This and that...

 A couple of weeks ago, I was privileged to attend Jenna's piano recital.  She has only been taking lessons from her new teacher since January but she did a very impressive job.  Way to go, Jenna.  You sounded awesome.

 This is a photo I took of our weekday house to post it for lease.  Two of our tenants we thought would stay for awhile are moving in June.  We have been scrambling to get the yards looking nice and get signs up so we could get them rented again.  After advertising this one for a couple of weeks, Steve came up with the idea of moving upstairs and keeping the downstairs furnished as an executive rental.  There is a need for that in our market.  However, as it turns out, our tenant really didn't want to move, but needed to live in a less expensive place because she had to replace her car.  Voila!  In the next couple of weeks, we will be trading places.  It will be a lot of working moving at the same time, but I think that it will be a huge blessing for her and will work out okay for us too.  I'm grateful not to have to take a million phone calls on that home.  Now we are focusing on the CV home.  I posted it yesterday and have 5 appointments for next Friday afternoon.  Hope we get a good match then.

 Steve finally picked his retirement gift that he wanted to spend the gift card on that his co-workers gave him.  He bought a really nice tool cabinet.  It is big enough that we needed younger, strong guys to help load and unload it.  Fortunately, Steve and Adam were able to unload it.  Steve already has it full of tools.  Now what do we do with everything else in the barn?

 Last Sunday, we celebrated Mother's Day with a nice BBQ with Steve and Adam cooking the brats and hamburgers.  Adam's responsibilities as Bishop didn't allow him to bake homemade rolls so they kept things simple. Thanks, guys, for overseeing the food preparation on our day off.

 After dinner, Britton and Jenna, laughed themselves silly over a book published by the Blackfoot newspaper called "We Don't Make This Stuff Up, The Very Best of the Morning News Police Reports.

Last Sunday morning, I got a text from the Bishop asking me if I could come to church a few minutes early.  Of course, I was running late, but we kicked into gear and made it there about 10 minutes early.  In Sacrament Meeting, Steve and I were released as ward historians.  I was called to be a team teacher with my high school friend, Janet Aikele, of the Valiant 9 class which happens to be Korinne and 13 of her closest friends.  Janet is currently out of town, so Steve went with me today to act as bouncer and I taught.  It went pretty well.  I took photos of each of the kids to help me get acquainted.

We have had lots of rain lately.  I feel like we live in another state.  It has been driving Steve crazy that all three of his lawns are growing so fast and he can't find an opportunity to mow them.  He really doesn't like unruly lawns.  Just now the sun finally peaked its head out behind the clouds but of course, today is Sunday.  I bet he will be mowing it at 7 a.m. in the morning if it isn't raining.

Happy Birthday, Mother!

My mother, Aloha, would have been 99 years old yesterday.  So on Friday, my siblings got together for lunch in her honor.  We ate several servings of clam chowder, one of her favorite foods, and talked of memories we had of her.  Since she passed away over 45 years ago, it was challenging for some of us.  Jackie, who was only seven at the time of her death, she has few real memories so she loves to hear the older siblings talk about her and her love of life.  She was often the life of the party and was great at including others and helping them to enjoy themselves.  A popular story tells about a time when she was hosting a gathering and she had requested that everyone wear casual attire so they could relax and enjoy the evening.  One neighbor came wearing a tie.  She promptly went over and said "no ties" and took a pair of scissors and cut off his tie.  That made a lasting impression.

Jackie, Cathy, Greg and Steve sitting in our little living room chatting about times past.

Jackie, who is an amazing photographer, put her camera on a tripod and took this photo of all of us.  Steve, Kristen, Jackie, Cathy and Greg.  Cathy looks a lot like Aloha if you just put a dark colored wig on her.  However, she was my height but much thinner.  She probably weighed about 100 lbs on a good day.

 On Thursday, my sister, Cathy and I drove down to Payson for the temple open house.  We loved that temple.  We are sure that a lot of brides will want to be married in this beautiful temple.

 Then we picked up Ann K. and took her to lunch for Mexican food which is a favorite of hers to celebrate Mother's Day with her.  It was a very pleasant lunch and gave us a chance to catch up.  We had a ticket for her to join us for the open house but she had already been that same morning with her grandson, TJ and his wife, Jill.

Steve picked this beautiful Mother's Day bouquet for us from our garden.  I love these brightly colored iris.

Spring Comes to Idaho

 We made a quick trip to Idaho on April 24 and 25th.  One of the first things Steve did was help Heather eliminate a few more of the voles that have ravaged their yard throughout the winter.  Some of the kids watch out of the window while they put the hose down several of the holes throughout the yard.  As the voles escaped from the running water, Steve used his BB gun to well, you know, prevent them from digging more holes.

 That evening was Elsie's graduation recital from her 3-year music school.  The graduates each played one of their very own compositions.  It was pretty amazing to hear the music these 6-8 year olds had created.  Of course, Elsie's was one of the best.

 Since Aaron was out of town and couldn't get back in time for this milestone, it was nice that both sets of grandparents could share the evening.

 Of course, Steve and Heather, were the lucky people to take her out for her ice cream treat.

 We loved hearing a sampling of the kid's music practices.  These kids have musical talent.

 Saturday, we were able to watch both Jantzen and Anna play soccer games.  They are both pretty athletic and it was fun to see the progress they have made in this sport. Jantzen's second game of the day was at the same time as Anna's so we watch each one of them play one game.

 It is amazing that Heather is able to keep up with all of the kids' activities.

 Aaron drove through a rain storm late into the night to arrive about 2 a.m. on Saturday morning.  We prayed for his safe arrival and were grateful for that blessing.  After the soccer games, Steve and I went to Aaron's new office to help put together some furniture.  It is a very nice facility and a great place for his employees to work.  We hope that his business continues to grow.

 The girls enjoyed playing secretary.  They were great on the phone in their imaginary conversations.

 We arrived back in CV in time for this gorgeous sunset view from our deck.  The rain had blanketed with mountains with snow.  The green below the snow made the scene spectacular.  I wish I knew how to take a nice photo.

Springtime Equals Yard Work

 When we arrived home from our China trip we found ourselves with a lot of spring yard work to do. Our own yard needed lots of attention as well as the yards of our rental properties.  Steve started in directly to get these yards shaped up.  Our CV grass had a lot of snow mold and the thatched grass had to be raked so the water could penetrate to the soil.  That was one of my jobs.  Steve was working on removing sod and building grow boxes for our blackberry and raspberry starts and our garden.
You will note the new home to the south of our CV house.  They new neighbors have moved in now.

 We made a trip to a local nursery to purchase some replacement fruit trees and to purchase this almond tree for our front yard.  Hope it grows.  Fortunately, our cherry tree lived so we purchased a grafted pear tree which has three varieties and another peach tree.  We still want to get one more-a plum tree.

 Every Sunday when Hilary's family comes to dinner, Jameson runs downstairs and brings up this train set and puts it together in our family room.  He is more interested in trains than dinner-except for dessert.  Ha!

 On this Sunday, we had dessert so Korinne helped me make a berry crisp.

 We were asked by the ward mission leader to host the missionaries for a lesson.  We agreed and ended up with the Bishop's family, a guy from our ward who is returning to activity and his 20 yr-old daughter and the missionaries.  With a hectic schedule, it was time to pull out the frozen lasagna.  I wasn't very proud of the meal but it was edible and no one complained.  The missionaries did a nice job on the lesson and will be teaching additional lessons to our new friend as well.

 It's a lot of hard work to remove sod and build a garden box.  Steve has this one almost finished.  More to come.

My work has been particularly hectic throughout April.  Most of my pictures this month were the photos for houses I have listed.  I don't know when I've had a busier month.  I think that I don't quite handle the overload as well as I used to.  I can't seem to get as much done in a day.  Darn it is frustrating!