December Christmas 2018

Tony and Cindy and the kids came to Ashford during December and helped us celebrate Christmas with my mom. We took advantage of one of the family sitting rooms and it was a perfect spot to show our love to Great-Grandma Hiatt. Ashford is so pretty and serene and brand new too. You can't beat brand new (unless something is really, really old and that's even cooler).

I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father for all my many blessings, especially for each of my children and grandchildren near and far. We are fortunate that we get to have Tony's family with us for Christmas Eve each year.  Pictured here are Dennis, Tony, Cindy, Lauren, Reagan, Jane, Vivian, Eli and Calvin, but in my mind's eye I can see Truman (where was he?) Angie, Forrest, Ethan, Elise, Jonas, Wyatt, Andrew, Andrea, Brandon, Whitney, Caroline, Amy, Dave, Jack, Macy and Carly. I can picture each of you celebrating the Savior's birth and the joys of Christmas wherever you are.

I was working on my Sunday School lesson today and there is a wonderful scripture in Matthew 6: 21 "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
I treasure each individual in our family, and it's where my heart is. And I know it's where your heart is too, so even though we may be far apart, our hearts are knit together in love.

Other little things in this photo that make me reminisce: the napkin rings made by my grandchildren; the Mr. and Mrs. Santa Clause salt and pepper shakers that are either my own, or my mom and dad's. It was one of those moments when going through my parents' things when we moved them to assisted living I saw these salt and pepper shakers and thought "oh my gosh, we both bought the same item independently!" (or for all I know they bought mine for me many years ago); the traditional flimsy red and green tablecloth flecked with strands of gold that is pulled out every year; the crystal goblets that were given to me by Grandma Ranquist, so I'm pretty sure they're "real"; the butter dish that's a piece of my wedding stoneware, which I still love, and which we saw in a Parade of Homes a few years ago so they're still relevant!; Cindy's homemade rolls; the makings for grape drink with 7-up which I only make on Christmas eve and my Grandmother Nan introduced me to 60 years ago; the candles burning and all the lights turned off for just a minute only on Christmas Eve.

This year I thought I'd try having the Christmas Eve program in the basement since we had Grandma Hiatt's piano down there. Eli is still plugging away at learning 100 hymns/Primary songs (but he gets an extension beyond age 14 to earn his $100 just because I decreed it :-).

Beautiful Vivian playing a Christmas song

Fully focused Calvin playing for us.

And speaking of Calvin, the man of 1,000 faces and easily as many emotions, here he is as a shepherd AGAIN, giving us his harumphhh-ness about the whole thing AGAIN..........which brings back fond memories of yester-year......

....HARRUMPHHHH...........and Jane, SWEETJane, still is game to be the sheep!

...ever beautiful and goofy at the age of 16!

Only Reagan can be the angel with this much spunk!

As she commanded the attention of the entire nativity community!

And Tony and Cindy were fully clothed in nativity attire too.

Calvin was very focused and interested during the scripture story in Luke.

Reagan here represents the joy of openings gifts from one another!

 

And speaking of gifts, holy smokes, look at the American Girl dreamhouse Tony built for Vivian! We always go down to the Springville Sweat's house on Christmas day; bleary-eyed from the crammed activities of the holidays, and they are in their matching Christmas pj's all the live-long day. That's the BEST!

Angie gave me this beautiful plate collection for Christmas. She found it at an antique shop. Each picture is of a mother with her children - and she found one plate representing each of the months that she and Andrew and Tony and Amy were born. It's so beautiful!

I could listen to these girls play duets all day.

Vivian took this photo of my Christmas village, and added this filter with the sparkling lights!

The kids stayed over night with us on New Year's Eve. Can you guess what they're depicting here?

And they dutifully banged pots and pants just like my kids did when they were little.

This kills me  Calvin made it - it says 2019 and all along the sticks he has the months written, and it's so intricate and wow, he might be an engineer some day.

New Year's Eve Countdown!

Visiting Aunt Denny and Uncle Joe and their new puppy whose name I can never remember....It still with an "M"

I decided to try Sock Olympics for probably the last time ever. But it was great fun! Here is Truman and grandpa playing "throw the sock over the half-wall into the front room and pray it doesn't knock over a vase!" The two photos below are from my phone or something, anyway I can't write anything below them, but I think they look quite noble on the Olympic podium!

And to wrap up 2018, here is a random hilarious photo - Angie and Amy both commented that they watched the popular Tidying Up show on Netflix with Marie Kondo and that one of the episodes had an Asian man who looked just like Dennis. Dennis was a good sport and let me take a picture of the two of them for evidence and a good chuckle. I also watched the show and tidied up - using some old Stake Women's Conference posters to divide my sock and garment drawers into two sides, which has made me happy every single day when I reach for my bottoms and/or tops and they aren't intermingled!

Here's to a productive and happy 2019!

Fall 2018

We love our home. We have a family joke from back in the day when we were traveling to La Grande to visit my mom and dad. As we arrived Tony, who was probably only 5 or 6 years old, realized it wasn't Grandma and Grandpa Ranquist's rather palatial home in Albuquerque, but instead the old homestead on 1005 "L" (which was heaven on earth but still more modest in size, and no chandeliers). Tony seemed sad and we asked him why, because we knew he loved visiting Grandma and Grandpa in La Grande, and he said "but it's LITTLE!"  It became one of those little family phrases that stuck and we say it all the time. We say it all the time now when we return from visiting any of our four children and survey our house - we look at each other and laugh and say "but it LIIIITTLE!"

Here we are in the beauty of Tony and Cindy's house, celebrating Reagan's 18th birthday. I bought her a Ronald Reagan sweatshirt for her birthday. It's a scream.

All seven of the Springville Sweats.

There is something about the light on the mountains in Springville that is absolutely jaw dropping. It's stunning. I think it's as beautiful as any spot I've ever been on earth.

We try to make it to one sporting event a year for the kids and this was the one and only soccer game we went to for Vivi. We didn't even make it to any of Cal's, I feel bad. And Vivi scored a goal! Her first and only goal and we got to see it. You can see her hand-slapping her team mates right there in the middle - she's to the side of #10.

Giddy with glee over the goal. It is fun. It's also fun to arm wrestle on Sunday afternoon. Anything that's physical is funner than sitting around like a bump on a log. I am such a bump on a log.

We took some beautiful fall hikes in 2018.

The sacredness of every day life - Dennis has taken to turning on "Music and the Spoken Word" on Sunday mornings at 9:30. It gives beauty and meaning to being a bump on a log on the Sabbath.

I had to include this "picture of a picture" of Angie with the BEST 80's hair on the planet. The photo was taken in 1991 in La Grande, and you can see all of my parent's beautiful flowers.  Which makes me think I should be working in my yard rather than working on this blog post!! Again, bump on a LOG! (Grandma Hiatt resting peacefully in the background in real time).

Another random moment going through my dad's daily journal where he includes a sentence saying that baby Jack is "adorable" - "he reminds me of me." I love it!

It turned out that Amy and Dave made a previously unscheduled trip to Utah and we got to join them at Zion's National Park! I have become a big fan of Zion's park. It's so unique and incredibly stunning. I think I was trying to make it look like Macy and Carly were holding up the boulder :-()

 Me and my Amy ages 36 and 66!

It's a great big wonderful world out there!

 Me and Dennis ages 66 and 69!

 Watch out Jack, something might grab your arm!!!

 The "real" photographer at work!

  Huish family 2018.

It was a really great trip and the beginning of their journey toward moving to Utah!!!

Sagewood had an agreement with Daybreak Elementary School where each grade got to walk to Sagewood one time during the year and interact with the residents. This day was so wonderful. I think it's kind of daunting to see lots of the residents in their frail state, but these kids didn't seem phased at all. My mom loved being read to.

Lots of kids shown here reading to the residents.

 And another Springville Sweat birthday celebration! Jane Marie is 16!!

Wheeeee! 

I love teaching piano to Calvin. He is really bright and catches on so quickly! He likes to play everything fast and loud! Although I remember when he was in kindergarten and starting out, he could play sooooooo very softly, it was hardly audible.He's demonstrating here that his armspan is exactly as long as their piano. He's left-handed so I have to sit on his right side so I don't irriate the heck out of him reaching across him to correct things.

 And woooo whooooo!  Another new Jazz season where as I always say about sports in general "hope springs eternal!" 82 games in the regular season, plus, I don't know, 10 pre-season games? and today is March 26th and there are like eight games left in the regular season and the Jazz will make the playoffs so at least four games post-season, which adds up to around 100 nights a year that Dennis can look forward to!!!

Can't you just feel the fall breeze blowing through the open back door? It's always so nice when the days and nights cool off.

 I never know what I'm going to discover when I download photos from my camera. This one takes the cake. I was working on the Christmas quilt I made for Angie, and I could not see where the hole was to thread the needle. So genius me, I took a picture of it and enlarged it with my fingers and voila - I could see that the the hole went front to back, and not side to side!!

I will always cherish the experience of working on this quilt for Angie during the fall of 2018, in order to get it ready for Christmas. It was truly a labor of love for Wyatt and Angie. I pretty much had the whole bar relegated as a sewing room for lots of weeks, and it worked great. I usually kept the ironing board in my bedroom and would walk back and forth and back and forth all night long, ironing each seam because, as my mother rightly taught me, ironing is just as important as sewing straight. Dennis would be watching his new favorite show "Airline Disasters" on Discovery channel, although after hearing about all the plane crashes they investigate, it does give both of us pause when we board an airplane! 

And finally, some last fall photos, one of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple behind the fiery red leaves along the roadway, and then this beautiful photo from Tony and Cindy's back yard, with fall still in full swing, and a fresh dusting of powdered sugar snow on the mountains.