Greetings from Utah Valley

Some of you might be mildly interested to know that Laurie has turned into quite the football fan. At least he has faithfully watched the BYU games since we have been here. Well at least he has watched the winning games , that I know of. Right now he and Steve are watching and eating popcorn. BYU has made 3 touchdowns and I don't think airforce has made any, but the game is not over. We went to lunch yesterday with our friends, the Bullocks, from Oregon, who come for every homecoming game. They have season tickets to BYU football probably so they can always come to at least the Homecoming games. He played football for BYU over 40 years ago, and she was a cheerleader, so they are really die hard fans. It is heavily overcast here right now, but so far no rain. She says many games in the past, they have had to sit under tarps because if has been raining. We'll see. The weather forecast is for a lot of rain today and in the next couple of days. We went this morning for a walk in Provo Caynon though and it was nice there. We have been walking there for a couple of weeks. Laurie has taken digital pictures and I tell him he should do a blog with the pictures, but it hasn't been done and so I will just talk about it and maybe sometime soon, he will put on the pictures. The canyon has been a great place to walk. The trail is really nice, paved, and wide. Lots of people use it. It follows along the Provo River. We have been all the way to Vivian park, not all at once, but we park the car at different parks and walk different stretches of the trail at different times. It is all pretty and interesting. We have seen lots of school children with little nets looking for bugs and butterflys, etc. We see bikers, skaters, boarders, joggers, strollers, etc. The trees are starting to turn color and so everything is really pretty, and we have enjoyed the exercise. Today we saw a tiny chipmunk, we have seen quite a few squirrels, we saw a rabbit yesterday, and one day we were frightened by a very large snake that slitherred off the trail right to the side of us. I just jumped back, but Laurie had the presence of mind to at least look at it and realize it wasn't a rattler. But colorwise and size, you could have fooled me. It was a lot bigger and lighter in color than those smallish dark colored snakes we saw in the spring in the pit. Steve and his boys went on a hike this morning too and went to the Homecoming Parade. We didn't go to the parade, I basically don't like crowds. The boys started school Friday and both seemed happy with the experience. The bus stop is almost as far away as the school so Steve says he will just drive them to school each morning on his way to work. The closest stop is up on Denali Dr. I guess they could come home on the bus. We had a fun little BBQ in the backyard last evening. It was still warm and sunny yesterday. But now it seems like fall. Austin, Angela, and Brian will come to dinner tomorrow and we will sing a belated Happy Birthday to Isaac and then next week is Norah's real birthday. Some of you need to post more often. I miss hearing from you.