WOW!

Yesterday Mom and I attended the funeral for my brother-in-law's father who passed away. In our family it seems like my in-laws family just become part of my family as they often attend many of the family activities. As in the case of Eldon Hunt who had attended many Thanksgiving Dinners at my home and others over the years. As Mom, Blair and I were waiting to talk to the family and view the body I saw out of the corner of my eye and others looking at someone right behind me. I looked and it was President Thomas S. Monson. His parents and Eldon's parents has been close friends during their growing up years. President chatted with us and other for quite some time. He later spoke at the funeral.

As we talked he made you feel very comfortable. It was amazing to be able to meet the Prophet of our church and also to see him in a very normal setting. I still can't believe it!

He even wiggled his ears for Jack, my niece's son who is 5.

Neighborhood Cleanup

A couple of weeks ago I had someone come clean out all the junk and trash left behind in our attic. It was amazing what was left behind. I counted three sinks, one toilet , a mattress, lots of old building materials, doors, windows, wood and lots of other junk. We took a large trailer load to the dump.
Two weeks later the guy came back to finish job of cleaning the basement out. That junk got to go out on the street for the neighborhood cleanup.


A weird day in the neighborhood. First a lady knocks on my door & keeps pushing herself closer to the door. She asked if she could pick the apples off my apple tree in the back yard because a couple of years ago the 5 single guys that rented this house before we bought said she could. I slowly reached my hand to lock the screen door. I said I wanted them and then asked where she lived. She said "around nearby" She acted put out that I wouldn't let her pick the apples, which aren't ripe yet anyway.

I had a guy working for me cleaning out the basement which has tons of junk, old metal pipes, coal from whenever they had a coal burning furnace, 100 + ...hard liquor bottles plus lots of old broken doors etc. Once a year the city has a clean up day and you can put your junk out that won't fit in your trash can. The guy is piling everything out on the street. The bottles are in trash bags. He finishes and goes home. Shortly after a lady knocks on my and asked if she can have the coal to burn in her coal stove. I said sure, glad to have someone use it. She said she would be back later that evening but never did show up.

Later that evening I hear lots of banging and look out the window. A guy is throwing the trash around as he is going through it. I get Fred and go out ask the guy what he is doing as he is ripping open the bags with glass in them. I tell him that he needs to clean up the mess he made and got him some trash bags to put the bottles in. I then realized that someone else could come and look in the trash bags, so I got the trash can and told him to put the bottles in it and he did. Well, a few minutes later three other people are going through the trash getting the rest of the metal. Interesting people! Almost every day for the next week before the city picked up the trash, people were checking out the trash. Someone else came and got the coal and we put out the old swamp cooler and the next morning it was gone. I hope they put the stuff to good use. Boy the saying "Your trash or junk is someone's treasure" is true.

How Does My Garden Grow Chapter 5

This past Saturday I went out to water my garden and check it out. Wow, what a surprise. I had not seen any watermelon growing and thought we would not get any watermelon just lovely huge vines. Much to my surprise there are three growing. From what I can tell reading about the variety of watermelon, which is a Sugar Baby it is close to being ready to pick.
The cabbage keeps growing bigger and bigger. I think I will pick one in two weeks. I have 7 or 8 so I need to start eating them. They will keep growing until a frost.
I picked three peppers off the pepper plant. The basil and parsley needs to be cut back. I am going to make pesto and tabouli using quinoa instead of bulghur. Tabouli is a traditional dish from Lebanon which is where Joe's great grandfather came from.
What a surprise that there were this many tomatoes ready to be picked and I had not seen any. They were hiding down under all the leaves. I picked 7 more this morning. We will be enjoying lots of tomato dishes in the coming weeks. I love to slice the tomatoes and sprinkle Feta cheese and fresh basil drizzled with olive oil over it. I can eat tons of tomatoes that way. So good!

Car 66 at Rocky Mt Raceway

Joe's company, Itt sponsored a race car this year and invited their employees to a race. We got to go and take Alice and Jeff and the boys and Doug and Jessica. ITT provided us with a nice dinner before the race and the driver, Eric was talking to people and they had his backup car out front that we could look at. It was cool, no glass for the windows, just plastic in the front and back and plastic lattice on the side windows.
The boys loved it. They love the movie Cars so we thought they would enjoy it. Joe was able to get a ticket to ride in the Pace car and was able to take Braeden, Carter and Jeff. They loved it. It was a fun evening.

Oh yes, #66 ITT's car won the main event. A great fun evening.

Happy Birthday

For my birthday I decided I wanted to have a slumber party with the boys. This was the first time that Tanner got to come for a slumber party. We went to Gateway Mall and played in the fountains. It was so fun to watch the boys play in the water on such a hot day. Afterwards we had Ice Cream at MacDonald's. Braeden was my party planner and with Joe's help put up streamers and the Happy Birthday Banner. It was a very fun day.

My Sad Van :)

Tuesday night I was taking Joe some supper as he was working late. We have not be able to have only a few minutes together each day so I thought we could eat supper together. Well, that was not to be. On my way to his work as I was driving through an inter-section a car ran a red light and hit one car and then spun into the side on my van. I was so shocked and didn't know what had happened. Fortunately no one was hurt except for some sore muscles from the impact. I was able to drive the van still. The insurance has been great and the van is in the shop get and make over.

Happy Birthday USA

The 4th of July was on Sunday this year so most celebrations were on Saturday. Joe has been working on a proposal for work that had to be submitted by the 9th so no celebrating for him. He has been working 15 to 20 hours a day for the last week except for Sunday. To celebrate Independence Day we had the traditional BBQ with hamburgers and hot dogs with potato salad, baked beans and watermelon. Yum Yum. I saw the coolest cake on a TV program and decided to make it for our dessert. It was really good and the boys thought it was cool.