To Memorial Day... and BEYOND!

This morning we drove out to the cemetery and met Steve and Grandma there. We had to buy some flowers on the way because we are in the beginning stages of a total make-over of our back yard. (We bought some donuts too, but you know why I had to do that.)

Above you see the plastic flowers Mom brought, along with some of the roses Melody & I procured. We had enough to add a single rose to the headstones of Dale Thacker, Gus Stentzel, and a few others notables.

It was a relaxing day. I got up and ran 3 miles in weather cool enough to require a long sleeved T-shirt. This even we had baby back ribs, garlic bread, and salad. For desert we got out the soft ice-cream maker and had cones. What a way to end the day.

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Melody and I spent the day Saturday down in Saratoga (south of Mountain View, south of San Jose) for the wedding of her nephew Greg. His bride is from a Japanese family, and the wedding was held in the Hakone Gardens. It was very beautiful. The waterfall that you see below was just one of the many wonderful sights. 

On the footbridge you'll recognize Mel, but and the others are her nephew Mark and his oldest two daughters. Also pictured is Cipriana. I didn't get too many photos of the younger kids. but these were good.

The bride is from a family who's ancestors converted to Christianity in Japan in the early 1900's, and suffered a fair amount of persecution for it. The wedding ceremony was performed by a really nice Japanese man who is a Presbyterian minister. We sat at his table at the banquet, and he and his wife were really fun to talk to.

Below are photos of the prettiest girl at the wedding. She let me sit next to her during the ceremony, and walked with me through the old downtown area. We stopped at a neat little bistro/market and bought some Lavash bread (Yumm!). Anyway, you can see this cute lady in front of a couple of the more picturesque places in the garden.

The banquet was held at a country club a few miles from the garden. It was a real nice place, and they served the biggest (and reddest) cut of prime rib I've ever seen. At least 24oz, it was HUGE! Fortunately, Mel and I had ordered the Halibut - which was without doubt the best fish dinner I've ever eaten. It ws laid on a bed of  something like cheesy "funeral potatoes" with other veggies round about. Manalive!

The cake was topped with these origami swans (which I know how to fold out of paper), but these were made out of hard candy. Very pretty.

Greg and Chihiro (Marie to her friends) do make a cute couple.

And finaly, a photo of the Ed Mumford (Melody's brother) family. Too many to name, but most of you know all of them anyway. We really had fun, and it was good to see all of Ed's kids and grand kids together.

The Guy on the Temple

I know these will be posted on Pam's blog, but they were so great I couldn't resist putting them up here too. With Rob's job as Controller at Okland Construction, building the Gilbert Temple, comes certain perks.  He and the family got to be at the placing of the Angel Moroni earlier this week. Two of the photos below are actually from the the day before when they had a "private" viewing with a few others before the Angel went up.

Not sure why Lucy's leg is up like that, but I think she's trying to "pose" for the camera. Her closed mouth, straight line smile is classic Lucy. There's something about her that reminds me of a little boy I knew 50 years ago.

At the actual placement of the Angel: Molly, (a friend who's name I don't know), Lucy, and Grant.

The day of the placement, Molly was saying the family prayer and said: "Thank Thee that the guy could get up on the temple with the crane." I think we all feel that way.

The Flower Are Free Today

All of our kids (with the exception of Chris, who was on his mission) will recognize the joke in the title. . .  but I'll come back to that later. I took Mom out to dinner Friday night to Red Robin. She always likes going there, but I can rarely talk her into getting a "Mountain High Mud Pie", which is this huge stack of chocolate ice cream and cake and whipped cream. Yum! But she had a great salad (with enough left for lunch the next day, which is her favorite thing to do), I had a great hamburger (which is my favorite thing to do) and we headed over to Dairy Queen for a couple of chocolate dipped soft-served cones. Yeah!

So Saturday Mel went down to help set up for a wedding reception and I headed to the store for a couple of special items for Mothers Day. I paid at the checkout stand, but it wasn't until Sunday when I examined the receipt that I noticed they hadn't charged me for the flowers. The lady scanned the tag - but it didn't show up on the receipt. (Rats, now I have to go back and try to get them to take the  money I owe them. That's harder to do than you might think.) So that's why the "flowers are free today."

Anyway, Mom says she had a good day, in spite of my feeble attempts to do things special for her. I think the real winning event was being able to hear from all of her children. Thanks for making is great day for her!

YOU'RE THE BEST!

Movie Day

With the end of the school year approaching, several challenges present themselves. Perhaps the biggest is that the students tend to think behavior and effort standards no longer apply. (I'm good at helping them recognize that's not the case...)

Also near the top of the list is the huge number of filed trips that occur (most of which are never mentioned to me, so suddenly one day anywhere from a third to all of my students don't show up for class - no warning). I have to be prepared for everything.

Last Friday my 7/8 grade band at Tierra Buena School was a perfect example of this. So with only a third of my class there, I decided to pull up Johnny Lingo, the original one, on my computer and show it to them. 

Even the LDS students had never seen it before (remember that they are only Deacon/Beehive aged kids), so I explained that it was an OLD movie about arranged marriages, feelings of personal worth, and treating people with kindness and respect. It went really well. I think I actually saw a couple of girls who were moved by it. (Guys, not so much.)

Anyway, my next emergency lesson plan my well include "The Phone Call." If you're not familiar with that one, well, look it up on YouTube. It's pretty funny.

HG Fisher Arizona Trip

Fun stuff first - Kim was kind enough to work me into her schedule and I stared my mini-vacation by hiking Camelback Mt. north of Tempe. You can see it up the street in the photo on the left. The trail takes off to the left and works it's way upward back along the face of the mountain on the left. That's not bad - but then after you catch your breath at a rest stop in the saddle, the real climbing starts. And climb we did. Sometimes hand over hand. Two things made it a bit a of a challenge (well, at least for me at my age): the altitude, and the TONS of people on the trail. Kim said it was a light day. But man!

Anyway, after more than a few "breath" stops, we got to the top and enjoyed a nice view. This is us facing west with the eastern portion of the Valley of the Sun behind us. We ate granola bars, raisins, Mom's mini-muffins, and drank water. Not bad fair. The best part was getting to be with Kim (one of my hiking buddy's). What more can I ask?

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After Church we tried to get some usable photos of the kids and their parents. You see the results below, I'll let you be the judge. Jeff & Becca brought their cute kids, and with Doug & Cheryl Fisher we had at least a half dozen cameras going off. We hoped get something worthwhile. These come pretty close. Rob, HG, Pam on the left. Tyler, Grant , Lucy on the right.

Later that day we all drove out to the new Gilbert Temple site. It's looking great, and since Rob's company is building it, he gets to have special access to it in a week or so when they place the Angel Moroni on top. Pretty cool. Below are Kim, Lucy, Molly, and Grandma Hall. The kids really like visiting the temple site - though for different reasons than you might think. For Lucy it's always about finding rocks to take home. And often the rocks are just big chunks of concrete she finds in the dirt. She's an amazing kid.