The Hallstroms Come to Visit!

We were so excited to have the Hallstrom family come to Utah in August!  Their driving/flying schedule was so complicated I needed a spreadsheet! Not to mention that during the week they were preparing to come out, they moved Ethan twice, brought Wyatt home from the hospital (after living there for 40 days!); packed the Tahoe with a year's worth of Elise's college provisions, and then packed for three different trips to make the trek to Utah.

Jonas in front of the Salt Lake Temple. There are a few things I will never get tired of, and taking a photo of a loved one in front of the Salt Lake Temple is one of them. Seeing the Salt Lake Temple still makes my heart skip a beat. Jonas and I took TRAX to get to Temple Square. I needed to turn in my conference center parking pass and  thought it would be a good opportunity to take him downtown to see the sights. We ate lunch at the Lion House. When I told Forrest he said "That's pretty much every teenage boy's dream - to eat lunch with your grandma at the Lion House." But Jonas was a good sport! On our TRAX ride in we were part of a very scruffy, motley group of humans on that train. I was half expecting the guy from "Ghost" to scream, "GET OFF MY TRAIN - GET OFF MY TRAIN!" But if I thought the first collection was scruffy, the group we had to endure on the ride home was horrifying. It was one of those things that even after the passage of time is never, ever going to be funny. SORRY JOE. Sorry for the seamy side of TRAX. Some of the people I worked with at the conference center would say "you're brave!" when I'd tell them I rode TRAX, and now I see their point!

The look on Jonas's face when he walked into the conference center main auditorium was priceless.It was worth the horrors of TRAX. Behind us you can see a tabernacle organist practicing at full throttle. Glorious indeed.

Wyatt was still freshly home from his last round of chemo but he was up for everything! We went to the mini golf course by our house one morning, and had it all to ourselves.

We had the Springville Sweats and my mom and dad and Denny and Joe and Emma come to the park by our house for a picnic one balmy summer night. It made me grateful for all of our extended family. Heaven. And I was also grateful for Grandpa Ranquist's trusty 1978 GMC pickup truck, as we hauled our grill and table down to the park.

Truman and Wyatt got to meet each other. Wyatt is showing his bracelet that's got a grain of sand from the dead sea, or some water from the dead sea, and a rock from the Himalayas? or... anyway, it's very cool! And all the proceeds from the sales of those particular bracelets went to fight leukemia.

These girls! They have such beautiful voices. I have a dream of having all 17 grandchildren record some music next time we're all together. Every time I listen to "Dancin' in the Street" by the Mamas and Papas I crank it up as loud as it will go while I'm driving in my car, and pretend it's my talented grandkids singing it. I played the CD for Tony's girls last week while I was at their house teaching piano. Eli happened to walk in and looked slightly horrified and said "What IS this?" Maybe I'll have to pick something more current for my daydreams of the Von Sweat Family Singers.

People I love and a blanket I love. The "blue blanket" graduated from being our master bedroom bedspread, to being the useful "cool in the summer, warm in the winter" couch blanket, and now is relegated to a place of honor as picnic blanket. It's 45 years young!

And Wyatt Dean is 9 years young, great-grandpa 91 years young and great-grandma 87 years young.

Once again playing "Ultimate Werewolf" and you can see that Elise is a werewolf in this round because she has her thumb up. Do you think Vivi is peaking?

Calvin J Sweat LOVES games. And he loves Ultimate Werewolf although sometimes we have to cheat a little and let him pick the card he wants. Looks like he hit a home run and was a werewolf in this game!

Uncle Joe, Wyatt, Aunt Denny and Emma. It was so great they were able to come!

My wicker picnic utensil organizer. It's something Aunt Karla would have...not ME! I bought it from the Amish. It's an Amish Wicker Picnic Utensil Organizer. And I keep it in my bathroom when it's not being used for picnics (Aunt Karla would never have done that) and keep my hairspray and aspirin bottle and deodorant and lotion in each little compartment. As Grandma Ranquist used to tell Angie, "A place for everything, and everything in its place."

GHASTLY FOOT INJURY! I think I actually broke it right across the brow, but I will never know. It still hurts! I looked online and it said 6-8 weeks so I'm getting there. When it happened, I was chatting with Forrest and reached into the fridge to get him another honey lime chicken enchilada, and picked up the 9 x 13 glass pan, which was sitting on top of another 9 x 13 glass pan (DUMB, DUMB, DUMB, DUMB, HATE, HATE, HATE, HATE, STUPID, STUPID, STUPID, STUPID!) and the Siran wrap on the top of the bottom pan stuck to the bottom of the top pan and it heaved its heavily-laden 9x13 self out of the fridge, turned so it was frantically flying vertically, and came down hard with perfect vertical precision on.my.foot.

I probably shouldn't have a photo of food right after the ghastly foot injury. We got to have Elise stay with us and had her all to ourselves for about 10 days after the rest of the family drove back to Minnesota. This was before Angie then flew BACK to Utah again and DROVE Elise to BYU-I in Rexburg. We loved, loved, loved having Lou here. It was such a bonding experience. She is wonderful. Here we are at lunch. Sometimes I remember to take pictures, other times I don't even think about it for days, but hey, here I've captured this moment when Elise said she might like green beans! (she didn't :-).

Blurry photo evidence that we visited great- grandma and grandpa Hiatt and played the "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" duet for the millionenth time with great-grandma!

Elise wanted to do baptisms at the Salt Lake Temple and it was a perfect day for it. The only glitch in the day was I dropped my temple recommend on the ground! I realized it as soon as we got in the door, and ran back outside and a man said, "Did you lose your recommend? I just turned it into some sister missionaries."
Well, dang, it took about a week for it to make the rounds in their lost and found, but it finally turned up. So I didn't get to share the experience and watch Elise. But she really loved it. I don't know if I've been in the baptistry of the SL temple since I was a teenager on a temple excursion. I met a guy named Ed Evans who was from Bountiful and and we corresponded for about three weeks after that. He signed his first letter, "Lovingly and affectionately." I'll never forget how appalled my friends and I were that he wrote that. He's probably a Stake President somewhere and has 10 kids. Or a drug dealer. I'll never know.

Stunning!

Inside the conference center at the fountain outside the auditorium. The fountain sounds just like a canyon stream rushing by and then you step away from the fountain and walk into the sacred quiet of the conference center auditorium and it's such a cool contrast.

Grandpa and Elise and our hostess "Up on the Roof!" I never did get to take any tours up on the roof when I was hosting, because it's closed most of the winter. By the time I get re-upped at the conference center, it's going to be f-r-e-e-e-e-z-ing again. That's my most vivid memory of hosting last year - f-r-e-e-e-z-ing while I waited for TRAX.

Oh gosh this photo conjures the opposite of f-f-f-r-e-e-e-zing! This is a picture I took of the Fairy Village at Glover Nursery. I was ecstatic when I stumbled upon it! So, I bought one new fairy house and some moss and have planted it out in the back yard to begin nurturing a permanent fairyland.

Here it is in its infancy. Next year there will be more. That rock is created perfectly to fit fairy houses. Dennis hefted that rock, along with three of its cousins, into the back of his car when he worked for the State and drove all the way home with the front of the car pointing slightly upward because the rocks in the trunk were so heavy. Thank you daddy man!).

Elise found out that lots of her soon-to-be roommates love the movie "Princess Bride" and she'd never watched it from start to finish, so we watched the whole thing lying on my bed. Ahhhhhh!

She also got to work her magic with some Truman Time!

Tony and Cindy were laying their sod in the back yard and we went down to help.

We took plenty of breaks too!

They were work horses, and had some work horses there helping them. Thank heaven for neighbors and friends! One neighbor woman, who Cindy said they hardly know, came walking over with her gloves and jeans, and just pitched right in. And laying sod is hard work!

Tony set up a fast-motion camera on the roof and it's a hoot to watch it all unfold in sped-up time. It's a huuuuge back yard.

See all their helpers?

The beautiful view of Maple Mountain from their back porch. Their next-door neighbors were having a firepit built that day and so we had noisy cement-cutting saws competing with our attempts to hear instructions shouted across the expanse of their yard. Sometimes they would turn off the saws and then it was so blissfully quiet.

Good job Antonio!

Well, that's a wrap.Here is a photo of our back yard taken today October 20, 2016......

...and a photo I took this morning of what is probably my farewell hike up the canyons this year. Cool, crisp temperatures of early morning. 
XOXO
Mom

oh, okay, here's 10 more from last week!