Happy Thanksgiving...

So, it's a week before Thanksgiving and the temperature yesterday was 70 degrees. The same for today. So Brian and I are going golfing this afternoon. What wonderful weather. It's supposed to be warm next week too. Think we can convince our wives that we need to go golfing on Thanksgiving morning? HA!

I was reading Donna's blog and had some thoughts of my own.

I do remember lots of pets on the farm. We had cats, dogs, cows, horses, goats, chickens, pigs, hamsters, gerbils, snakes...you name it, we had it. I lost the snake in my room and Mom had a fit and threatened me if I didn't find it before she came back from the grocery store. I found it and was promptly escorted out of the house with my 'pet' and told to let it go!

Cats. We had cats galore. Mom and we adopted Sleepy and she did have a ton of kittens. Dad calculated that she had at least 60 in her lifetime. The one that stayed the longest was Simon the part Siamese that went to California with us. He had an eventful life. When he was a kitten he and Sleepy went to sleep in the back of Dad's truck. He jumped in and went to work before they could bail out. They rode all the way to work with Dad. He called Mom from work and told her that she should come and get "HER" cat. When we got to Dad's truck there was only Sleepy. We couldn't find Simon for days. Mom and Donna knocked on doors down our road and low and behold they found Simon under the trailer of a little old lady. Simon had jumped out of the truck a couple hundred yards from the house. We figured that he'd jumped out while the truck was traveling at approximately 40mph. He lost a tooth and ripped his lip badly, but survived. He did drool when sound asleep for the rest of his life. YUCK!! Drool spots on your pillow!

Cows. I was a cow person. Still am. I'd rather have a cow for a pet anyday. Does that make me a redneck? I'm asked all the time what my favorite pet is and I respond, "Cow." Think about it. If the world is coming to an end people still have a hard time thinking of eating their cats, dogs and horses. No one thinks twice about eating a cow. Plus I just like bovine. Always have, always will. Wish I could keep on in my backyard, but the neighbors might not like that.

My memories of the cows on our farm are many. Butterball was a great cow. She was mild mannered and bore healthy calves. We ate most of them. I think she only had two or three heifers the rest were bulls. I don't think we ever named here but we had a black angus that was a hoot. She loved watermelon. If you stood by the fence and held up a watermelon rind and whistled she'd run to you. Full out run, not trot, not lope, run! She wanted to be the first there to get the most watermelon. Duke was my pet brahma. He was so tame. We had to get rid of him when we started buying registered stock. I remember the day still. It was foggy and cold. We herded all the cows into the front pasture to put them in the trailer. I was lagging behind and tried to cut Duke out and let him 'escape' to the back woods and we'd have to let him stay. Dad saw me and what I was trying to do and stopped me. I cried when I said goodbye. We replaced those cows with Buddy, Perla, and I can't remember all the names. We then had to get rid of them after a couple of years when we moved to CA. I tried to talk Dad into taking them with us, to no avail.

Dogs. Jack was our faithful mutt that we got off of the Pope family. We had a Jill too, but she got sick and had to be put down. Jack stayed with us for a few years. Probably 5 or 6 years. He was a wanderer. He wandered up into town one time and was 'adopted' by a family. Donna happened to be playing in town with some friends when she spotted him on a leash attached to a little boy. Donna called him and he tried to come, but the little boy dragged him back to his house. Don't know how but Mom and Donna went to the house and retrieved Jack. He still couldn't be stopped from wandering. He wandered into town and went through peoples trash cans and did it once too often. Someone shot him in the leg and he hopped home on three legs that fall. All winter long he stayed in his house/box and Donna and I fed him and watered him and put fresh hay in his house/box until he emerged in the spring with a limp and a large wound on his hind leg. He stayed a little closer to home after that. Too bad. He followed Mom into the woods when she went to visit Dad while he cut firewood. Jack bit into a cyanide trap meant for coyotes and died. Mom felt bad and didn't tell me about that until 5 years later when I was just home off my mission. I'd always thought that he'd been 'adopted' or shot again.

Seeing as it's Thanksgiving I'll tell the story of the Tom turkey. We had a Tom and a few hens that we kept for fun and the eggs. Big eggs! It was one of my chores to feed the chickens and the turkeys when I got home from school. The Tom was a mean one and tried to flog you when you entered his territory (the pen where he and his harem were kept.) Dad showed me how to push the Tom away with a stick to keep him at a distance. One day I guess I'd had a bad day at school. I don't know why. When I entered the turkey pen the Tom came at me and I reared back and baseball swung right at his head. WHACK!!!! And he fell over. I panicked and collected the eggs and headed back into the house to contemplate my punishment. When Dad got home I was too afraid to face him so I avoided him. About 30 minutes later Dad called me into the back yard. With fear and trepidation I dragged my feet into the backyard. Dad asked what was "wrong with the Tom?" I had only knocked him out and not knocked him off. I feined ignorace and considered it a boon. I did tell Dad at a later date exactly what had happened. But that Tom didn't bother me when I went into the pen after that.

We've had a few pets here in Provo too. Cats and a dog and some fish. Not the menagerie we had in Texas. But with luck we'll be able to find some land one day and have a few cows and chickens.

Halloween 2008

Last Wednesday Janet and Sarah picked out 4 very large and pretty pumpkins. They were HUGE!

Mandy struggled taming her pumpkin...

Sarah dispatched hers with ease...

Mine was scrumptious...

I wasn't very inspired while carving mine...

Sarah wanted to do the pumpkins barfing, but it doesn't translate very well in the dark...

I think this one is Janet's...

Amanda's...

A nighttime shot of our front yard. I'll get a daytime shot that's clearer. Our's was referred to as the Scooby House or the Twinkling House (because of the blinking lights hanging from the trees.)

Halloween morning was gorgeous and red as the sun came up under the clouds...how does the saying go? Red sky in morning, sailor take warning. Sunday it rained all day.

Riley, Sarah, Sara, and Heather

Amanda and her boyfriend, Alec, dressed up as Jack Skellington and Sally from "The Nightmare Before Christmas" Amanda made both of their costumes from scratch.

Don't know if he looks better with or without the hat.
Pretty happy for a girl held together with stitches...

Thought you might be interested in what Janet has been up to the past week and a half. She's been putting up apple jelly and apple syrup. We had a bumper crop of red delicious apples. I think she said we'll have 12 quarts of syrup and I'll bet three times as much jelly. A lot of the jelly we'll put in the little half pints and give them away to co-workers for Christmas. This picture is just the first days product...

Snow, Snow, Stay Away...

The weather report says that we're gonna have a snow storm early next week...just in time for the Presidential Election. We've been blessed with very good weather for the past couple of weeks. I've usally packed away the golf clubs for the season by now. Last night I took advantage of the mild weather and got in 9 holes. I tried to get all sorts of people to go with me, but to no avail. Janet volunteered to go with me but Sarah wanted to go pick out pumpkins for carving last night. I went by myself and it was a beautiful afternoon. 78 degrees and very little wind. Oh to live in a warmer climate, on a beach or a tropical island for that matter.

We carved pumpkins last night. 3 nights before Halloween is kinda late, but had we put them out a couple of weeks ago they would be rotting in the warm weather anyway. Janet and Sarah picked out some of the biggest we've had in a long time. I'll try to get Janet to publish her pictures of the festivities. First I'll have to teach her how.

Janet and the girls have had a blast decorating for Halloween this year. They've gone all out with lights and "Caution" tape. Now they're thinking of building ghosts. Again, I'll try to get photos of the decorations on line in the near future.

Father/Daughter Activity

So, about a week ago the Young Women in our ward hosted a Father/Daughter acitivity. We played a couple of games. One was the matching game. We had two bulletin boards filled with fathers on one board and daughters on the other with the names on the backs of brightly colored cards. We were broken up into two teams and had to pick one card from each side. We took turns until we figured out where the matches were. It's the same game we played as kids, but I don't remember a name, other than the Matching Game.

Next we played a version of the Newlywed Game. I guess our version would be called How Well Do You Know Your Father/Daughter Game. Mandy and I know each other pretty well, but Sarah and I tied for the number of most correct answers.

Me and My Girls

Me and Sarah

Me and Moo

Remember I said that I'd blog some photo's from Eric's ordination weekend? Here they are!

The Family
Wish I'd put my arm around Eric too.
Janet and Me
Eric and his Mommy
The four sibs
The whole gang
Eric loves this one
The three Amigos
This one's just cute
Looking forward

Cousins

I really like this one

Thanksgiving Point

So everyone met at our house during the third weekend of September. It started out as the annual scrapbooking affair for Janet, Gail and Donna. They spend the weekend in Sandy, Utah at the South Town Conference Center and create scrapbook pages and buy lots and lots of stuff. You can see some of the pictures from their weekend at Donna's blog.

That was the start of it all. I don't know who convinced Mom to come out that weekend, but Donna paid for her ticket and now Mom was coming. Linda and I spent this weekend last year visiting Bob Sorensen and perusing the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum. This year Linda offered to spend the weekend up here vistiting with Mom and taking her around SLC to see the sites and any family history stuff. What a nice daughter.

Next we realized that Eric would be ordained some time just before that weekend. We asked Eric if he wanted to wait a few weeks and do it while his Aunts and Grandma were here? He really wanted to be ordained right then, but then thought about it and decided that I would be cool to have more family there for the occasion.

That's when Janet and I really started thinking hard about Dad coming out for his grandson's ordination. Dad was a little reluctant at first, but we were able to convince him to come out for a long weekend and Eric's ordination.

Then, about a couple of weeks later I hear that David is thinking of coming out too. Now that was really cool. David hadn't ever been to see us in Provo. I shouldn't complain, we've only been to his house once. But he drove all the way. He did say that he probably never do that again. That it's a little lonely on the road without his lovely wife. Not very good for a trucker, eh? But we're very glad that he decided to come.

So for Eric's ordination we had both sets of grandparents, Janet's sister DeAnn and her family, all my siblings, three of Linda's kids and one of her grandkids, and some of Eric's good friends. It was a very cool Sunday afternoon that we were able to capture in photo's by a photography friend. I'll put those on a later blog. But now...

I call this "Throw Daddy Off the Pier." We were looking at the cool Koi in the ponds at the Thanksgiving Point gardens.

Gail's daughter, Caroline.

Linda and I rented a golfcarts and we were glad we did after a couple of hours touring the 50 acres of gardens.

Sarah loved taking pictures of all the flowers and bugs and frogs and...you get the idea.

Sarah's pic of a pergola at the gardens, very cool huh?

Sarah's rose picture.

Me, Dad, Carolinea and David checking out the Koi.

Grandma wasn't interested in the fish so we sat and talked for a while.

After the gardens we headed over to the working farm. Can you believe that Sarah had never milked a cow before? I don't think she actually got any milk out?
Sarah and Caroline bought tickets and used them to ride the ponies.
Doesn't she look natural up there?
Caroline made fast friend with this little pony.
These are supposed to be the tallest man-made falls in the western hemisphere....

OOPS!! or OUCH!

Okay, I didn't mean to do it. The other night I was coming in the front door and I slammed the door behind me. I remember seeing the cat (Sadie) sitting in the middle of the front room looking at me and the door. I just figured she would stay put. Well, never assume what a cat will do. She decided at the last second that she wanted out and that she could beat the closing door. I heard two distinct thumps. That was strange. I turned around and saw a tuft of fur on the floor. I thought to myself, "I sure hope that's one of her play mice." It wasn't.

As you can see I had scalped the end of her tail. And that's a quarter for size reference. It was pretty gross. I looked out the front door, but for some reason she was no where to be seen. Wonder why? I waited about a half hour and called out the side door and she actually came back in the house. She wasn't crying or anything. A little skittish, but amazingly she didn't seem to be in any pain. She joined us on our bed and we watched her to see if there were any serious problems. She just curled up on a blanket and went to sleep. But the "rat tail" that was left was quite gross. If you have a weak stomach don't click on the pictures for the close up.

After a couple of days the tail dried up and hasn't given her any trouble. She's been nibbling at it and has taken a few millimeters off over the past couple of weeks. I don't know if it will ever be completely gone. The fur ahs been closing around the wound but you can still see the little brown stub sticking out.