Blast from the Past

Pam and the rest of you with school-aged children are not the only ones who have cute notes written by your offspring that you will always cherish. A phone call from David a little while ago made me remember one of the proudest moments of my life, revolving around our oldest son, Chris. When he was 12 our ward Scouts made and sold strawberry pies to earn money for camp. The day the sale started, during sacrament meeting (okay, not real proud of that, but not too upset either), Chris whipped out this hand drawn flier, then had copies made to distribute. I'm still impressed.

Note the not-so-subtle attempt to have you buy the pie from Chris, and the ant (some quasi-reference to a picnic I believe) which is in every scene, but is only fat after having eaten the pie.

And he went on to be the director of marketing at BYU-I Radio. . .

What I Do on Saturdays

There's not much in my life that's very exciting to hear about (at least for other people), but the days are always full. Saturdays in particular are filled with plenty of errands and chores, which mostly center around fixing things that broke during the previous week. There's always plenty of variety with this - because pretty much everything I have was broken down when I got it.

A good example of this is the popcorn machine that I bought used nearly 20 years ago, and which we use to earn extra money for the band programs at school. Popcorn and root beer after school every Friday nets us $1200-$1500 a year. Not bad, but it takes some maintenance. Today I had to repair the heat lamp switch and a short in the wiring that shut the machine down early yesterday.

Of course, most of my "fix it" time is spent repairing musical instruments. I repair the instruments at my schools for free, but everyone else pays. Not  much, but enough to make it worth while - without breaking their budgets. Sometimes it gets real busy (like at the start of a school year), but other times it's not too bad.

Then there's the ever present household repairs. (The reason they are ever present is because I'm too lazy to take care of them when I should.) This toilet has been leaking for weeks. I went to the close-out sale at OSH today and got most of the materials need to fix it, but probably won't get to it. Just too, well, you know.

Then there are the Yard Sales

Last weekend our good neighbors across the street had a big sale with lots of great stuff. I think they got rid of most of it. I picked up an almost new airless paint sprayer for a friend of mine who paints houses as a side line to make extra money. I also had my eye on this length of rope which I talked him into giving to me after the sale was over and it hadn't sold. 300' of braided nylon with heavy-duty eyelets and hooks at each end. A manly piece of rope. I plan on letting the Scouts use it for a project at an upcoming celebration of the 100 year anniversary of BSA/LDS Relations.

I don't know if it's a blessing or not, but we did get quite a bit of rain, and even some thunder & lightning this morning. It really came down hard for a while, which is very unusual for Yuba City this time of year. In the video above you can see and hear it and also get a good shot of the completed patio with sod laid in between the block. That was last Saturday's project.

Just for Fun

And finally, we had a beautiful full moon this past week. I snapped this shot of it as I was heading to work about 6:45 am. The view is looking west on Butte House Rd. just past the stake center.

 Cool.

Arizona in the Summer Time

The scenes below are from our trip to Arizona to see Pam & Rob and the kids, Kim & Nate and - at least for me - enjoy some nice warm weather. The first evening there, after being fed some wonder pizza by the Hoffman's, we saw this great rainbow (a double rainbow really), and later some cool lightening.

Two of my favorite eating experiences from our trip (it's always about the eating). Lucy and Molly with my chef's hat on, still saying: "bacon is mt favorite color." And, also concerning bacon, Rob made these GREAT cheeseburgers. Two grilled cheese sandwiches for the bun, all beef patty with cheese and bacon on top, plus all of the necessary accoutrement's. David is enjoying his below. Being a cheeseburger lover, I was impressed.

After Grant's baptism Pam had arranged a great little buffet of treats. Someone made Grant a "candy lei" which was the envy of every kid there. Below he and Molly sip chocolate milk (I indulged in several cup-fulls myself). There were yummy cookies (including Kim's Snicker Doodles) and Rice Krispy Treats.

The brain trust, and keepers of the chocolate milk.

The day night of baptism we had an adult evening out together. We went to a place called Nielsen's for ice cream. It was pretty fun. They messed up when they made our orders, and doubled a few of them so we got some extra goodies. We had things like hot brownies topped with ice cream and hot fudge; hot peach cobbler topped with ice cream and caramel; and vanilla ice cream with strawberries and graham crackers all mixed up in it. We just had a blast.