First snowfall.

We got our first snowfall of the year
Sunday afternoon. It only snowed about two inches, but it's been cold so it stayed around. By Friday it's supposed to be back up around 70 degrees. Ah, the Utah weather.

This photo is of Rob, Kristen and Haylee coming across the parking lot after church. It wasn't snowing when they went to church.

More construction

This is the new softball complex, looking southeast. It is directly south about 15 yards of the baseball diamond. You can see the natatorium in the middle right of the picture. The plan is to lay sod on both the baseball and softball diamonds, but to seed the soccer field. The soccer field will take about 18 months to be ready to play on, while softball and baseball should be ready lin the Spring.

Construction

This is a photo of the new baseball field at Box Elder High School. It is part of the $30 million building project at the school and includes a new softball and soccer field. This picture is taken looking north east from the approximate middle of the old soccer field.

Footings

Here , the crew is working on the footings for the south classroom addition. The poured these first, then moved to the north addition.

The BE School District is building a nearly complete new high school. They will eventuall tear down about 80% of the old school and put up new stuff. This is the day they made the first cement pour and Darrell (in purple shirt) got to help vibrate the concrete down into the forms .

The crews are really making progress now so I will try to make new posts each week or so. It's already fun to watch the walls start to go up. See the next picture.

Peach Days 2008

Melissa, Carin's younger sister, was an attendant at in the Peach Queen pageant last week, so she got to ride on the float. She is the beauty in the purple dress. The parade was fun, but the most fun was having everyone home for the weekend. All except Carin, JC and Zenock of course, because they moved to Washington D.C. last week.

We had peach cobbler, watched the parade, went to all the craft booths, had peach cobbler, looked at the window displays, had lunch after the parade, and all the other Peach Days stuff you do. It was great.

Big D

This is the infamous grassy knoll where "other shots" were allegedly fired at JFK in November of 1963. Supposedly there were gunmen behind the white picket fence you see in the middle right of the photo.
J. C., Debby and Zenock at Dealy Plaza, next door to the Texas Schoolbook Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald hid out, then shot President Kennedy.
This shot is looking at the front of the TSBD. Oswald was on the sixth floor (second from the top) on the far right.
The top window in this photo is the one from which Harvey fired the fatal shot. There is a museum on the sixth floor which takes about 1 1/2 to 2 hours to view. For me, the whole experience was very emotional. Deb too! Modst of the people talked in a hushed tone of voice, or not at all. And yes, I bought a book to tell all about it.

Crater of Diamonds

Another highlight of the trip was visiting Crater of Diamonds State Park. It's the only diamond mine in the world where you can search for diamonds and keep what you find. Unfortunately, we didn't find any; however, I did bring home some dirt to look through. I wanted to go to Mt. Ida, which is famous for giant crystals, but it was just a little too far away.

Zenock

Of course the highlight of the trip was getting to spend time with J. C. and his family. It took Zenock a whole week to warm up to grandpa, but finally when we were saying our good byes in the Clinton Library parking lot he gave me a kiss and a big cheesy smile (see below). As you can see, he liked Deb a lot better. She got lots of kisses and hugs, while most of the time he just gave me the eye.

Arkansas Trip

In early June Debby and I went to Arkansas to visit J.C., Carin and Zenock. Wow, did they ever keep us busy!
One of the places we stopped was Little Rock's Central High School, where the Little Rock 9 integrated the high school in 1957. There is a visitors' center across the street that tells all the gory details. Our visit was very emotional. The picture on the right shows the front of the building, which is gorgeous! You can see four larger than life statues at the top of the white facade. There is also a reflecting pond in front of the building--all-in-all it was very impressive. The school is still a working high school with 2,400 students. They run tours twice a day during the school year. I bet that isn't a distraction to high school kids! There;s more below.

InFebruary I was nominated for the KSL Teacher Feature. and last week we went to LaCaille, a fancy restaurant in Salt Lake City. It was very nice, the food was good, and the governor spoke. We schmoozed with people and had a great time. The restaurant was ritzy, and we still get to go once more, probably this summer. I have heard it's very expensive!

May 19, 2008

Saturday Debby and I went to our first ever dance recital as grandma and grandpa. Malia was a clown (see picture), a cow girl, Minnie Mouse, took a bath in a bucket and other stuff. It was very entertaining. After the recital, she got to choose a place for lunch so we went to Dairy Queen because they have hot dogs (she doesn't like hamburgers).

Malia and Haylee

Here you see the two oldest grandchildren. This is an old picture, but it gives you some idea of how cute they are!

US

Deb and I are now empty-nesters. Kelly, our oldest, is living in Salt Lake City and has a nearly-five-year-old named Malia. Malia is excited to go to kindergarten next fall.

Kristen is married to Rob and they have a nearly-three-year-old named Haylee. She is the singer in the family right now. She knows all the primary songs and sings them at the top of her lungs. Kristen and Rob live just two doors north of us.

J.C. and his wife Carin are living in Texarkana, Arkansas while he goes to school. They have a little boy, Zenock, who just had his first birthday. It goes without saying that we miss them a lot.

Kami and her husband Chris live a few blocks from us and they have an 8 1/2-month old named Hannah. She is just learning to pull herself up to the furniture. Their fun is just beginning!

First Blog

This is a big experiment. Anyone who knows me knows I have a lot to say, and this seems like a good way to let lots of people know what's going on in our family. Besides, I like to take pictures and now I have a place to post them.

I'll work on this and after a while, hopefully it will be worth looking at. Stayed Tuned.