Salt Lake City

On Memorial weekend Sunday afternoon Deborah and I went to Salt Lake City to visit Sophia, Ella, David and Brigham - and Jana and Steve too. On Monday we went to the "This is the Place" monument state park. It is fixed up with old buildings from throughout Utah.

There was a petting zoo and the kids got to ride horses.

We also toured one of Brigham Young's homes.

I had to stay and do a peer review on Tuesday and Wednesday. Deborah stayed until Tuesday and took the shuttle home.

On Saturday we stayed home and did not have any visitors for the first time in a while. I went and helped the Chamber move for a couple of hours and Deborah did her magic around the yard. After I got back I, with a lot of help from Deborah formed and poured the concrete for the stair landing of the deck. I also got one of the railing posts bolted into place.

Family in Malad

On the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend holiday I went with my Father down to Malad to visit the cemetaries around and decorate graves.

We went to St. John's, Malad and Cherry Creek Cemetaries. My Grandmother and Great Grandparents are buried in Malad.

I have a few snap shots of my mother's family.

After decorating graves we had dinner at the Dude Ranch then came home. Deborah went to Henry's Lake to fish with her parents while I was in Malad. She said she caught a bunch of big fish but there are no pictures of the fish to prove her fish stories.

Kemmerer and Progress

We haven't been to visit Abbigail, Madaline and Charlotte since last October so this week we decided to make a trip to Kemmerer, Wyoming. We headed out Friday afternoon for Kemmerer and got there about 7 oclock. That evening we walked down town and had dinner at Bootleggers. It was a nice evening.

On Saturday we went to Diamondville for a "yard sale" at the park there where there were lots and lots of playground equipment where the kids played and I took pictures.

After that we went to lunch and then Madaline and Charlotte took naps while Justin, Deborah, Abbigail and I went to a pond and fished. I didn't do much fishing, rather I took a lot of pictures. They caught som fish and we came home.

About 5 oclock pm we headed home.

On Sunday evening we went to Lorna's graduations. It was nice.

Monday was nice warm weather so after work Deborah made progress with her garden and I made some progress with Deborah's help with the deck.

Grandkids and Boise

This past Friday I had meetings in Boise so we took off on Thursday for Boise. Grandpa Reed got to go with us to visit Darla and Travis.

I wasn't feeling well at first so Deborah drove. Toward the end I was feeling a little better so I took some pictures on our way over.

The first night we stayed with Kambri, Kiera and Brian. Friday morning on my way to my meetings I took Kambri and Deborah to spend the day with Pam, Isabelle and Payton.

All they did was play all day. The went to the park and had lunch. They then went home and watched a movie.

Later that evening I went to the new Star Trek movie with Nathan, Kiera and Brian. Deborah took Kambri and went to Dillon's Soccor game. We stayed the second night at Jason and Pams.

Saturdy morning I went to JB's to have breakfast with Darla, Travis and family. Kambri was there and was the center of attraction.

We left at about noon to head back to help Lorna and John get ready for the dance. (At least Deborah did.)

It was a fun weekend.

Grafting and a Couple of Holes

It is Sunday after Stake Conference which was really good. I decided to update our blog again. No, I am not going bore you with this daily but I want to get in the habit of keeping it up.

For months Deborah has been studying about grafting limbs into other trees. She has been doing this since last fall. We have this crabapple tree in our back yard. It is a beautiful tree in the fall as you can see by the picture but the apples taste terrible. She has always loved the strawberry crabapples that have grown on her mother's tree when she was growing up. Deborah decided that she would graft some twigs from that crabapple to our crabapple tree. Kind of like the story in Jacob of the Book of Mormon.

Saturday, Deborah decided that that was the day to do this. We started out by going to Deborah's parents where Deborah started cutting off new starts from the branches of the strawberry crab.

We then took the branches home and Deborah went to work on our crabapple tree. She started the major surgery by cutting off the limbs of the tree where we were grafting the new twigs to.

She then cut a slit in the end of the stub and inserted two of the twigs into the slit and then covered it with a tree paste that is supposed to help in the healing.

You can see the progress in the pictures and the final is the after shot of our now new strawberry crabapple tree. Compare it with the initial picture and there is a big change.

I wasn't near as industrious as Deborah. I did get the ledger board for our deck attached to the house and the two holes dug for the foundations of the posts to our deck. Friday I unloaded the wood for the deck out of the pickup and stacked in back to where the deck will be. Remember the deck is only 6'x6' so it is not very large. We are going to have some pavers by the deck to be a patio in our herb garden.

Home without grandchildren

We are now going on two weekends without grandchildren. I think Deborah is going through withdrawals. We will get a big fix next weekend when we go to Boise and get to visit both the Stites and the Hawkes with lots of grand children to visit.

Deborah has been busy working in the yard. She really loves keeping things nice.

I have a new project. (I do better with projects than just "yard work".) I am building a new deck with Deborah's help. She is the master carpenter of the family. I have included a before picture and hope to show our progress as it goes along. I am hoping that it is not an all summer project and that it gets completed in a couple of weeks. It is only a little deck of 6'X6'. I am also planning on putting in an herb garden to go along with Deborah's hydrophonic strawberries. Deborah put in another 4 towers this spring. This is the before picture.

I also spent a little time photographing Deborah's flowers in the front of the house. She does a really good job with those flowers.

Kirsten, Brandon and Jonas

Right after Kambri left we got to have Jonas over. He came the Monday after Easter and stayed through the following Monday. He had to bring his parents, Kirsten and Brandon, something about being too young to fly alone on the plane. They came before we went to Arizona and left after we came back.

Jonas is in his tie.

Grandma and Jonas. It was fun and now we are without grandchildren again. We still have children with Lorna, John and Jared living with us, but they are not as fun as grandchildren.