PROVIDENCE UPDATE

Hi ya'll, I'm only about six months behind in my updates.  Waaaaaaat's with that Gloria????

November - had delicious apricot tree felled as it thought it was Jack's beanstalk and grew to altitudes above our reach and then produced only 3 pieces of fruit.  Now that has opened up space for lots of sunshine to come into area for other growing fruits and vegetables.  I'll have to fine another outlet for apricots now.

 Remember that area in front of Holly's window that many of you helped move all those red rocks for her future garden/rock path area?





Well it became of nice deer bed during the past winter months for several nice pieces of venison that Papa would have enjoyed.  Ha!

 While the redheads were at SLC Irish Dancing Feis late mid November, Haedyn and dad came to Providence and he was able to make friends with GiGi.

 Jake was another story though as he kept hiding under forts he's make on Holly's bed, in her SS or another otherplace he could find.

Here's a nice shot of Jake's shadow outside with GIGI looking through the blinds.

Then to the right is GiGi's favorite chair in the parlor.  It's nice and warm and where papa used to sit for same reason.

 Haedyn was good to help Brook and Holly with fall cleanup.

 Then went with Grandma Gloria for car service before our trip to AZ

While we were waiting, we played some ping pong.

 Then  one day he and GG made ginger cookies.

 On our way to church.  He looks very handsome in his Sunday duds.

He loved laying games with aunt Holly and even better when he won!  And
she really enjoyed having him so she could play on her Wii.

Holly prepared the turkey for our 

Thanksgiving dinner together with Brook and Sunshine family as well as Marian, Sunshine's mom.

A week after arriving at the hacienda I hired some guys to fell another tree, take down a broken down shed and plaster, stucco, front of house,   Put three heavy duty coats of plaster on roof after doing some repair for rotted wood, put in new rain gutters, paint foyer, doors, metal gates, and put in two new sliding glass doors from AZ room to patio.  Glad to have that done especially with all the rains ahead down there.

In Dec. Santa left his red bag at my house filled with lots of wonderful gifts.

Then I joined Brady, Mary and Hannah for a wonderful  trip with long flights to AUS and New Zealand.

Those loooooooong flights were quite an experience, but the Christmas Day flight from HI to AUS there were only 60 on the plane.  That was great!

 Saw a seal as close as guide would let us get and then sharp eye Hannah found the rare Blue Pengui in Dunedin.

He's up in center of the cave.

As I've texted and talked about before it was quite a trip and experience that few get very often to fly and sail half way around the world.  

Holly is enjoying the spiralizer she received for Christmas as she replaces it for pasta and puts vegetables

into smoothies.  Amy Johnsond has lost 15 lbs, just using it that way.  She also enjoyed spending some time forJustin and Katie's family over Christmas.  This photo of Justin is of him wearing the new shirt she gave him.

SEP-OCT UPDATE

Holly couldn't wait to try out her new quilt as soon as I had finished binding it.  I think it will be special for her as she helped with the expense and  the tying.

  I finished cutting the dress bag scraps that Sunshine had saved for me and they were laid out in various designs, stacked and ready to box to travel to Green Valley.

I've been making fleece blankets to donate to CAPSA before I leave and Jake loves to help me and has chosen the pattern he wants for his Christmas present.

Several weeks ago I spent a delightful afternoon with cousin John and his son Bryan who lives in Ohio and is now flying out every 2-3 months to help his dad out with "honey do" items around house and with John's finances and loss of his mother and his dad's adjustment to that loss.  I haven't seen him for 19 years and it was nice to see him again as John talks about him all the time.  I took them lots of fruits, vegetables from gardens and baked goods that are Johns favorites.

Holly has seen all the browns and greens that are falling all over our yard (just there for the taking) and knows that they could be doing their thing as they breakdown in a compost pile.  So she bought "Composting for Dummies" and found that composting doesn't have to be an elaborate thing as some people get into, but be as simple but effective as one likes.  So she began last week with a combination of leaves, paper, cardboard (browns) and has added our fruit and vegetable refuse (greens) to the mix.
She will turn it every so often and it will be great to add to garden next spring. I'm all for it and say "Good Going" HollySue!

We've had a great apple crop this year as all four trees grew quite a good yield.  A wet spring and delayed ripening of them produce delicious apples but they aren't as red as this ceramic one on kitchen cabinet.  But I've been canning and freezing some and giving lots away to neighbors and friends to enjoy.  There are still quite a few on the tree next to garage that haven't ripened enough yet, but should soon as we've been getting down to freezing temps these past 10 days.

I'm trying to practice the art of patience in waiting to have workmen come in and complete the jobs that are on their dockets at the Howells' home.   The front room is still a mess as the drywall water damage at front window has not been finished.  The stucco guy says he'll repair all the little stucco hole damage those pesky woodpeckers and magpies have caused at end of this month when he can work me in.  The side hill needs trimming, the fruit trees are sickly do various bad stuff caused by wet spring and they need to be sprayed, but that can't be done until all the leaves are off trees.  Then they need to be pruned as that hasn't been done for two years.

I've been feeling pretty good except for the days when I'm doing lots of physical work that requires turning my head up, down and around and the vertigo blast gets my attention.

I guess that'll do it for now......mom

Canadian Thanksgiving

Who needs Columbus Day when you can have another Thanksgiving dinner?

AUGUST UPDATE

What a busy month this has been - maybe that's why it has flown by.  This is my Hansen cousin John Ream who like my father would have been allowed to enter Great Grandfather Smith's huge library because he loves and appreciates good books.  When I took another meal up to him last week he showed me his new huge monitor that allows him to read his Kindle with two pages on the screen.  He was very excited about it.  This has been a very hard month for him as his dear wife, Virginia,  died  end of July from conditions associated with having Alzheimer's for about 20 years.  He's been her sole caregiver in giving over his life to that service.  In that computer room which he has named Ginger's Place he allowed me to view her  in a lovely silver urn along with flowers and other mementos of hers.  It has become a shrine because they spent many of these last years eating, talking, watching TV, reading to her, etc and I'm probably one of the few who have ever been in it.  I know I'm the only cousin who knows Virginia has passed on because he's a very private person and doesn't want a lot of hoop-la made of it.  We've gone way back together, as he helped to tend me when Kate was born, helped refer me to the right people for my job at Thiokol after grad from USU, our love of ancestors, literature, great music, both of us dealing with Alzheimer's care giving, etc and he loves all the goodies I make, bake and deliver to him from spring to winter.

The fellow who was going to put a new roof on house died two weeks ago.  He was such a nice guy so I'll have to find someone else now.  The guys are working on the rain gutters as I type will add two more rain spouts out back.  And yes Justin you and Jesse were correct about the corners needing lots of work.

I finally can see fairly well now, yea!  Best I can hope for with the issues in left eye, but it's sooooo much better than all summer long.  When I picked them up from  office I found out that a high school  friend had finally died of brain tumors after a long three year fight.  I don't take local paper so missed her obit and felt so badly that I'd missed her funeral.  Quite a few of the deco in this house are her works of art.

Two weeks ago dear friends from A. F life drove up to Logan for lunch and four hours of talking as fast as we could to catch up.  I wasn't quite ready to drive to Heber City with old glasses and chest pain so they came up here.  Barbara, who joined our widow's club 5 months ago listened to some of the ways Hi and I dealt with loss of our mates.  Soooo good to see them again.

Then last week with new glasses, I drove to West Jordan to Sally's home and met Barbara there.   I programmed her address into my new car's navigation system and Maggie got me through heavy traffic just great.  These two were my closest friends during our missions together and we also talked as fast as we could for about 3.5 hours.  They're already talking about another get together in October.  We'll see......  We exchange recipes and patterns.

I've been wrapping many wedding gifts this summer for youngsters in the ward, cutting and arranging blocks for next quilts.  Holly got so excited about one of Sunshine's bag material that she asked if I would make her another quilt.  She's purchasing the needed items and will help me tie it when canning season is over.

After I left Sally's I met with Lance and Becky to do a session at the Jordan River temple.  It's been a long time since I've been with them and it was nice.  We ate dinner on their lovely  patio porch and enjoyed the cricket serenade with cute Zac and Leona (just had her 97th birthday.  I slept overnight so avoid heavy traffic back home.  The bed was so soft that I had  the best night's sleep in a long time - my bones loooooooooved it.  Sarah delivered a 5.10 oz baby girl (Indianna) after being on best rest for two weeks.  She came two weeks early and now she and Shad are living with Lance and Becky until Shad heads to Kuwait for a year.  Sarah and babe will stay with grandparents til he returns.

Holly said she texted that I'm up to 88 lbs this a.m.  So I guess eating and drinking  more salt and sugar diet is working.  I'm eating pretty much the things I've done for years, but adding the soy taco mix, and hummus, and ground nuts, bubble less smoothies, flat sugared root beer, Dr. Pepper, and more Ensure and adding powdered milk to anything plausible that I can think of.  I'm eating small peanut butter sandwiches made with dry peanut butter mix with just 4 grams fat is so fun to do again.  And some small bites of homemade candy or chocolates.  The costocronditis if still with me especially when Holly and I are canning.  I try not to overdue, but when I need to rest the pain eventually goes away which it didn't a month ago.  So hopefully I'm healing slowly but surely.  These salsa and marinara sauce recipes Holly and I are making come from our garden and a tomato farm in Mt. Sterling south of Logan.  They are delicious and meet both of our dietary needs (less oil, salt, sugar for her) etc.  She's taken over Dad's job of chopping peppers, onions, garlic, celery so it's nice to have help again.

The pears are falling and I need to do some cin pear jam- am getting low. and the apple are getting ripe.  Cucumbers are overflowing onto the grass and I'm done with dills so we're giving them away.  Have done lots of pickled beets and some for us to cook and eat and also giving many away as out crop was huge.  Our second planting of spinach is looking good and we both love eating a lot of it fresh from garden.  Kale is still there for my salads also.

well I thinks that's enough for today - making too many typos.

BTW - I got an email from Dan Courtney several weeks ago asking if I would be willing to give his accommodations a recommendation on our stay in La Jolla last summer.  I've been giving it some thought and knowing what some of your opinions might be have not responded yet.....
  

JULY update

Some of you haven't seen my new marlin blue car - rides much better than the Jeep, but since I've driven it only about 100 miles due to eyes and chest issues, how would I know????  HollySue thinks so.

I donated my wind torn flag to the local cub scout troop who gave it a respectful and touching burning ceremony.  I was in tears thinking how much dad did to preserve and protect its meaning to us.

The Howells climbers increased in last weeks when Katie, Drew, Derek and Brayden joined the previous members of Gloria, Brady, Brook, Sunshine and Justin in climbing up to famous Saddle Rock.  Hopefully this group will continue to expand and others make their try.

 While some of family were here the weather really cooperated for our activities.  And so did the raspberries!  They were are the peak of their production and it really was great to have so much help bringing in the crops.  They also helped make many bottles of jam to take home for "lickin good eatin" during next year.  Berries are just about done now only some of another variety are still producing for cereal, yogurt and raspberry pies for

friends.  The apricot tree was loaded with millions of blossoms when I returned in April, but then most were frozen.  So Holly got a few down for me yesterday and I found a few more this morning to eat with my yogurt so there will be not apricot jam, or nectar bottled this year.  I will not choose to give last year's supply away to every Tom, Dick and Harry from now on.

Holly and I are eating a lot of our home grown spinach, kale, her cherry tomatoes and her peas.

Grand kids and siblings helped Holy with her beautification project under the deck.  We'd donated most of the "farm treasurers" that dad and I used as decor in that area, but they were rusting and looking bad and we found others who had a nice use for them and hauled them away, yea!  We need a truck.


She had a challenging week (last) as she was back on the days testing team working with the new organic line of fish.  She had to get up at 5:00 most mornings, but one day it was 3:00 a.m. and she was spent everyday she came home.  Her friends want her to join them on days when the product is perfected and ready to go into production.  Not sure what she'll do yet but they'll have to twist her arm for sure I think.

I've had to deal with all sorts of techno problems last and this week which has been stressing me out big time.
MSN issues with possible hacking, changing passwords, which affected my iPhone connecting to computer, routers competing with each other causing Holly and I problems, printer issues and downloading photos easily like I used to.    Iieeeeeeeeoowwww,  I'm ready to go back to 2 party phone lines, Royal typewriters, and snail mail.........

When Justin and Jesse got on roof to check out how rest of the gutters were compared to the short one I cleaned out they found some were filled with sludge and leaves and some were not.  They covered the area under the Japanese maple and trimmed the branches with metal covers.  That tree is going to get a severe haircut this fall.  But Justin reported that the tiles were wearing and in crevices did not look good at all.  So I called Roger to get name of his roofer and Steve came over and check it out last week.

I guess I shouldn't have purchased that new car as roof is in bad shape.  It was guaranteed for 15 years and its coming up on 19 years soon. He said I was fortunate as this house really gets the brunt of storms and weather compared to where others are situated.  Six vents are bad as well.  He was up there a long time measuring it as it's a very large roof, but this was the house dad and I planned and built.  Next time I'll build a much smaller one, ha!

I'm awaiting the gutter/window man now to see what shape the gutters are in.  There was also some living room wall damage near curved top window that needs repair asap.

I'm so thankful for all the help this crew gave Holly and me on "Mom's Honey Do List" while I did lots of resting, reading and recovery work in the lounge chair.  HollySue was so nice to order one of these cute Tees for sibs and me - surprised me.

Got my new lenses -far sight is fabulous - can see better than in a looooooong time, but still trying to get used to the bi and trifocals.

Thanks for all your reminders and encouragement about drinking more (just had a drink) and I've started to keep cups and several glasses of various liquids out and around to remind me to do it.

Have good days and bad days with chest and still can't lift or pull or walk quickly without pain and shortness of breath.  Have docs appt next week and am going to see about finding a new doctor a well.

Glad that Haedyn is recovering well.  Too bad he and I can't share blood - his flows too fast and mine flows too slowly.....

JUNE UPDATE

What a very busy month this has been for me filled with so many fun as well as challenging things to do.  No wonder I go to Green Valley in winter.  It's much more restful down there.

I was so happy to attend Taegan's award ceremony several weeks ago.  She was chosen the most outstanding student in her Social Studies class.  I also got to view the great article she wrote after she interviewed me and used some great photos of his military life and experiences in Vietnam.  Good Going Tae!

Congratulations to Taryn on her graduation from Empire High School with honors.  She'll be representing the district at a medical conference in Boston at the end of this month.  She'll be attending UA this fall and has been working hard to obtain various scholarships for a free ride.  She's just about there.  Good Going Taryn.  Her mom had a big surprise party for her afterwards and I even had some of the delicious and professionally decorated cake that one of Sunshines's friends created for the occasion.

Our desert has turned into the rain forest as we've had over 5" of rain in May and  caused more flooding in fruit room so Holly put ladder up and I cleaned out the sludge of dirt and leaves (she has vertigo on ladders).  Then a terrible dusty wind storm went through yesterday afternoon causing all sorts of havoc with trees felled and two boating accidents on Bear Lake with loss of a doctor and three children's lives  So sad to hear and makes the four hours of our power outage a very minor inconvenience.  I must say our lawn looks gorgeous and Holly loves the new lawn mower I bought after that piece of junk that Ryan used for three years.

The felling of this beautiful silver maple wasn't caused by a wind storm but by environment.  It's been dying slow but sure for many years like all the other silver maples here in Providence.  Many have their opinions why, but nothing definitive.  So I had it taken down along with several other  large bushes and stumps ground out.  Holly and I were sure we had identified all the sprinkler heads so wouldn't have damage, but one of the hoses could'n't withstand that whirling blade and I had to have it repaired.

Amy made the mistake of coming over to ask us if we would watch her home while they were on 10-day cruise and we asked her to help Holly move dad's old potting bench down to patio where she has made a darling entrance to her place.  Holly has been fired up to get things in better shape as we both want it beautiful

 here without so much upkeep.  We're making good progress and she can tell when I'm done and sends me in the house.

She was selected to be on the team to develop the new organic line of fish that P. Farm wan'ts to introduce so she has been working days and getting up at 4:30 - 5:00 is not her cup of tea.

These are my Lewis cousins who love coming to my home for lunch following decorating the graves in Logan and Providence cemeteries.  It poured rain and some couldn't come due to family weddings, grads, or illness, but they all loved the delicious wraps that Holly was in charge of.  I was shocked at Bob's appearance and demeanor.  He's changed so much, aged a lot, shuffles around like a 100 year old man and I felt

badly that he's been damaged so much.  He and Kate have sold their P.C. cabin, their home near St. Geo, his motorcycle and expensive car.  Sharlyn came and after a fun family history jeopardy game put together by Lance she told us all about the woes in her and daughter Lisa's lives.

 When I went to Paradise to put flowers on Henry and Zella's grave I passed their former house with new addition that owner Brent Pulsipher put on.  I'd like to take a look inside when it's all completed.


Took a fabulous raspberry dessert to Uncle Del and Carol.  They are in mid 80's and he's not doing well with congestive heart failure which took Grandpa Henry.  They were surely glad to see me and they are the last of dad's older relatives in Paradise.

My right eye is looking great (yea), so says Dr. Young at my midday checkup today and he'll make a slit, (yipes) in the left eye when I return from keeping a blurry closeup eye on my CO blondes next week while Katie's at Girls Camp.

Some of you have heard via Facebook that I've gifted and am selling my beloved Pacifica to Taryn to drive to UA and wanted to know what I replaced it with.  Well, this is a beautiful slightly used silver Jeep Cherokee which came with all the safety items that a woman with deteriorating vision could want.  However, after 2.5 weeks I knew that it was not for a gal who weighed 87 lbs as it has a smaller wheel base made for sturdier bodies.  Holly said she would buy it but "Dave" would yell at her so she's made the good decision to stick to her debt free plan.  I've traded it in for another car that might suit my needs,  but had better drive it for 2.5 weeks before I trade it in..........