November 6....the best kids!

I mean, really, does it get cuter than this?

This was taken the night before Ryan left for his mission in 1999.  We wanted to have individual pictures of both of them, then one of all of us.  But, Meg was NOT interested in sitting on that table, and was very adamant about it.  Ryan hopped up on the table and attempted to convince her that it was all OK.  Fortunately, the photographer was on the ball and caught this.  It's one of my favorite pictures of them together.

I got Ryan with Sam.  A package deal!  He was fifteen at the time.  I was a little worried about instantly becoming a stepmom to a teenager.  But, he was mostly an easy kid.  We had a few battles, but nothing huge.  He always wanted to do the right thing, and I never ever worried about him doing anything REALLY stupid.  Slightly stupid was expected.  After all, he was a teenager.  

When Meghan was born, he got his very first sibling.  He was almost seventeen and  ecstatic to have a little sister.  He loved her from the very first minute and has been a phenomenal big brother.  She adores him right back.  She was two when he left on his mission and he was really worried that she would forget him. Two years is a long time for a toddler.  But, while he was gone, she talked about him constantly.  She'd get on a phone and pretend to call him and chatter away.  She sent him drawings, he sent her drawings and cute letters back.  She decorated the outside of all the packages we sent.  One time, I took pictures of her trying to wrap his Christmas gifts, printed them out and decorated the outside of the package with them.  Ryan said that the lady at the post office thought it was so cute and funny that she was showing everyone else there.

When we went to the airport to welcome him home, she was so excited we could barely hang on to her.  When she saw him come through the door, she ducked under everyone else and got to him first in a giant attack hug.  For weeks, she worried that he was going to leave again.  He did, eventually, to go to Arizona for school.  Even though they only lived in the same house for a total of not quite three years, they've stayed close.  He makes an effort, and I really appreciate that.

I can't believe Meghan is now almost sixteen.  Time flies.  She's a fun kid most of the time, with a funky little sense of humor. She loves art, anime, K-pop music, any music her brother sends her, the beach and her big brother.  She wants to be a graphic artist or an animator.  She tries to do the right thing most of the time and is good to her friends.  I love taking her and her friends places, although the volume is usually pretty high as they all talk and laugh at once.

Ryan is now a law student at BYU, so he and Sue live in Utah.  They got to spend the summer with us this year, as he got an internship here in Monterey County.  They are fun to have around and we miss them when they go.  He's a self-described "music geek" who loves finding new bands no one's heard of.  He sends his sister all kinds of music, which he screens to make sure it's clean.  I love that if Meg wants to listen to someone and asks me, that I can tell her to go ask her brother.

I guess if you count Susan, I have three lovely kids.  We're proud of all of them and grateful God sent them to us.

November 5th.....a house big enough to share.

No, I don't have a huge house.  It's big enough, though... I wouldn't wanna clean one any bigger.  It holds most of our junk, gives us room for our several thousand hobbies, and allows us to help out a friend here and there.

When we found out our San Jose landlord was selling, we decided it was time to find our own place.  Prices in Silicon Valley were insane, so we started looking outside the immediate Bay Area, and eventually stumbled on a lovely 10 acre lot on a hill, with a view of Monterey Bay.  It was zoned for a house per 5 acres, so I called Dad and asked how serious he was when he joked about building a summer house out here.  He came out, loved it, and we split the cost. We moved down to an apartment in Salinas, and started trying to get a permit to build.

When we finally got a permit, Dad moved out from Arizona for a year and played General Contractor. Sam worked on it before work, after work and on weekends.  I helped out with what I could.  Even Meg, age 5, was recruited to go around with the magnet and pick up all the dropped nails.  However, we were building two houses at once, and as the money got tighter and tighter, we doing more things ourselves than we had originally planned on.  Which, of course, took even more time.  We got closer and closer to our deadline, and we were going to have pay a hefty fee if we didn't get our occupancy permit on time.

We were pretty stressed, and VERY tired, but friends from church found out our situation and for a couple of weeks, we had all kinds of volunteer help.  It was amazing and humbling and I'll never forget it.  A couple of  retired guys came every day and helped Dad and Sam (who'd taken a week off of work) drywall both houses.  My good friends came over one night to help me finish staining all the pine paneling, and after I went home to put Meg to bed, stayed until well past midnight helping Sam put in bathroom cabinets.  Our Bishop came with his wife and tiled a couple of the bathroom floors.  Another friend, a contractor, brought some workers and helped finish putting up all that pine paneling.  Someone else put up most of the lighting fixtures.  And all this time, people were bringing dinner for EVERYONE nearly every day.  It was amazing and I'll always be grateful to all of those people.  We got our occupancy in the nick of time.

So, how to pay it forward?  I was the Relief Society (women's auxiliary) President at church and one Sunday in Bishops Council, the Bishop told us about a call he'd gotten from a family in Mississippi.  They were moving to the area, but his job was starting two weeks before his housing was to be available.  He wanted to know if someone could rent them a place to stay for a couple of weeks; he had six kids, ranging from 18 down to 3.  I told him that the upstairs was empty, REALLY empty, and if they didn't mind all sharing that room and sleeping on the floor, they were welcome to stay with us.  I was a little worried, as I didn't know them at all, but after talking to the mom on the phone, I was sure it'd be fine.

And it was, and they are some of our favorite people. Since then, we've hosted lots of people, including our Bishop when he retired from the military.  His wife and kids went three months before he did to get settled, he stayed upstairs.  Boy, was that an eye-opener.  I hope Sam is never the Bishop.  Some of the people that have stayed with us have been friends transitioning either between military posts or jobs.  And, we've had some complete strangers, usually friends of friends, stay with us while they look for housing here.  By the time they leave us, we consider them family.   Sometimes, they pay us a bit if they can, enough to cover groceries and the increase in utilities.

I love that we're in a position to help out in these circumstances.  Our friends jokingly call it The Bailey Halfway House, or the Bailey B&B.   None of our huge extended family lives close, so it's also nice to have the space to have family come visit.  Ryan and Susan can come spend the summers when they can.  We can have meteor shower parties and have everyone just sleep over.  It's always a little crazy when the house is full, but it's a good crazy, we love it, and are grateful.

November 4th.....Happy Birthday, Sue!

Today is my daughter in law, Susan's, birthday.  Easy subject to pick for today, because we love the heck out of her.

We met Sue shortly after we moved into this house.  Ryan called from Arizona, where he was going to school.  He wanted to come for the 4th of July, and was it OK if he brought some friends with him.  I told him to bring sleeping bags, we didn't have extra beds.  He showed up with five girls; the girl he was dating, Susan, and three others.  All of them were lovely, fun, talented, helpful girls.  We probably would have been happy with any of them.

One day, a few months later, we were in Arizona for something...can't remember what.  We wanted to go to the temple, but we needed someone to sit with Meghan, who was only six at the time.  It must have been a wedding we were there for, because family members weren't an option, they were either going with us, or watching their own siblings.  Ryan came over, and we were kind of giving him a hard time,  "wow, if we only knew someone who knew some single girls who like to babysit".  We suggested Susan, but he initially nixed it, saying that he thought she had a "thing" for him, so she'd surely babysit for him, but he didn't want to take advantage of that because he wasn't interested.  We had a long discussion about that, I remember.  We couldn't figure it out, she was beautiful, she was fun, she was smart....

A few months later, we found out through the grapevine that they were an "item".  We were pleased and hoped it would work out.  It took them awhile, Susan was only 19 or 20 and Ryan was pretty cautious, as he really didn't want to make his Dad's mistake of marrying in a rush and then spending years trying, unsuccessfully, to make it work.  Meggie was ecstatic when they finally announced their engagement, she finally had a sister!

As we worked getting the wedding together, I was impressed with how practical and creative she was, putting this wedding together on a shoestring.  Her parents really weren't in a situation to help much, so we chipped in.  She found the designer dress she wanted, then shopped on eBay until she found it in her size for about a tenth the original price.  They were married in the spring, so they had the reception in the beautiful back yard of a friend.  We didn't have a dinner, just a finger food buffet that my friend catered for us for a much-too-low price.  She ordered gorgeous roses from Safeway, and one of her friends did beautiful centerpiece arrangements.  Ryan's uncle was the DJ.  All in all, I think between us all, we threw a beautiful wedding for $2500.    Ryan said later that he can't imagine what more money would have got him;  he had all the people he loved, good food, good music on a beautiful evening.  What else did he need?  Do we have smart kids or what?

They've been married for going on six years now, and are still the mushiest couple we know.  He could not have picked a better girl to be his wife and life-partner.  She's easy going, fun to be around, very creative, always up for trying new things, very smart and deals with any kind of stressful situation pretty well.  A good quality to have, as they have four sets of parents to deal with.  They've already had some tough times, and she's a trooper.  They work together well, getting through everything, making tough decisions, etc. They have a lot of fun, too...she LOVES costumes and dressing up and spends the entire year planning their annual Halloween party.  She's not afraid of much as you can see here and here (both of those links, you'll have to scroll down to the end of the post).   She's a wonderful big sister to my teenager, taking her shopping and giving her clothes/makeup/hair/ boys advice. We love the heck out of her, and we're grateful Ryan found her.  

November 3.....Modern Communications

I had a plan for these posts, I was gonna start with the big stuff, the "Sunday School Answers".   But, as I'm looking at pictures posted by my college roomie who lives in Singapore, I'm grateful for modern communication technology that helps us stay in touch.  I dunno, maybe this is a big one, too.

I moved to Utah in 1984 when I was 25.  I had several friends moving there to go to school, and while I wasn't interested in that (because I was stupid) it sounded like an adventure to move to another state.  So I went.  Back then...which really wasn't all that long ago....for keeping in touch with my mama, there was expensive long distance telephone and there was snail mail.  For several months, we wrote each other once a week.  Maybe once a month, she would call me.  I kept most of the letters, because my mom was not a journal keeper and I thought they'd be nice to have one day.

She always typed her letters, she's a superfast typist and hates writing longhand.  One day, I got a letter where she's telling me a story about one of my great-uncles and how they had this big shindig for his 90th birthday.  Who was there, where it was, what they ate, how her uncles played the fiddle (but don't play like they used to, ha!) They had a dance and during the dance....   Here the typing stopped, and she hand writes: "the typewriter ribbon broke, I guess I'll tell you the rest later".    WHAT?!  Turns out that my great uncle had a heart attack and died on the dance floor, dancing with his daughter (I think) at his big birthday bash.  What a way to go!  But, I didn't find out the rest of the story for almost a week, when she called me.  I couldn't afford to call her, so I just had to be frustrated.

(This is an old Underwood Electric typewriter, similar to mom's.  It weighed approximately 2200 lbs.  Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I couldn't lift it.)

Now, I could have texted her, tweeted her, facebooked her, or emailed her.  OK, not really, my mom hates technology.  BUT, I could have called her on my cheap, unlimited long distance service.  And I do, fairly regularly.  I kind of miss the letters, but it's nice to just call her whenever I want cooking instructions....you can't really call them recipes when they come from mom.  "A little of this, some of that".

But, everyone else, including my Dad, I can tweet, text, Facebook or email.  This is especially great for us, because we have a HUGE family.  Sam has eight sibs, I have five.  Between us we have about sixty nieces and nephews, ranging from about a year old to 40-something.  We have nearly 100 great nieces and nephews, with our first great-great due in January.  They live all over the country, most of them not in California.  We have most of the adults in that big gang on Facebook. In fact, more than half of my facebook "friends" are family.  I love that we see each new baby within hours, sometimes minutes, of it being born.  I love that we can send birthday greetings without breaking the bank buying cards.  I love that they can share their everyday victories, pleas for prayers, school pictures of kids, requests for advice, latest book they read, UFO sightings, or WHATEVER with the rest of us.  My daughter actually knows most of her cousins, has enough online interaction with them that she actually enjoys extended family functions, because she doesn't feel like we're hanging out with strangers.

I've also been able to reconnect with old, loved friends that I hadn't seen in years because of geographical circumstances.  (Is that a thing??)  Those friends live all over the world, and it's awesome to be able to be in touch again with them.  Sometimes, I've found that they live pretty darn close and I never knew!  Best weekend ever was with two friends that I loved spending time with when I lived in Provo.  I'd sort of kept in touch with one, and she lived pretty close.  But one day we discovered the third one lived only about five hours away.  So we planned a reunion weekend.  And found out, that even after twenty years, we still love to spend time together.

This modern technology, social media, etc can take over your life.  But, I think it's a God-send for helping to keep family and friends close.  I love it, and I"m very thankful for it.

November 2,....My Country

Yep, even with all it's polarized, back-stabbing, heated political arguing, I'm grateful that I live in the United States.  I love that I can agree or disagree publicly with anyone I like and no one is going to throw me in jail for it.  I'm worried that as it becomes more and more common to stick to "politically correct" that eventually, no one will be brave enough to say that the Emperor has no clothes, however.  Not for fear of retaliation from the government, though, just verbal retaliation from the "politically correct".  People who complain loudly of "intolerance" are sometimes the most intolerant.

In this great nation, I live in the state with the stupidist politics.  I'm pretty convinced that all the delegates to the state legislature, from any party, are either crooks or idiots.  But, we choose to live here for several reasons.  The biggest is that this is where Sam has endless opportunities for work (funny, since we're currently unemployed, but something will come up).  Before he took his first job here, he moved at least once a year.  I hate moving.  The next biggest reason?  Have you ever been here?

This gorgeous spot of God's earth has practically perfect weather.  The beach is five minutes from my house.  I can see the Bay on non-foggy days from my living room.  This is a place where millions come to vacation, and we get to live here.  Yay for us!  So, I'll gripe about the ridiculous cost of living, the stupidly high taxes, the state gov't that mismanages all those taxes, so they always wanna raise more, and keep wasting my conservative vote here because we LOVE it here.  As long as we're employed, so we can pay all those things, anyway.  But, God has blessed us so far, so we'll stay and help the five other conservatives keep California from falling into the ocean.  Ha!  

Going along with being grateful to be an American, is gratitude for the men and women in our all-voluntary military that help us to stay free. It's something that I never thought of much until we moved here and gained the privilege of having so many military friends.  The Defense Language Institute is here and the Naval Postgraduate Academy, so lots of military folks.  When I hear about deployments, and moving all over the world, and putting up with sometimes crappy (at least here) military housing, etc, I have a lot of respect for the people who choose that lifestyle.  We nearly always have at least one friend in harm's way somewhere:  Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria.

With that goes gratitude to the spouses of that military, who hold down the family fort while worrying about the safety of their soldier.  Yesterday, my dear friend Tori posted about what it's like to be the one at home with the kids while her Special Forces husband is off doing his job.  I'll end with a bit from her post:

"As a military wife I cannot tell you how many sleepless nights I have had, how many "not quite daddy" hugs I have tried to give, or how many tears I have cried for both myself and others whose loved ones have lost so much and made the ultimate sacrifice.

How many days, nights, weeks, months and years of my life I have spent wondering, wondering if we will be next and even if we are one of the"lucky" ones, how much time we will never get back, how many memories never get to be made, how many family dinners, birthday parties, weddings, reunions, funerals, holidays, births ( I was lucky enough to have Oz with me for 3 out of 4 ) will be missed...

Very few people will ever understand truly what those in my family and all military families prior or current have sacrificed for the freedom of our fellow man, even those who do not recognize us as such. I ,for the most part, happily and willingly chose this life and would not change it.! And whether or not my "Framily" and I agree, I will continue to support my soldier as he defends my right to my opinions and your right to yours, with his life!"

It's November???!!!

Really?!  Wasn't it just Christmas last week?

Haven't posted in awhile.  I had all kinds of things I wanted to write about, but I didn't have time and now I can't remember what most of them were. They weren't "newsy" things, just stuff I was thinking about at the time.  But, my brain has a short attention span and they are gone for now.

So, now it's November (egads) and it's Thanksgiving month.  I'm gonna make a goal to post every day about something I'm grateful for.  Think I can remember to keep it up?  I guess we'll find out.  It won't be in any particular order.  Just as I think of them.

Except for this one, I think the number one thing I'm thankful for is Sam.  Our 17th anniversary was a few weeks ago.  Time is a funny thing.  Sometimes it seems like just yesterday that we were getting married, other times I can barely remember life before Sam....like it was in some far distant past.  I'm a lucky girl, though, they don't come any better. He spoils me rotten, tells me I'm beautiful (he needs glasses), works hard even though he hates it, is an awesome dad to our kids, and is an all around good guy.  Everyone loves Sam, especially little people.  I'm sure he thinks I"m certifiable most of the time, but he puts up with me and I love him.  This is an old pic of him....he's the cutie on the right.....taken in Italy when he was a missionary.

We didn't get to do much for our anniversary.  Partly because we're still unemployed.  But, also,  it was on a Sunday and we got a visit from my niece Melissa and her family that weekend.  Which was a lot of fun.  She lives in Florida, so I don't get to see her often enough, and she has such a sweet little family. When Melissa was a little girl, I was single and only had 3 or 4 nieces and nephews, so she's one I really remember as a little kid.  Her Avry (6?) is a clone of her mom at that age, and it just makes me smile to watch her.  She has an adorable older brother and baby sister, too.  They had some great friends with them, and it made for an enjoyable day.

Busy-ness

I haven't posted anything for awhile.  Partly because we're very busy these days, and partly because all that busy-ness isn't all that exciting.

Meghan has started 10th grade, which is taking over our lives.  She is still homeschooling through the charter school we've been with, but has added classes at Monterey Peninsula College.  She is still swimming on the swim team, although a bit reluctantly.  She's never been much for competing, she mostly joined because her friends did.  But, the exercise is good for her and I promised to not harass her about how much sugar she eats if she swims at least three times a week.

Of course, everything is in Monterey, 30 minutes away.  She has seminary at Heather's in Marina (about halfway to Monterey)  from 6 to 7 am.  Then she's at the college from 9am to noon, Monday thru Thursday. She swims from 4 to 5:30 pm three days a week, at a pool about ten minutes from the church.  So we go to the Marina library (or somewhere) after MPC to do the rest of her schoolwork before swim practice. On Wednesday she goes directly from the pool to the church for Mutual.  Oh, and piano lessons are Wednesday mornings from 8 to 8:30 am.  Crazy.  Heather and Lysa both have kids going to either MPC or in the swim team.  So we've tried to work it out so that no one has to spend their day driving.  But trying to figure it out is like a complicated math problem:  If you have nine kids in three schools, on two different swim teams, two sedans and a van, how do you get everyone where they need to go and still have someone home to get the preschooler on and off the bus.  Throw in assorted doctor and therapists appointments for special needs kids, and you really see the problem.  But, we're managing.

Sam is still working at the temporary job.  He finished the board that they hired him for in about a week, but they contracted him for six weeks, so they gave him a few more projects.  He's finishing up the biggest one this week, and he hasn't heard if they have more to do.  In the meantime, we're still kind of hoping to hear from Cisco about the job he interviewed for.  He's also been getting calls from a guy he used to work for that we call Slimy Dave.  He's not exactly trustworthy, so we've been kind of putting him off.  We're praying we don't have to resort to working for him.  Today I have to decide if I'm going to pony up the $1300 a month to continue our health care coverage, or just give it up and hope we all stay healthy.  We've always paid it before, but Sam was getting a lot of contract work at the time.

The Stake Christmas started practices a couple of weeks ago.  The director picked some challenging music, so I've been putting in more piano bench time than usual.  The Elderhostel choir that I play for every year starts next week.  That's a crazy schedule on it's own and how I'm gonna integrate it into the school schedule is a mystery so far.  I suspect the sisterwives will help pick up the slack, because they are awesome and I don't know what I'd do without them. The extra cash will be nice, especially if Sam is unemployed again next week.

A couple of weekends ago, we took a quicky weekend trip to Carson City to get apples.  Really, we went to see the Halls, the apples were a bonus.  It was short, but it was nice to see them, as always.  We got our game of butthead in, ate awesome meatball sandwiches and sweet and sour Hawaiian haystacks, saw the Reno temple, had a lovely drive home on Hwy 4 through the Sierras and came home with enough apples to make twelve pints of strawberry applesauce and two pints of apple butter.  Yum.  Just because I don't believe in posts without pics, here is one that Sam took on the drive home.

OK, two.  I feel like this tree most of the time these days.

A Getaway

After Sam was offered the temp job, it was on condition that he be ready and available to start between the 10th and the 15th of August, they would call when the engineer was ready.  We had missed going to Arizona for my nephew's wedding the week before because we didn't know when our next money was coming in.  We're still paying off hospital bills, and we'd paid for the car for the kids, so we were trying to make the rest stretch as long as possible.  The temp job was a decent wage, but no vacation or holiday pay, so no days off after we start.  We had to miss another family function on the 16th, for which we caught some grief, but you can only do what you can do.  We aren't in a position to be turning down jobs.

However, we had about four days before his possible first day, so, we ditched Meg with a friend for a couple of  days and took off for a little road trip.  I didn't know where we were going, I told him just don't take me anywhere hot, we had a VERY limited budget for motels and gas, and I didn't want to spend hours and hours in the car.  So 2-3 hours away was the max. We packed food so we could limit eating out and headed out.   I thought we'd go up the coast...or down the coast.  But, he headed inland, where it's not just hot, it's REALLY hot.

He said that he wanted to drive over Tioga Pass to the Eastern Sierras, there were several things that he wanted to photograph there.  It's all at about 8000-9000 feet, so how hot could it be?  The drive through Yosemite was pretty, as always, but there were about three million people there.  Very crowded.  We didn't spend too much time in the Valley, but headed up to Tioga Pass and Tuolumne Meadows.  It was a little less crowded up there, and we saw a couple of huge herds of elk, which was cool.

We came down the pass to Lee Vining, where we found out that every hotel was completely full.  Nada.  (This is why I don't like traveling without reservations in the summer)  North up Highway 395 was a little town called Virginia Creek that we remembered had a really good Italian Restaurant and a little motel.  We were hungry, so we headed up that way.  We got there and the only "room" they had left was a tent cabin.  It had a bed, but that was it.  Showers and potties were communal.  It sounded pretty cheap until they told us that it didn;t come with linens, it was another $25 to rent those.  We decided to call around while we ate dinner.  Apparently, since the last time we ate there, they have changed owners.  The food was not great, but at least it was a lot more expensive.  But, while we ate, I managed to find a decent hotel up the road in Bridgeport.

The next morning we got up before dawn and head down to Mono Lake to take some sunrise pictures.  It's really a surreal place, an alkaline lake with "tufas"; towers made from mineral deposits.  A friend pointed out that since they are white and have seagulls sitting on them, they look like piles of seagull doo.  He's kind of right about that!   The sunrise was beautiful though.

We hung out at the lake until about 9 or 10 in the morning, when it started to get a little too hot for hiking around.  For us coastal-dwellers, anyway.  It was getting on up towards 90F.  My Arizona family will scoff at that, but I've been living in 65F weather for 17 years, I don't do "hot" well at all.  We decided to drive down to Mammoth Lakes as I've never been there.  There's a place near there called Devil's Postpile that Sam has always wanted to take photos of.  He hadn't been there in years....he used to ski there when he was growing up in Bakersfield.  When we got there, it was still pretty hot, even though we were at 8000-8500 feet.  But, we are definitely not used to the altitude.  I think we could have handled the heat OR the altitude, but the combination was hard on us sea-level sea-breeze dwellers.

Anyway, Devil's Postpile turned out to be a little bit over-hyped, but it was still an interesting place.  We waited until very late in the afternoon, so it would be a bit cooler and there would be fewer people around while he tried to photograph it.  Apparently, it is an area where basalt pushed up during a volcanic eruption, and then cooled slowly enough to create these long hexagonal crystals that are about 18 inches across.  It looks like a lot of columns lined up on the edge of this cliff.  At the base of the cliff is a long talus slope of hexagonal pillars.  It looks like someone carved them all.  Definitely like nothing I've seen before.

Earlier in the day, we had driven up to a lookout point called Mineret Lookout (or something like that).  As we were leaving Devil's Postpile, it was getting dark and we passed the turnoff to Mineret again.  Sam had been wanting to try and do some star photos somewhere where it was really clear and dark.  We decided this was the place.  We drove up to see if it was open at night.  Turns out that it was open, and a popular star-gazing place so we had lots of company.  We were at just above 10,000 feet, miles from any town or city. The stars were spectacular, and the Perseid Meteor shower was just beginning, so we saw many shooting stars.  It had cooled down to about 75F, with a tiny breeze so the weather was perfect for doing lots of time exposures.  This is one my favorites, the full resolution version is spectacular.  We were very pleased with our first attempt. If you click on any of these pictures, by the way, you can see a bigger version.

We spent the night in a little hotel on June Lake, with a lovely view of the lake.  The next morning we heard it was supposed to be even hotter (they had broken records in nearby Death Valley the day before), so we decided it was time to return to our ocean breeze.  

We drove home back over Tioga Pass and could NOT get over how many more people had arrived since a couple of days before.  It was still a weekday and everyplace was packed.  We rarely go to Yosemite during peak tourist season, partly because it's hot, but mostly because it's amazing and kind of disturbing how many tourists you can pack into that valley.  Yeesh!  But, we managed to find a quiet little lake/pond with ducks and dragonflies to sit and eat our lunch before we drove the rest of the way home.

It was a short trip, only a couple of days, but it did a lot to restore Sam's spirits and it was good to get away without any schedules, people to please, etc.  

About a week into his temp job, he got a call from Cisco Systems.  One of his engineer buddies had submitted Sam's resume there, and they wanted to talk to him.  He's had a couple of phone interviews there so far.  It would be nice, Cisco has nice benefits and they are willing to let him work at home part of the time.  That is especially nice, as their campus is not really in an easy-commute area.  The other possibility is that he does well for this contracting company and they keep him permanently. They don't offer benefits, so it'd be a tight squeeze because we'd have to cough up $1400/mo to keep our insurance, but it's better than nothing.  

So, we'll just keep doing what we're supposed to be doing and I'm sure the Lord will continue to look out for us one way or another, as He's always done.

Windows of Heaven

SOOO much going on, no time to post.  So, I'm going to try and do it in small bites.

First, the day after I wrote the last post, Sam was laid off of his job.  No warning, 1 week severance.  The owners of that company are not the most trustworthy of people, we weren't surprised.  Sam had a couple of altercations with one of the owners, over really stupid stuff, and where they had him working, they just didn't have enough work to keep him busy.  They wanted him there 8 hours a day, so they could bill for 8 hours, but he didn't have more than 1 or 2 hours of actual work to do.  Sam is not good at the "looking busy" thing, when there is nothing to do.  Anyway, whatever, it's done now.  

We went through our usual "Woo hoo, vacation!"  (Sam, of course) and "Oh, crud, NOW what do we do"  (me, of course).  The first few days, there was absolutely nothing showing up on any of the usual sites, but Sam mobilized his vast network of engineer and designer buddies, and we went into "money diet" mode, reducing the grocery budget, no movies, etc.  I have a huge long list of stuff that needs to be done around the house, so Sam went to work on that.  

When they laid him off, they paid him also for his accrued vacation.  So, we got a regular check and a slightly bigger vacation pay check.  I figured out how long it should last.  I worried about how long it would take him to find a job.  We had just quite a bit to fix up the Daewoo for Ry and Sue to take back to Utah.  Sunday came, the bishopric already knew about our situation and offered any help.  But we have some money in the bank, and food storage and I figured we'd be OK for a while.  I had to pay tithing on both of those checks, however, and it wasn't an insignificant amount.  Even though I have a testimony of tithing, it's hard to pay it when you don't know when or where your next money will come from.  

The next week, we got a call from someone with a temporary job.   It's for six weeks, but it's for a design house, so if they like his work, they could reassign him and keep him busy longer.  No benefits, so we'll have to figure out how to pay the health insurance premiums, but whatever, we won't starve.  Not that either of us are in danger of that for awhile, anyway.  Meg is another story.  ;0)

Yesterday, Meghan decided to finally memorize the last Old Testament scripture mastery scripture.  We went to look it up, and found that it was Malachi 3:10: 

Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

The windows of heaven have been opened for us, and we are grateful.

All is Well!

I know I just posted yesterday. But, I've been thinking about this for the last week, and yesterday's post was already getting too long. Today is Pioneer Day, a holiday in Utah, and celebrated by Mormon's all over the place. It's the anniversary of the day in 1847, when, after walking 1300 miles, the first Mormon wagon company reached the Great Salt Lake Valley and Brigham Young said, “This is the place!”. Between that date and the day the transcontinental railroad was completed, about 70,000 people crossed the great plains in either covered wagons, or handcarts.

I had ancestors in several of those companies, at least two several-times-great grandmothers who died on the journey. One buried “somewhere on the plains of Iowa”, another in Nebraska. I am proud of my pioneer heritage, and that my ancestors were not afraid to embrace the gospel when they heard it. Even though it meant being chased out of their homes time and again. And, finally,  journeying by foot and wagon to a place where they hoped they could live in peace and build the Kingdom of God.

I don't, however, believe that my pioneer heritage makes me better than any other member of the church.  Everyone has some “pioneer” in him. My friend who joined the church as a teenager and escaped a pretty rotten childhood to become an amazing mom is a pioneer in her family. My Jordanian friend who actually got thrown in jail for joining “that American church” is a pioneer. As is my Pakistani friend, who finally had to escape Pakistan with his family, as their lives were threatened.

President Uchtdorf, an Apostle, said “For many members of the Church, these words bring to mind valiant pioneers who abandoned the comfort of their homes and traveled by wagon and on foot until they reached the valley of the Great Salt Lake. I love and honor the faith and courage of those early pioneers of the Church. My own ancestors were living an ocean away at the time. None were among those who lived in Nauvoo or Winter Quarters, and none made the journey across the plains. But as a member of the Church, Iclaim with gratitude and pride this pioneer legacy as my own.

With the same joy, I claim the legacies of today’s modern-day Church pioneers who live in every nation and whose own stories of perseverance, faith, and sacrifice add glorious new verses to the great chorus of the latter-day anthem of the kingdom of God.”

The anthem he's referring to, is “Come, Come, Ye Saints”, which was written by William Clayton in 1846, somewhere in Iowa, as the Saints struggled through mud for several months to travel the 300 miles to Winter Quarters, where they would spend the winter. I played it Sunday for Sacrament Meeting, I love cranking the organ up for that song! And the lyrics are as appropriate today, as they were then:

Come, come ye Saints
No toil nor labor fear,
But with joy wend your way.
Though hard to you the journey may appear,
Grace shall be as your day.
Tis better far for us to strive
Our useless cares from us to drive.
Do this, and joy your heart will swell,
All is well, all is well.


Why should be mourn,
Or think our lot is hard?
Tis not so, all is right.
Why should we think to earn a great reward
if we now shun the fight?
Gird up your loins,
Fresh courage take,
Our God will never us forsake.
And soon we'll have this tale to tell:
All is well, all is well!

My pioneer heritage is a reminder to me that we CAN do hard things, with the Lord's help. We probably won't have to walk 1300 miles with a covered wagon or handcart, but the times we live in make many things more difficult than they were 150 years ago. It's a different kind of “hard thing” we are called to do, to stand up for truth and virtue when it's not popular. To raise children who love God in a culture that sees the things of God as nothing and the Bible as a mythology. But, with faith in God, we can do all things.

This is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing "Come, Come Ye Saints". I picked this particular video, because I like this arrangement of the song, and because I like that the lyrics are there for someone who doesn't know them

Berries, berries, berries, plums...

There's a lot going on here these days, none of it particularly interesting. Sue and I made a boatload of olallieberry jam. If you've never had ollalies, you've missed out. They are a cross between a blackberry, a loganberry and some other berry that I can't remember...maybe raspberry. They are almost as big as blackberries, but with a lot fewer seeds. The juice is reddish-purple, but stains everything blue (go figure...pomegranates do the same thing). Anyway, here is the “before” pic of our lovely berries. No, we did not pick them ourselves, we are much too busy for that (ha!). Actually, they are thorny, stickery bushes and you only save $1/lb that way. We bought 10 lbs: for $10, I'll let someone else get stuck, thankyouverymuch.  This pic makes them look like they have little white spots..it's just the reflection of the flash or something.

Here is the “after” picture. Lots of lovely bottles of jam, and two quart bottles of syrup that were still cooking when I took the picture.

No, we don't eat that much jam. However, since very few people even get to taste olallies (they only grow here and I think in Oregon/Washington....and they are never in the stores), we give a lot away as gifts so that people who don't live here can enjoy them, and maybe want to come visit during berry season. The syrup will be gone quickly...Sue has a “thing” for coconut pancakes with berry syrup.

Someone at work gave Ryan a huge bag of plums. They are already ripe and sometime today will probably be close to the edge of what a good Mormon girl can eat/drink....soooo....more jam is in the forecast for today. Fun. At least it isn't hot here. I remember canning stuff in the summer in Arizona with my mom. We would go out and pick grapes, or plums, or apricots, or whatever, then come home and steam up our house canning, because the 115F that it was outside just wasn't hot enough. In San Jose, I set up a big propane burner on the porch and canned my zillion quarts of tomatoes outside. It was nice because that burner could boil my big canner in about 3 minutes, and it wasn't heating up my already-hot kitchen. Here, in the morning, it's actually kind of chilly, and a big steaming pot of something is no big deal.

Even though canning/preserving is a lot of work, I get a certain satisfaction from knowing exactly what is in my jar of tomatoes, pickles, salsa etc. I especially like it when I preserve what we grow ourselves. Makes me feel like pioneer woman or something, I guess. A throwback to my Arizona/Utah pioneer ancestors. When we were building this house, and had so much room to grow things I was pretty excited. We planted several fruit trees and anticipated the garden we would have.

But, we didn't plant a garden this year. We need to get a better handle on how to keep the “neighbors” (gophers, rabbits, squirrels, deer, snails) out of it, without resorting to poisoning anything. Too many little people around here for that. We put chicken wire under the raised beds for the gophers, put a fence around it for the deer, but the snails, the rabbits and the squirrels ate the last garden to the ground in a week. Everything was growing nicely, we left for a week and came back to nothing. Very discouraging. I love all of God's creatures, but they should leave my zucchini alone. OK, they can have SOME zucchini, but NO PEAS. Or beans. Or corn. Or tomatoes.....

This picture is just because we had a lovely day at the beach last week, and Normie and Zerin got to fly kites.  ;0)

4th of July Celebrations

Sam loves taking kids out to the tidepools in Davenport.  So, even though we'd just been there, when Salah wanted to take his family, Sam offered to take them the morning of the 4th.  Unfortunately, low tide on the 4th was at 5:30 am.  Davenport is about an hour up the coast, so we met at 5:00 am (ugh) and headed up there.  Meg, Ry and Sue opted to stay home and sleep.  Party poopers.

It was foggy and overcast, but not too cold and we saw all kinds of critters.  I've decided that when it's overcast, it's better to see all the beautiful anemones because they seem to close up when the sun comes out.  These were very big, about 6 inches across.

Here is Laith, poking at some little ones.  He got a kick out of poking them and making them close.

This is Zaid.  He still wasn't walking, so Erin just plopped him down next to a little tidepool and let him play.  He looked like he was having a great time.  Such a cutie pie!

Sam tried to do some family pics while we were there, but it's hard to get two toddlers to cooperate at the same time.  I like this one, anyway.  

After a couple of hours, we decided to head home, by way of the bakery in Davenport.  We had croissants for breakfast, then headed home.  Sam, Meg and Ryan went to a movie, then managed to disappear for several hours.  Susan and I made the food for the party at The Compound, and then headed over to prepare for the real festivities.

We had the Compound families there, plus two more families, so it was a pretty big crowd.  We had enough food to feed the whole town of Marina, though.  We had tri tip, hot dogs, smoked pork, hamburgers, chicken schwerma, about 10 salads, and Erin made the hugest, most beautiful flag cake with strawberries, blueberries and raspberry and pudding filling.  It was awesome.  We cranked up our sound system, had a family dance, an original song performed by the girls (Meg, Isabel, Phoebe, Tenny, Anya and Normie), and just sat around a visited.  Six yr old Normandy learned to ride her first 2-wheeler, courtesy of Shaunna's twins, who brought their bikes with them.  Fourteen month old Zaid took his first steps late in the afternoon to much cheering.  

At dusk, we turned the sound system to patriotic music and started our fireworks.  This year, instead of each family bringing a few (usually small) things, we pooled our money and bought much better stuff.  I think it was our best fireworks show since lame Monterey cancelled the city show.  It didn't hurt that there were all kinds of illegal sky rockets going up in the neighborhoods around us.  My nephew Tanner was very excited, because he'd never seen any fireworks, except on television.  First we went through about 200 sparklers:  here's Heather, handing them out.

Here's Susan, dancing with her sparklers with Zoe.

Then, we had Meg and Isabel draw a "Line of Death" in chalk to keep the kids back, and the guys set off the  other fireworks.  

It was a pretty awesome show for home fireworks.  I enjoyed it, the kids seemed to love it.  I miss the big show over the Bay that the city used to do, but this was fun, too.  Sam got a few really cool pics...I really like this one.

Happy Birthday, USA!  I love my country, even as I wonder what our future is now, with the current political polarization.  I"m grateful for the freedoms we have and for the sacrifices our predecessors made to secure those freedoms.  I have ancestors that came over on the Mayflower to escape religious persecution, and ancestors who walked across the American plains for the same reason.  I have family members who have served in the military.  I have many, many friends who serve in the military now all over the world.  I am grateful to them for the personal sacrifices they make to live the military lifestyle, who send their spouses where they are needed while they hold down the fort at home.  I've seen some of the struggles and worries and I know that it's not easy.  They are always in my prayers. 

God bless America!