Weekly Review September 28 '18

It's officially fall and the sun is shining! We haven't seen the sun much lately...we've had a lot of rain this week. It has also cooled down a lot. It seems like as soon as we hit the official first day of fall, it got a lot cooler. I'm not complaining about that, though. That means that it isn't miserably hot. It's still pleasant enough to wear shorts most of the time, just cool in the mornings and evenings. We'll definitely enjoy it while it lasts.

I mentioned in last week's post that I was heading over to Pack Meeting that evening. Pack Meeting went well. The boys got their awards and the Cub Master had prepared a fun "escape room" type activity that all the kids really enjoyed. Here's a few pictures:

Saturday was pretty busy. I had a bad headache all day and really didn't feel my best but there was a lot to do so I kept going. I did some scanning, cleaned the kitchen floor, did Cub Scout planning, and worked on a Christmas project. Frank was doing some cleaning in his old office and I helped a bit with that too. It's still not completely cleaned out but it's getting closer. In the afternoon we went to a birthday open house for a lady in our ward and enjoyed visiting with her and a others. That evening I had a job interview--sort of. I heard a family in our ward was looking for an accountant for their small business so I sent them an email to let them know I was interested. I sent the email weeks ago and had decided they didn't want to talk to me but then out of the blue on Friday evening I got a message from them asking if I could meet with them over the weekend to talk about it. Turns out they saw my email but accidentally deleted it and they had been trying to figure out how to contact me. So I went over and talked with them and found out more about what they are looking for. I think some of what they need I could definitely do but they have some tax situations that I am not so sure about. I was honest with them about what I thought I could and couldn't do, so we'll see what they decide. They were going to be talking to at least two other people and I haven't heard back from them yet. I'm sure it will work out if it is supposed to work out--I'm not positive it's what I want to do so whatever they decide will be okay with me. I've seen a number of other positions online that I need to apply for but I haven't done that yet. Yes, I think I am dragging my feet a little! Job interviews are not my favorite thing.

On Sunday I gave a lady and her granddaughter a ride to church. They are planning to come again this week. She's a really nice lady. The choir sang a song that day--I didn't even realize until we got to practice that we were singing that day!! Church was interesting because (as we expected) there were a whole slew of releases and callings, including a new RS presidency and a new YM presidency. I think that is just the beginning! The new RS president is one of my book chat friends, and she will be great. She was a counselor in the YW presidency so there were some changes there too and the wolf den leader was called to be a counselor in the YW. They didn't call a new wold den leader either but hopefully that will happen soon. For this week, she asked the mom of the only Wolf who shows up to help me with den meeting and that worked out well.

On Monday I spent the morning on a ministering visit. This sister is expecting her first baby in November so my companion and I were answering a lot of her questions about baby care and giving advice about a lot of things. We also helped her with some cleaning outside her house--cleaning siding and the front screen door. She has a lot of health problems and she has had really bad heartburn with her pregnancy--especially if she bends over--so we offered to do some things that require bending over! Anyway, we had a nice visit and also made plans to have a baby shower in October. The rest of the day was standard stuff except I also worked on cutting out some laminated items for Seth's teacher.

Tuesday was also mostly the regular chores but that kept me busy all day. I also did a few things to get ready for den meeting and finished the laminating project for Seth's teacher. Frank spent a lot of the day doing work for a client at their office, which is over an hour from here. We had the Elders over for dinner that evening. One of them was getting transferred the next morning and Frank had agreed to drive him to Columbia and pick up the new Elder. I guess one convenient thing about him being unemployed--he's available to do things like that during the day and he's the ward mission leader, so that is helpful.

Frank was up early on Wednesday for the missionary transfers. I got Seth to school and then went to Walmart to do the grocery shopping. Frank met me there on his way back from transfers--I was almost done so he helped me finish up. Then I went to the religion class, where I ended up doing a role play where I was presenting our church's beliefs about the fall of Adam to a group of people from other religions. I had about 2 minutes to prepare, too. It went pretty well, though. I mostly read a bunch of verses from 2 Nephi 2 and then explained them. It was kind of cool because as I was talking, I kept getting chills all over--I felt the spirit testifying that what I was saying was true. We're so fortunate to have such a clear understanding of the fall and the purposes of the fall--it is an event that is so widely misunderstood! That evening I had den meeting. We learned about a famous American (Harriet Tubman) and then we watched a few videos of Rube Goldberg machines and the boys built a little chain reaction thing out of Legos. Next week we will actually try to build a successful Rube Goldberg machine.

Yesterday I spent a few hours reading my book about temple symbols and doing some indexing. I also finished scanning all my photos from my mission. (But don't think I'm done with scanning projects--there are still a lot of other photos from other years!!) We were going to have visitors that evening--a sister missionary who served here and her family (she just finished her mission this week and her family came out to pick her up) but they got behind schedule so they are coming tomorrow morning instead.

This week has not been too eventful, as you can tell, but we have kept pretty busy with all the usual stuff, including exercising and brain balance. Seth is improving in some of the brain balance exercises that we are doing--others, not so much! I am interested to see what his teacher has to say--if she has seen any improvement in his focusing at all. I feel like emotionally he is doing pretty well. He seems to be a little more on an even keel--most of the time he is fairly pleasant and cooperative and doesn't seem to be getting angry as easily although he still does get upset sometimes.

It looks like Frank will be signing off and submitting his paperwork for his job at the end of next week. It's going a lot slower than I'd like, but that is a big step in the right direction.

Seth and I are still reading Little House on the Prairie and he is enjoying it. It is funny sometimes the comments he makes about things. We read a chapter this week where the Indians visited their house and took all of Pa's tobacco. Seth's comment was "He's better off without tobacco anyway!" Another time he mentioned they shouldn't be drinking coffee. He also said this week "it bothers me that they keep calling them Indians". I explained to him that it wasn't intended to be disrespectful and that the term "Native American" is fairly new--even when I was a little girl we were still using the term "Indians". He was surprised to hear that.

This morning Frank helped me get the budget updated. I spent so much time on it last week that there wasn't much to do this week. Now I am going to take him on a date to Red Lobster for lunch (thank you for the gift card, Amy & Nate!) and he is getting hungry so I'd better go. Never keep a diabetic waiting when they need to eat!

Weekly Review September 21 '18

We got some sunshine this week! It was really nice to see the sun again. It has been pretty humid and warm most of the week, but today was cooler and the humidity was lower, so that's been nice. We are ready for some nice fall weather, although I'm always sad to see summer end.

I feel like I kept pretty busy this week. On Saturday morning we met up with Darlee (Tanner's girlfriend) and her mother at Arlington National Cemetery. Frank and I have been there once, but it's always an interesting place to visit and Seth had not been there yet. We walked around the cemetery and got to see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers. It was nice to meet Darlee's mom, and we enjoyed talking with them and getting to know Darlee a little bit better. Here mom is very warm and friendly. Here are a few pictures that we took:

We couldn't stay very long because we had stake conference and Frank had to be at a meeting at 4:00. In the short few hours in between our Arlington trip and going to the adult session of conference that evening, I did some Cub scout planning, cleaned the kitchen floor, and worked on a project for Christmas. I was singing in the choir for the meeting, so I had to be there early to practice and a couple in our ward had also called and asked me if I could give them a ride (she's in a wheelchair and neither one of them can drive) so I had to leave early enough to pick them up too. I got dinner ready and took some dinner for Frank with me. We ate together quickly and then I went to the practice. The meeting was really good. Frank couldn't sit in the pews that long (especially since he had already had a 2 hour meeting) so he sat out in the foyer for most of the meeting. He wasn't feeling really great that day anyway (dizzy / woozy) so he ended up going home a little early. I took the couple in our ward back home after the meeting was over, so I got home kind of late.

On Sunday we were able to watch the general session of stake conference from our own church building. It was really good also. It was nice having the whole afternoon and evening to relax. I don't remember everything we did, but I did some indexing, worked on Faith in God with Seth, and read to Seth too. We finished Little House in the Big Woods and we are several chapters into Little House on the Prairie now.

I'm not going to do a daily play-by-play of the rest of the week because it was mainly the usual things--regular chores, exercising, brain balance, scanning and Christmas projects, Wednesday religion class, and practicing the ukulele. Here are the other "not ordinary" things that we did. Seth didn't have school on Wednesday. That evening we went to the library and we also picked up the ceramic piece that he made at a birthday party a few weeks ago. (I need to take a picture of it--I will try to do that before next week!) Yesterday I got my hair cut. Today I mowed the lawn (first chance I've had to do that in a while and it was very long!) and tonight I had Pack Meeting. This is the first one we've had since Seth turned 11, so Frank and Seth didn't come with me and that was kind of weird (but it was okay). The Cub Master planned a fun "escape room" activity which the kids really enjoyed. We have a very small group of Cub Scouts and a couple of the families didn't show up so we were a pretty small group but it was still fun.

Frank has been keeping fairly busy with his business, although I don't think he was as busy this week as some he's had lately. I have continued to explore options for jobs for me but haven't found much to go on yet. I think I am going to do an online Quickbooks class so that I am more up to date on that program. I also looked into taking a tax preparation class from H&R Block (which could possibly lead to a job) but when I looked it up, I found out the class has just started last week and there weren't any seats left (I wish I had thought of that idea sooner!) There wasn't any information about the next class but I will keep checking on that. I also looked into some seasonal jobs but most of them require lifting, which I'm not sure I could do on a regular basis. So all of that is a little discouraging but I will keep looking and hopefully something will turn up eventually. Thanks to all the work that Frank is doing, I think we will be okay until the end of the year at least, so that is a blessing.

We just found out that the DC temple is going to be closed longer than they originally thought. It was supposed to be closed for about 2 years, but now they are saying it is probably going to be 3 years. We are sad! I guess they are finding more issues than they expected. 

That's all I've got for this week!

Weekly Review September 14 '18

We have barely seen the sun for days and probably won't see it much again until sometime next week, but we are not getting hit by Hurricane Florence so I'm not going to complain. I miss the sun, but it will come back! We had some fairly cool temperatures over the weekend and it rained like crazy but early in the week it warmed back up to the 80s, which is where we've been all week. It is very humid, too, which isn't the best but it could be worse.  That's the weather report!

I don't think there's a lot to talk about this week--mostly we had the usual stuff. On Saturday Seth went to a birthday party for a girl in his class at school. They have been in the same school class together since they started school at age 3! The party was at a make your own pottery place and Seth got to paint a pottery piece. He won't get it back for a while since it has to be fired and everything. He had a good time at the party. Meanwhile, I visited my friend Wanda. I kept busy the rest of the day with some projects I'm working on (scanning my mission pictures and a project for Christmas) and I also transferred all the patches from Seth's Cub Scout shirt to his Scout shirt.

On Sunday we had a special Stake Conference with a member of the Quorum of the Seventy visiting. The meeting was broadcast from the stake center to our ward's building, so we just went to our building for the meeting. It was really good! This Sunday we have Stake Conference again--our regular Stake Conference this time!

Seth did not have school on Monday (I know, a day off already!) because it was Rosh Hashanah. (They get some of the Jewish holidays off--he gets Yom Kippur off this coming week.) It rained really hard on Saturday and Sunday so by Monday the river was flooding.

It wasn't the highest I've ever seen it, but it was pretty high. I took the second picture from the top of a hill and then turned around and took the picture of the row of townhouses, just to give you an idea of how close the flooding was to our house. (Our house is the third from the left--last one you can really see before the tree gets in the way.) We were feeling kind of anxious about flooding on Monday because at that point they were still saying that we could get major rain and flooding from Hurricane Florence. Since then, the storm track changed and I'm not even sure we are going to get any rain from Florence, but we might get some. The river has gone back down now so even if we get a lot more rain I don't think it's going to be a problem. Anyway, on Monday we decided to pull out our 72 hour kits and make sure they were ready to go, just in case. We put them, along with some cases of MREs and some bottled water, upstairs in Jared's room so that they are more accessible.

On Tuesday Seth went back to school and it has been a pretty normal school week. When Seth gets home from school each day, we work on Brain Balance stuff. Then I make dinner (Frank gets it started for me sometimes while I am working with Seth) and Seth gets to have some screen time. In the evening we have been reading together every night and we only have one chapter left in Little House in the Big Woods. He's been enjoying the book and it has been fun for me to read some books with him that I really loved when I was a child.

On Tuesday evening Frank was gone doing work for a client. When he came home he noticed Snickers was lying at the bottom of the stairs (Seth and I were upstairs reading). Snickers wouldn't follow him up the stairs; he acted like he couldn't do it. I went down and started to pick him up to carry him up the stairs, and he yelped a couple of times. I put him back down and then picked him up again more carefully and that time he seemed okay but when we got him upstairs it was obvious he was in pain--he was shivering and panting. We thought we were going to have to take him in to be seen that night but then after a little while he settled down so we decided to wait and take him into the vet the next morning. After examining him all over, the vet decided that it was his back that was hurting. She doesn't think it's anything serious--he may have just strained it somehow. They gave us some muscle relaxant and some pain medication to give him for the next week and hopefully by then he will be doing better. I did get him to follow me up the stairs last night so that is a good sign. I have noticed the last few weeks that he has been somewhat hesitant to go up the stairs, so I think this has been coming on for a while. We are just relieved that it wasn't anything really serious.

Besides taking Snickers to the vet, I did all the usual things including the religion class. That evening was Back to School night as Seth's school so I went to that to hear what his teacher had to say. /We didn't have den meetings, so that worked out well.

Yesterday one of my ministering sisters came to see me in the evening. During the day, I had some "temple time"--I read a chapter in a book I have about temple symbols (it's very scholarly, with lots of notes so it takes a long time to read a chapter; it's very interesting though and I am learning a lot) and then I did some indexing. I was indexing burial records for a parish in the UK in the late 1700s and it was so sad how many burials I saw for multiple children in the same family! I am grateful for modern medicine!

Today I got the budget done and I have been able to talk to Amy for a little while, which has been nice. We are feeding the missionaries tonight and we are trying to work out meeting up with Tanner's girlfriend sometime today or tomorrow because she is visiting Washington DC this weekend.

In between everything else, I have been working on scanning my mission pictures (I've done a lot, but I have a lot more to go) and I'm working on another personal history blog post too. I've been practicing ukulele a lot and Frank and I have continued to exercise every day. I have been trying some new salad recipes and some of them are really good. Here's the one we tried last night:

It's one of my favorites so far--bacon, shrimp, cherry tomatoes, celery, red onion, yellow bell pepper, and feta cheese. Yum!

That's it for this week--I told you there hasn't been a lot going on!

Weekly Review September 7 '18

This was the first week of school for Seth and I think it went pretty well, overall. We got a pretty good routine worked out and things went smoothly. It did not feel like school should be in--it felt more like the middle of summer! We had temperatures in the 90s every day, with high humidity too. It is supposed to start raining tonight, though, and the temperature has already cooled down to the high 80s. It's going to keep raining for the next couple of days and tomorrow the highs will be in the 70s; Sunday the highs will be in the 60s! So that is a pretty big change but not an unwelcome one. Highs go back to the 80s early next week which will be nice. Hopefully we won't get hit by Hurricane Florence also--I guess that is a slight possibility.

Last Friday I took Seth to the school to drop off all his supplies. We didn't stay long, since he is already familiar with his classroom and knows his teacher, but he enjoyed seeing some of his friends. Afterwards, I took him to get an ice cream cone--kind of a farewell to summer vacation! There was a school picnic that evening but we hadn't really planned to go (Seth said he didn't care about going). However, I had ordered him a yearbook last spring and he could pick it up at the picnic so Frank took him over to the picnic for a little while to get his yearbook and see a few more friends. We ate dinner at home, though. It started raining later and Sam came to spend the weekend with us.

I spent most of the day on Saturday working on my resume, and managed to get a fairly decent one figured out. I still think it needs work, but I'm sure I will continue to refine it over time. In the meantime, I did go ahead and apply for a couple of the jobs I saw online. I didn't get to that until yesterday, so I haven't heard anything back yet. It's kind of scary to be looking for a job. I mean, on the one hand, I feel like I've gained a lot of valuable experience over the years and that I have a lot to offer an employer. On the other hand, I worry that I have forgotten everything I ever knew about accounting and that even if I manage to get a job, I will totally flop! At any rate, I was glad by the end of Saturday to have a resume figured out (at least somewhat). That was a pretty big task.

On Sunday our Sacrament Meeting was pretty interesting since we got a new bishopric. Our new bishop is pretty young (I'd say at least 10 years younger than me) but he will be great. His wife is our current RS president, so as I expected--there are going to be a lot of changes coming! One of the ward members sitting behind me in the meeting leaned forward and asked me if I was ready for round 2 as RS president, and I said "NO!" By the way, Frank always predicts who our new bishop is going to be and he always gets it right. (Last time we had a change, he predicted the entire bishopric correctly!) Actually, I kind of beat him on this one because a few weeks after our new bishop's family moved into our ward I said "He's going to be our bishop someday." (That was about 9 years ago.) After our church meetings and dinner, Sam headed back home and we were back to being a family of 3 again. It's weird sometimes to only have 3 of us!

We didn't do anything special for Labor Day, just the usual Monday chores and family night, of course. Seth played at the carpool boys' house for a while in the afternoon. I was busy trying to figure out some Cub Scout stuff too--we were trying to figure out when we were going to have den meetings for the month of September because our Pack Meeting date had to be changed. (It was supposed to be tonight, originally, but there is a special meeting tonight at our stake center with Elder Christofferson speaking. It's for the "young marrieds", though, so that doesn't mean Frank & I.) I was also working with the Primary president and another mom in the ward (the RS president & new bishop's wife, actually) to figure out plans for the 11 year old scout campout since we don't have an 11 year old scout leader called in our ward yet but her son and Seth are both 11 and wanted to attend the stake 11 year old scout campout. They had to have 2 adult leaders go with them, and we finally got it all worked out to have two men there the whole time and planned the meals also and then on Tuesday they cancelled the campout too! (It was supposed to be tonight also but besides the meeting tonight it is also supposed to rain all night and all day tomorrow.) The campout has been rescheduled for the middle of October (this is the 3rd time it has had to be rescheduled). I'm hoping by then an 11 year old scout leader will be called. At least our new bishop is well aware of the need for an 11 year old scout leader now! It is frustrating to me that Seth has been 11 for over 3 months and nothing has been done to call a leader before now, but I know it wasn't the highest thing on the priority list. It's just kind of a bummer for him (and us) because he has been wanting to work on stuff and there's no one to help him. (The other ward where he was going got a new leader and they decided they don't want to combine with our ward at all.) He still says he wants to be an Eagle scout someday, which means I want him to get through as many of the ranks as possible in the next year and a half before the church stops sponsoring scouting. We've already lost 3 months of that time. Please, just help us out here!!

Sorry, that ended up being a long sidetrack / sort of rant. Tuesday was the first day of school and since Frank was home to remind me, I actually took a picture of Seth:

To celebrate the first day of school, my friend Rebekah and I went out to breakfast together (as soon as I dropped Seth off at school). That was fun. Frank was pretty busy with his business this week and I had all the usual work to do plus extra stuff so we barely saw each other for a couple of days! After breakfast, I went to the library to get a book about a famous American for den meeting. (For one of their requirements, they have to learn about two famous Americans--we'll do another one next time we meet.) The library did not have a very large selection of biographies for children, so I just got one book. I will have to go to the larger branch to find a book about a second American. Anyway, for this den meeting I chose to talk about Neil Armstrong. That turned out to be a good choice--all the boys were really interested in him.

On Wednesday I had mostly the usual stuff, including the religion class. I enjoyed the class a lot, as always. The carpool family went out of town for a few days so they hired Seth to take care of their cats on Wednesday. We let them into the house on Wednesday morning (on our way to school) and then Frank & Seth went back over Wednesday evening to let them out. I had den meeting that night and besides learning about Neil Armstrong, we also made two simple pulleys (part of a different adventure) and at the end we played a game using Uno cards (but not Uno). The boys seemed to have fun.

Using two pulleys to send messages to each other across the room.

I didn't sleep well on Wednesday night so I got a late start on Thursday. I managed to get through everything I needed to do except sewing patches on Seth's Scout shirt (I need to move the council patch and the troop number patches, plus his Arrow of Light patch from his Cub Scout shirt to his Boy Scout shirt. I didn't buy him a Scout shirt--I have one I bought for myself several years ago and then outgrew. It's a little big on him, but not a lot.) I removed the patches from his Cub Scout shirt, but I haven't sewed them onto the Scout shirt yet. Hopefully that will happen soon.

Today I also woke up a little late (not as late as yesterday, though). It's been kind of a trying day. Everything I tried to do took a lot longer than I thought it should, so that all I've managed to finish at this point (it's almost 7 pm) is the budget. I guess it was the budget that took so long, and that is mainly because there were problems with a couple of things and we had to make phone calls to try to clear up those problems. For one thing, our car insurance withdrew the same amount from our account for September as they did for August, even though we removed Jared from our policy. For another, Marriott withdrew too much out of our account for our Cobra payment--I won't go into all the details, but we've had quite a few problems with Cobra payments since Frank got laid off and it is frustrating that they keep making mistakes. It is even more frustrating that when Frank called them today to try to clear things up, they admitted that they had made a mistake but said it would take 4-8 weeks to put the money back into our bank account!! Frank argued with them about that, and someone is supposed to get back to us about that on Tuesday. I think it's ridiculous that it would take that long to put money back into our account. It makes me angry because I feel like we have enough money issues to worry about right now without their mistakes adding to the load. I had better luck with one of our credit card companies, who agreed to remove an interest charge from our last bill. (Another long story; technically they could charge us the interest since I made a mistake and paid one of our bills late in July, but they agreed to remove the charge since we are long time customers and have a history of paying our bills on time.) At least one person was nice to us today!!

Looking back, I'm not sure why I felt so busy this week but I guess just adding in those two trips to the school and back every day does make a difference. Searching for jobs to apply for and applying for them took quite a bit of time too. I continued to exercise every day and Frank was able to start exercising again too. (His back has been hurting him a lot the last 3 - 4 weeks, so he hasn't been able to exercise.) Seth and I finished reading Farmer Boy last night and he wants to read the rest of the Little House series books now, so we started Little House in the Big Woods last night too. I've also been doing Brain Balance with Seth after school each day, which takes between 30 minutes and an hour each day (depending on how cooperative he is). It's going pretty well but it is too soon to see results yet.

That is everything that I can think of to tell about this week.

Family Vacations

I'm not doing so great at keeping up with my personal history. Life gets so busy--I'm not sure why! I guess if I keep doing posts here and there when I get the chance, though, that someday I will have a somewhat "complete" personal history. I mean, it will never be complete because I keep living and making more history as I go. I won't be finished until the day I die--so I guess someone else will have to write the final chapter for me, right?! Anyway, here is my next question to answer:

Where did your family go on vacations?

There is one place that for most of my childhood was synonymous with the word vacation, and that place is Mesa, Arizona. That is where we spent all of our vacations. With a large family to support and the cost of traveling, we always used our travel time and funds to go "home" to visit family. And I loved it!! I didn't wish I could go somewhere else because to me, Mesa was the most wonderful place on earth. I'm sure our summer trips to southern Arizona were very hot, but I don't remember that so much. What I do remember was how I always felt enveloped in the wonderful, unconditional love of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins when I was there. To me, that made it the best place ever, and my only regret was that we didn't get to go there more often (usually once a year). I still remember the longing I would feel to be there and how exciting it would be as the time for a trip to Mesa approached. Seriously, the anticipation I felt was every bit as compelling as the anticipation for Christmas morning!

We always drove to Mesa, no matter where we lived, and for me the drive was part of the fun (mostly--I'm sure I got tired of it sometimes). When we lived in Houston, the drive was particularly long. We would leave very early in the morning and drive all day--and get to El Paso on the other side of Texas by the end of the day. The next day, we would drive through a corner of New Mexico and then into Arizona and up to Phoenix. When we lived in southern California, the trip was much shorter--about 8 hours, so sometimes we would leave later in the day and arrive in Mesa in the evening. (We took trips to Mesa for Thanksgiving a few times during those years.) After we moved to Utah, the trip was longer again although it didn't take two days. I think it took about 13 hours, until a new road was built that shortened the trip to about 10 or 11 hours. Anyway, I still remember the excitement of waking up early in the morning to start a drive to Mesa. We all piled into the station wagon, which was pretty crowded with ten of us. There were no seat belt laws in those days and I don't remember any of us wearing seat belts. One child would sit up front in between Mom and Dad, 3 would sit in the middle seat, and the 4 youngest kids (that included me of course) would sit in the back. The seat in the back would be folded down so that there was a large flat surface, and a couple of blankets would be spread over it to make it more comfortable. Each one of us would get a "corner" of the back for our area to sit. We always brought pillows and we would each have a bag with puzzle books and coloring books for entertainment. I remember one trip my mom surprised us with new fabric bags that she had sewn for us--mine looked like a little dog.

I don't remember stopping to eat very often on these trips--it seems like we usually had sandwiches to eat, and we always had a thermos of water too. (I remember cups of water and sandwiches being passed from one person to another over the seats.)  One of the things I really liked about these trips was that we always had some treats--candy (black licorice was one of my favorites), crackers, sometimes chips. We didn't get treats like that very often at home.

My kids now are amazed when I tell them that we didn't have any video games, or television, or movies or anything like that to entertain us on these long trips. We had our puzzle books, coloring books, and books to read. Luckily, I never had any trouble with carsickness, so I would lie in the back and read a good book for hours! I also remember taking naps. I enjoyed looking out the window and taking in the scenery for long periods of time. We also played games like road sign alphabet and trying to spot license plates from all of the 50 states. Sometimes we would sing songs together--silly songs like "Sweet Violets" and "Johnnery Bet"--as well as Primary songs and hymns. Dad would often sing "Oh What a Beautiful Morning". To me, that was Dad's "happy song" and it always made me feel happy when I heard him sing it. I remember one night on a trip when I was pretty young where we took turns choosing what hymn we would sing. I remember feeling reverently happy inside and feeling so glad to have the family that I had. I'm sure now that I was feeling the spirit, and that night has always stayed in my memory.

Pit stops--should we talk about those?? I don't remember there being nice rest areas back in those days like they have now. We had to use restrooms at gas stations (and they were usually pretty gross) or worse--find a spot by the side of the road. I'm sure we had to stop way more often than my parents wanted to!! I also remember that back then when we pulled into a gas station, an attendant would come out and pump the gas, clean our windshield, and handle the payment. When I got older, they started having "self serve" islands at gas stations and we would usually use those because it was quicker. Eventually everything became self serve.

On our trips to Arizona, I remember that when we got to the border of Arizona and passed the "Welcome to Arizona" sign, we all cheered. At the border crossings we would have to stop for an "inspection" and declare that we didn't have any plants or fruit with us. We weren't allowed to bring those things into the state (something to do with possibly contaminating the citrus fruit that grows there). One time we had an apple leftover from lunch and I remember watching one of my brothers stand outside the car and eat it (rather than throw it away). Once we were in Arizona, I was always excited when we started seeing saguaro cactus, because that meant we were getting close to the journey's end. (On a trip to Arizona in 2017, the first time I'd been to the Mesa area in nearly 18  years, I was in mid sentence when I saw the first saguaro cactus and immediately stopped, pointed, and said "Oh, oh, oh!!!" I was so excited I was incoherent!) Those trips to Arizona will always stand out in my memory as some of the happiest times in my life.

This photo of me was taken on my Grandpa & Grandma Pew's front lawn in Mesa, Arizona. It was probably taken around Easter, 1969. The following photos were also taken when we were on a trip to Mesa, in about 1974, I think. I'm not sure if the first photo was taken on the same trip as the rest, but judging by Ben's size, I think they were. The first photo was taken at My Uncle Lee & Aunt Diane's house:

The rest of the photos were taken at an extended family party at Palmer Pool. (My Aunt Gay was a Palmer before she married my Uncle Bruce Johnson, and her family owned this lovely pool.):

This is my Grandpa Johnson. I love the smile on his face!

This is my Grandma Johnson. She was always so sweet and loving.

Dad cooking food for us.

Mom

Curtis and Hans enjoying watermelon!

Ben

Me, Tim, Amy eating our dinner. I think Tim is scratching his nose, not picking it! :)

This last photo was taken on the front porch steps at my Grandpa & Grandma Pew's house. Again, I'm not sure it's the same trip as the others but we all look about the same age, so I think it is. One mystery about this picture--where is Tim?! I'm not sure why he isn't in the photo.

I'm including these photos because they were all taken in the front yard / on the front porch at my Grandpa & Grandma Johnson's house in Mesa. I think I was about 7 years old, so this would have been about 1975:

Behind Hans, you can see one of the grapefruit trees that grew on one side of the yard. We used to pick grapefruit right off the trees to eat for breakfast. Yum!!

The front porch / door are visible in these photos of Shellie and Tim.

Amy and I were both standing on the front porch for our photos.

Another memorable Mesa trip was in 1978, because my Johnson grandparents were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. My mom and her siblings put together a nice reception & program for them. These photos were taken at that event. I was 9, nearly 10 at the time. I remember this being a really nice night!

Amy with our cousin Larisa, who is just a month older than Amy and I. We spent a lot of happy hours on our Mesa trips playing with Larisa and her sister Jeanette, who is just a year younger than us.

Our family at the reception--we have a photo of Curtis because he was on his mission at the time.

My grandparents!

The cake--I have one of the little gold plastic birds still.

At the end of the program, each of the grandkids gave my grandma a rose--red from the boys, pink from the girls, and a white one for my sister Jana. This picture captured me giving Grandma my rose--I love how she is reaching out to give me a big hug! Amy and Jeanette are also in this picture.

Cutting the cake

The whole clan!

This photo was probably taken in Mesa in November, 1978. Curtis would have just returned from his mission and Erick would have recently left for his mission. We were getting ready to move to Utah.

Another Palmer Pool photo, about 1981

I took these photos of my Aunt Karen, Grandpa Johnson, and Grandma Johnson on a visit in the summer of 1981. They are all sitting in the TV room in their home:

This photo was taken at my Uncle Joe's house in Mesa in November 1982. We were there for Curtis & Julia's wedding, and we had a small openhouse for them at my Uncle Joe's house. In the photo are Grandma Johnson, Webb Johnson, Grandpa Johnson, Ben, me, and Uncle Joe (Pew).

The next two photos were taken at a Johnson Family reunion in the summer of 1984, at the Grand Canyon.

I'm not sure who everyone in the photo is, but Aunt Karen is in front. Maybe Chris beside her and Uncle Lee standing up in the hat.

This is Amy & Jeanette enjoying the Grand Canyon.

The next three photos were taken at another Johnson family reunion in 1986. This time we were at Zion's National Park in Utah:

Me, Aunt Karen, and Amy shopping for souvenirs.

Jared, Larisa, Jeanette, maybe Catherine?, me, Justin, Amy

Zion National Park

These next photos were taken in July 1986 in Mesa--we ended up going to Mesa shortly after the reunion because sadly, my Aunt Karen got very sick and passed away a few weeks after the reunion. I took photos of both of my grandparents' houses. My Grandpa & Grandma Pew had both passed away in 1984 and I knew their house was going to be torn down soon (we had to sell their land and a mini storage is on the property now).

This is the front of my Grandpa & Grandma Pew's house. It hadn't been occupied for a few years, so the lawn is dead. This home was the first frame house built in Mesa and it was an historic landmark.

This is the view looking down the long road between my Grandparents' house and my Uncle Joe's house.The pink building on the left is the garage (not attached) for my grandparents' house. When I was growing up, they sometimes had a horse or two in the pasture to the right of the road (in the photo). I have fond memories of walking down this road from Grandpa's house to Uncle Joe's house.

This is a view of the back of my grandparents' house. The door goes into the dining area. The window on the side is one of the living room windows. The large tree was a tangerine tree--yummy!!

This is a photo of my Grandpa & Grandma Johnson's house. The large tree was a pecan tree. I remember my Grandpa cracking bowlfuls of pecans on our visits. They were yummy too! The large window on the right is a living room window. The one on the left is a window in Karen's room.

This apartment building was a short way down the street from my Grandpa & Grandma Johnson's house. When I was a child, I thought it was really cool! It was called "Tahitian Palms Apartments".

These last 3 photos were taken in Mesa in 1991--Amy and I went on a trip down there shortly after we returned from our missions.

We did a session at the Mesa Arizona Temple.

We pose underneath the sign for Pew Street, a short street between Main Street and Pepper Place, which is the street where my Uncle Joe lives.

We also visited my sister Jana's grave in the Mesa City Cemetery.

As I said, we didn't go on many other vacations when I was young but we did stop to see the Grand Canyon (south rim) on one of our Arizona trips (I'm too young to remember it) and we also took the time to visit places of interest near our homes. When we lived in Denver we visited the Denver mint, Royal Gorge, some Indian ruins, and Pikes Peak & the Garden of the Gods. We also visited Rocky Mountain National Park.

Here we are at--you guessed it!--Loveland Pass (Colorado) in either 1972 or 1973. In spite of the snow, I am pretty sure this was in the summer time!

I have somewhat dim memories of most of those places, but I do remember being nervous walking on the bridge over the Royal Gorge. I could see through the cracks between the boards, and it was a LOOOOONG way down! In Houston we visited the Alamo, the San Jacinto Monument, and a battleship near there. We also went swimming in the Gulf of Mexico once.

When I was 9 years old (summer of 1977), we took a trip to Utah to take my brother Erick back to BYU for his second year of college. We went to Mesa for one of our family visits first, and then we drove up to Utah from there. This was the first time I had ever been to Utah, and I was not very impressed. I was shocked with how sparsely populated Utah was--we kept driving through these tiny towns with only a few houses and a grocery store / gas station combined. Being raised in a Mormon family, I had heard about Utah my whole life, and that was not how I pictured it! My parents reassured me that when we got farther north there would be bigger towns, and they were right, of course. On that trip we visited BYU campus, Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Bryce Canyon, the St. George temple, and the Grand Canyon (north rim). When we were in Arizona, I remember everyone asking us if we had seen Star Wars yet, and telling us that we needed to see it. So while we were in Utah, we went to see Star Wars at a theater at University Mall in Orem. We had no idea then that about 18 months later, we would be moving to Orem.

I think this photo was taken in Nephi, Utah while we were on our Arizona / Utah trip in 1977. We visited Dad's brother Frank and his sister Betty and their families in Nephi. I remember they took us on a picnic up a canyon--I WAS impressed by the canyon!

As I got older and there were fewer kids at home, we did have the chance to go on a couple more trips. In July 1980 we took a trip to Bear Lake (on the Utah / Idaho border) to go camping. I think we may have driven up into Idaho on that trip too, but I can't remember for sure.

Bear Lake, 1980

On the way home from a trip to Arizona in the summer of 1981, we stopped to see an extinct volcano called Sunset Crater and an Indian ruin nearby called Wapatki. We also drove through part of Zion National Park and our original plan was to camp there overnight and see some of the park the next day, but when an ice chest overturned and dumped ice water all over our sleeping bags, we had to change our plans. We tried to find a hotel to stay at but they were all full so we ended up driving all the way home and getting home in the early hours of the morning. We didn't really get to see much of the park since we got there as the sun was going down, but I did get to visit Zion National Park several years later when the extended Johnson family had a reunion there. I also visited there again with Frank & Seth, as well as my parents and some of Amy's family in 2016.

Me at Sunset Crater

Wapatki Indian Ruins

In July of 1983, we had planned a trip to Yellowstone National Park. My brother Erick, who was married and had a daughter by then, was the mastermind behind the trip and he and Liz did most of the planning. Shortly before the trip, there was a change in my Dad's work (I think that's when Billings moved to Missouri and he had to find a different job) so my parents decided they couldn't go. Erick & Liz were good sports, though, and they agreed to let Shellie, Tim, Amy, Ben and I come along even though our parents weren't there to help (and of course 9 month old Erin went with us too). It was a fun and very thorough trip--I think we saw every geyser, pool, mud pot, hot spring, waterfall, etc in the entire park!! I loved the beauty of Yellowstone. It was amazing to me that in such a small area we could see canyons, waterfalls, a lake, a river, geysers, hot springs, thermal pools and mud pots, as well as a wide variety of wild life including elk, deer, and buffaloes. There are bears in that area, too, of course, but we didn't see any of them while we were there. While we were at Yellowstone, we stayed in small cabins. We stayed a couple of nights near the Upper Geyser Basin and one night near Mammoth Hot Springs. The cabins near Mammoth had wood burning stoves and I remember that sometime in the night our fire went out and we didn't have any more fuel and we were freezing!! (Yes, even though it was July--we were at a high elevation and it got cold at night). We found out in the morning that Erick had left a box of fuel on the steps of his cabin for us, in case we needed more! In spite of the one cold night, it was a great trip that I will always remember.

Tim, Ben, Amy & I at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Don't judge me for my hair--it was the 1980s! (It was also really windy!)

Amy, Shellie, Tim, Me, and Ben at the base of Tower Falls in Yellowstone National Park

In the summer of 1985 our family went on another trip with Erick's family. This time my parents were able to come too and we all went to Mt. Rushmore. We camped on this trip also. Amy and I turned 17 while we were on this trip and I remember that my parents put a few balloons on the tent on our birthday. The area around Mt. Rushmore was very beautiful and we were surprised to discover that there were a lot of things to do there besides just see the famous presidential sculpture on the side of the mountain. One of the highlights of this trip was watching fireworks in the sky above Mt. Rushmore on Independence Day.

I'm sure there are other trips that we took that I have forgotten, but those are the main ones that I remember. Of course, as an adult with my own family I have gone on many more vacations, but that would be a topic for another post!

I love travelling and seeing new places, and I am grateful for the vacations I've been able to go on and for the many happy memories of times spent with family.