waiting for sara

i'm waiting for sara, hannah and jonas to arrive tonight, so i thought i'd post something new. i will try to do some lists of eight. i don't have eight favorite restaraunts but you all know i like applebees a lot. my favorite chinese place is not china city, but wong's in fargo north dakota. and my favorite mexican place is ranch el rey's in rapid city south dakota. they had something called a reyrito that was extremely good. remember the italian place? i loved their pepper steak sandwiches. there was a steak place in price where dennis and i used to go called the matador, but it's gone now. isn't is sad that most of the places i like to eat are not there anymore?

as for tv shows, i don't have eight favorites of those either. i like house, the big bang theory, and the newshour. i also like three or four radio shows: car talk; wait wait, don't tell me; prairie home companion; and science friday with ira flato.

eight things i did today: read the scriptures, exercised, washed a load of whites, practised with jenny and ron for sunday, went to the post office and bank, shopped, cooked supper and made red cabbage.

i don't like to talk about the things i wish for or look forward to. i'm not sure why. it could be the things i look forward to the most are so far in the future there's no need to dwell on them and so obvious that i don't even need to mention them. i do look forward to seeing you all at thanksgiving (except you leslie, but i look forward to at least talking to you on thanksgiving) and i wish i had a clean house, better eyesight, and that dennis didn't have to work so hard.

well, i finally got to sunday evening. we have had an eventful and fun filled weekend. leslie and miranda both came home, plus it was stake conference: the culmination of many weeks of choir practise for our stake choir. i conducted and jenny accompanied the choir. we sang 'the king of love my shepherd is' last night at the adult session. after we finished jenny said she never wanted to see that music again. i guess the organ part was kind of hard, but i wasn't thinking about that when i chose it. it couldn't have been any more difficult than the perilously high soprano part. i twisted leslie's arm to come and sing with us to round out our somewhat sparse soprano section. we would appear to have had plenty of sopranoes, but very few of them sang very loud or very high, so i certainly appreciated her willingness to help me out, and i could hear a big difference with her sweet voice added. she even sat through practise and a two hour meeting that felt like four hours last night. then, this morning we sang 'the morning breaks the shadows flee' and 'my shepherd will supply my need' and they both turned out so well. i have a love/hate feeling about conducting stake choirs. i love the actual practise and production of the music, but getting people to come, arranging practise and figuring out all the logistics is not my cup of tea. i'm glad to have it over with so dennis and i can relax on sunday nights. dennis is always a good sport and comes and sings in whichever men's section needs him the most. this year he sang tenor.
we also did some quilting this weekend on miranda's quilt. it's fun, but a little stressful since we want to be able to do it much better than we're able to at this time. this quilt will have it's own homey charm and i hope miranda enjoys it for years to come.
now everyone has left and dennis and i are back to quietness. waving goodbye to leslie and she drove away left us a little sad and lonely, but before we know it it will be thanksgiving and the house will be full again. we'll see you all (mostly) then.

october 15: les is 21

ok, i spent hours yesterday sorting through pictures to scan for leslie's birthday. at first when i tried to scan them nothing happened, then eventually they scanned and went somewhere in the computer, but i don't know where, so i am blogging pictures of leslie that are already in 'my pictures'. that means you probably have seen these on other blogs, but oh well. happy birthday to leslie anyway, and i will keep trying to scan the old photos or someone could give me a tutorial to solve the mystery of where pictures go when you scan them.
leslie is beautiful, although she actually thinks i'm not being objective when i say so. but she is. the creamiest skin, the prettiest lips, the rosy cheeks, the nicest smile; that's why we nicknamed her 'buttercream girl'. field trip to the rochester panel.
see, what did i tell you? she's a beauty!
many looks, many hair colors.

she stayed bald for so long, i never dreamed she'd have the head of hair she ended up with.

ok, leslie isn't actually in this picture i now realize, but these kids are darling too.

i have lots of photos of leslie and miranda. this one is a classic.
they could always make each other laugh. wasn't this at aa's wedding? this is the thanksgiving of 1996. miranda and les were sick together on a couple of holidays.

last christmas.
always with a bunch of cousins. or holding a child.
how did arden stay so clean?
this was the day leslie won three first place awards and one second place at the music competition when she was in ninth grade.

so many great times and memories. i love you leslie, you cannot possibly know how much. hope you have a very happy birthday. you are a continual joy to me.

politics and economy

hey, are we all watching the presidential debate? what do you all think about our two nominees? who impresses you tonight? obama appears to be the better debater, but i'm trying not to be swayed wholey by debating skill. i'm trying to listen to what these guys actually say. at first they weren't saying too much beyond their standard sound bytes, but now they've kind of gotten going. john just said,"i know that spending can be brought under control because i have fought against increased spending for my entire career". is that a logical statement? i'm not sure. well, i'm interested in what you guys think about these two and their campaigns and ideas and also about the financial crisis. are you all excited about paying 700 billion dollars to bailout these banks? i don't know what to think.
oh, and just a reminder, i need your checks for $143.00 to pay the taxes on tara. my box number is 591 and the zip code is still 84513.

today is our whit's birthday. she is twenty-three. here are some pictures that i found of her to make us all smile.

dennis has a new toy that he is burning to use, but by the time he got it all put together, and then taken apart again to fit in the trunk, it was too late to take it to pete's hole and try it out. quel domage! these are our red delicious apples, not quite ready yet.
this is what some deer did to my bell peppers and cabbage and someone needs to go on the hunt for this culprit and when they find a deer with cabbage leaves hanging out of it's mouth or smelling suspiciously of green peppers i think he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, the dirt bag!
look how pretty the peaches look. they are slowly getting ripe, but they are very late because of the whole late spring thing, and they're not real big because the trees are really loaded, but juicy and delectable all the same.

this bread i made a while ago and didn't realize banner had taken a picture of it.

banner and i had a pedicure party with the jelly foot bath les gave me. tennyson would not join us because she didn't want her feet to touch anything our feet had touched. give me a break! i played chinese jump rope with the fauver girls last weekend. miranda and banner in mid jump. we got some videos too.

this is a video banner must have taken of a woodpecker on the crabapple tree.

30th anniversary

so yesterday, august 18 2008, was our thirtieth wedding anniversary. that's quite a milestone if i do say so myself. i was too lazy to scan old wedding photos, so i'm making do with some i found already in the computer. i think this was taken on a trip to southern utah a few years ago. we've both filled out some as you see. this picture is dennis in the mission field. look how cute he is.
this is me the christmas of 1980, wearing a smock because i was seven months pregnant with ben. the location is our first home, the trailer. aunt carol's china cupboard is behind me and on the table is the tablecloth that shelley made for us and which i still have.
this is ben's first halloween. i had just got my first sewing machine, the viking, so i made this zorro costume for ben. the leather coat of dennis' matched one for me; we still have them though, of course we can't squeeze into them. we gave them to each other for christmas two years earlier. i bought his first, then he went up with grandpa to provo and bought mine the same day they delivered a litter of pigs in the zcmi parking lot.
this is dennis now, doing what he does best: seeing that people are well fed. that is why we no longer fit into our leather coats. he is compulsive about this as we all can attest. i am not good at getting pictures onto posts in any sort of rational order and i'm afraid if i put more on now they will go before these instead of after, so i'm going to quit now.