The Power of Art

I watched this show last night. It happened to be the one on Rembrandt, and the episode on David is next week, which probably means that the series is almost over. Hopefully (and PBS usually does) there will be re-runs I can catch. I highly recommend it to all of you!

Patio of Fire, 2007

I thought maybe I could get Brian to write this post, but it looks like that's not going to happen. He's not a fan of the word "blog", and so is not interested in anything associated with it. Oh well. We still love him. Mostly because he's our link to the Patio of Fire!

Patio of Fire, 2007 went off smashingly. First there was the fly over with a plane that looks something like this (sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the actual fly-over)

Next up were the Patio of Fire Dancers. Mom had me take a picture, because she said it reminded her of Stars.

The opening act this year was "Merrel Haggard" (aka, my father-in-law, Bruce, singing Merrel Haggard songs), singing "Oakie from Muskogie". I don't know how many of you know this song (I'd never heard it until now), but the opening lines are "We don't smoke marajuana in Muskogie, we don't take our trips on LSD". Woah. Here's a shot of Merrel (with Brian in the back playing the guitar).

Up next was the headlining band....Meelz on Wheelz! They did a great job! Inbetween songs there were give aways of t-shirts, hot dogs, and gift baskets, and they launched t-shirts out of the cannon. Here's some action shots of the band.

My friend, Karla, and her husband, Jeff, came down for the festivities, and they both won a t-shirt!

At the end of the show, was the 20 minute, totally legal, Fireworks Show. This year it was expanded and they were set up on both sides of the stage, featuring songs from the seminary D&C soundtrack, High School Musical, and some rap music (when it started, Mom turned to me and said, "So is this rap music?).

A fun time was had by all. We wish you all could have been there, but hopefully you can come for Patio of Fire, 2008!

As you can see, Sophia Elaine is no longer my little baby. She's growing up, on the move, and lovin her mobility. I wish I had a rewind button so I could revist moments in her past. (If my life were a musical, right now would be the part where they start singing "Sunrise, Sunset.") Pictures will have to suffice.

BBQ Anyone?

After we came home from the mission just a year ago, one of the first things Laurie did was to buy a new BBQ. Travis was here with his dad's truck so off they went to Costco and came home with a big, shiny, stainless steel, impressive looking BBQ that took up most of our small back deck. The main problem was, though, that it didn't work! He tried several times to cook various meats, etc, on it and it never did a good job. The trouble seemed to be that it just didn't get hot enough, so instead of cooking anything, it just kind of dried it out. So Laurie called the company listed on the literature that came with the BBQ and they sent him a new "regulator". So we thought we would be able to cook some decent food on the re-regulated BBQ. But it still didn't work. So when Laurie complained about the no-good BBQ while Nancy was here last month she asked where we got it and when we told her Costco, she said "Take it back, Costco will take anything back!" But we told her we had had it a whole year and it had never worked. So she called Costco and they said they would still take it back. Laurie spent over an hour looking through drawers for the receipt, but couldn' t find it. So she called again and they said we didn't even have to have the receipt. So again Travis helped Laurie and they loaded up the BBQ, this time in the back of Laurie's own truck, and took it off to Costco. They found the purchase in their computer and refunded the money. Then started the search for a new BBQ. It is a very important things to have, you know. So Travis was nice and went with Laurie looking at new BBQ's. They went everywhere in town that they could think of that sold BBQ's. But Laurie was kind of gun shy and couldn't find one he really liked. We kept telling him he could get the new model from Costco because at least we knew they would take it back if it didn't work well. But they came home empty handed and so after Travis went back to Arizona, I knew the task fell upon me to accompany Laurie all over town to try to make up his mind about which BBQ to buy. We looked up all the places in the phone book, but that didn't do much good. Angela even called to say she had seen a pink pig BBQ at a place on State Street and thought we ought to get that one. But we had already seen it and it was charcoal and we wanted gas. Otherwise we might have gotten the pink pig! Brian told us that his parents had recently bought a new BBQ and they had gotten it at R.C.Willey. So we went there. There were a couple that Laurie liked there. One was huge and thats the one he really wanted, but I told him it was too big to fit onto our small back deck and would only let him get the ordinary sized one. But we bought it. The next day he put it together and set it up on the deck, all the while complaining that it was way too small. But it appeared plenty big and shiny, and stainless steel, etc. That night he tried it out. He cooked a couple of steaks and grilled some vegetables and they all turned out great. The BBQ was made in, guess where! CANADA! The Canadians make a much better BBQ than the Chineese. So a couple of days later was July 4 and we planned a great BBQ'ed menu. But for some reason, the old problem seemed to be cropping up and when Laurie went to put the meat on, the BBQ wasn't getting hot like it had done the night before, so we thought we were jinxed. But he decided to change the tank as it appeared to be almost empty. After that, it did a great job. We had Austin and a bunch of his friends, Angela and Brian over to eat and had a real spread--ribs, chicken shish-ka-bobs, sausages, chili, potato salad, jello salad, broccoli salad, cookies and cake. And then afterwards we went to one of Austin's friend's home and watched the fireworks from the side of the mountain exactly east of the Stadium. So all in all we had a great July 4.

Text + Pics = Blog

Granted, this shows how incredibly inexperienced I am in the world of blogging, but I have yet to figure out how to post pictures and text at the same time and in a timely manner. So these posts are the journals to go with the pics. Bear with me.

June Retrospective:

1. Got to hang out with Sting and 18,000 other incredibly happy, screaming fans. I don't think anybody there could have been happier than me! It was a great concert experience for a girl who has loved The Police for the past 20 years.
2. We set up last years swimming pool. It still works and everybody loves it. The swimming pool is a mothers best friend in the summer time. Soooo much fun and oh so relaxing.
3. Babysitting Norah. How fun to have "twin cousins" again! It allows me to reminisce on when I really did have twin baby girls.
4. I've been canning home grown Romas. This is a most satisfying and rewarding activity.

I had several more photos of June to share with you. However, that would require me to have more blogger skills than I currently have. Yes, yes, you all say it is so very easy, but for me more like so very frustrating. I will learn in time. Tutorial anyone?

Fabulous Fourth!:

After hearing the forcasted high for July 4th was to be 117 degrees (is that even allowed? doesn't that break some sort of rule?) the family and I decided to head up to the mountains to enjoy cooler temperatures. We drove down to fossil springs (a ridiculously bumpy 7 mile drive down unpaved roads that should really only be done in a SUV) and found a fantastic, pristine swimming hole with clear blue waters and moderate temperatures (we figure if the roads were paved, the swimming hole would be crowded). The kids enjoyed swimming with the fish and I enjoyed taking their pictures.

We had a wonderful lunch of deli meat sandwiches on Kara's incredibly delectable homemade wheat bread and I made "the best fourth of July dessert ever" (or so Kara designated it). Really, it was delicious: two short bread biscuits sandwiching a layer of cream and mixed berries. So festive and oh so yummy! Thank you Martha.

That night we headed into Payson to check out their Fourth Festivities and Fireworks. They really know how to put on a great show! 45 minutes of great fireworks. We ran into our neighbors from Mesa and sat by them so the kids could play with their friends while we waited for the show. The weather up their was just perfect and the grass felt so soft and inviting. It was really a great day! If you can't spend the fourth in Utah, Payson is the next best thing (and much less driving).

Fabulous Fourth!

June Retrospective