Happy Birthday Melody!

Trevor and Michelle brought their kids and came down for a visit over our Easter vacation. (Easter and Melody's birthday being the same day this year.) The other kids decided to make her 60th a birthday one to remember by coming as well. It was all very "hush, hush and hoosh, hoosh."

The airline gods were smiling on us, because Pam and Lucy. Kim, and Davis were all on the same flight. I said I was going to run some errands, and drove down to pick them up after returning from Fairytale Town with Michelle's family. We had Lucy knock on the door and ask grandma to come out, she had something to show her. I haven't been able to get the video to load, but you can view it at:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zhzdhv7ki08ovew/2014-04-18%2015.41.09.mp4

The plan was to have Chris bring his family up Saturday too, as a surprise. But it was too hard to keep the cat contained once it had been partially let out of the bag. So when they got here we took all of the children over to the Church for the ward Easter Egg Hunt and lunch while the adults took Mom out to lunch. All, that is, except Trevor. He took the duty of staying with the kids who were having a little separation anxiety (and maybe a few other anxieties as well). We owe him a lot.

Mel decided to go to Full House Chinese restaurant, where we hadn't been for years, as seen below:

The food was good, and the company was great! The girls had a book made for their Mom with lots of fun photos from the past, and a list of "60 Reasons Why We Love You" scattered throughout it's pages. Something she will treasure the rest of her life.

We're still in the middle of partying, so there will be more to follow. Stay tuned!

Lunar Eclipse

Last night Uncle Richie and I stayed up "way past our bed-time" to watch the lunar eclipse. Below are some photos from the event. No, we didn't take these, though Rich did make a valiant effort to do so with his really nice digital camera. I tried too, with my ordinary cell phone camera. Both were about equally bad.

These pictures are pretty accurate representations of what I have seen in the past. However, last night there were increasing amounts of clouds until the critical moments when the eclipse was total, and we should have seen the beautiful red color. Instead, we saw nothing but a steadily blurring white disk. 

We did have a fun time talking about the end of the world and what kind of celestial body displacement would bring about some of the things described in the scriptures. Plus it was a fairly warm night, so it was nice

This last picture here, as pretty as it is, really doesn't do justice to the kind of  red that comes with this kind of eclipse. I've seen it absolutely blood red before. A very haunting sight.

The next full lunar eclipse is in October this year - and there will be two more next year. The kind of frequency hasn't happened in the past 25-30 years. Exciting stuff

Squirrel!

We have a bunch a squirrels living in the trees in the field beyond our back fence. I really don't like having them running through our yard and trees. They are often noisy, and they leave their walnuts in the lawn (and I step on them when I mow it). I have issues with rats who have furry tails, as well as those with bare tails.

On the other hand, Melody thinks they're cute and likes to watch them scurry about. So we were standing in the kitchen on this beautiful, sunny afternoon, and we see this squirrel chewing on a walnut. I decided to shot some video.

Keep you eyes focused on the center of the video. He's there