So long to Summer. . . Part 1

As you all know, I kinda got sidetracked from the blog. . but as I listen to the wind blow tonight bringing the storm that will probably give us our first snow of the season. . . I decided to post a few more pictures from our fun summer. . .we enjoyed every minute of it!!

A very exciting thing happened to our street - the city actually repaired it so that is it smooth and nice to drive on - no more hills and valleys as you drive into our cul-de-sac!! The Bakers were here the last couple of days while the work was being done - we had fun watching from the front porch!



Then a couple of days after the street was finished, the water retention pond behind our house overflowed and our intersection was majorly flooded for couple of hours. The boys got in on that fun, also!
Grandpa and Grandma and the Bakers at the company picnic in Orem. Grandpa got to be in the dunk tank, we ate lunch, they had balloons, cotton candy, and prizes for the kids.
Did I mention that these pictures are not exactly in order - just a smattering of fun summer days!! Here are a couple of pics from the 4th of July again - Lauren, Kaleen and Shaylyn taste testing the homemade ice cream!
Curt cooking his famous shish-ka-bobs for everyone.
We had a great time at our Hedges Family Reunion in Pocatello - the weather was great, we had almost 100 people there which meant our attendance was close to 100% also!! Lots of young great grandchildren - Rebecca helped me organize game and activity stations to keep them busy. Of course the squirt bottles were the big hit - even Grandpa got in on the fun!!
Andy, Declan, John, Christian, Nathan, Matt
Rebecca and Jessica, Curt, Mitzi and Shaylin, Jayna and Emmalyn
Grandpa and Grandma with all 21 of their living grandchildren - a special day!The big group shot. . . 4 new babies since last year - Jessica and Emmalyn in our family and Silar and Taylor in David's family.

Christian with the blocks. . . Christian and Declan playing at the sand and water table at the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point - the blue aprons do help keep their clothes dry and clean. . .

Enjoying lollipops at Sundance. . .even Jessica!!
Oh what fun they had at our nearby creek - the boats were so fun to float down the stream!!

June Joy and Fun on the 4th of July

June started off with a visit from my friend from college, Bonnie Lucas and her family. They were in Utah (they live in Georgia now) for the wedding of their son on June 5th in the Salt Lake Temple. We were also privileged to attend the endowment session for the bride the week before at the Salt Lake Temple. It's always a treat to be in the temple that we were sealed in almost 34 years ago!! This is a picture of me, Bonnie, Lee Ann and Yvette - two of Bonnie's friends. June 5th was a fairly cool day but a beautiful one!

As most of you know, those Maricopa Bakers spent 2 wonderful weeks with us in June - check out Rebecca's blog for tons of pictures of all the fun we had. The boys enjoyed playing outside and playing ping pong inside (I'll have to check if we have pictures of that) - Declan would always say "Bam-it, Slam-it" before he served the ping pong ball. He was very good at serving, for not being much taller that the table itself. Christian is getting very good, too. It was fun to play with them. Here is a picture of Declan with the blocks - we can hardly wait for Emmalyn to get here so we can get her picture with the blocks, too! Grandpa reading the boys their Book of Mormon stories before bedtime. Christian is reading now, too. He actually read Declan several stories while they were here. Declan loved the book "The Diggingist Dog" and Christian read it to him several times. We enjoyed visits from the Trouts and Olsens over July 4th. The Trouts took all the pictures on the 4th, so we need to get copies of all the fun!! We had a relaxing day and a BBQ and even made homemade ice cream. After dinner, we sat out on the lawn and watched the neighborhood fireworks for entertainment. Lauren and her roommate, Shalyn (pronounced Shay Lynn, not to be confused with Shaylin) came too. They are attending summer term at BYU. It was fun to meet Shalyn and we hope we get to see her and Lauren more times this summer! On Saturday, Curt and I helped out with the baptisms for our Stake. The Olsens and the Trouts hiked up to Stewart Falls, up near Sundance. We met them for dinner at Bajio's and then they came over and we all hung out at the park and visited.


Kaleen and Meghan playing at the park. . .


Texting while Tetter-tottering, Linda is always on the go. . .
Meghan and Kaleen and Sheldon and a few others tried out the swing over the creek - shhhh! Christian and Declan don't know about the swing yet. . .
The Trouts went to church with us on Sunday, then headed back to Henderson. The Olsens and Lauren and Shalyn came over to dinner, we had a fun BBQ together, then play a fast game of Cranium (good thing they know how to play, we've never quite got the rules straight!) Rachel is at EFY now in Logan and Dana is staying in Utah for the week. It's fun to see them!Olsen Family picture (missing Daniel!) Sheldon, Elaine, Terrell, Rachel, Dana and Roy. Terrell came down from Logan on his motorcycle - wow!
Can't wait to see all who are coming to Duck Creek - we love being with you!

Wallsburg News

When we went to Wallsburg over Memorial Day Weekend we took a few pictures of the changes to Grandma Wall's property. The old white house has been torn down, and the only things left were the old oil tank and the flagstone steps that led up to the house. A new house is being built on the south west side of the property - in the old pasture.
The old oil tank.
So far the old grainery is still standing.
Mom and me near the old flagstone steps. We will miss the old home and yet the happy memories that we have of time spent there with our grandparents will stay in our hearts forever.

Spring and Summer Fun

Even though we had a cool spring in Utah, we enjoyed some great times together with family and friends. We celebrated John's birthday in Arizona, got to see Roy, Dana and Rachel when they were in Utah over Rachel's spring break (it even snowed one morning when they were here!), Curt's cousin's daughter, Sonia, spent a few days with us while she was looking for her first full-time teaching job and it was fun to get to know her better! Sid and Marcia came for a weekend and Curt helped them scan some family pictures for Marcia's upcoming family reunion. We watched Enchanted together, ate at Rumbi Island Grill and checked out a new bakery in town - Flour Girls and Dough Boys. We also had a fun weekend with Nathan - he helped us fix several things around the house and sold us on a cool timer switch for our bathroom fans! All our guests who have used the upstairs bathroom have loved it. We also used Nathan's great technical skills to get a TV set up that we can view when everything goes HD in a few months. John and Lacey overlapped on that weekend also - coming up to see a couple of Jazz play off games. And Irene came to pick up Hilary from BYU - after a little bit of car trouble, they got Hilary moved out of the dorms and back to Denver for the summer. We loved having them all here. We piled on the blankets on the downstairs beds, because it was cold again that weekend! Sunday we had a great stake conference with Elder Boyd K. Packer as our visiting General Authority. He had great counsel for all ages!! Our friend Maggie Conway came up at the end of April for BYU Women's Conference, too. So you can see that April passed very quickly and I definitely got behind on the blog! So moving on to May, we received the following gift for Mother's and Father's Day - the next best thing to a visit from our grandkids - a darling picture taken by Matt, Jayna and Rebecca of all five of them - Shaylin, Declan holding Emmalyn, Christian and Jessica. The boys are sporting suits that they received from their Baker grandparents and the girls are wearing some cute Grandma dresses from the Jolene's stores in Utah. We appreciate the time and effort it took to get everyone dressed up and take a lot of photos to get this great shot!

Emmalyn was blessed on May 18th at Matt and Jayna's home in Maricopa, Arizona. Jayna's grandparents were coming into town about midday, and their Sacrament meeting is at 8:30 a.m. so they decided to do the blessing at home. One of the Bishop's counselors came to the house and Matt gave her a name (Emmalyn Rose) and a beautiful blessing. Below are the proud parents and precious baby girl!
Grandma Olsen came to Arizona for the blessing and I drove back with her to Utah - we stopped by Henderson to spend the night with the Trouts on our way back. We had fun getting things ready for Memorial Day. On the Saturday before Memorial Day, Curt and I drove to Las Vegas to trade cars with John, he was in town for a friend from BYU Idaho's wedding. We met John and Lacey and Will and his girlfriend Karen at the Las Vegas Temple and then took them out to lunch before hitting the road for the 6 hour return trip. Here are a few pictures from our Memorial Day remembrances and celebrations - my dad's headstone in the Springville Evergreen Cemetery with all the beautiful flowers. We had a fun picnic at the park in Orem - Sheldon and Elaine came too - it was COLD as you can see from the next picture - Mom and I are wearing layers, coats, and we even used HANDWARMERS on May 26th!! I was about ready to sign up for a Phoenix summer!!!!
This is a picture of my aunts and uncles on the Olsen side --Mom - Bernice Olsen, Uncle Ben, Uncle Jim and Aunt Marilyn, Aunt Genny, Aunt Geneva and Uncle Ken, and Aunt Janet. We love them and miss those who have gone on before.

More posts to come (hopefully!) and June has been another fun month. We're looking forward to Hedges and Olsen family reunions in July!

Cherry Blossoms in Japan

While I was in Arizona playing Grandma, Curt traveled to Japan. On Sunday after he attended church with his associate, they visited this area near the Tokyo Temple to take pictures of the cherry blossoms. Yes, that is the Temple spire in the background. This next picture was taken in a different place near the Imperial Palace.
This is Curt's new screen saver - spring is arriving somewhere - it's being slow to arrive here in Highland - we've had snow 3 times during the past week!

Emmalyn Rose makes Five!

Jayna and Matt presented us with a beautiful granddaughter on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 7:46 am. She weighed 6 pounds 13 ounces and of course is adorable! Big sister Shaylin is a big help, getting diapers and wipes and wanting to see the baby first thing when she gets up. I had fun staying for a few days - playing with Shaylin and holding Emmalyn!We got the call at 3:30 am and decided to head to the Salt Lake City airport and see if Southwest airlines could work their magic again. (This is the 3rd grandbaby that we have made it to the hospital to see with hours after a middle of the night call!) We had a flight booked for Monday morning, we were able to change it over the phone as we drove to the airport to the 8:45 am flight - they said the 6:40 am flight was full. But we had faith that we might be able to get on the earlier flight. We were at the airport by 5:30 am and they had room for us on the 6:40 am flight!! Since Utah has already changed to Daylight Savings Time, there is an hour time difference and we arrived in Phoenix around 7:10 am. We rented a car and went straight to the hospital - we were just a few minutes away from the hospital when Matt called and told us that she had arrived - so by the time we got there, they were ready for us to see and hold her. I grabbed my camer one day and got this picture of Shaylin after Jayna had fixed her hair so cute! We went on several walks and wagon rides - see Matt and Jayna's blog for pictures of the fun wagon.

Of course I also got to spend time with the Baker family while I was there. On Saturday, March 29th, Christian participated in a Fishing Derby held by the city of Maricopa at Pacana Park. They have quite a man-made lake there. It was catch-and-release - but everyone had a lot of fun. The afternoon sun was warm - Christian is sporting Andy's sun hat. He was thrilled to catch a fish after an hour!! But we overheard what some of the people used for bait and he'll be ready with the secret weapon next year.
Andy had to work Saturday morning and made it home in time to take Christian fishing. All I can say is there may be a new serious fisherman at the Olsen reunion this year!!
Christian and Declan and Jessica on Sunday, March 30th. She is growing up and the boys love to play with her!

Thai Visitors

In February we were privileged to share a few days with several visitors from Thailand. I met most of these wonderful people last year and it was fun to see them again and to show them around Disneyland and Utah. This is a picture of the group as we entered Disneyland - Mom Olsen also went with us that day and helped us get fast passes and ride all the best rides. It was a rather cool day but we still had a good time. It was the day after President's Day and the park was pretty busy, too. Next is the picture of us on Tower of Terror - my first time! Everyone was so impressed at how Mom likes all the scary rides and doesn't even look scared!

In Utah, another highlight was a snowmobile trip for the visitors. It was cold, but not too cold and you can see that everyone is well dressed for the weather. They had a fun day riding the machines and of course, a few times had to dig out if they got stuck in the snow.

After touring the corporate offices in Orem, a meeting was held with the visitors and exectutives. Sallee (who works in the office in Bangkok) also came to Utah and helped with translation when needed.
This was Sallee's first time to see snow (as it was for some of the others), we took some pictures in the deep snow before she left.One evening we all had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at the Hughes home and afterwards were favored by a violin duet by Stewart's and Christopher's daughters. It was a delightful evening. The next evening we enjoyed a delicious dinner featuring Korean and Japanese food at Chistopher's home - we enjoyed our time together very much!