Xlear at Lagoon; Swim Meet; IHOP

The next weekend was Xlear's Friday at Lagoon. Michelle took Joe & Jessie (I never even saw Joe), and Peter & Adi were there with their kids but Timothy and Joelle were overbooked for the weekend so they missed out.

Julieanne and Jessie came home with me for a sleepover and then in the morning we went to watch Timothy and Joelle in relays at the swim meet. After that we headed to IHOP for breakfast and then back to the meet for a bit. Joelle came over later and we had another teaparty while watching Hotel for Dogs.

Seattle to Welcome Rebecca

The weekend of the 11th I went up to Seattle to the shower for Rachel and Rebecca -- at least that was what the invitations said. It was a lot of fun -- particularly seeing the books that everyone chose.

Morgan is a real cutie pie -- and Vixie is looking great!

After everyone else left we went down to the lake. Looks like Patti was missing her kids who were scattered around -- Heather & Chris in Reno, Katie in India, and the rest with Dave in Boise. Paige, despite the picture, had a lot of fun in the kayak with Tim. Hunter, on the other hand, was a very reluctant kayacker.

Born on the 4th of July

That would be Jessica (who was born on the 4th of July) -- we started the celebration the evening before with a barbecue at the Scera Park. Bugs' karate team was in the parade, so they didn't make it but Hinckley, Dean, Joelle, Timothy, Nathan, Jessica, Mark, Amy, Tessa, Sawyer and Rigdon, and Jim & I showed up -- along with about 40 from his side! Unfortunately, Elizabeth was in London that weekend.

Tessa and Sawyer and I had to make a trip to Wally World to get him a birthday present. He tried out lots of things but finally settled on a little plastic horse. I might have expected that from Joelle or Jessie, but was surprised at Sawyer. Then he had to have a ride on the Wally World Stallion. You can't tell from the picture, but the horse was broken and wouldn't gallop at all.

Tessa preferred posing on Dumbo. Gee, I do have cute grandchildren!

Of course we all went to the parade on the 4th. Jim was a great chef and we had pancakes, sausage, and juice -- to the envy of all around us. We had a pretty big crowd so nothing to share!

Look at all the Red White and Blue. That's Mike Lee and his twins in the back ground. John was just diagnosed with Crohn's Disease and Sharon has had to feed him with a nasogastric tube every night.

Yvonne's Potluck

Since Cory and Jacob (with Zion and Enoch) are moving to Texas, we had a potluck at Yvonne and David's. Lots of good food and good visiting.

Cinnamon with her husband and daughter Moriah -- Yvonne, as you can tell, looks great. She just finished putting a roof on Joshua's house and is working full time as a pharmacist tech.

David and Nathan weren't exactly excited to be caught on camera -- but they never are and I think they enjoyed themselves.

Adi, Dean and Hinckley in front of the

neat, enclosed, over a pit trampoline. Nathan

offered to jump with the kids but no one else

liked that idea. Peter didn't even volunteer.

Difficult to believe Robert & Tawnie have seven kids (six girls with a boy in the middle). Here they are with three of the girls (Lorelei, 3 weeks old, is under the blanket).

This is Noelle, Julia with Marti, and Robert & Tawnie's other three daughters on the slide and swing.

Taylor, Chris, Heather & Mason went with us. This was really my first chance to show off as a great grandmother, and of course that was fun.

Taylor is sitting next to Heather with Mason next to Peter. Hinckley's head and Julieanne's arm.

Robert & Tawnie's son is the one in blue, Cory is at the water jug, Jacob is sitting next to Noelle's husband and Ben has his back to the camera.

Elizabeth & Chris caught at the ice cream. Bugs

with his back to us and Noelle's daughter next to

Cory.

All the kids had such great fun playing on all the playground equipment that I was thinking we needed to get some for our yard. That thought lasted about five minutes until one of the kids

came and asked his dad what to there was to do because he was so bored. Guess the kids will have to settle for dressups and legos and pool and BOOKS at hour house.

This is a cool piece of equipment. It's an airplane that tips every which way but doesn't turn over. Timothy is pilot, Cinnamon's son has back to us, Joelle is standing with Julieanne just below her. Enoch is sitting in back of Timothy and I think Bugs is on the other side of Julieanne. I think the girl with her back to camera is Noelle's but I'm not sure at all about the one facing camera on the other side of Timothy.

Elizabeth's ACCIDENT

Elizabeth finally had her first accident. As she says, at least she could drive away while the other person (THE ONE AT FAULT) was in a brand new car -- because she'd totalled her other car the week before -- and that had to be towed away.

MORE 4WHEELING PICS

Timothy turned out to be a great driver. He also turned out to be
a pretty good helper when it was
time to clean things up and put them away.














Porter wasn't too sure he wanted to ride, but once he got started it was difficult to get him to quit. Guess that is normal for kids his age.

4-WHEELING IT

For Memorial Day Jim & Elizabeth and I took the kids fourwheeling and had a picnic.

Blessing Marti

Vixie and Rachel brought Paige and Morgan out for Marti's blessing and Marti flew out from Chicago. Yesterday we had dinner here. Michelle was able to bring the kids and come but Rob had a conference call so didn't make it. Evening ended with Jim reading/dramatizing Peter Rabbit for Julieanne, Bugs, and Porter. Peter remembered his dad reading Peter Rabbit to him "all the time." Rachel and Vixie told him it was the Peter Story -- nothing about Peter Rabbit and nothing about him.

BYU Idaho Graduation

Chris and Heather both graduated on the same day -- at the same hour -- in different buildings -- so Taylor and I took Mason to Heather's graduation and Chris' parents went to his.

After graduation Chris' parents took us all out to lunch in Rigby. It was a lot of fun -- and delicious bananas foster for dessert.

APRIL

Wow -- April sure slid by fast! I began the week at a neurofeedback intensive training in California. Great weather -- great training -- great time. A girlfriend from high school came over one night and we watched Benjamin Button. I wasn't too interested, but she really wanted to watch it -- and it was surprisingly good. Lots of things to think about in that one.

CONNECTICUT & DEBBIE'S BOYS

I had a great 10 days in CT -- a couple with Debbie, a few with the boys and John, and the rest with the boys. I was able to go to a neighborhood basketball tournament that Rainer was playing in. They had excellent coaches and some very good basketball players. Rainer made several baskets -- a couple back to back -- but his team didn't win. BUT, unlike the games I'm used to, there was no booing -- even when the ref called a technical.

C.J. went to a retreat for the weekend (sounded like youth conference to me) so Rainer had a friend over and we played Settlers until the wee hours. It was a lot of fun.

After we picked C. J. up in Rhode Island after his retreat and dropped off a couple of his friends, we stopped at a maple sugar farm. We really had a time finding it -- certainly could have used Jeff's Sally.

I brought some maple syrup back and took some to Nathan when I went to his place for dinner tonight. Michelle said she remembered going to a maple syrup farm but no one else seemed to remember. It looks from the picture with the bucket in the tree that they are doing it the same old way, but this farm has over 15 miles of rubber tubing running from tree to tree and instead of buckets, the tree taps go into the rubber tubing for collection. The processing plant reminded me of Vincent Birch's milking plant.

ORDERS FROM VIXIE!

Chains of Love
The first 5 people to comment on this blog post get something from me-and I promise it will be good! Doesn't matter where you live, near or far-within the next few months you will get something from me!! The catch? You have to post this message on your blog and do the same thing for 5 more people! :) Can't you just feel the love?* You're all so excited, aren't you? :) *

TIMOTHY'S DANCE FUNDRAISER

Timothy belongs to an all boys dance group that is going to perform in New York this summer -- naturally Hinckley gets to go along. Anyway, that means fundraiser and last night we got to go to a performance of his group. Two of the dances were particularly good, Transformers and Newsies (pictured above)

After the performance we all went to Wendy's for a snack. Dean, Hinckley, Timothy and a couple of his dancing friends were also with us -- but they were too successful at avoiding the camera.

Doesn't Adi look way unready to have a baby in two weeks? Porter, on the other hand, might not complain about sharing the attention.

Great Great Grandpa Brown

My Grandpa Brown is a big memory from my pre school years. He died in 1950, in Salt Lake City, and I think he lived there for several years before he died. I never knew Grandma Brown, because she died in 1934, before I was born. The time when I remember Grandpa Brown was just after we moved into our "big" house in Cardston -- across the street from the RCMP station and the cenotaph. He was married to "Mrs. Wood," but spent an awful lot of time in our garage, even in the winter when it was cold. He had an old (even then) Remington typewriter there and lots of papers. I guess that was his office. Very rarely, I went to "Mrs. Wood's house." She was never accepted by his family. I don't know why they didn't like her, but she certainly made delicious cookies so going there was always o.k. by me. No one is certain as to why his children wouldn't give her the time of day, but the general feeling is that Grandpa never did right by Grandma (Amelia Little) and so when he was old and married to Mrs. Wood (and probably much more mellow due to age and less problems), they resented her because he treated her much better than he did their mother. The picture above is pretty much how I remember him.

I still have a poem that he gave me on a small piece of paper, typed out on that old machine:

I saw a little dandelion, with a head of gold

Trying to outshine the sun, was that little flower bold.

I saw that little dandelion, at the close of day,

And do you know, that little dandelion's head had turned to gray.

Here's a picture of Grandpa Frank Brown and his wife, Grandma Harriet Amelia Little, taken years before their marriage in 1891. They look pretty young to me, and not very happy. I guess that was before one smiled for pictures. We had always thought these were their wedding pictures, despite their youthfulness, but they could even have been taken at separate times.

They did have their troubles. Many many of their descendents have been afflicted with very serious depression, migraine headaches, etc. I visited Rhean's daughter, Katie, when I was in Portland in December and somehow it came up that I was adopted. She was very surprised and asked Rhean why she had never known that (Katie was a big admirer of my sister Julie). Rhean's comment was -- ". . . of course they were adopted. That's why Linda doesn't have this chronic depression that the rest of us have."

BIRTHDAYS CELEBRATED AT OLIVE GARDEN

Saturday we had a fun lunch at the Olive Garden. It was a fun time. Thanks for

the Spa Certificates. I will certainly enjoy using them.

I've been busy working on my neurofeedback training and am looking forward to seeing Debbie and her family in a couple of weeks. Elizabeth's basement is coming along fine -- though Jim is tearing his hair out trying to keep the construction paper on schedule. Yesterday we moved the hutch Mark made out of her basement and in to my neurofeedback office. Progress -- or at least change!

JULIEANNE & PETER'S RECITALS

The evening before Valentine's Day we were treated to two concerts. There was a bit of an overlap in time, so Jim and I picked up Timothy and Joelle* and went to Salt Lake to pick up Julieanne, Bugs, and Porter. Adi has been SICK for several days, but when we got there she was determined to go. Unfortunately, she was very unsteady on her feet and we finally convinced her to go back to bed. Plans were SURPRISE changed, Bugs and Porter stayed with Adi's sister Michelle, we got Michelle's daughter Amanda and Nathan joined us for the concert. Believe me, Michelle got the best of the deal as Joelle, Julieanne, and Amanda were a very noisy and out of control combination. Of course Nathan stirred things up anytime the girls' interest in noise and squealing subsided.

Julieanne, according to Grandpa Jim, was absolutely the best performer. She was certainly right up there, playing a piano piece she is preparing for a recital. Their were a couple of sisters who sang a beautiful duet and a Samoan dancer who were also pretty good, but they were a couple of years older than Julieanne.



* Hinckley & Dean had a republican party dinner to attend (where they received brand new Lincoln/Log Cabin pennies as well as delicious "Lincoln" chocolates and some advance information about Mike Lee (Rex Lee's son and Jim's son-in-law who formerly clerked for Justice Alito) running for Bob Bennett's senate seat. We had thought Mike Leavitt was eyeing that position

Tahoe for Rachel's #40 & Elizabeth's #32

Nathan, Rachel & Rob, Elizabeth, Patti & Taylor & Dillon & I are in Lake Tahoe for a skiing celebration. This is Taylor --

Isn't that a gorgeous view?

Wouldn't be a family get together without games, but even Nathan

and Rob are joining in here. Taylor and Dillon were busy with the

t.v. and Patti and I were reading. No surprises there.

Three Brothers

It is difficult to get Zachary to cooperate for a picture, but I think this is a good one of all three boys together.

Blake and Morgan were blessed the same day in Michael and Stephanie's ward. Rachel & Rob, Mark, Amy & Kids, & I were all able to be there. It is neat to see everyone working together & supporting each other like that.

After sacrament meeting we all went over to Michael and Steph's for a delicious lunch and the Super Bowl.



Tessa is so cute with Paige & Morgan. I bet she is a big help to her mom.