How to Have a Happy Thanksgiving

First of all, you have a sweet little granddaughter - Addie - come to your house and fix your table decorations. I can assure you that the fall leaves will be put in a nice line around the runner.





Second, you acquire a whole bunch of pumpkins. This can be accomplished when you have a resourceful daughter (Marenda) who located 6 pumpkins of various sizes for us.


After all of the pumpkins are cut up and cooked in a large pan, you have your granddaughter help you run it all through a food processor strainer.





























While the pumpkin is cooking, you have a granddaughter who loves to help roll out the pie dough









And you eventually end up with 10 delicious pumpkin pies.

Since you do this a week or two before Thanksgiving, you then put them in the freezer or share with friends and family.








NEXT - and very important this year - we had to make sure we had somewhere for our guests to sit. We both decided it was time to get rid of the used sectional that wasn't very comfortable. After lots of looking and comparing, we ended up going back to the first store and buying this lovely set of furniture. (It's interesting to note that when you take a man furniture shopping with you - you will probably end up getting something
that looks more masculine.) Actually, I really liked this set the first time we looked at it. and the more Garth thought of it, the more he liked it. I fell in love with the heavy round occasional tables that were with this set.


FINALLY the big day arrived. We had 10 people to dinner so we all easily fit at our dining room table.

Some time before our guests arrived, we were ready for Trina and Guy and their 4 boys and our two college granddaughters - Kalen Reynolds and Mellissa Rosenhan.





Shortly after they arrived, Sheridan let us all know that he was "Hungry"!












Here we are finally ready to eat - after taking time to each tell several things we were grateful for.
Left: Mellissa, Guy, Mitchell, Trina, Caleb, Sheridan, Marcus, Kalen & Garth.








While the "boys" played football - Mitchell watched TV while he kept a hold of a lock of his hair.












And the girls just relaxed and visited.




Trina and Mellissa showing off our new couch




Mellissa and Kalen showing that the Love Seat works well.





HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL!

A Tiny House

Shanda asked me to help her make Talia a little cloth house for Christmas. She picked out the fabric she wanted for it. Here is the finished product. I am mainly putting it here so that Shanda can get a good look at it in Colorado Springs, but others might like to see what I have been up to.





Here are the occupants of the little house.












And this shows the front of the house. The zippers on the side open to allow a little girl to play inside of the house thought he door opens as well.

Happy Halloween

Although it was a little early for Halloween, I wanted to start out with the scariest incident of the month. When we were traveling home from Phoenix, We saw huge clouds of black smoke up ahead on the climb out of the Valley.













We were shocked to see this truck that had been pulling an RV totally engulfed in flames. Our hearts and prayers went out to whoever this misfortune occurred to.













We enjoyed being with the family on Sunday, Oct. 26th for Drake's 9th birthday. As you can see, cake decorating is no challenge when you have just received a new Lego set for your birthday.




















Halloween was celebrated again with the families in this area at Deren's and Liz's place. We furnished a crock pot of zucchini soup and chocolate covered donuts and some games for the children. I am including all of the pictures since it is hard to get children to all look in the right direction in the same picture.



In this first picture Garth is holding Kasen who is dressed as a baby lion. Drake is mostly hiding in the wonderful cloak that Liz made for him. Addie is a mermaid in a costume made by her mom.



















Guy and Garth are relaxing.













THE GROUP WHO DRESSED UP!













Back row: Drake, Kasen, the lion is held by Kalen, Marcus the Ninja and Sheridan the Aviator. On the front row we have Addie the mermaid, Mitchell the baby giraff and Caleb the dolphin trainer.


























Garth dubbed us as Jack & "O" Lantern. He designed his own shirt.


WE HOPE YOU ALL HAD A VERY HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

COUNTING TODAY THERE ARE JUST 55 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!

What We've Been Up to During Oct. 2008

Having just returned from over two weeks of travel, I felt I should document our activities. The day after celebrating Mitchell's 2nd birthday, we loaded up our Windstar and traveled to LaVerkin where we visited with my mother (Ruth Nielson). On Friday morning (Oct. 10th) we saw her and then traveled the 6 hour trip to Prescott, Arizona where the Haltermans graciously allowed us to stay with them. This included a shopping trip with Kendra to start looking for fabrics for all her projects and our visit with several of our friends in Prescott. We saw Ethel Taylor, Ruth Allen, Allison Stanford and Dave and Alice Lange. We are amazed how well Alice is doing.

















On Saturday we traveled to Phoenix, Arizona with Kendra and the children. It was fun to be with them again. On Monday we started in to serious work on the many projects we wanted to get done.




One of our most enjoyable thing was to be able to spend some time with our 3 lovely Arizona grandchildren.


Kira came home with a Principal's Award for her first quarter grades. Naturally we are very pleased grandparents.






Tessa loved having us there to give her more attention. She loves music and had us all dancing when she would push the buttons to get the music going on the toy on the refrigerator door.














Trenton looks so handsome in his cowboy costume that he wore for one of his school activities.



















Kira is a great big sister. Here she built a baby "jail" to keep Tessa from going up the stairs or from going in to disturb her mother while she was giving voice lessons.
















I set my sewing machine up in the living room.










After finishing a little orange skirt for Tessa's birthday, I made up the cover for this fabric chair for Kendra's loft reading area. She bought "Dick & Jane" fabric because those are pictures from the first reading books.








We enjoyed being a part of Tessa's first birthday celebrations and helped Kendra clean up, set things up and host the party for many friends and relatives.
















































Some of the projects we did included;


Family Room cafe curtains.




















Living Room curtains
























Halloween costumes for Kira, Tessa and a helmet for Trenton. (Kira is the White Witch from Narnia and Tessa is Lucy. Trenton is wearing Caleb's knight costume for Peter but I made him a helmet.)









Drapes for the sliding doors in the dining area,


















Roman Blinds for the kitchen windows.

















With some help from Barry, Garth built a locker unit to be used in the pantry room.












Here is the finished product.




































Perhaps the biggest project that both Garth and I worked on was the reupholstering of two chairs for the living room. I think you will agree that they looked much better after we finished with them.




















And so ends our report. We had a great time but are are happy to be home again.

Peach Days in Southern Utah

Greetings everyone! We traveled to LaVerkin on Thursday, August 28th, to spend some time with my mother, to have a belated birthday dinner with my sister - Quinta, and to attend my 53rd class reunion (Hurricane High School)



Eight of us gathered at Mother's house on Thursday evening for a belated birthday meal for Quinta who turned 78 on July 3rd. I prepared the meal and LuDeen made pies and furnished ice cream. Going around the table to the left you will see Garth, LuDeen, Marsha, Eric (Spencer), Quinta, Randie and Fred. It is always great to get together with my brothers and sisters and their spouses. We missed Corrin and Janice.

On Friday we took Mother's fiber optic's Christmas tree over to her apartment for her to enjoy and to brighten things up a bit. We had tried to take it to her earlier but she hadn't wanted it.

I also took her two new dresses. She is wearing one of them in this picture.
































Saturday was reunion day. In the morning, Garth delivered me to the parade route in Hurricane where I met some of my classmates and we rode on this trailer. I am actually on the other side of the trailer 2nd person from the front of the trailer.











In the evening we met at the American Legion Hall in Hurricane and had a delicious meal of dutch oven cooking










For our program we tried to follow our graduation program. Since I couldn't find one of the songs I sang in, I did a couple of songs from the operetta that we did our Senior year titled, "Kentucky Sue". I had the title part and sang, "I Want a City Feller" and "Kentucky Sue".














These are my classmates who were present. I am on the front row, 2nd from the right. Out of our graduating class of 53 we had 9 men and 13 women present. It was a fun time.