LABOR DAY WEEKEND CABIN FUN

Invited my sister Elaine and her son Alex and my niece Emily Miller and her family to have some cabin time again.  It has been over three years since we did this last so was great to have them back.  Daughters Morgan and Brooklyn have grown A LOT!   As has Alex who now towers over everybody!

  Morgan, Emily & Brooklyn Miller (Emily is the daughter of my sister Julene), and Alex and my sister Elaine Manwaring.  Taken on their visit to Bryce Canyon Sunday afternoon after our good Italian dinner which Emily's husband Ryan always makes for us when they come.

 Best friends and cousins, Morgan, Alex and Brooklyn

 Alex, Brook, Emily, Morgan & Ryan

Some of my favorite people!

Bryce was spectacular with the changing weather

 The kids couldn't get enough ATVing.  This is them at the top of the summit that overlooks our cabin area.

But as usual, the ATVing never goes smoothly!  One of them always gets towed!

It rained every one of the five days they were here!  Sure made the air fresh and cool!

Wildlife was another big draw for the weekend

Hummingbirds

Crows, bluejays & hawks

 Each youngun' found a favorite horny toad to play with

 And the cool evenings brought our nightly visitors

This is one musical family!  Ryan with his guitar which he played a lot for us... including the concert with Emily and her violin after Sunday dinner!  It was so fun to watch how in tune they are with each other as they vocalize and instrumentalize together!   Some cars coming down the road even stopped to hear for a while!

Unfortunately the last day both Ryan and Brooklyn were not feeling well.  We were glad that most of their visit was fine, but made it all end on a sadder note.

The other sad note is that we have decided we have cooties or something!  Three of the four cabins that surround us are now up for sale!  Hope Glen does not have to sell his after all.  Don't know what we would do without our friend across the road!

AUGUST - A Forsgren adventure leads us to an Austin surprise!

    While we were in American Fork I had Victor drive me back down to the Harriet Harrington home on 1st E. & 1 South.   I had received an email from Andy Meredith who had found reference to this home on my John Erik Forsgren blog.  He and his wife had purchased it and were happily renovating it to live in.  I was so glad to hear this because the last time we drove by the home it was in a sad state of neglect.   So, I hoped if drove by we might find one of them there and I could see how the project was progressing.

Harriet Frances Noon Smith Forsgren Harrington is the subject here.  Her mother was one of Heber C. Kimball's wives.  When Harriet's husband David Smith passed away in an accident she was subsequently married for a short time to our John Erik Forsgren.  That marriage did not last.  (He was not known for his ability to care for his wives).  After than, under the suggestion of President Brigham Young she was married to Leonard Harrington as a plural wife.  He became mayor of American Fork and served in that capacity for many years.  This is the home he had built for Harriet and her (their) children.

When we arrived I was astounded.  They had really taken it back to the bare bones - as, of course, you need to do!  They had even trimmed the massive trees that surround the home so there is more light and probably more safety for the workers!
    I walked past the No Trespassing signs since I heard voices inside, snapping a few photos along the way.

I was reminded of the demolition of the Peter Forsgren home in Brigham City.  Layers of flooring, layers of wallpaper and paint lay everywhere!  Original floor boards and stove pipes were exposed. 

Original hand-turned railings going up a very steep & only 32 inches wide staircase!  I opted NOT to try to navigate THAT!

An electrician told the voices upstairs that there was a visitor wanting to talk to them.  Andy and Candy Meredith were both there and greeted me warmly.  Both are younger than I expected.  They showed me around a bit.  They will be documenting all this on their own blog which I will eventually link to the Forsgren blog.

The surprise came when we were just chatting.  I remarked about the hanging greens over the front doorway and they told me that they had been married just a month earlier in that doorway.  So, of course, I had to get a photo!  

Candy told me she was from Lehi.  When I commented that my husband's family was from there as well and mentioned they were Austins, she said, "I'm an Austin!  Well - I am a Grace from those lines!"   Couldn't believe the small worldness of it all!   Of course I had to hustle them across the street to meet Victor where they tried to narrow down the connection a little.   The whole brief time spent there just made me smile!!

The home from the back side.  They do not have any renovation restrictions because it no longer qualifies for the Historic Register (because someone changed the roof line significantly in the 1930's) 

They wish to move in October.  If she can stay on top of these workers each day I suspect they will achieve their goal!  This is not the first home they have restored.

JULY/AUGUST - Taking advantage of the time we are given.

     Because we made the decision to come to the Salt Lake area from California we caught people by surprise when we asked if we could stay with them.  Gratefully we were warmly received by friends who didn't mind housing us.

Reunion and good bed from Ardith Gledhill Lindren Rhymer - a former Guatemala El Salvador missionary and roommate at BYU.  So grateful to catch up on news of her family and to visit about "wellness living."

We were able to visit Larkin Mortuary and say goodbye to nephew David Morgan.  David had expressed a desire to be cremated - a wish his father honored, so we were grateful to get see him one last time before that happened.  David was also an organ donor.  Because of the nature of his death they could not take vital organs, but they could get corneas and bones & vessels.  So a part of him will literally live on in the lives of others. He looked very peaceful.

Since we were close to downtown, we visited the Church History Museum.  They had a Boy Scouts of America exhibit running, featuring some original Norman Rockwell paintings.  We had so enjoyed them back in Massachusetts in 1988 that we didn't want to miss another chance to see his originals.   I love this museum.  They do fine work and I was grateful to be able to be granted permission to freely take photos.

 These were two of my favorite.  How many mom's have pinned things to their son's uniforms since the beginning of scouting??

This blue one is still my favorite!  So sad that a photo or "Boy's Life" Magazine cover can never capture the majesty of an original oil painting which has depth and glow and deepness. What draws us so to his work is that each individual painted is a living person that Rockwell knew in his home area.  

 If you are in Salt Lake don't miss this exhibit while it lasts! 

The man himself, teaching art at camp???

I have never visited the Museum without stopping by the exhibit of the Joseph & Hyrum Smith death masks. 

Somehow I always want to see them and try to sense their spirit and how they really looked.  So many of the modern paintings are romanticized or modernized - but the death masks are the real features.  I felt very sad to see that the one of Hyrum (on the right) had been damaged & then "fixed".  I wondered if it had been vandalized or had been accidentally damaged in a move.  

Spent one hour at the Family History Center where I checked my USB drive for some data and then we drove out to Bountiful to take my cousin Garth Moore out to dinner.  Had a nice visit and catch-up.  We had seen him and his wife Corrie just before their mission to the Netherlands two years ago.  Sadly, Corrie passed away unexpectedly three months into that mission!  That was her native country and she was loved and happy there.  Of course being without her has been hard for Garth to get used to.   He directed us to Texas Roadhouse there in Bountiful.  I got what they call "Road Kill."   Sort of the equivalent of a Philly Beef and Swiss but without the bread.  I loved it!  (I am not usually a beef fan at restaurants!)

Garth is an interesting combination of my father and his own in his appearance!  This is my cousin that my kids will "remember" just because we always looked for Garth during Conference time whenever the Tabernacle Choir was singing!

Reunion with the "other buds": That would be Brenda Meikle Thorpe and Cherie Lundwall, the other two ladies forming our roommates group (with Ardith).  I didn't get to see them in February as we had planned (roads too dangerous and snowy), so we got together for brunch at Granny Annie's in Kaysville.  Afterwards Ardith returned to her home in Taylorsville and Victor and I went on to visit with Cherie at her home in Ogden and then later to end up at Brenda's to have dinner and for Victor and I to spend the night.  They have a new condo into which they have downsized.  Just perfect for them.

Can't NOT do genealogy, right?  Drove up to Brigham City and visited with Jill Forsgren & son Micah who will be helping with the Forsgren Reunion next year.  They showed me more fun surprises!!  When the Peter Adolph Forsgren house was being renovated & some floors were torn up they found pieces of carpet that would have been woven by Peter Forsgren.  Some of those remnants were given to Mark & Jill Forsgren.  What a pleasure to see the fine workmanship!

 I don't know what I expected, but this is beautiful work and made to last!  Jill has promised me a remnant after she completes covering a chair pad with some of the fabric.

Of course we had to stop at a couple of stands along "fruit way" before leaving the Brigham City/Willard area.  We spent the rest of the afternoon with Peter and Aly in Saratoga Springs.  Jill was with her mom at the hospital where Becky Jensen had gall bladder surgery this afternoon.  We had to leave before they made it home.

Spent the evening with Sowbys again in American Fork.  Always rest really well there.

AUGUST 1ST.  Spent a lot of the morning at the Springville Museum of Art in order to go to the Walter Rane exhibit.  Walt attended the USC branch at the same time that Victor and I did back in our single days....so we have followed his progress and works with pleasure.   As it happened they also had just finished setting up the annual Quilt exhibit & Competition.    It was all amazing.  Why, in all these years, did I not know this building existed???   A comment by one of the sculptors on display was that Springville spends more $$ per capita on the fine arts than any other city in the United States.   This is good stuff!

The large sculpture of the Indian by Mahonri Young is in this museum

Walt's self-portrait

I liked his paintings of children & family members even more than the current ones he has been doing for the Church.

What I didn't know was that he also has illustrated for the "American Girl" series of books and for others.

I studied his painting of the boy Joseph a long time

An earlier still life

The museum also has an amazing collection of Russian paintings and other wonderful stuff in its permanent collection:  

This one is from the Utah Artist's Collection

I have always been attracted to art that features faces & hands - especially of the elderly

Don't you love the excitement on their faces??  I felt just the same way when we watched our first TV broadcast in Boise.  It was such an amazing invention.  (This one from the Russian collection)

Such a " family history" painting!!    Lots of tales passed on by Grandma!!

The Quilt show embraced many rooms of the museum.  It featured both handworked and machine quilted examples.    No matter what your feelings are about machine quilting, the results were magnificent.  My friends Margene Taylor and Carolyn Gilkey would have been lovin' every minute of this exhibit!!

This one was voted "Best of Show" 

Though this photo doesn't show it well, this quilt is also decorated with pearls.

How can anyone DO such painstaking, detail work??

Museums and art galleries are hard on the legs.  But they sure are good for the soul!!

JULY - Cabin Time with family and friends; boys camp

     The morning after our Chilean Mission reunion we found a Sacrament Meeting (never hard to do in a Utah town) and then immediately afterwards left for the cabin.  Becky had just finished one group of HER guests.  We were hosting another group just before the 4th of July and then Becky was hosting her Bishop and his family from Vegas over the 4th of July.

The first to come were Rob & Sarah Peel Parry - Victor's cousin from his Rasmussen side.  They came to also enjoy some Shakespeare down in Cedar City, but we managed to get in some relaxing, good eating and ATVing!  Fun kids, fairly recently married.  We are always so pleased when the younger generation actually likes hanging out with us!

 This, of course, is a big cabin appeal:  The relaxing part!

Not a great picture because I was laughing so hard, but this is the typical look after 2-3 hrs on an ATV when the season has not been very rainy!!

 Sarah and Rob with their share of dirt, too.

 Rob's feet after sandals are kicked off.

This is my favorite photo.  The morning they were leaving to go on to Mt. Pleasant to join her family for Independence Day celebrations Sarah and Rob said they had something they needed to tell us.  They wanted us to know they are expecting their first child (due Jan. 1st!) but made us hold off posting anything on Facebook or the blog because they hadn't had time to even tell their own parents.  I was excited to be first notified and thought their concern that WE would feel bad if we heard later and hadn't known while we were together was a wonderfully amazing thing.  This will be one lucky child to have such good parents! 

Here are two more really lucky children!  These are the cute kids of Sarah's sister Andrea who was able to get away from Richfield for a day and join us up on the mountain.  Maren Peel, Andrea's mom, was pregnant with Andrea when she & her husband lived with us briefly in the Verona house not long after we were married.  So we have loved the Peels a very long time!!  Fun when relatives can also be some of your best friends! 

Days were still dry and pretty hot.  The little people found a way to cool off.  Aria was in heaven in this little wading pool!  (Her diaper soaked up so much water that we weren't sure there would be anything left to play in!)

Just get enough of these dimples and smiles

 Sometimes you just NEED watermelon and a simple, summer meal.

Exit Peels;  Enter Warners   Fourth of July

     And switching "hosts."   Becky's turn again - this time to welcome HER friends and time for us to recede into the background.  

      I felt like a fly on the wall watching a well-oiled machine roll into the driveway and just take over with precision and charm!  The Warners have 7 children, expecting their 8th.  Sometimes you just need to sit back and watch an amazing, committed, loving (and very NORMAL) LDS family in action.  Ginger and her husband spoke, children obeyed.  They cooked, they cleaned, they watched out for one another, they squabbled, a few even cried, they even tried their hand at resisting authority.  They read scriptures, they prayed, they thanked, they hugged, they shared knowledge of things we needed to learn.  They shared deep Gospel feelings.  They put up with cramped quarters (our cabin isn't THAT big), but enjoyed the adventure of sleeping outdoors or on floors and did just fine.  

The ultimate moment was when we were cleaning up to ready the cabin for departure.  I walked into the kitchen to find Hannah on her knees damp mopping my kitchen floor!   I almost cried I was so astounded and so grateful!  My first thought was "Cinderella" but this little lady was not distressed or "put upon" because she was doing something so "menial."  I will never forget how I felt and how much their service enriched our lives that week.    Thank you, Bishop and Sister Warner!

Taryn, proud to get down and dirty on a good ATV ride!

The best gift of all was a thunderous downpour on the 4th of July!!!  Oh, how we have needed the rain.  And watching a summer rain storm from our front deck is by far the favorite past time of cabin dwelling!

The kids love it!   

Amazingly, Brianhead fireworks show went ahead as planned.  I guess you can't rain out a modern firework.  I was especially festive.  I opted to stay at the cabin and catch up on some computer work.  Instead I felt very tired and was in bed by 9 p.m.!!!  There is a lot to be said for just letting the body systems rest, too!

July 8-13.  Victor was off to camp with the Young Men of MonteBello Ward.  I guess you could say it was a vacation for me too, because when you are home alone you can get a lot done and you can do it any time of day or night that you want to.  And you can be lazy some days.  And productive other days!  At the end of the week we got to have Carol Mills Barber and her family back for a couple of days when they were en route from Utah to their family reunion in California.   We know some really nice people!  These are "2nd generation friends.  Carol's mom, Cindy, and I were genealogy teaching buds in Los Angeles before I was married and before Carol was very old!  We've stayed close to Cindy and Rick over a LOT of years and have hosted most of their children as they have grown older, married and begun families of their own.

While it was raining daily in Utah at home in Las Vegas firefighters were still battling the Mt. Charleston fire which had already been burning several weeks.  The constant cloud of smoke from across the valley made for some really bizarre-colored skies & sunset.  Hauntingly beautiful.

While sitting in the chair reading one afternoon I noticed the orange colored shaft of light shine across my floor!  Jumped up immediately to catch all these photos

 The reflection of the setting sun in our swimming pool

My camera could not capture how red the sun really was.  Brought to mind a latter-days scripture!