Denver doings

What a fun time we had in Denver. Amy and Misha met us at the Denver airport complete with signs welcoming us! It was so good to see all 3 girls and Chris and Jo and to give them real live time hugs! It had been over a year since we had seen them.

On Tuesday morning bright and early, Dad and I stood in for Chris and Jo at the LDS Cannery in Aurora, just N of Denver and canned PearSauce for 4 hours. I cored and cored and cored ripe pears and Dad assisted with putting the finished cans into this BIG metal round cage before they went into the pressure cooker. It was fun and we were able to bring home a few cans in our suitcase. Makes you realize how much you like your day job! What a blessing it is to have all the opportunites for service in our church.

We spent lots of time at their house just hanging out, playing and enjoying each other. One day they took us to Boulder, up in the foothills, and we hiked a bit up the mountain side. It was great even though it was at 1 mile high!

The girls had time to play with the Legos I brought, and Kristen loved to stack Jenga blocks and we built houses together.

Jo made a yummy Thanksgiving Dinner and we enjoyed it on their new dining room table with the china Christopher brought back from Grandma Andrews when she moved to Phoenix.

Once Thanksgiving Dinner was over, the girls wanted to walk to their school across the street and pick up garbage so it would look nice and then played on the swings and stuff for a few cold minutes. I was amazed at all the trash we all picked up. Even Kristen got into the action and would race Dad or I for the next bit of trash. Way to go girls.

We were so surprised when we were coming home Friday night from the Firestone rec center where we had gone for a family swim hour and little bits of snow started falling! They had forecasted it earlier in the day, but it had gotten too warm and we didn't think it would happen. By the time we woke up on Saturday morning, Christopher's house looked like this!

Well, we had a wonderful dinner at an Italian diner in big beautiful downtown Firestone. We went shopping for some Christmas presents on Black Friday and were able to catch some of the sales so we could leave their presents there with them and not have to mail them! Yay! As usual, I was VERY SAD to have to leave and cried when we started to get ready with the suitcases. It was a great time. We are so glad we got to go. Our big suitcase, the one we had to pay Frontier $15 to take ( they charge you for any suitcases you check ) took its own vacation to Phoenix on the way home and finally made its way to our house this evening about 7 pm, everything was in it, Yay! http://picasaweb.google.com/hightechmom/Denver1108#

What's wrong with this picture?

One of my favorite games when I was young was in the HIGHLIGHTS magazine where you looked at 2 pictures and tried to find what was different or what was out of place. So here is our version of that game.

We heard some loud thumping one evening this week downstairs and couldn't figure out why there were noises. It sounded like we had BIG ghosts in the house bumping around. Turns out it was the small shive (guess what that is) that flew off the end of the shaft of the motor of the furnace and broke the V belt. I get home from work and walk into the house and wonder why it is so cold. I usually set it to 65 while we are gone and turn it up when I get home from work. But it was lots colder than that, but the thermostat said it was ON and HEATING. But it was WRONG. It thought it was on, but it was OFF and it was not blowing a darn single ounce of warm air anywhere in the house.

Dad and I were thrilled when we opened the OLD furnace cover and saw it was only a V belt, as we had one of those already on hand on the floor area of the furnace just awaiting such an occasion, having learned years ago to keep one on hand. Dad went about fixing it, and then we flipped all of the circuit breakers back on, and whir, a nice sound.... for 2-3 seconds and then silence.

NO>>>>>> we cannot afford to get a new furnace and heat pump. No. no. no. It was fixed. But it wasn't. Seemed it now was getting absolutely no electricity to the unit and the motor so it wouldn't run. I had to leave, quite sadly I will say, to a temple recommend interview. All I could think about was how could we ever find $$ for a furnace repair??? But, miraculously, while I was gone, Dad unconnected and reconnected every wire in the whole thing, and ... it mysteriously started up again. I came home to a 68 degree house and I was SO happy. Good things do sometimes happen.

Fun with the Grands...part II

Well, we did LOTS of cool stuff with Dylan and Drew this weekend on their first sleepover. Katier had a sleep over some months back and it was time for Dylan and Drew. We worried they might be scared sleeping downstairs in the dark and long hallway, but they slept in Lori's old room with nightlights and slept all night! Except for the prefunctory potty visit about 11 pm Becky had warned us about. Dad and I decided that making some rockets would be fun for boys, so I cut out cardboard and helped them paint and paint and paint. Then we had to let it dry. So while we were doing that, we played outside, they helped Grandpa cut some wood for the workbench, made airplanes on the garage chair, played with the parachute men, watched TV, played Wii, played computer games and in general had a lot of fun. We finally got to assemble the planes and up to Ellsworth Park we went. Here is a video of the final project. And no, it didn't hit Dad, just looks like it.




I went with Becky into Portland to ride Grandpa's bus last week on my day off and we had fun there too.

Colors

Fall has the most incredible colors. Dad and I took a walk this afternoon down the Old Highway towards the Fish Hatchery and saw the most beautiful things. Here are a few and a walk down memory lane.