Sunshine From Texas

 It's been kind of a cold week with lots of wind, but it was sunny at our place because Tiffany and Abigail arrived from Texas and they bring sunshine with them wherever they are.

 Tiffany is homeschooling Abigail this year so they start their day with the pledge to the flag, scriptures and prayer.  It is awesome to participate.  Then they do some serious homework while I do some of my necessary work activities.  We managed to squeeze in visits to the local assisted living center to visit my friend Aryls and her roommate Mele. 

 We met Great Grandma Ann for lunch one day and enjoyed the luxury of a pedicure and the massage chair. 

 When Steve arrived back in town, we headed to CV to celebrate Korinne's 8th birthday.  She had a party at Jump World or something like that.  Afterwards, we gathered for pizza and presents. 

 On Saturday we joined some of Adam's family members and added in Heather and Aaron's family for a nice lunch before Korinne's afternoon baptism.

 In spite of a glitch, the service was very nice and Korinne is now a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Her dad, Adam, baptized and confirmed her and gave her a beautiful blessing.  Tiffany was the hero since she was able to occupy Jameson and keep him in tow after he broke out in tears for Adam when he saw his dad in the font.

 I was fortunate to get this quick photo of the grandkids after the baptism.  Aren't they awesome!

 So far, Tiffany has made it to every family baptism in this generation.  Considering the travel distance, that is an amazing accomplishment.  Thanks, Tif, for your dedication, loyalty and as always, your help.  She also made the scrumptious mac and cheese that was the center point of our lunch.

Congratulations, Korinne!  We are so pleased that you chose to be baptized today!

The BIG NEWS!

 I'm feeling a little sad right now because I always dislike it when I have to drop Steve off at the airport on a Sunday afternoon.  I like to have him around on weekends, especially Sundays.  It also meant that I missed Hilary's Relief Society lesson to get him to the airport on time.  Hilary is the best teacher in our Relief Society.
Anyway on to the BIG NEWS.  After about 4+ years of trying to sell our Idaho dream house, we finally have an accepted offer.  There is a family that actually LOVES our house besides us.  Imagine that? We have prayed so earnestly that a family who needs and would love our house would come to purchase it.  We wanted them to be a great addition to the neighborhood since we love those people there.  It is a blended family who just got married a couple of weeks ago.  Between them they have 11 children and 2 grandchildren.  Six or seven of the children still live at home so it will be a busy household.  The agent says the dad is the nicest, handiest, most helpful guy.  Sounds like the neighborhood is lucky.  We just had some exterior painting done and had all the shrubs and trees trimmed so the exterior appearance looks much better.  Do you like the red door?  I think it looked much better.  Of course, we also lowered the price again.  We even had another family scheduled to look at it tomorrow.  The time must be right!  We are grateful and feel really good about how things are going so far.

 Winter arrived in CV on Friday.  It snowed again all day on Saturday.  Britton and Jenna built this large snowman with their friends in the backyard of our next door neighbor's house.  It was fun to hear them laughing and playing.  I just had to get the camera and take a picture.

 We worked a little in the barn on Saturday hanging up tools and putting away our deck furniture.  We also drove around the area looking for investment properties but didn't see anything we liked.  It's okay.  There will be time for that.
When we arrived back to our work condo, it was sunny, bright and about 55 degrees.  It looks like we will have winter weekends and milder weeks.  That's okay too.

Steve Loves to Trick or Treat

 This beautiful sunset was taken from our deck in CV.  It doesn't belong in this point of the blog, but I haven't figured out how to move it.  We love the view from our deck.

This is a picture of some of our friends enjoying dinner at our condo place this week.

Steve loves to trick or treat with the grandkids.  He used to love it with our kids and now he loves it with any of his grandkids.  Therefore, I picked him up at the airport and we headed directly north to spend the evening with Heather and her kids.  We stopped by in CV to drop off some stuff and pick up other stuff.  We were able to catch this cute picture of Hilary with her new hairstyle and Jameson, the cutest chicken and bumblebee in the neighborhood.

 We arrived in Idaho in time for a quick dinner of witches stew that Heather made with black beans and squash, all black and orange.  It was a fun way to start the festivities.  We all drove around the area with Heather so we could participate in the festivities.  Tanner stayed at the house to hand out the candy to the few kids that come by.  The houses are so far apart, that only a few neighbors stop by.  Everyone goes to more densely populated streets.

 On Saturday, Steve and I worked on our flowerbeds AGAIN.  The beds are not a priority to our tenants.  Then we hosted an open house and Steve filled the back of the pickup with more treasures from our garage storage closet.

 It was such a beautiful weekend that we planted some flowers in Heather's yard and helped clean out the garden boxes.  I believe we did that on Friday while the other kids were in school.  You can see that Quinn was our helper.

 We also decided to make good use of all the pumpkins Heather had purchased.  I cut them up and cooked them just like I used to do years ago.  We made a couple of batches of pumpkin bread and some wonderful pumpkin cookies.  Heather froze the rest for future goodies.

 Aaron arrived home from his business trip very early on Sunday morning.  It was stake conference and Tanner was assigned to be a youth speaker.  As you might have guessed, he did a fabulous job.  We were so proud of him.  Jantzen and Anna were also among a few children selected from throughout the stake to sing in a children's chorus.  Their performance was inspiring and tender and brought tears to our eyes.  We were so very happy that we were able to witness our grandchildren's testimonies in action.  There was a visiting Seventy from the General Authorities of our church named Kent Allen.  Elder Allen was also very inspiring.  It was a wonderful meeting.

 Since Aaron's father is the stake president, they hosted the Allens for lunch after the meeting. Along with Heather and Aaron's family, we were invited to join in.  Aaron's parents are always so gracious to include us and we enjoyed getting better acquainted with the Allens.

 We drove back to CV that evening so we could unload our stuff in the barn.  We weren't really prepared when we left the 50-60 degree weather up north, to find 3-4 inches of snow in our yard in CV.  We stayed overnight and unloaded our truck in the morning.

 Of course, we had to catch up on the things we missed with Hilary and Adam's family. 

 Steve returned home from his trip to California in time for us to host our River Sisters group for dinner on Thursday.  It was the first time we have had non-related company in our little rented condo Steve calls Little Vietnam.  It worked out fine and we shared good food and a lot of laughs for a couple of hours.  I'm sure glad we organized our group and committed to getting together every other month for dinner.  I just didn't want to become disconnected from such good friends after we moved from that ward.  We all enjoyed our chance to catch up.

 Back in CV for the weekend, we spent quite a bit of time on Saturday, unpacking all of those boxes we hauled from Idaho.  We found a big box of winter coats, so I washed the washable ones.  Steve was happy to find a good one since his best Case coat was inadvertently left in the back seat of a rental car somewhere between Wisconsin and California. A coat and a cape from years back should look like new once the dry cleaners get finished.

 We unpacked a couple of boxes of my dad's law books, more records, our china, bronze silverware from Thailand that my grandmother had purchased on an Asian trip and given to my mother.  We put everything away so now the barn looks better too.

 Then we splurged and went to a movie.  It is called the Saratov Approach.  It is too bad it was only released locally because it is an excellent movie.  Our family friend, Corbin Allred, had top billing in the movie and he did an amazing job.