Fiddler!

I think the video must be too big of a file to post and I can't edit it to make it shorter. It's really kind of short, anyway--not even the whole song. Wish you could hear it. I'll keep trying. If you have advice on how to save or load it, I'm open to suggestions.

Fall

Above is a picture of my house. It's hiding there, snuggled under the bright yellow leaves. Below you will see a picture of the beautiful view that greets Eric's eyes as he walks down the street to school each morning these days.

Fall is my favorite time of year. It's not the apples. (See previous post). It's the colorful leaves, the crisp and cool air. It's the contrast of the bright blue sky against the complementary oranges, yellows and reds. And It's the crunchy leaves under foot and under tires of my bike. I go out of my way to crunchy piles just to hear them. I love the beautiful fall wreath I frequently take the time to make during these fleeting months. Fall is definitely the best time of year. Mike and I were married in the Fall, we spent our honeymoon up in the colorful High Uintah Mountains. I also like Halloween because of the candy and chocolate. What's not to like about fall? The pressure of Christmas coming all-too-soon? Maybe. But I'm great about forgetting about stressful things like that. I just crunch on through the leaves, laughing and smiling all the way.

How would you like to come with me on my ride to work each day? Here's a photo essay of my daily commute.
Enjoy!

Overhanging trees just seem to embrace you has you travel down the street.

These are greeting me at the back door entrance of my library.

The flags were still this morning. The are usually blowing in the breeze. I just love the contrast with the heather-y bushes and red rock in the planter below the flag poles with the striking tree in the background.

The view above and the view below are both of 700 west, two different blocks. It's my main thoroughfare and a really pretty ride.

And finally, below is the beautiful view that greets us as we walk out of our house and towards the street to face the day. What's not to like? The sunny yellow cheer can start anyone's day on a brighter note. Hope it did just that for you!

Salt Lake City Homes

The blue home is 436 South 13th East, SLC UT. I was told it was the Sorensen Home, where Bob lived with his folks, Aunt Blanche and Uncle Ollie and the Sorensen Grandparents (Virgil's father and mother)

The very dark green house is at 677 South 6th East, SLC, UT. I was told (by Mom) that this was the house that Virgil's Aunt Anna (Anne? Annie?) lived in. And then there's a couple of initials by my notes which I made 2 years ago when I visited Mom -- "M.S." I have no idea what that M.S. after the name Aunt Anna means. Any suggestions? I thought the "S" was probably Sorensen, but who knows. And I've heard of Annie, but I definitely wrote "Anna" in my address book. Weird.

The white house is the Coles' home at 618 8th Ave.

It's fall

It's fall here, too, and here is a picture of my apple tree out back. I had thought I did such a good pruning job in the spring. NOT! It's a big bush. And the garden and back yard are a mess, too. But someday we'll get around to cleaning. I mean, it takes so much time to update this blog all the time! ha.

Mike turned 54, uh, I mean 55. I actually put the wrong candles on the first time. Silly me. I did get it right the second time.









I had fun up north with Robert and family, too. Will try to find the pictures of the old Sorensen homes to share. I'm not really sure on the names, but will include the addresses.

And I'm enjoying the art class I've been taking. It takes a lot of time out of my week. Perhaps I can photograph a little painting I've done and post it, too? Its that too braggy? Zion overlook.

Tahoe the Beautiful

We went to Reno this past weekend plus a few days. Silly me, I never even thought to take a picture of Katie and Casey while we were there. We did have a nice time with Katie on Saturday evening. Casey worked late, so we didn't see much of him. Katie showed us her downtown bicycle beat and we met her partner who was on duty (she was OFF duty and got to spend time with her parents and little brother!). The River Walk in Reno is beautiful. Lots of water features and statues, fountains, etc. We went to church on Sunday with Katie and then after watching an afternoon movie (and Katie napped through it), Mike and Eric and I headed over to Lake Tahoe to check into our hotel. It was very "lodge" looking with log furniture, etc. The pool was great!
Mike and I went to hear the time share presentation on Monday morning while Eric slept in and ate, then we had a bite to eat and went to Zypher Beach to paddle around in a canoe for a while. It got kind of rough and nearly tipped us over! Back at the hotel, we swam in the pool and relaxed.
Tuesday, the three of us headed over to the South West side and visited the Forest Service visitor's center, saw a really cool fish chamber viewing thing like an aquarium. We wandered through some historic sites that are either restored or in the process of being restored. Playgrounds of the rich and famous who were some of the first to recreate in Tahoe during the summers. Beautiful places! We drove on in the afternoon towards Emerald Bay and took in those historic sites and nature and beauty, too. It was a mile hike down into the shore of Emerald Bay, but Mike did it--sore knees and all. Eric and I left him waiting while we went on another shorter hike to see Cascade Falls and Glacier Lake. It was all so beautiful and green and pretty. We only saw one small area of forest that was burned, but it was VERY close to the town! Whew!
I'll attach pictures. Wish me luck. You can see them all at yorkphoto.com.
E-mail me for the password or with your e-mail to see them and I'll share.

How Many Librarians???!!

Twenty thousand. Yep. 20,000 librarians in one spot for many days at the American Library Association Conference in Washington, D.C. June 21-27, 2007. And I was lucky enough to be able to attend! I went with the Library Director from my library, and the Associate Library Director. His wife also came along. So there were four of us there from Cedar City. I heard the Cedar City public library director was also there, but I never ran into him. I was there for Friday, Saturday, Sunday and part of Monday.

I've never been to Washington DC before, so I was really looking forward to it. I thought I might have a chance to see a few sites, and luckily I did. I also spent many hours in workshops and presentations. I learned a lot and had a lot of fun. I ate out with my associates, shared a room at a lovely hotel with my boss, Diana, and just had an over all great time! I also walked and rode a lot of miles around the downtown area and am almost confident about heading in the right direction--that's saying a LOT for a directionally disfunctional person like I am.

I'm just going to post a few pictures of me enjoying the sites. Till later!

This is me on the bike tour at the WWII Memorial. Very nice spot. I did manage to see a few sites and enjoyed them all. It is a great city.

Below is the Smithsonian "Castle." Pretty flowers. Some more of the Bike Tour. (Bike the Sites--nifty company!) Yeah, well. I don't know quite how to move the photos around to make them look better. The top one is a statue of Einstein. They say that if you rub his nose, some of his knowledge will rub off on you.

This last one is of my favorite sculpture (well, one of them) at the Renwick Gallery, one of the Smithsonian Museums I stumbled across on my walk one day. It's a solid piece of walnut, carved to look like it is coverd up in white cloth. Really.

Is there a Doctor in the House?

Yep, now we have one. Damian received his degree from Western University of Health Sciences, College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific on Friday the 11th of May. We are very proud of him. I'll try to add a picture or two on to this blog, but it's still a challenge for me to do things like that.

Mike and I also attended Damian's Military Commissioning dinner on the night before. He has risen from being an Ensign in the Navy to a Lieutenant (sp?). He will be doing his internship at the Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego, California. He'll report in June sometime. But in the meantime he has to find a place for his family to live! That's what he's doing now.

We were going to spend Saturday at Magic Mountain, but Mike got sick and we came home instead. He's still kind of sickly today, even a day later. Eric and I both had a bug last week, but it didn't affect us for nearly so long as Mike's has. Poor guy.

We had a really fun luncheon after Damian's graduation in Pasadena. The graduation was held at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium (very classy place and quite old and ornate), and across the street is a new and trendy mall. 45 friends and family members gathered for a fun lunch and visit time at the "Yard House" restaurant in the mall. Damian and his friend and classmate Brian both continued to wear their graduation robes, so folks walking past our huge group on the way in could see what the party was about --those two young men, and about three or 4 others not in robes still. It was most of the LDS classmates who got together. Lots of kids, babies and grand parents, siblings. Damian had all 4 of his siblings there to see him graduate. I was the lucky one who placed the hood over his head in the ceremony. His college has a long tradition (the school itself is only 30 years old!) of allowing family members to "hood" the graduate. That was fun for me. It was a busy weekend, but now I know the Pasadena freeway really well because I drove/rode it 6 times between attending the Military banquet, the graduation and swimming afterwards.

Mike and I the the kids who came with us (Gail, Nick, Eric and Caroline) stayed in Chinatown. It was. . .ummm...shall we say adequate? An adventure? I'm glad we didn't have any babies with us. Caroline and Gail's room seemed a bit cleaner and less smokey-smelling than mine and Mike's and the boys. And those boys are boys. Well, I should have stayed in the Girls' room! Katie was there for one night, too. She spent a few days in Disneyland with Damian and family, and even met up with her mother-in-law, Michelle, for a while because Michelle was there, too.
It was so fun having all the kids around. Friday afternoon, Gail and Katie and I all went shopping in Chinatown for a couple of hours. I didn't bring my camera to that, so they will have to share pictures at some other time. Soon, we hope.

Congratulations, Damian!

Ninja Turtle?

Someone suggested that the Turtle Cake looked like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cake. Ha!
Or, as Nick would have said as a 4-5 year old, "Teenage Butane Engine Turtle."

Turtle Cake

Nick and I baked a cake for Alexa's 4th birthday. I baked, he decorated. It's a turtle, in case you can't tell. Eric called it an "Asian Turtle." Because of the almond-shaped eyes.
:-)

Weekend in Vegas

We didn't really spend the weekend in Las Vegas. Just a few hours. It's one of the few times--maybe the ONLY time--I've ever been to that town and not come home with my hair smelling of cigarette smoke! We drove Mike's parent's down to a wedding. It was their great-granddaughter's wedding. It was quite the shin-dig. Me, Mike and Nick also went. Eric was off to a music competition in Salt Lake City (where he earned superior ratings in his competition). As some of you may know, Mike's dad suffered a mild stroke a few weeks ago. He is not doing too badly. The speech all returned, but his balance has been off for a while and probably will not be returning any time soon. So he falls. A lot. Usually he scrapes himself up or bonks his head or something. He's short, so doesn't have very far to fall, thankfully. Well, that Saturday morning, he really took a tumble. Doesn't know how or why, but he hit his head on the wood-burning stove in their living room. Or on the stone hearth. Either way, he ended up with a very big gash in his brow-forehead and a bunch of stitches that his grandson, Dr. Damian, came over to give him that morning. John also got taken in to have a CAT scan to make sure there was no serious interior damage. So we went to Vegas anyway, glorious stitches and all.
We left around 1 pm and were home by midnight. We visited some other family in Las Vegas that we hadn't seen in a bit, spent 3 hours at the wedding. It was at some reception center called "Rainbow Gardens." It was a nice and very fancy, but kind of Las Vegas-y production. I think the MC or DJ actually said, "Let's get ready to RUUUMMMBLE! when introducing the wedding party! ha. It was fun to visit with Vernal folks who had come down for the festivities. They fed us a nice buffet dinner with prime rib after the wedding and about 5,000 pictures, but we had to wait till 8 pm our time to get it. We just ate and left, knowing that it would be very late before we got back to Cedar.

The funniest part of the evening was when Mike was walking his Dad around. John's not very stable and not very fast. I guess Mike figures his Dad needs to exercise more, because he doesn't slow his pace a whole lot. Coming back from one of the many trips to and from the bathroom with John, Nick looked over at them walking our way. John with his dark glasses, stitches in his head, a cane, very pale and VERY old-looking, barely keeping up with Mike and Nick said to me, "Ever seen that movie 'Weekend at Bernie's'?" We about fell out of chairs laughing. The scene was so familiar. Nick tried to snap a picture discreetly with his camera phone. Then, the next morning I tried telling Mike that he needed to go look at a picture Nick took last night, but in the process of telling him, I COULD NOT stop laughing either. Kind of mean, I know. But it looked just like the movie! And Mike laughed, too, just thinking about how they must have looked. Too funny.

And John and Berenice BOTH survived the day and the night and even made it to church the next day. That's the first time John's been to church other than Nick's homecoming since his stroke the end of March. So he's very much alive. ha. NOT like Bernie.

Gail and Seth spent part of the weekend at our house, too. Seth and Caroline went camping, Gail met up with them later, and Gail got to spend some good quality time with her best friend from high school and the new fiance. The friend's wedding and reception is the day we'll be in California for Damian's graduation from Medical school. Gail and Caroline are coming with us. Seth, Gail and Caroline even came to church with us, too. Last week was Earth Day and Eric tried to convince us to walk. But it was COLD last week, I had to haul teaching materials and we drove. This week, my excuse was uncomfortable shoes. Eric, Seth, Gail and Caroline walked and were very late. I have no idea why they didn't drive when they knew how late it was!

We just had a nice fun family Sunday. After church, Damian came over with his kids. Tandy wasn't feeling well, so he just came to get them out of her hair for a while I think. So we had all our grandkids here for a while and the weather was so gorgeous. We played 'roll the ball' in the front yard, and frisbee. Pretty soon there will be irrigation water running in the gutter so we can have boat races, too! Yea!

Well, I've decided to join the blogging sphere, too. Can't say that I'll be able to do much at first, but I'll give it a shot. Thanks for getting us going!