Hawaii with the Fam

Borrowing my DIL's laptop computer is what I have to do when I'm not at home.
Which is happening right now.
We are in Maui at the Kaanapali South Beach and enjoying every minute.

 Watching these two cousin's interact.

 Taking this little angel down to the chaise.

Screaming as the big girl gets to go down the big slide.
Woo Hoo!!

Happy Thanksgiving to us!

Fried

I was trying to be helpful today as I went to a sewing clinic for "Nutcracker" costumes for the Los Gatos Ballet.
As soon as I got there, a nice lady told me I could plug in my sewing machine next to hers, and so I proceeded to unload the 23 year old Pfaff computerized machine that I had brought for the job.
The light on my machine turned on but my computer was down and the machine wouldn't work at all.
The nice lady then told me that she had a European outlet that was working until I plugged in, but I had tripped her unit.
Why didn't she tell me that the plug I was plugging into was converting my current to 220.
Yikes!

My circuit board is fried. I took it to the shop already and it will cost me 600 dollars to repair. I loved that machine. I have another more awesome one, but it was a great second, portable, junk fabric sewer machine.

I guess it's a good thing something like this didn't happen.

 Lots of ladies were there sewing all afternoon. Hope they got lots of costumes done. I stayed for about 3 hours and then went to check out my machine hopes. Grim.

Rip It Up

We are in kind of a our big, noisy mess around our house this week. Well at least I am, 'cause none else is home much.

 The first day we saw a few tons of bricks getting broken up and piled up around the patio.

 The next day saw the shovel of the little caterpillar tractor was put on and brick being hauled away in the dump truck out on the street.

 Luke thought this was a little unnerving, but soon it was AOK.

 The break up of the cement was next. Whatever the tractor can't reach due to tight quarters and turns around the house, has to be done with the regular old jack hammer. There are about 3 of these babes knocking on the property at any given moment.

Wait. Where did all the water in the pool go?

 Kind of a mess, right?

Don't break any of the windows.

Visit to Utah

The Hubby and I went to visit our #4 child a couple of weeks ago and were able to take in a couple of her teams last volleyball games. She is becoming a good little coach and it was fun to watch her in action.

 She keeps track of many aspects of her players game and the players on the opposing team too.

Here are all of the Senior girls and manager boy that were playing their last game.

Good job Steph!

We were also able to visit with GG and Aunt Toni and the gang while on our little trip. They are doing well and settled in nicely to her new home apartment. It turned out very nicely.

 We went up to SLC for one evening and searched Temple Square for our missionary friend Amy H, and then

 found some nice homeless guy (not really) to take to dinner.  He's our #1 son, and is working hard on a landscaping job up at the VA Hospital. It was great to see him.

I also experimented a bit with my cool camera. Just told it to recognize orange and grey everything else. 

Excerpt

I belong to an email group of missionary mom's that write about questions, problems and solutions for their respective missionaries and I had to share a little doodad from one I just received.

Some of the moms are asking what their Bishops and Wards send to the missionaries for Christmas and one commented that their Ward newsletter has a little exert for the missionaries from the ward. It says, " Every week on the back of our Sunday program our Ward features an exert from one of
our missionary letters and share it with the Ward. They get to know the
Missionaries."

So a few minutes later this email arrived. 

"excerpt

Sorry.  I'm a scrabble player."



I have a few pet peeves with language usage, but I don't think I'd point them out to someone I have never met.  I usually tell my husband when he says or uses something wrong, and I expect him to tell me, but really???  I couldn't believe this.     
So funny.
PS: Now you can feel free to correct me when I am wrong. teehee!   No... really... you should.

A Little Free Time?

Yes, my busy, busy, busy Hubby is now just busy, busy. He was relieved of one of his "busy's" this past weekend when we had Elders Higham and Wilson here from Southern Cal and Salt Lake City respectively.

We had received a letter a month or so ago advising him of the change to be made in our Stake Presidency. In our church the Stake President is the one who trains and supports the Bishops of the area. Our Stake (as in a tent stake - something that gives support and permanence to the tent, or church) has 7 congregations in it and each has a Bishop in charge. My Hubby was that guy the Bishops went to for advise, instruction, and help with their organizations, people, and problems.
I have a philosophy that Bishops have to deal with screwed up kids and crazy women. Stake Presidents have to deal with the people who made them screwed up and crazy. (don't quote that)
John was the Stake President for the past 9 years which is a typical length of time for one to serve in this capacity. Most people couldn't hold down this position while still making a good living for his family, being on 3 extra Board of Directors for other companies, being an involved father (Remember 9 years is a long time. We had 4 kids at living at home when he was called to serve.), and an excellent husband, but my Hubby can do it all with seeming ease. He is quite an amazing guy. He now gets to breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy a few other things. Maybe he'll even get a new hobby.
Our new Stake President is Brent Knudsen. He has been our Bishop the past 5 years and he is another busy, busy organized wonder.
Good luck and our prayers are with the Knudsen's.
Good luck to the Hubby too, as he has to fill some extra time with something he enjoys while not driving me too crazy. I have no doubt in his ability to do that. Like I said, "He is amazing!" (You can quote me on that.)

Oh, Halloween

Another post I need to show off is our Halloweening for the year.

Oscar (right - Oscar is a green grungy guy) I meant Elmo showed up at our party. He LOVED his costume and just walked around getting into anything that looked remotely interesting.

 He brought his sister the caterina.

A retro clown came with them to the LG Ward party. 

...and a scary green witch greeted them all. 

Then a couple days later David and Kara showed up at our house with those same cute characters.
Thanks for sharing Halloween with GPa and GramVi.

Where Have I Been?

Basically I've just been hanging out at home and trying to get some things done. We are headed to Hawaii next week and so I'm sure to get some pictures to post of the whole fam damily for this here blog, and I do have a tractor in my back yard as of a few hours ago, so I'll get a picture of that up soon.

I took a picture of my gardener Panfilo and his son today lifting my huge barbecue off of their truck at David and Kara's house. We are giving the BBQ to them along with a ping pong table and portable fire pit.  I have inadvertently deleted the pictures. Oops.

Oh, look. I found it 2 days later.

Panfilo's crew are such crazy workers that I had to get the picture to remember them lifting the very heavy (like 500 lbs heavy) BBQ but when I was opening up my new picture program "Aperture," I erased a few items.

My computer is working better  (it was sluggish because I had it completely FULL of pictures which have now been moved off of the hard drive) so I should be back blogging as usual.
My list of things to blog about include 2 little trips, a couple of birthdays, a couple of quilts, the Hubby's release from being Stake President, visit from 2 General Authorities, & good food and decoration.
Fun times were had by ALL.