August

 The beginning of August.  Chris came into town to help Amy move into their new house.  On Friday, the 7th Joy, Chris, Erick and I got together for lunch.  Fun to see them.  We met down at Joy's Mapleton house since she was there packing the last things up as that house is selling.  

Saturday morning we went down to Amy's new house to try and help them unload. They had several people there so we didn't do much, but it was fun to see their house!  Great place.

Then I went to Heidi's for Julianna's baby shower.  It was so fun to see all the girls there for it and cute baby Carter--Linnea's.

Kolton's mom was there and she brought 3 bags of gifts!  They were all such cute things...by the end of Julianna opening her gifts we were all laughing at the amour of things!

A darling dress and purse

Nicole (Kolton's mom), Kolton's Gr., Carter,
Linnea, Sam, Kelly, Amy, Erin, Kristina,
Emily.  In back...David's aunt Linda and
her daughters

Cute Malia

Quilt Heidi made

I went to the temple on Tuesday and noticed these flowers.  They were planted in June and I noticed there is not a dead flower among them.  There are no dead spots in the temple grass.  Maybe the Lord has a special gardening secret???  ;)

Catheys to dinner

Fence fixing

 

A week before Jacob left we had Catheys over for dinner--one last hurrah.  We had our traditional pizza and then watched a movie.

 

On Saturday Jacob and Jason replaced a board in our fence and then we went to MooYahs for lunch.  It was a pretty good burger.                                                              

The last couple of weeks before Jacob left were kind of hard.  He was nervous about the unknown of college and the classes and at the same time he wanted to be off and spreading his wings.  It has been a balancing act for sure!         

MooYahs

A quiet time on the swing

Special delivery from Grandmaa

Yummy!

Grandpa Wong had grandma bring over a bunch of treats for Jacob to bring to school with him.  Lots of his favorites...Oreos, Nerds and Grandma brought a Wendy's frosty to go with it. 

That week the packing began.  We had sorted out some of his stuff in his room, that he wanted to take, previously.  He had begging, clothes, toilet paper, cleaning stuff, etc. The night before we took him up Jason gave him a father's blessing. 

Father's blessing

All packed

On Saturday, the 22nd, we packed up the car and headed to Logan.  We got there about 1 p.m., unpacked the car at the loading zone and I went to park. 

When I came back Jason was there with a load and we waited for Jacob to come back and get us for the 2nd load.  When he arrived he was not too happy about how small his dorm room was.  😄  That was funny to us because we know how small college living is. 

Leaving.

Once we got everything unpacked and situated it was better.  Some of his other roommates were moving in also and they seem nice. We took him to In-n-Out Burger and back to his dorm before we headed home.  

Home is quieter (though we never had tons of noise) and different without him home.  His first weekend he sent this picture and said, "You were right.  This can be fun doing things on your own!"

He captioned this with "winning". ;)

An newly mowed and edged lawn

Jason and I have done fun stuff like mow the lawn...On Thursday Julie Spilker and I went the the Johnson Files Improv show in Orem.  I went 2 years ago with Jason and Jacob and I think that show was better. 

Johnson Files show

   

2026 Laurie Palmer, Marlin Palmer,
Me, Linda Beck

  

2001 Janice Young, Marlin Palmer,
Me, Betsy Simmons

Friday night I went down to Provo for the memorial for Janice Young the former school secretary at Franklin Elementary.  

Marlin and his wife Laurie, and Linda Beck, the librarian, were there. Betsy passed away back in 2021.  Elaine Bergener was there with her husband.  She lives at the same place as Janice did.  She is now 95 and moved in a few years ago with Bob due to her Alzheimer's.  I did not recognize her at first.   She was in a wheelchair and not as I remember her.  I was telling Marlin that the people at Legacy Village, where all of this was happening, would never know the Elaine we knew.

It was a very nice memorial and after I telling Marlin....you spend a lot of time with some of these people during your life on a day to day basis.  Then you begin to go to their retirement parties, and then funerals.  It is just weird because you don't imagine yourself at this point.  When I am with these people I think of myself as the 30ish year old I was when I knew them, but I am now 62.  That is 7 years older than Marlin was in the 2001 picture!

Back to Jacob.  We have talked to him a few times.  The Connections class went well and on Friday night they did the walk from the Spectrum to the "A".  The university president talked about that is 4 years they will be walking from the "A" to the Spectrum for graduation.  He is struggling with wanting to be home, tired of the dorms, liking his roommates, but not clicking completely.  It is hard.  

I think he would be bored if he were at home.  I hope he can get through this.  I know he can, he may just need some more support.  

July

 Ah, house projects.  We have decided we need to replace our shower.  We've gotten 3 bids...2 of them were around $16,000 for just shower...the third was about $9000.  Ugh!!

We have a California shower
tub set up

Trying to find a shower wall
color I like

Another angle

   The problem with picking colors is they don't always make what you like.  Our current shower is cream with a soft swirl of white running through it.  You hardly see it, but it is there.  The only thing close is this one with brown in it.  If it is too much brown I don't think I'll like it.  I hate doing stuff like this!

Utah State Orientation
No, I don't know why Jason is making that 
face

Schedule

On Wednesday, July 3, we went up to USU for orientation.  Jacob went up the night before and stayed overnight.  We got up and drove there that morning.  We met altogether and then had breakout session separately. They give lots of information and show how they support students.  It was pretty informative. 

We had lunch and then more classes.  We headed home around 4 p.m.

Lucy, Julia, Tanner, Emma, Hannah &
Olivia

MarySue's bday and 4th dinner

Watching fireworks

4the of July!  250 year celebration!

On Saturday the 4th we went to Joy's for lunch with the family.  Elizabeth, Amy, Barry and Linda, Gayle, Joy's friend Sue, Taylor, Mike and us.  It was fun to see the kids and how round 2 of the grandkids (or mom's great grandkids) are beginning to fill in.  By the end of this year I think Mom will  have 23 great grandkids!  

We got home about 4 p.m. and around 5 p.m. Randy, MarySue and Karen came for dinner.  It was low key, but very pleasant and we visited until 9:30.  

After they left Jason and I drove over to South Town mall in time to watch the fireworks out the car window.  

Jacob went with us to Joy's and then he left to go over the Elias' house for a party.  They ate, swam, watched a movie, went to Sandy South Town to watch fireworks and then hiked to the suspension bridge in Draper.  He had a good time.  

Sunday was America's Potluck dinner to celebrate America's 250th birthday.  Not many people came, but Cathey's joined us.  I'm glad we went.  Afterwards we went to Cathey's and played games.

Dinner

Ashlyn, Morgan and me

Happy 4th!

Draper Days parade

Back at the park in the afternoon and staking out
our spot for evening concert and fireworks

Draper Days goes on for a week.  The past couple of years we have participated just on Saturday.  We began by going to the parade with Catheys.  There are a few freebies passed out and it always fun to see what you get.  

After the parade we went to Draper Park for the Fireman's pancake breakfast.  Then we went to Central Bank for their street tacos.  It was very hot, but fun.

We then went home to cool off!  At 3:30 we went back to the park to play Bingo.  There were 8 of us and out of the 8, 5 of us won!  I got a cooler bag.  

Our view while eating. 

We then walked around the park looking at the vendors booths.  As we passed one of them someone said, "Jason."  It was his cousin Tara.  We stopped to talk to them for a few minutes and Tom and Wendy continued looking around.  

When we were done we continued looking at the booths and then met up with Catheys.  They decided to walk up the hill to Macys for deli sandwiches.  I knew with my hip I could not do that hill so Jason and I stayed and split a salad from Costa Vida.

Great spot on the hill, in the shade, enjoying
dinner.

After we ate we went back to our blanket area and as we got there we ran into Jason's other cousin Ty (Tara's brother) and his wife.  Fun to see them.  

We played 5 Crowns with Catheys until the fireworks started.  The day itself was very hot, but that evening was comfortable in the shade and later darkness.

Getting ready for the fireworks

Heidi, Rio and me

The next Saturday I went over to Heidi's to see Mackenzie and the kids.  They have been in town for Mackenzie's sister's wedding.  It was fun to visit.

Sunday nap

Celebrating Rob's 9th birthday

Ethan, Jacob, Grace, Sage. Sarah, Dan,
Lilly, Irina, Rob playing softball

On Sunday afternoon we went over to Jared's

to celebrate Robert's birthday.  We had tacos for

dinner and a cookie with ice cream cake for dessert.  MarySue was not there as she is visiting Jenny for a few weeks.  

Jason's work has been crazy this month.  He has to do a report that has taken him HOURS to do.  Its not just him...his counterparts in other refineries have had similar problems.  

Can't believe July is about over.  It has been a very hot month!  In 3 weeks we take Jacob to school!  Wow!!

June

Hale Theater-My Fair Lady

 We kicked off June by going to My Fair Lady at Hale Center Theater.  It was so good and the scenery was amazing!

Mylee had recently gotten home from her mission for health reasons--stomach and back pain beginning in April.  It got to the point that she needed to come home so it could be figured out.  

Turns out she has a small hernia and a cyst on one of her ovaries.  Both thing explain the pain.  They are doing tests on the cyst to see if it is cancerous and if it is not they will watch it to see if it will shrink on its own.  If it doesn't they will do surgery and she should be able to go back to the field.  In the meantime, she is a service missionary and sister training leader here.  It is fun to have her back around!

The storage room saga again!

  The day after the theater we found ants in our food storage room.  Not only ants, but flying ants.  UGH!! Tried ant bait and that helped, but didn't stop the flying ant problem.  

So we had to take everything out--AGAIN and try to find the problem.  Regular ants leave a path so we found that, but the flying ants you have to assume are coming in the same way. 

Jason took out part of the ceiling

What a mess!!

 We ended up taking down the ceiling completely, found the corner ant trail and they Jason bought some expanding foam and sprayed it in all of the crevices in the ceiling.  We could also see ants outside, in front, right by the steps which are over this room. 


We watched and found that the ants had died, but not the flying ants.  So we sealed up under the door to see if the expanding foam would seal them out.

What a mess!

Every few days we checked and still found them in the closet.  Finally called pest control and they came out about a week later.

Jacob has a job working for the district doing IT sorts of things.  Cleaning and moving Chromebooks etc.  He likes his job, which is nice...for a few weeks he was also working at Home Depot in the garden department on Fridays--which he did not love.  Since he was SO part time they let him go.

After his first week of work, we went down to St. George with friends...Jackson Holebroke and Grady.  They stayed with Jackson's cousin for 3 days, and 1 night they went camping.  I don't know Jackson's cousin's parents, but they must be saints because they had their family, another uncle and family and the boys there!  He had fun.

Jacob went to St. George and we went to
Olive Garden for dinner!

Off they go to St. George

On Thursday Jason and I went over to Jared and Stephanie's stake center to help set up for the wedding luncheon and reception.

On Friday the 12th, Emma and Ethan got married in the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. It was a beautiful day and they seem so happy!

  

Taking a bow with a kiss

Setting up food

Getting ready to eat

Japanese Drumming

Father's Day!  Chips, a rachet piece,
 and his E-Bike

Tree was getting in the way of 
closing the gate.  It had to go.

For Father's Day we went to Josh and Irina's to celebrate.  

J hanging out in the living
room

My half face picture

Sage tried to teach me how
to get the group picture.  I need
practice!

Jen Stein, Sharon, Kim, Joy and me

Kim Stewart came into town the last week of June.  We got together with her for dinner.  

They came to spray and at first I thought it was wet and not drying.  I put a fan on it, but it actually had set and was like shellack.  When the guy came again we washed it with soap and water and that helped. 

I am so tired of this room.  It all started after
we had the additional cement poured in the 
front in 2023

Jason's birthday was on Saturday.  6 days away from Father's Day!

What could it be?

It was shirts, shirts and more shirts!  I bought a bunch because I never know what he might really like.  He ended up keeping all of them!

A shirt!

Another shirt!

That night we invited Catheys over for ice cream and we watched Sheep Detective.