Simple Pleasures

"Simple pleasures are the best" and although Conference weekend is not a simple thing, it is a simple pleasure for all of us who get to revel in it. I have learned to love it more and more as the years go by and look forward to it so much. I love filling the house with the sounds of the prophets' voices and the waves of music flowing into our home and my soul. The most memorable talk for me was Elder Scott's talk on finding peace through prayer, home evening, temple attendance and one more that I can't remember right now. He was so earnest! I felt like he wanted to step out of the t.v. screen and speak to each of us personally it was so important to him that we heard his message. He told us we need to set aside time to include these practices in our daily lives they are so important. More important than sleep. It gave me lots of food for thought.

I also love the traditions of conference weekend. "Tradition! Tradition!" One of those is Saturday night Priesthood session and Navajo tacos. It's the only day of the year I do that. Kind of like cooking a turkey once a year for Thanksgiving. This year was special because Ethan joined us for the weekend from his freshman year at BYU. Dennis, Tony and Ethan attended Priesthood session at our Stake Center, while Cindy and the kids and I made a few crafts. This year I was kinda lame and couldn't think of anything to try except making soap but and the word "scent" was repeated more than once in the instructions and I realized I would probably be allergic to the perfumes. So the next best thing was to walk around JoAnn crafts and buy papers and stickers and watch the kids figure out what to make with them! I used some of the cutouts to decorate the plates that hang above the back door and took some of the extras to work and hung them from the ceiling tiles. I hope nobody in the Valley Mental Health hierarchy objects because they're there for the duration of the month of October. 

In the photo below, Lauren is wearing a t-shirt she got at the Neon Trees free concert in Provo the night before. Lucky!!! She is also doing homework, not crafts. Oh the responsibility of growing up. I think it was for driver's training too.

Another fun blurry phone photo. Shrinky dinks!!

 Eli built a little contraption. It had a battery and bolts.

When Ethan said he was able to come up for the weekend (or is it coming down when you travel from Provo?) I asked him to bring his laundry. I suggested he bring his bed sheets too, and then I told Angie I was taking bets as to whether or not he would actually do it. When he got here he said "Grandma my sheets are fine. I didn't bring them." I had to laugh. He also admitted he couldn't bring himself to consider the inconvenience of having to take them off and then put them back on again and I'll admit I was a little worried that once he returned to his dorm room they would conveniently stay at the bottom of his clothes hamper and he'd be sleeping on top of his bedspread until second semester. Part of me was thinking, "E, just think of what moms go through. Changing BUNKBED sheets is the WORST!" Yay moms.

Ethan's wash.

Here is the young man hard at work, studying in the red room.

Here are Calvin (and Cindy) doing a mighty action hero pose! 

....................I think Cal gets his moves from Grandpa Sweat! Look at Dennis's pose below from another day of well, not simple pleasures for Tony and Cindy, but yeah, simple pleasures for US! It was months of back-breaking work for Tony and Cindy, and then we got to go down and help put the frosting on the cake i.e. roll out some sod. I rolled out one piece. Their neighbors are great. You can see them helping in these photo, kids and all.

There's the empty lot where we had our family pictures taken (rocks removed).

After I rolled out my one roll of sod I snagged Eli and Vivi and we had piano lessons. Amy and I had been talking about method books and she mentioned the Fletcher series and a lightbulb went off in my head. THAT's the one I'd been missing! I am so glad we had that conversation. Here is Eli learning the much-loved "The Birch Canoe." That song does it all - nice exciting bass rhythm, minor key for building excitement, moving the thumb up to A flat is so easy and yet sounds so complicated. He loved learning it. It's a leap from the elementary songs to the harder ones. His eyes just lit up! Yay!

I'm pretty sure Tony and Cindy will never own a cat, but this cat adopted THEM. It's the neighbor's cat, lives outside, but has decided to shadow the Sweat family. He kinda reminds me of Magic.

Ta da!

Well, to close, 10 more simple pleasures.  I am teaching Relief Society next week, President Uchtcorf's talk on being grateful so am thinking about an attitude of gratitude:

1) The stillness of October.
2) Smartphones and being able to text and take photos and upload them to the computer (or is it download photos?)-down to Provo and download photos, or up to Provo and upload photos?).

3) Four children, their four spouses and 16 grandchildren forever and ever hallelujah Amen!
Here is one of them - Jane's 12th birthday party last week:


4) Good health
5) Music. I went to choir practice yesterday and there were quite a few people there (plus the accompaniest brought her three adult children who have voices like angels. I hope they hang on with the choir until we sing at Stake Conference in two weeks. We're getting a new stake presidency. President Sohm served for 10 years and I was blessed many times over to get to serve with him. At choir practice I was pressing on the side of my throat while I attempted to sing and it was so interesting to feel the vibrations and hear how it changed the sounds coming out of my mouth. It was like putting a girdle on my vocal chords. 
6) Friends both old and new.
7) My mom and dad living so close by (grandpa's computer was in the shop and he hasn't been able to reach the owner. Dennis just told me they did an investigative story on Channel 2 tonight (Get Gephardt) featuring the owner Steve, who is no stranger to law enforcement. I just hope dad can get his computer back!
8) My sisters Julie and Denise
9)Knowing I can get up in the morning and go and do.
10) The arts and how they help us make sense of the world and make our world so much lovelier.

XO
Mom

Over the continental divide and through the woods!

 ...to the Huish's house we go! Dennis knows the way to carry the Camry through THE WHITE AND DRIFTING SNOW- OH!!!!

We decided to take advantage of the beautiful time of year as retirees who can travel in the fall, and make the 8-hr. drive to Colorado to spend the weekend with Amy and Dave and the kids. We had no idea we would find ourselves driving through a healthy rainstorm for most of the day and even snow at 10,500 feet at Vail Pass. Angie posted a comment on my instagram and told me to "just take a nap." But I can't take a nap, someone has to keep a tense vigil even though I realize Parnelli Sweat is driving. I'm working on it. Dennis said I was much better on the trip home. I only gasped twice! There were lots of warning signs about the road being closed at 6:30 for blasting and it was quite the sight to see tons of workers out in the rainstorm preparing to blast away part of the mountain for two new twin tunnels they';re building. It was almost surreal. Luckily we were going the OTHER direction because the hundreds of cars stuck on the blasting side were in for a long wait.

The day started off beautifully in Spanish Fork Canyon:

The windmills at the foot of the canyon are always such a graceful sight, and that's when Dennis takes off his shoes which signals that he means business and the official trip has begun. Shortly therafter I often decide to call Amy to tell her we're on our way, exactly when we enter the depths of the canyon and doh, I don't have cell phone reception. We did our typical raiding of the Maverick and bought Hostess Snowballs (Yay, they're BACK!) and black licorice. I've given up the Red Bull. Too old. And during the course of the trip I read the entire Salt Lake Tribune, an entire New York Times, an entire Wall Street Journal and an entire USA Today. I know lots about ebola.

We pulled in around 7:00 pm Thursday night, and were so impressed by all Amy's cute Halloween decorations, especially the two cute lifelike punkins on the mantle! (Macy tells me I say "cute" too much :-).

HURRAH FOR THE FUN IS THE PUDDING DONE HURRAH FOR THE PUMPKIN PIE!!!

 Not to be outdone by the girls on the mantle, Jack showed us one of his newest Ninja Warrior feats!!

 Who knew the mantle was Ninja Warrior training apparatus?

As a matter of fact, there are a lot of Ninja Warrior activities that go on. Macy said to me the other day, "There are so many things I want to do when I grow up....Gymnastics...........the Olympics, then Ninja Warrior!" I was picturing her all dressed in black with a hood, but come to find out she meant the t.v. show "American Ninja Warrior." You go girl! It made me stop and think about childhood and all of the dreams we have of when we "grow up." How on earth do people do the splits?

Jack continues to have the music in him! (and the strategy in him. He soundly beats me at Stratego). I am going to study it and next time I see him, I'm going to give him a run for his money. really.

The blurry photo is about right, cartwheel after cartwheel after cartwheel!

Macy runs everywhere she goes, but Carly is much more subdued. So it was pretty funny Sunday night when out of the blue I heard "bounce, bounce, bounce." She'd pulled out the basketball and started dribbling around like crazy. And she's good!

There are always lots of crafts and love notes and crayons and pencils galore.Amy was so nice and brought up her electric guitar and let me play the piano while she played the guitar. It's so fun to do those Beatles songs with her! I have no photos of that.

And a tea party. (I tried out a braid-making technique I'd seen on Facebook on Macy and I put them in random places in her hair. Makes me laugh to look at this photo).

 Brown-eyed beautiful Car-Car.

 All four food groups represented!

They have a real china tea set that Amy bought at a garage sale. The girls were so careful taking it out of the box and then placing the paper towels back over each piece when we were finished.

Macy pouring....................

We had a running joke that I was scared of the cool Halloween birds that Amy had as part of her decorations in the family room. I left the tea party for a minute to go downstairs and when I got back the girls thought it was a good Halloween scare to sneak this bird onto the table next to my cup.

I lay down in Macy's bed and was there for oh a good three seconds before she figured out where I was. She was my little shadow the whole time we were there.

 "Who me?" Yes, YOU!

She took her first selfie. I am wearing the selfsame shirt that I've worn in every photo for the last four years.

Jack had a birthday party on Saturday so we decided to make a haunted house just for him in the basement while he was gone. When he got home from the party, we took him downstairs. Macy greeted him at the bottom of the stairs as a ghost and then she led him through the various hauntings.

This is a spooky picture!

We did the time-tested peel some grapes and tell him they're eyeballs trick.

Unbeknownst to all of us, grandpa was hiding in a dark corner. When we thought it was all over he came roaring out of the shadows and scared everyone to death. Come to think of it, Dennis LOVES to hide and then scare everyone! The kids thought it was pretty funny that part wasn't planned and worked so well.

We also went to the Friday matinee of "Meet the Mormons" which was great. I really enjoyed it. My favorite was the guy who danced goofily. I loved him. And that the candy bomber loved his second wife's teeth. Amy said the people who were "meeting the Mormons" were the theater owners because it was like a big ward party with everyone at the movie saying "hi!" to each other because everybody knew everybody.

Saturday night we went out to dinner at a fun diner, and then went to a corn maze outside of Denver. Seriously, Denver needs more corn mazes. Amy remembered how crazy busy it was there last year during the day because they have a pumpkin patch, so she decided we should go around 5:00 and I'm sure glad that was when we went. The line of cars snaking out of that pumpkin patch LEAVING when we arrived was unbelievable. And then when we left the corn maze that night, the hundreds and hundreds of teenagers, every teenager in the greater Denver area, that were standing in line for hours to get into the HAUNTED corn maze blew my mind. We got in and out in a snap and had a fantastic time that also included a tiny bit of cutting through the corn at the very end or we might still be in there!

Saturday was a gorgeous fall day and we went bike riding at a trail close to their home. I even rode their scooter and got going so fast that the wind was whistling through my ears! My knee has been killing me for the past three weeks and it didn't hurt at all while we were in Denver and still feels fine. Yay!

The kids made "nests" on their back deck out of rocks and grass and here they are sitting on them waiting for their rocks to hatch. While we were at the dollar store I sneakily bought three little creatures and placed them in their nests after they went to bed Saturday night. They were grilling everyone about where they came from and it was all I could do not to tell a white lie.

Jack in his climbing tree in the side yard.

Our back yard before we left. Keep this image in mind. It's out of context here but oh well!

Macy is reading "Charlotte's Web". There is nothing so fun as reading a book you love with a child you love. It's glorious!

Sunday morning finery.

Two blurry pictures. I take tons and tons of blurry pictures with my phone. Jack gave a talk in Primary and we got to hear him. He wrote it all by himself and it was on the family. He quoted part of the proclamation. It was excellent!! When he was finished Amy and Dave and Dennis got up to leave and I was sad to leave Primary. I could have stayed and listened the whole time. I think they were missing the piano player the chorister and all of their teachers since it was fall break, but as always, everything worked out and people stepped in to help.

I love this blurry picture. I wish it wasn't blurry! Amy the Relief Society President was at meetings before church, and after church. This was before we left and the socks are rockin it! Dave is wearing his intellectual tweed jacket with patches on the elbows. He spoke in church and gave a magnificent talk on the second coming. When we got home from church we had to wait and wait for President Amy Huish to get home after her presidency meeting and we were encompassed about with the smell the crockpot roast. It was torture. But so worth the wait. Nothing better than coming home from church and smelling potroast!

We had such a great trip. Loved hanging out with the Huish family and were so happy to have this opportunity to spend time with them and make the trip before the snow flies. Before tons of snow flies. And now we're home safe and sound and it's awfully quiet around here. Love and miss all of you!!!!
Mom

 P.S. Okay, remember my photo of the back yard? Here is a follow-up photo. Do you notice anything new? We LOVE our new back fence. We have never had a back fence to speak of in our whole married life. It makes the back yard feel like it's "ours". It also makes it seem smaller. But that view was getting so scraggly and poopy that we're thrilled to have the fence there and will look forward to working on the back area some more and having summer fun in the upcoming years when you visit.XO again.