November 10, 2012

• November Family Letter

  It is Saturday mid-afternoon and I am sitting out in the motorhome thinking I ought to get this family letter written.  It has been a week and a half since I updated this blog, so thought that I would do that along with the family letter.

  Let’s see, my last blog update was just before Halloween, so I ought to post a couple of pictures of Jenn’s kids and their Halloween outfits.

  
  Jayden and Bentley in their “outfits”
  (I would post a picture of me and my costume… but it is the scary one that I have to wear ALL THE TIME!

  We left Richmond and headed for Bear Lake the day after Halloween (Thursday, Nov. 1st).  On the way through Logan we stopped and visited with our good friends Loran and Marcile (Hirschi).  While visiting with them I took a couple of pictures:

  
  Marcile & Loran

  I posted the picture on the right on Facebook and got so many comments about them not looking “happy” or “liking each other” that I had to correct things, so I took the picture on the left… which brought much more positive comments.

  We had a much nicer ride through the canyon than I had a week earlier.  Fall leaves were mostly gone, but I have always thought that the canyon was pretty anyway.

  
  The left picture was just as  you got a view of Beautiful Bear Lake as you come down from the top.
  The right picture was taken my first trip to Bear Lake a little over a week before.

  This trip to St. Charles, I parked the motorhome over on Dallas and Theresa’s driveway.  They were leaving with their family to visit Disneyland, so they just let me take over.

  
  Motorhome Parked in Dallas’ driveway.
  Pretty well took up the whole thing!

  
  Mom’s home this visit verses my previous trip!

  Before Dallas left, I helped him mow the lawns… mostly just picking up the leaves.  Looked pretty good when we got finished.

   
  Mom’s large lawn to the South -  Me on the mower (toy!).

  The Friday before Dallas and Theresa left we had an impromptu dinner over at the Paris Cafe.  Both Maxine and David had been working all day, but agreed to meet us on their way home from work, so Mom, Dallas, Theresa, Judy Lynn and I piled into our Terrain (kinda squished) and “motored” to Paris to meet them.  So sorry Brent and Jan, would like to have had you included… but things happened too fast and not time to recover after because Dallas and Theresa left the next morning and did not get back until after we had gone.

  
  Mom, Maxine, David, Dallas, Theresa, Judy Lynn & Me

  We tried to spend as much time as we could with Mom.  We took her to Montpelier one day, to Logan another, and back to Montpelier on another day.  We also tried to see Maxine and David as often as we could.  We went over to Maxine’s and watched her fix Mom’s hair.  She still looks really good, don’t you think!

   
  Maxine Fixing Mom’s hair — and the “Final” look at the end of the project.

  
  I fixed Mom Breakfast almost every morning.
  This morning was scrambled eggs and toast.

  
  This morning was bacon, easy-over eggs, toast, home-made raspberry jam, orange juice and Milk.
  She looked pretty happy!

  We left Bear Lake for Malad on Tuesday (election day) and drove straight through to Malad, only stopping in Logan to pick up some flowers to put on  Ashley’s & Dad and Mom Alder’s graves.

   
  Motor home parked in the lane to the side of Mom Alder’s Home.

  
  Ashley’s Beautiful Head-Stone

  
  Mom & Dad Alder’s Headstone

  We stayed in Malad until Friday morning and worked most of the time in Mom Alder’s house.  We spent most of our time cleaning out just one of the upstairs bedrooms.  Didn’t find anything too interesting… not hidden treasures that I could ascertain… DANG.  We visited with Jeff, Wendy and Jennie Ann each evening and got to see Logan for a few seconds on the last night.  We were going to spend most of Friday working in the house, but woke up that morning to HUGE snowflakes falling and decided we needed to get to Richmond before the snow started sticking on the roads, so we cleaned up our mess the best we could, buttoned up the MH for travel and was on our way before 11:00… pretty early for us.

  
  Leaving Jeff & Wendy’s driveway.
  The big white specks all over the picture are HUGE snowflakes.

  
  Motorhome parked back at Jenn’s

  We drove straight to Richmond through Logan, but by the time we got to the Logan valley, the snow was coming down as rain.  It was forecasting snow though, so when I parked the MH at Jenns, we did not put the large front slides out so I would not have to crawl up on top to remove snow in the morning.  And they were right, not much snow, but enough to cover my satellite dome to block out TV

  
  MERRY CHRISTMAS!

  Last evening we made our last visit to Golden Corral and their shrimp for a while.  We do not have a Golden Corral or a Chuck-rama in Oregon, so I have to take advantage of it while I am here.  This makes the second trip to Golden Corral and one to Chuck-rama (I have their shrimp-days all figured out!).

  
  And I ate my share.  They didn’t make much money on me last night!

  This morning I got up and showered and was ready for the day when I got a text from Jenn inside asking me if I would tend Jaidyn and Madi while they took Bentley to wrestling.  I was happy to do that.  They were only gone for an hour, but then “the girls” needed to go shopping to get “stuff” for tomorrow.  I guess Jenn wants to feed the folks that come to church for Madi’s blessing, but I will bet that food is not the only thing that they went shopping for.  Taurean and I stayed home with the kids and I stayed inside until Taurean’s brother came over to watch Nebraska play football (they are HUGE Nebraska fans since their family is originally from around there).  So then I left and went out to the MH and worked on this.  Glad to get it done.

  
  Me doing my “Grandfatherly” duty.  Love these kids!

  Our plans are to stay here for tomorrow and then head south starting on Monday.  We plan to go as far as Provo on Monday and park the MH out in front of Melissa’s, spend the evening there.  Judy Lynn has some craft stores that she has to hit and we will do that either Monday after we get there or Tuesday morning if we get there too late.  Then we will head to AZ through Las Vegas, taking two days to get there.  We will stay in WARM AZ until Thanksgiving and then work our way back to Oregon.  And yes… we are having a BALL.  LOVE our motorhome!

  • 6:11 pm
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