Happy Turkey Day!

Thanksgiving was celebrated at Jeff and Sherry's home. Mike and family, John and I attended. We all
helped out by bringing potluck dishes. There were two birds, so Jeff and Mike got plenty of turkey skin!! It seemed like turning the foxes loose in the hen house to have those two carve a turkey each!

Yummy Raspberry/lemonade jello, green salad, stuffing/dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green peas, and three different pies were on the menu. Who could complain? Homemade rolls, a veggie tray, and nearly 5 cans of black olives were enjoyed by all!

A short program/talent show completed the celebration. The three McKea girls favored us with a solo each. They are coming along with their piano studies. It is fun to be their teacher!

We kept the little ones overnight so that Katie, Annie, and Mike could experience what has come to be known as "Black Friday". No sleep all night doesn't appeal to me! Kids were fun...helped decorate the Christmas tree! They had new coloring/activity books to enjoy and were just as happy as clams!

I was happy to learn that Joe and Andy had fun at Tammy and Dayle's house. Also, Gordon accepted Tammy's invitation to dinner. I was so glad that he did. He hasn't seen our family in several years.

Now, to look forward to the Christmas holidays. I love this time of year! Happy Holidays to All!!

The Homecoming Queen Has a Crown!!

Well, it must be noted that our eldest granddaughter, Julie Anderson, was voted Homecoming Queen at Timberline High School! She is a very tall, slender, redheaded sweetheart and we are all proud of her!
May she always be a princess to her family and a great example to all!!!

We had a family dinner tonight, Halloween Eve. Had ham and potatoes - straight from our garden. Had kids
at a table in the basement. Everything tasted so good and the children from five to seventeen (nearly) had a nice time. They are so good to each other. We are blessed with outstanding children and grandchildren, but who's bragging? A proud grandmother, that's who!!

Nearly all of our leaves have fallen. Thanks to the younger McKea's most of them are all mulched and roto-tilled into the garden.

Happy to have clean kitchen windows!! Never got to the windows this summer; summer didn't even start until July and then it was super hot!! Besides, any excuse will do!! :-)

Autumn Picnic

Today was such a nice "fall" day that I asked John to join me for a little picnic - my treat. We went to Blimpie's with a "buy one, get one free" coupon. Terrible construction around the parking lot, but we persisted and went inside to order. They honored the coupon and were gracious about it; but the manager claimed to know nothing about it and it was likely meant to be used at another location! It was the coupon that got us there in the first place!!

We thought we'd find a nice park with a table, some shade and a tree or two, so we started out at Lone Peak Park. We took our food and sat at a table only to have three youngsters 3-4 years of age run between the tables screaming at the top of their voices. We picked ourselves up and left, driving to a park just west of our senior center. We followed a maintainence truck into the parking lot, and saw a cute gazebo up the hill. We thought that would be a nice private spot for lunch with a terrific view, but the truck proceeded that way, so we decided they must be planning to have lunch at that one gazebo, so we let them have it and went to the pavillion instead. We sat down and opened our sandwiches and began our lunch only to have the same workers come by mowing and edging the lawn.....and they started right by us even though the whole place has considerable grass that could have been mowed first!! We smiled and ate on....until some yellow-jackets smelled our lunch and began sniffing our food. By this time we were desparate for lunch and about out of patience, although I admit we spent most of the time smiling. I guess it was just not meant to be!! No picnic today!! We took our food home and ate at the kitchen table!! At least there were no screaming children, lawn-mowers, edgers, or yellow-jackets! Enjoyed the company!

September Saturday

I had decided to clean behind the refrigerator, but needed help. Mike came over to help John pull it out. Wow!! It was plenty dusty back there! John and Mike vacuumed, dusted and wiped down the wall and outside of the frig. Thanks for all of the help!! I rushed out and bought a new microwave; when will I have access to the outlet again?? I'll save the old microwave for future college kids. With a lot of help we got it all loaded again and all sparkly for our use!
Outdoors the little McKea's helped "deadhead", trim, pull weeds and just spruce up the flowerbeds which have been neglected, due to our many short and exciting vacations.
Last weekend we enjoyed Tuachan ("Little Mermaid") and Cedar City ("A Midsummer Night's Dream"). Super lovely weekend, thanks to our children's Christmas gift to us. Thank you, once again!!
BYU football is in the air. It is nice to not have to put up bushels of fruit. I gave it up when we were reduced to just the two of us. Now, I enjoy the "fall" time of year so much more! :-)

A Perfect Summer Day!

Just must tell you how wonderful the day was. It began with a trip to the very helpful chiropractor; I don't know how I'd get along without him!! He added accupuncture to the visit, which usually relaxes me and then gives me a boost of energy for the rest of the day. After this visit, I went to

the next room for a full-body massage!! Oh, how wonderful that was!! Had a sandwich from "Kneader's" and then a couple of piano students. A girl just cannot cook dinner on such a spendid day, so we went to "Cafe Rio" for dinner! As I said above a perfect day!

P.S. It may have perfect for a couple of special people in an entirely different way; John took grand-daughter Erin fishing in the late evening and got a couple of nibbles. The best part was being together and the shake they bought on the way home! Good times for sure!!

Flaming Gorge - Family Reunion 2011

Wow!! What a fun-filled long weekend!! Everyone but Dayle was able to come. We missed him and hope to have him with us next time. Thankfully, he sent his family and they created a great stir! Tammy is always making things fun..."Mom, if you added two more little diamonds to your toes, you'd have smiley faces"! Julie and Belana were quite taken with the signs in the condo: "It's never too late to live happily every after", and "You're closer to heaven when you're in the mountains". Julie made most of us beautiful woven bracelets - or were they knotted? Chevrons and hearts were the decorations on them. Julie is quite good at this skill. I love my blue and pink bracelet!!

We had three condo rooms rented with a lovely breezeway between. Here we set up two white folding tables and served our meals. Great location. We just pulled all of the chairs out of the rooms and had a great area...for eating and game-playing.

The food - pancakes, bacon, pulled pork, spagheti, hoagies, was so good. I guess it helped to be hungry, but I've never enjoyed a sandwich and watermelon like I did after the river run!!

The river run was soooo much fun. Andy got me into a raft, thinking she was putting me in a quiet spot at the back, and then Joe turned the thing around and I became a rower at the front of the raft!! Lots of water and lots of fun - right up until Jeff and Jason tried to steal Andy's super-soaker and Mike threw a bucket of water at me and I slid right off my seat ending up on my back with both arms and legs in the air!! I felt like a dying beetle!! Joe helped get me righted and we shortly after landed. John and I took the youngest back to the condo to shower and rest. The others ran the river a second time. It was just beautiful and so much fun!!

The games and activities were engaging, too. The marathon "Minute To Win It" was just great! Everyone was
as quiet as we were all weekend, while everyone concentrated on the challenge at hand. Stack nuts with chop sticks, shack three golf balls, balance a nail head on a string, toss cheese balls at someone whose face is slathered with shaving foam. Great laughs...and thanks to Sherry our team took first place....!!

The candy bar game is tradition and always a hit. Then, John and I each gave a short spiritual thought to top off Sunday morning. After all, we did miss church!

The goodbyes were hard, especially knowing the Andersons were headed 1000 miles away. It was a great weekend. Kudos to Joe and Andy for hosting a great 2011 Family Reunion!!

The Fourth of July

We rented Wildflower Park in Sandy and invited all of the family to come. It was so nice to have unlimited space, tables, bathrooms, great company, and good food. We also got to meet Titan, Annie and Dan's new addition. He was only about a week old, so he slept a great deal. He seems like a calm, sweet
little baby. With them as parents, he is likely to have a calm personality, too!

Jeff's rocket was also a big hit! Sounds like a huge explosion, but is really all electronic - no fire. The kids - and Jeff - had great fun chasing the little parachute!!

It was overcast most of the day, which tempered the heat of this Fourth. The fireworks were fun - at the traditional spot of the "J"!! It sprinkled a bit, but not enough water to worry about.

Katie gave me a huge sack of taffy for the piano candy bucket...my, they must have collected two gallons at the Murray Parade!

Good-bye Mexico, Hello, U.S.A.!!

We planned a land cruise to Cancun, Tulum, and Chichen Itza about three months ago. The time of departure
finally came. We had a fine neighbor boy water the lawn, and some fine grandchildren water the flowers and garden. When we got home the place looked very nice! Good thing, because there is a ton of work in
that yard...remember the wedding??

We met four nice couples on our cruise, three of them from our valley. We had lovely motels, delicious food (altho we ate only food that was peeled or cooked), beautiful scenery, and TONS OF RAIN!! Upon arriving home, we learned that we were in the first tropical storm of the season - named "Arlene". I believe we had ten to fourteen inches of rain!!! On Monday night, it thundered, lighteninged, and dumped rain all night long. The only other distraction was a pair of peacocks talking all night long - at an interval of a second, musically speaking. Talk about a noisy night. We were kept active enough that sleep came easily though. We saw some amazing pyramids, statues, and relics that were very, very old.

Tulum, Ek Balam, and Chichen Itza were just amazing!! So glad we were able to share the trip together.

My right ankle did pretty well, considering all of the walking we did...at landmarks and in airports. At each location I would walk as far as I could, then turn back to the hotel. Not long later, the rain would just dump! Everyone was wet to the skin, but I managed to stay pretty dry! :-)

Our flight was cancelled, so we had to stay overnight at a Marriot Courtyard and get up at 3:00 in the morning. Landing over the Salt Lake Valley was impossible, due to a storm front. The turbulence was frightening!! After diverting to Pocatello and gassing up, we headed back to Utah and were able to land.

John and I both experienced some sort of food poisoning. Diahrrea, upset tummy, body aches. Sure glad it
didn't hit until we were home. Took us two days to recuperate! Glad to be back in the United States of America!!

Yard Work

Our next-door neighbors scheduled a wedding reception in their back yard. It has been so cold that we really hadn't done much in the yard; it's been way too cold to plant. Well, I decided we needed to be
good neighbors and make our yard shine for the event. We invited the little McKea group over to pick up
maple "helicopters" and then the next day, our Noorda family came and four boys worked so hard to help
plant the rest of our petunias, and spread bark dust (a habit I have brought from the Northwest), plant
gladiolas, sweetpeas (the flower), and even "detail" the car! Wow! It looks mighty spiffy around here and
the car looks brand new! It was a pleasure to drive it to a sealing session.

The wedding went well; it was lovely weather for them all day and all evening! We had about thirty cars lining both sides of the street and around the corner. I'm glad our yard was presentable and that they had such a nice day!

Many thanks to our helpful grandchildren, who made light work of a lot of chores!! Love them all!!

Where Does The Time Go?

Here it is nearly the end of May!! I just can't wrap my mind around the idea that two whole months have slipped by!! We went to a funeral just last week for Bill Huckstep; he was sort of an adopted grandfather to our children when they were young, because they had no living ones of their own. He had a cabin out of Boise and he and his wife Maxine were so kind as to let us join my brother's family and vacation there a couple of times. He did everything in a big way. He had such great, relaxed humor and was a kind, family man. Heaven will welcome him with open arms! He has said that "your life is like a roll of toilet-paper; the closer you get to the end the faster it goes"!! I guess that's what happened to the past two months!

April was my designated "health check-up" month. I saw my knee doctor, had a mammogram, visited the ob/gyn, went to the eye doctor and saw the dentist. I had good reports, except I lost a decayed (under a gold crown) wisdom tooth. Why was that so sad? I guess it felt like the beginning of advancing years, when you slowly lose yourself bit by bit. Sure hate to walk this road, but it's better than the alternative....I guess! :-)

April held "Girls' Weekend" and you know how much fun that always is!! We shopped, stayed up late, got up late, ate out, scrapped and even finished up my tile boards of grand-children. I am so happy about that!
While we played, all of the children and dads went topaz-hunting in the desert. They had barrels of fun, also. The hit of their camp was Mike's homemade "biffy"!! They came back full of happiness, a little sand, a bottle of topaz and full bellies. We all had a terrific time!!

So, there it is: two months in a thumbnail sketch! Life really does roll along at a fast clip!! And those tile board were hung just two days ago and look so great on the wall downstairs!!

Girls' Weekend

Oh, the joys of having fun-loving daughters and daughters-in-law!! Sherry, Katie and I had so much fun - from "Good Things Utah", to Park City, and Rafael's and Carinos and Olive Garden. Cute new shoes, skirts, sweaters, tops and toenails!! Girl Heaven!

Of course, the dads and kids thought topaz-hunting and camping in the desert was just the best. The new Port-a-Potty was a hit; everyone thanks Mike for that. Everyone came home safe, healthy, happy, and thrilled with their little bottles of precious gems! I ask, "what could be better than family time?"

Easter ham was enjoyed by all at Mike and Katie's house; too bad someone in the family doesn't have a huge house with a huge great room! We do manage, though. All of us enjoy each other and I must say,
everyone is so good to everyone else. We easily add up to over twenty people, if everyone comes...

Well, Greg might take issue with the above statement; his Aunt Katie gives him a pretty hard time, but I figure he secretly loves it. He got to take his wild aunt for a little spin around her neighborhood. I understand that he did a great job, considering all of the harrassment Katie threw his way! Down the road many years, when he gets serious about a girl, he will have to see if the girlfriend can handle this wild member of the family. That will be the "acid test" of any relationship!! :-)

Our last snow storm on April 29th dumped 7" of snow!!! It was all melted by afternoon, but what crazy weather we are having!! Is this "global warming"???

Had a wisdom tooth extracted today. Darn, I really hated to lose it, but there was nothing left and it was just worth hundreds to do an implant. I will just have to adjust.

I am thrilled to have my three tile boards all ready to hang. Thanks to Katie and Sherry for seeing the project to the end. They will display each family of grandchildren downstairs, so I'm anxious to hang them.

HAPPY SPRING!!

Birthday Month

Well, we've survived a number of friend and family birthdays this month!! I can't believe how many
birthdays we have in March!! It's been a rainy month, mostly, so I'm excited to see a little sun-shine of late.

The family had a dinner at Sherry and Jeff's for John and me. This weekend we'll celebrate her
birthday. We do know how to share!! Sure enjoyed the spaghetti dinner!

Glad to get new perm and nice haircut. It makes life so much happier!

General Conference is this weekend. It will be nice to hear the words of instruction that we love
to hear. I have a turkey thawing in the sink, so hope the family can come.

Sure appreciate all of our family and friends....even the ones around the world~

Home Again, Jiggity Jig

We are home from a vacation to the Northwest. We were able to visit Tammy and her family and also to see my brother,Gordon, and a longtime friend, Linda. Dinner at the "Red Lobster" was delicious!

Tammy, Dayle, Julie, Belana, Dayle, Jr., and Brendan are all doing well. We enjoyed music, shopping, eating out and playing games.

Jets sure make travel a pleasure!! Our trip home only took 90 minutes!! It's still a bit tiring, but nothing like a 16-hour drive!!

We had eleven inches of snow here two days before we returned, but today it was close to sixty degrees!!! I am getting excited to see my daffodils and tulips bloom out front! It should be a "riot of color" out there!!

Tammy had painted the upstairs bathroom just before our visit and it just may be the impetus I need to get serious about our upstairs bathroom. It's been over 20 years since we've done it and it really needs a facelift!! I have chosen the shower curtain, rod, rings, toilet, flooring, faucets and wall color, but need to find a vanity that we will love! Hope to have it ready by this summer.

Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Well, we are home from a week long vacation to the Washington-Oregon area. It was so nice to visit with Tammy and Dayle and their family. It appears that Julie, Belana, Dayle, Jr., and Brendan are all doing
well. They are sure terrific game-players. Lots of "Greed" and then some "Word on the Street".

Lunch with Dayle has become a wonderful "tradition". Wendy's, Taco Time, Applebee's were all just great!
Shopping at the mall and at "Trader Joe's" was pretty rewarding, too. I got some denims, John found a shirt or two, and we got some cute baby peanut-butter cups for Sher and Mike to try in homemade ice cream.

I guess we got 11" of snow just two days before our return, but it was in the fifties today and my tulips are about an inch out of the ground. Can't wait for the riot of color to come out front. Lots of daffodils and tulips should be cropping up soon!!

I missed my piano students, but I'm back in the groove. I did have a wonderful experience in Portland concerning music...I found about a dozen solos by Dent Mowrey at the county library. I was so excited I almost cried....truly. He is a lesser-known twentieth century composer who lived in Portland. My piano teacher took lessons from him and I have played a number of his songs. They are so much fun to play and a joy to hear! Truly a gold mine!

Hoping to redo the upstairs bathroom. It's only been 20 years or more. Definitely time to do something. I've spent the past year or so choosing a shower curtain, flooring, a new toilet, shower rod and rings, and light....now to find a vanity and we're ready to go!

Tammy had painted her bathroom just before we got there, so she's my inspiration to begin!

Happy Spring!!! I think it's nearly here!! Hooray for Spring!!!

Shoot For Excellence!

I guess it must be close to report-card time. I have been so proud to learn that many of my piano
students are also 4.0 students. I am so privileged to work with such "cream of the crop" young
people!

I have been told by one of my daughters that in her growing-up years she remembers very few family rules, but a sense of high expectations. I hope all of my children knew that I wished
for them to do their very best, so that they could experience the good feeling that comes from
working hard and finding personal success! I never wanted them to feel that if they weren't
the best at everything that they had no value. We are all so different and it sometimes takes
a good part of our life to find out what our strengths and gifts are. If we just work hard, and
give great effort to the thing we undertake, we can feel great satisfaction!

I am just honored to be associated with great people both within and without my family circle!
I tip my hat to you all!!

Ground Hog Day

Today is just frigid!! I bet it's about six degrees out there. Because of this cold, cold weather, and the light breeze, everyone is just freezing. Therefore, I do hope that the Ground
Hog does NOT see his shadow!! We don't need six more weeks of winter - enough, already!!

Just heard that Julie got Straight A's!! Wow!! Terrific news!! That takes a lot of effort, so I'm really proud of her! And Erin won her school's Reflections in Music; great accomplishment
there, too.

Can't wait to see Greg play his last basketball game on Friday. Hope he'll make a basket for me!
He sure has some awesome shots...

Jenna gets baptised on Saturday; what a fun-filled, busy life we lead. Gotta love it!! :-)

Happy 2011!!

Well, here it is - a new year!! The Holidays were such great fun! Visits with family, trip to
Temple Square, concerts galore, yummy meals, great entertainment, great company all month!!

New Year's Resolutions? I'm keeping it super-simple: just three. Maybe I can have success...I'll let you know in December!