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).