miniature of the space shuttle launch site was cool.

The Santa Catalina Mountains provided scenery for our 3.5-hour drive home.

We had a great time, and Ed really loved being around all those old planes. Then by 5:30 we were on our way back home, looking forward to sleeping in our own bed but happy with the memories we created.

Birthday Times Two

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1 Sept 2011: On our birthday, Ed turned 51 and Mary turned 57.

Who would have thought it would be so much fun to share a birthday with your spouse? We've enjoyed that pleasure twice now since we got married, and it has been great!

This year our birthdays fell on a Thursday, so I had to work, but we enjoyed dinner out with son Dylan and new son-in-law Chris (daughter Sarah had rehearsal with White Mountain Symphony Orchestra that evening). We had Mexican food at El Rancho, the restaurant where our family has celebrated our birthdays for close to 20 years now. They put a sombrero on your head, sing "Happy Birthday," take your picture, and bring you a free dish of deep-fried ice cream.

3 Sept 2011: The building to the left is our condo. That's our front door straight ahead.

The next day was Friday, though! Ed and I wanted to get away and spend a romantic weekend together, so we made a reservation at the WorldMark Rancho Vistoso resort in Oro Valley, 14 miles from Tucson, AZ. Ed had never been to Tucson before, so we decided to check it out despite the heat we knew we'd experience there. (The high each day has been around 104 degrees. Could be worse!)

2 Sept 2011: The living room of our condo.

When it's just the two of us, we're able to spend fewer of our vacation club credits by reserving a studio unit instead of the 2-bedroom, 2 bathroom units we used to reserve when traveling with 3 children. The 2-bedroom condos are as big as my whole house! The studios are smaller, but still very nice and quite roomy for two people. And they still have a full kitchen and laundry room in each unit, as well as a patio complete with grill.

2 Sept 2011: The kitchen/dining area of our condo.

We spent Saturday at Old Tucson, the movie lot where more than 300 Western movies and TV shows have been filmed. I've lived in Arizona for 31 years, but I'd never been there before. We had a good time!

When we return home, I will post the photos of our little vacation on Facebook, but meanwhile here's a taste of how we spent our day at Old Tucson:

A stagecoach arrives at the coach depot.

Ed prepares to board the stagecoach.

Mary smiles despite the jolting ride inside the stagecoach.

We shared the coach with 3 people from Denmark (who loved the heat!).

Ed poses in a casket. Kinda creepy, eh?

Here's Ed, still hale and hearty, at the cafe where we ate lunch.

I never expected to run into family at Old Tucson! Cole and Bob Younger, standing behind Frank and Jesse James in this old Wanted poster, are cousins of mine! My Great Grandfather Sam Haley, their first cousin, remembered them riding into town to visit family (and maybe hide out) at the height of their notoriety when he was a child.

I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree!

Ed and I find ourselves in lock-up just like my infamous cousins!

We end the day in search of souvenirs for family!

Tomorrow (Monday) we'll be exploring Tucson's "Pima Air and Space Museum"!

The Hubby Is Home

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31 Aug 2011: Dylan (age 14) gets pointers from Ed on operating a tractor.

Ed and his mom got back in town around 1:00 this morning. They were both very happy to be back home and sleeping in their own beds again. Unfortunately, both of them were also extremely achy and tired all day today after the 15-hour drive home. They were hauling such a heavy load that it took 3 hours longer to get home than usual.

31 Aug 2011: Ed and Dylan check out the tractor still loaded on the trailer.

As for me, I'm very happy to have my husband back again. Hearing his voice on the phone several times a day is not quite as nice as being able to touch and hold and kiss each other. I'm also glad to turn the chickens and the garden back over to his quite capable hands!

It's nice to be a family again. With Jacob away serving as an LDS missionary in northern California and Sarah newly married and living with her husband Chris, it felt a little strange to have just Dylan and me in the house.

31 Aug 2011: Dylan (second from right) and other Boy Scouts receive awards.

Ed's return was perfect timing. Tonight we were all able to attend Dylan's Boy Scout Court of Honor. Even Sarah came to join us and see Dylan get his awards and his rank advancement to Star Scout. All he has left is Life Scout and then Eagle Scout, probably in the next year.

31 Aug 2011: Dylan (age 14) prepares to pin his Star emblem on his mom's sleeve.

31 Aug 2011: Dylan and his mom Mary.

(He's gotten so tall, 5'11" and he just turned 14 two months ago!)

Aren't families great? Being a wife and a mom is just plain awesome!

And then There's the Garden

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22 Aug 2011: Our tomato plants

This year's garden has been a mixture of success and, well, not exactly failure, but less than successful success. Many of our seeds never sprouted. Some of our plants, like all our strawberries, inexplicably died. Some, like the lettuce pictured above with the tomatoes, produced only a limited number of plants. Others, like our peas, started strong but failed to thrive (although we sure enjoyed those sweet peas while they lasted!). At times it seemed we were growing more weeds and rocks than vegetables!

Ed is already envisioning the changes and improvements he will make to our garden plot next year to ensure greater success!

22 Aug 2011: Ripening tomatoes.

Probably our greatest success is our tomato plants. For a while there we didn't think they would make it at all, with 2 weeks of strong, nonstop winds that kept blowing them over and crushing them. Yet when the rainy monsoon season began at the end of June, they began growing like crazy, overrunning their wire cages and putting out hundreds of green tomatoes, which are now beginning to ripen. We've already enjoyed 10 delicious tomatoes, making our gardening neighbors envious.

22 Aug 2011: Cucumber plants

Ed started the cucumbers indoors from tiny seeds. They looked very pathetic for a very long time, and Ed wasn't sure it would be worth transplanting them to the garden. Thank goodness he did! They took off as soon as they hit the dirt, and are now putting out many little cucumbers.

27 Aug 2011: A baby cucumber, about the size of a large pickle so far.

27 Aug 2011: Two cabbage plants beginning to curl.

Out of a whole row of cabbage seeds, we only got 4 cabbages, but they are huge. They are finally starting to curl their leaves around budding heads of cabbages.

22 Aug 2011: Six bean plants on a teepee-shaped wooden frame

Now I understand why the storyteller chose a beanstalk for the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. I've never seen a seedling grow so fast or so tall. I'm not kidding when I say you can almost see them moving as they break through the earth and stretch upward, putting out delicate tendrils seeking for something to grab on to. If you stand still long enough, it will grab you and hold on!

20 Aug 2011: Newly washed beans from our garden.

In the 10 days since Ed has been in Colorado, I've picked a plate full of beans every single day. I have two quarts of beans bagged and frozen in the freezer already. They'll be perfect for green bean casserole come Thanksgiving!

Tending the chickens and the garden is always a great adventure, but I'm ready for my sweetheart to come home and take over their care again. I miss you, my prince. I can't wait to hold you in my arms tomorrow night!

The Little Hen Who Crowed

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27 Aug 2011: 3-month-old Prudence? No, make that Percival!

Three months ago we purchased a dozen of the cutest little 3-day-old chicks. We chose our brood from among those that were guaranteed to be females only, because Ed knew he didn't want a rooster. We were only interested in eventually eating the chickens' eggs, not producing more hordes of little chicks.

Somewhere along the way, though, Ed noticed that Prudence's little budding comb was rather larger than her sister Priscilla's. He suspected Prudence might actually be a Percy, so we watched and waited. Nine days ago Ed and his mother left for Colorado. The very next morning, Dylan and I heard several very loud and determined "Cockadoodle-doos" from the backyard!

Exit Prudence. Enter Percy. You can see for yourself the difference between Percy (above) and his sister Priscilla in the photo below:

27 Aug 2011: 3-month-old Barred Plymouth Rock, Priscilla

No big red comb and wattles, and no crowing from Miss Prissy! At first, Ed planned for Percy to end up in the crock pot after he returns from this trip. However, I did some Internet research and Ed talked to his friend Jerry in Oregon (who has experience raising chickens), and we both learned that fertilized eggs are no different than unfertilized as long as they are collected daily and immediately refrigerated. We also discovered that hens who have a rooster tend to be happier, calmer, and better layers than those who don't. It looks like Percy got a reprieve!

27 Aug 2011: Miss Prissy still likes to jump up on my lap!

Until Ed left on this trip, I hadn't spent much time with the chickens lately. Going back to school soaked up most of my free time. For the last nine days, though, the chickens and I have been spending a lot of time together as Dylan and I have taken over their care. I've found that Miss Priss is still the dominant personality among the hens, and still the most tame, but she's an awful lot heavier on my lap than she used to be!

27 Aug 2011: All 12 of our 3-month-old chickens out in their yard.

A few weeks ago, Ed completed the chicken yard he added on to the hen house, and the chickens love getting to go outside everyday. It's fun to watch their different personalities as they vie for food, search for bugs, and establish their pecking order. Yep, there really is such a thing!

Percy, of course, is at the top of the pecking order list. He's very new at this, yet he seems to know instinctively how to manage his flock. Any lady who gets out of line gets a reminder peck on the head. If she tries to ignore him, he grabs the front of her face in his beak and holds on for a few seconds while she flaps and squawks as if she's being beaten. You better believe she follows directions after he lets go! He is very protective and ushers his ladies right into the chicken house at nightfall, as well as any time he feels danger is nearby. Dylan has had his feet attacked by an agitated rooster a few times when he entered the hen house after dark!

27 Aug 2011: Five escapees

Yesterday, when I went out to the hen house to take these pictures, I had an unexpected adventure. I had left the door to the hen house open wide so I'd have some sunlight for my camera, when one of the hens slipped past me. As I turned to coax her back in, another got out. While I tried to herd them back toward the door, two more escaped. Before I knew it, I was chasing down five escapees!

It was tricky because I was alone. Not only was Ed gone, but Dylan was away at an overnight campout with the Scouts. Luckily, the hens don't go too far and they tend to stay in a group unless you spook them. They just wanted to explore the new grounds, looking for more goodies on the ground to gobble up. Eventually I rounded them up and got them safely back in their enclosure. Meanwhile, Percy had been pacing back and force inside the pen, eyeing his escaped ladies anxiously and muttering loudly.

27 Aug 2011: 3-month-old Easter Egger, Buffy

Thanks to the birds' escapism, I wasn't able to get individual shots of all the birds, but here are a few that I got before I gave up. Percy and Prissy are both Barred Plymouth Rocks. Buffy, in the above picture, is one of our six Easter Eggers. She would be the Number Two hen in dominance, just behind Prissy in the pecking order.

27 Aug 2011: 3-month-old Easter Egger, Maybelline

It's funny that the chicks I had the hardest time telling apart were the Easter Eggers, because now that they are young adults they are the easiest to tell apart. I had read that, due to their breed being unregulated, they vary wildly in colors and features, which turns out to be totally true. Maybelline (above) has earned the nickname "Baldy" from Dylan because...

Maybelline likes to imitate a bald eagle!

27 Aug 2011: 3-month-old Easter Egger, Nadia

27 Aug 2011: 3-month-old Easter Egger, Cocoa

27 Aug 2011: 3-month-old Black Australorp, Crysta or Sally

Of all twelve chickens, in fact, there are only two I cannot tell apart at this time. We used to be able to tell our Black Australorps, Crysta and Sally, apart by the markings on their faces. However, as they've matured, the black spots on their faces have blended into identically smooth, black cheeks and I haven't been able to figure out which is which for several weeks.

27 Aug 2011: On the left is an Easter Egger, Kate,

and on the right is a Silver Laced Wyandotte, Gonzo.

Our most unusual-looking chicken would be Gonzo, one of our two Silver Laced Wyandottes. Her sister, Lacey, is beautiful with a sweet, petite face. Gonzo, you may recall, was given her name by my daughter Sarah, who was intrigued by Gonzo's funny little twisted face. The name Gonzo came from an odd little Muppet character who had a long, twisted beak, and it seemed to fit our odd little chick.

As Gonzo has grown, her deformity has increased. Her little comb has contorted to one side, one eye is lower than the other, and her upper beak has twisted so far to her right that it doesn't even close on the lower beak (which seems to be fairly normal and straight), meaning she cannot ever close her mouth. If you click on the picture above, you can see her sad little face pretty clearly.

Ed tells me that normally a disfigured chicken like Gonzo would be seen as a threat to the flock and would be pecked to death by the others. Somehow, though, Gonzo has managed to hold her own with her peers and is accepted by them. I think it's a miracle that she has even survived. With two halves of a beak that do not meet along the edges at all, I marvel that she can pick up the tiny bits of feed crumbles and scratch feed that make up most of the birds' diet. Yet Gonzo manages to grow at the same rate as the other chickens and is by no means the smallest bird in our hen house.

27 Aug 2011: 3-month-old Silver Laced Wyandotte, Gonzo

As odd as her distorted little face is to behold, there is also something very beautiful about Gonzo. I guess you could call it "True Grit," that determination and grace under pressure, her refusal to quit. And, as you can see in her pictures, Gonzo has the most lovely green sheen to her black tail feathers, a trait that even her pretty sister Lacey does not possess!

Slides: A Family Grows

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Autumn 1957: Caryl Reynolds (age 22) in her first home as a newlywed.

Ed's parents, Eddie Sr. and Caryl, began their life together living in a camper trailer. It was only for a few months, and then they moved into the smaller, older home down the road on the Reynolds Family Farm.

Spring 1958: Caryl (age 22) appears to be expecting a bundle of joy!

It didn't take them long to begin building a family. Just 11 months after their wedding, they welcomed their first child, a daughter.

1958: Caryl (age 23) and her baby girl, Margaret.

Eddie and Caryl's firstborn, Ed's older sister, was born in July 1958. She was named Margaret after her maternal grandmother, Caryl's mother.

1960: 2-year-old Margaret and her mother, Caryl (age 25),

who is expecting her second baby, my husband Ed.

Margaret enjoyed the status of "only child" for about two years and two months before she was joined by the first of four younger siblings.

September 1960: Edward Jr. joins the world.

My husband Ed, named Edward Jr. after his father, was born in September 1960 on his dad's 24th birthday. As I may have mentioned a time or two, we share the same birthday, September first! Wasn't he a beautiful baby? His eyes were already a definite shade of brown, even as a newborn.

Autumn 1960- A family of four: Mom Caryl (age 25),

baby Ed Jr., Dad Ed Sr. (age 24), and Margaret (age 2).

Autumn 1960: Mother and son, Caryl and Ed Jr.

1 Sept 1961: Ed Jr. celebrates his first birthday.

3-year-old Margaret really seems to be eying that birthday cake!

1 Sept 1961: Ed Jr. celebrates his first birthday. What a cutie!

Autumn 1961: Dad Ed Sr. (age 25), baby Lisa, Margaret (age 3),

Ed Jr. (maybe 14-15 months old), and Mom Caryl (age 26).

About a week after Ed Jr. celebrated his first birthday, his parents gave him a big surprise: a new baby sister. Their third child, Ed's younger sister Lisa, was born in September 1961.

Spring 1962: Ed Jr., Lisa, and Margaret.

1962: Caryl Reynolds (age 26 or 27) still looks great after 3 children!

Down the road, there were still two more children to join the family and more adventures to be had, but I'm going to take a break from the Reynolds family slides and share some current family events for awhile. I hope you've enjoyed getting to know my new family-by-marriage. I promise to return one day with more growing-up pictures of my husband and his siblings!

Bonus Picture: Caryl's parents, Harold (age 44) and Margaret Busby,

celebrate their 25th anniversary sometime between July and October 1958.

Slides: Adirondack Honeymoon

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August 1957: Edward Reynolds, Sr., almost 21 years old.

Soon after they were married, Eddie Sr. and "Kay" went on their honeymoon in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York. They camped, hiked, canoed, and saw the sights. Eddie Sr. took along his camera, of course, and he shot three rolls of film. Lots of gorgeous scenery.

August 1957: Edward Reynolds, Sr., almost 21 years old.

August 1957: Caryl Busby Reynolds, age 22.

August 1957: Caryl (age 22) prepares a meal. Notice the sunburnt legs!

While canoing in her short shorts, Caryl badly burned her thighs. To this day, she remembers the pain of that sunburn!

August 1957: Beautiful scenery in Adirondack State Park.

I put these pictures on a DVD so I could show them to Caryl and see if she could remember the places they went, but most of them brought only vague memories. I've gone online to search for other peoples' pictures of these places, trying to match them up and come up with a location, but I've had only limited success so far.

August 1957

Caryl thought this might be Bridal Falls near Allegany State Park, but so far I've been unable to confirm that.

August 1957

I was able to find lots of information on "Enchanted Forest of the Adirondacks" in Old Forge, New York, which opened in 1956. At that time it was mostly made up of a series of houses featuring themes from nursery rhymes and fairy tales, like the one below from Little Red Riding Hood. (Those types of things used to fascinate me when I was young. I think I recall something similar at Roeding Park in Fresno, CA, where I grew up.)

August 1957: The Big Bad Wolf at the Enchanted Forest.

The theme park expanded over the years, almost doubling in size and adding thrill rides. Today it is called Enchanted Forest Water Safari, with many, many water rides.

August 1957: Caryl and Eddie Sr. are locked up, but not sure where!

I don't know whether the old western town in these pictures was also a part of the Enchanted Forest. Ed thinks it might have been. I couldn't find references to any western theme parks in Adirondack State Park.

August 1957: Caryl at the western town.

August 1957: Eddie Sr. indulges his passion for trains somewhere along the way.

August 1957: Caryl Reynolds, age 22.

Caryl thought she remembered these dinosaurs, but they didn't turn out to be where she thought they were. You'd think the location of dinosaurs would be easy to pinpoint, but I can't find a mention of them anywhere!

August 1957: Eddie Reynolds Sr, age almost 21.

Slides: Eddie and Kay Get Married

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3 Aug 1957: The newlyweds cut the cake on their wedding day.

Edward Reynolds Sr. (almost 21) and his bride Caryl Busby Reynolds (age 22)

enjoy the first of their two wedding receptions.

After being engaged for a year and a half, Eddie Sr. and "Kay" were finally married. They had both graduated from college, were gainfully employed (Eddie Sr. was running the family farm with his dad), and were ready to be together full-time.

They got married in Canandaigua, New York, which was Caryl's hometown, and that same evening they had a big wedding reception. Soon after that they left on their honeymoon, which will be featured in my next post.

Late August 1957: Eddie Sr. and "Kay" attend their second reception.

Caryl tells me their honeymoon was cut short due to some new farm machinery that Eddie Sr. was nervous about leaving in the care of his father, Willard, whom both Caryl and Ed have described to me as a "hammer mechanic" (meaning if something didn't work right, he hit it with a hammer until it did).

After their return, Eddie Sr. and "Kay" held another reception at the old Episcopalian Church in Franklinville, New York, for Eddie's community. Most of the photos in this post come from the second reception. I only found two slides from the first one.

July 1957: Caryl Busby, age 22, at one of her two bridal showers.

Looking back, Caryl wonders if she made the right decision, putting off their wedding for so long at her parents' insistence. But she was a dutiful daughter, and everything obviously worked out for the best. Eddie and Kay were married for 52 years before he passed away. I'd call that a success!
*

Late August 1957: Caryl and Eddie's Wedding Rings.

Late August 1957: Caryl Busby Reynolds, the beautiful bride (age 22).

I think her dress is simply gorgeous!

Late August 1957: Edward Reynolds, Sr., the handsome bridegroom.

He was almost 21 years old at this time.

Family

One of the cool things about weddings is the way they bring families together in celebration. Through their wedding pictures I got to see many family members I might not otherwise have "met." Here are a few of them:

Late August 1957: Two of Caryls' bridesmaids were her new sisters-in-law,

Lucy and Edith Reynolds, ages 15 and 18.

Late August 1957: Two of Caryls' bridesmaids were her sisters,

Dorothy and Virginia ("Ginny") Busby, ages 23 and 20.

I think Dorothy was already married and was therefore the "Matron of Honor."

Late August 1957: All four of Caryls' bridesmaids together:

Virginia ("Ginny") and Dorothy Busby, and Edith and Lucy Reynolds.

Late August 1957: Caryls' little brother, Harold Busby Jr. (age 5),

known at that time as Hallie, but known later as Ed's Uncle Hal.

He is only 8 years older than his nephew, my husband Ed.

Late August 1957: Caryl's parents, Margaret and Harold Busby.

Late August 1957: The Bride and Groom with their parents:

Harold and Margaret Busby; Caryl and Eddie Reynolds; Marian and Willard Reynolds.

Late August 1957: Ed's Great-Grandmother Lois "Sonny" Reynolds

at the Franklinville reception (the second reception).

Lois Reynolds was the mother of Ed's grandfather, Willard Reynolds. When Willard's son Eddie was born, she used to call him "Sonny." Being a youngster who didn't know any better, he called her "Sonny," too. Somehow the nickname stuck and she was forever after known as Sonny among her family.

3 August 1957: Ed's Great-Grandmother Lois "Sonny" Reynolds

visits at the first reception in Canandaigua, New York.

July 11 or 12, 1954: This is Ed's Aunt Lucy (age 11 or 12) with

her grandmother Lois "Sonny" Reynolds in front of "Sonny's" house.

I don't know when this picture was taken, but

it's the only picture of Caryls' maternal grandmother I found.

This is Esther Cook, another of Ed's Great Grandmothers.

After 52 years together, it's no wonder Caryl misses her husband so very much. Yet she takes great comfort in the knowledge that they will be together again one day, that God has an eternal plan for families. Families are forever!

Slides: Along Came Caryl

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1955: Caryl Busby (age 19) at Letchworth Sate Park, New York.

Before Ed and I met in person, I asked him if he looked more like his father or his mother. He had to think about it for a minute, and then he said he thought he looked more like his mom.

1955: Caryl Busby (age 20) at the old Genesee Valley Canal Lock.

When I met his mom a month or so later, I tried to see the resemblance, but I just couldn't see it. When she showed me photographs of her late husband, it was clear that Ed looked absolutely nothing like his dad, but I didn't think he favored his mother much, either.

December 1955: Caryl Busby (age 20) as a bridesmaid

at a Christmas wedding.

However, once I began scanning all these slides and saw Caryl's sweet, young face on my computer screen, I began to see that Ed did indeed have his mother's beautiful smile, her warm brown eyes, and the full shape of her face.

Not sure when this was taken. Ed remembers this photo of his mom

being the front of a night light in his home for many years.

Since the boxes and boxes of slides we found belonged to Ed's dad, beginning long before he got married, we don't have many pictures of Ed's mom in her youth, and we have none from her childhood. To me, this is a great loss, and I hope we can remedy it someday.

Spring 1956: Caryl Busby, age 20, with daffodils.

Luckily, when Eddie Sr. met Kay Busby (Kay was Caryl's nickname in those days), he found a new favorite subject for his camera. She was a lovely young woman, but she was even more beautiful as seen through the lens of the young man who fell in love with her. These first 6 pictures of Caryl ("Kay") were all taken by Eddie Sr.

1957: Happily engaged Caryl Busby, age 21.

1957: Engaged couple Eddie Sr. (age 20) and Caryl (age 21)

with Eddie's friend Frank (on the right).

Eddie Reynolds Sr. and Caryl Busby met during the fall 1954 semester of their first year at Alfred University. She worked on the school newspaper and sang in the Alfred Choir. She was also seeing another guy. I believe she said he was another choir member.

1955: One of the earliest pictures of Kay and Eddie together

(Caryl age 19 and Eddie Sr. age 18), playing Scrabble.

Notice Kay is wearing Eddie's class ring around her neck.

Eddie Sr. was unfazed. Remember, this was a young man who was used to getting what he wanted. So Kay would try to spend time with her young suitor, but Eddie Sr. always seemed to be right there, close at hand, catching her attention. In the end, he stole her heart away from the other man. By January 1955, Eddie and Kay were an item.

1956: Kay and Eddie (ages 20 and 19) attending a formal

dinner/dance together at Alfred University in Alfred, New York.

I love how modest her dress is, unlike many other girls at this event.

Kay was 13 months older than Eddie, but she says it didn't take her long to get past that. They enjoyed completing college together. Eddie Sr. earned his Associate degree in Agricultural Engineering while Kay earned her degree as a Laboratory Technician.

1956: Eddie and Kay (ages 19 and 20) attending a formal

dinner/dance together at Alfred University in Alfred, New York.

Eddie was 6'2" and Caryl claims she was 5'2". Maybe.

Eddie and Kay had a very long engagement, due to the fact that Caryl's family insisted she had to graduate from college first and then work for awhile to repay them for putting her through college. Caryl's mom also warned her that it would be a mistake to marry a handsome blond man like Eddie Sr. According to Caryl's mom, a blond man couldn't be faithful because he would always be tempted by the many women who would throw themselves at him.

In the end, Caryl followed her heart and true love won out. But that's a story for another day.

Slides: Eddie Sr.

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Late Spring or early Summer 1953: 16-year-old Edward Reynolds, Sr.

This is Ed's dad, the father-in-law I never met.

When my husband's mother was pregnant with her second child, she and her husband discussed possible names should the baby be a boy. Her husband wanted to name the baby Willard, after his own father. My mother-in-law was less than thrilled with that prospect, so she made a deal. The baby was due in late August. If the baby was born on her husband's birthday, September 1st, they would name the baby after the father instead of the grandfather. Her husband agreed. After all, what were the odds?

Ed's mom, Caryl, went into labor on the evening of August 31st. She stubbornly refused to go to the hospital until after midnight, even though the nearest hospital was in Olean, New York, an hour-long drive away in those days. She was determined that her baby was going to be born on his daddy's birthday!

The rest, as they say, is history. My husband was born on September first, his dad's 24th birthday, and he was named Edward Reynolds, Jr. after his proud father.

Spring 1937: Edward Reynolds, Sr. as a baby.

Ed's dad died at age 73 in November 2009, less than 5 months before Ed and I met online. Since I will never have the opportunity to meet my father-in-law in this life, the slides we found with images of Ed's dad are all the more precious to me. In order to avoid confusion between my husband Ed and my father-in-law Ed, I shall hereafter refer to Ed's dad as Eddie Sr. In his youth, he actually was known by most people as Eddie.

June 1948: Eddie Sr. at age 11

January 1952: 15-year-old Eddie Sr. (on the right) with his dad, Willard (age 41).

Ed says the man on the left was likely a customer there to purchase milk.

January 1953: The school bus driver poses with 3 of his passengers,

the Reynolds children: Eddie Sr. (age 16), Edith (age 13), and Lucy (age 10).

Spring or Summer 1953: Eddie Sr (age 16) and a Persian Lilac bush.

Most of the 1,000-plus slides I scanned were taken by Eddie Sr. over the years. As I looked through decades' worth of slides, I learned that my father-in-law had a lot of passions. He loved nature and took hundreds of pictures of flowers, crops, mountains, waterways, wildlife, and farm animals. He also loved mechanical things, filling slides with pictures of trains, ships, and farm equipment. And he was dedicated to the art of farming, with hundreds more slides of various aspects of farm life.

June 1954: Eddie Sr. (second from left) graduates from high school at age 17.

Eddie Sr. attended Alfred University in Alfred, New York, from 1954 to 1957. He earned an Associate's degree in Agricultural Engineering. He belonged to a fraternity and participated in many college activities, from Halloween pranks to Homecoming. Apparently he really, really loved college life since there are ten times as many slides of his college years as anything else!

June 1954: Newly graduated Eddie Sr. (age 17) checks out his new college.

As an adult, Eddie Sr. was a hard-working farmer and, later, entrepreneur. He wasn't afraid to take a risk or toil hard to achieve his goals. According to Ed, his dad was a gifted trouble-shooter and a creative thinker and planner. He was also a kind employer, a good friend, and generous to a fault. Eddie Sr. ended his long career by working for many years as an employee of Colorado State University's agriculture department, where he essentially invented machinery to accomplish what the professors told him they needed it to accomplish.

1955- The Reynolds kids: Lucy (age 12 or 13), Edith (age 15 or 16),

and Eddie Sr. (age 18 or 19)

Caryl tells me that her husband was a good man who went out of his way to serve others, but he was also used to having his own way. As the firstborn and only son of his parents, he usually got what he wanted, which didn't always please his sisters. When I looked through his pictures, I felt he had the look of a man who was confident and happy and a little mischievous.

I can't wait to meet him.

Slides: Papa Willard's Farm Life

2011-08-21T15:25:00.004-07:00

11 July 1954: Willard Reynolds (age 43) and "his corn."

(That's what was written on the slide!)

Today I will introduce you to my husband's paternal grandfather, Willard Reynolds. Born in December of 1910, Willard grew up on the family farm and embraced everything about farming life. Ed remembers his grandfather--whom he still refers to as "Papa"-- as one of the fastest and strongest people he has ever known. He says he was 16 before he was able to beat Papa in a foot race.

Papa Willard checks out a maple tree that is being tapped for its sap.

Based on the markings on this slide, it was taken sometime between 1952 and 1955.

Ed describes his grandfather as being about 6'4" tall, which would have been unusually tall for a man in those days. From these pictures it is clear that he was a tall, lean, wiry man who worked very hard to earn a living from the land.

February 1953: Papa Willard (age 41) drills a maple tree

to begin collecting sap which will be processed into maple syrup.

Papa Willard continued the tradition begun by his own grandfather (Ed's great-great-grandfather) of tapping the maple trees on their farmland and producing maple syrup from the maple sap. This process was begun at the end of winter, when the trees still froze at night but warmed up during the day. Ed tells me this is the only way to get a maple tree to pump out its sap.

Spring 1955: Papa Willard (age 44) fills cans with maple syrup before selling them.

Of course, there were plenty of other tasks to be done throughout the remainder of the year. The following slides depict what life on the farm was like. Keep in mind that the descriptions written under the slides are quotes from what was hand-written on the slides themselves. I don't even know what some of them mean!

1953: Papa Willard (at right, age 42) consults and plans with someone called Winch.

1953: Papa (on the right) does more consulting out in the fields

with Winch and Rooney (left and center).

1953: Papa Willard (age 42) atop a truckload of freshly baled hay.

1953: Papa Willard (age 42) baling hay.

1950: Papa Willard (age 39) elevating hay.

(I assume that means putting it up in the loft to be stored...)

1954: Papa Willard (age 43) combining oats, with

his daughters Edith and Lucy (Ed's aunts) riding on the back of the combine.

(According to Ed, when you combine oats, you're actually separating them. Huh???)

1954: Papa Willard, a hired hand, and Papa Willard's son (Ed's dad) chopping bedding.

(Is that what the cows sleep on?)

Notice the beautiful family garden in the foreground.

1954: Papa Willard (age 43) chopping corn.

Besides all the farming of the land, remember that the Reynolds Family Farm was a working dairy farm, as well. That meant attending cattle shows and cattle auctions. From a very young age, my husband Ed was closely acquainted with the Angus cows on the farm.

1955: I loved all the old cars and trucks in this photo,

taken at the Caledonia, New York, Cattle Auction.

One story Ed tells is of a time when he was a small child, only 5 or 6 years old, and he unintentionally offended a momma cow. The cow had gone to the furthest edge of the enclosure to deliver her calf, and young Ed was helping Papa bring the calf and its momma back to the barn. While Papa handled the cow, Ed was in charge of herding the newborn calf, who was reluctant to continue the tiring, mile-long trek to the barn. When Ed began pushing the calf forward, the mother cow knocked Ed on his back, hard. Getting down on her knees, she tried to grind him into the soft ground with her head while Ed looked up at the sky in terror, unable to free himself. He thought he was going to die until Papa came along and whacked the cow across the nose with a heavy cane until she let young Ed up. Papa to the rescue!

1955: Papa Willard (age 44) with some of his Angus cattle.

Even after Papa Willard sold the family farm to his son (Ed's dad), he continued to live with his son's family and helped run the farm for 5 or 6 years longer. This made him an important figure in Ed's early life. When Ed was as young as 4 years old, his grandfather took him into the fields, woods, and barns, and allowed him to help with various chores, teaching my husband a strong work ethic which has endured throughout his life. I guess you could say that Papa Willard's legacy lives on!