Sixtieth Christmas

We celebrated Christmas and our 60th wedding anniversary with Julie and Tom in Vancouver.  Russell was there for a few days. He and Tom sang a beautiful duet at their ward sacrament meeting, accompanied by Julie. On the 26th he took off to see the" highly-recommended Megan Walker."  But shortly after he left, Ben and Jax and Avery Harper Higgins (due in March) arrived and spent a couple of days with us. On the 27th Tom drove us all up Washington Highway 14, with beautiful views of the Washington side of the Columbia Gorge, all the way to Stevenson and the Skamania Lodge, where we had a great dinner. All in all, a very festive time with family and the beautiful Pacific Northwest.
Here are a few of the highlights:

We stayed in Russell's room, complete with king-sized bed and all his rowing medals.

                                                    The beautiful Nativity scene

                                                          Some of Julie's festive touches

                                                    The view from their entrance way (Note that grand piano)

                                                               Russell is a good cook!

                                                             Julie and the Christmas dinner table

                                                                 Julie made Tom their traditional Tree

                                           When Christmas is on Sunday, everyone dresses up!

                                                         The tree at Skamania Lodge

                                           It isn't Christmas without a puzzle, especially when we complete it.

                                                 Getting ready for the anniversary bash

                                            Yes, Barb, we actually hung them up.  Very nice touch.

                                                   The crowns seem to go with the occasion

                                                       We look up to our youngest grandson

                                              Ben, Jax, Avery, Julie, Tom, Shirley and Dick.at the lodge.

Thanks to all for making our 60th Christmas and anniversary so memorable.  We loved every minute of it and we love each one of you.

Happy Thanksgiving

We just got home from a wonderful Thanksgiving with children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Can't beat that. Here are a few of the traditional festivities. (And someday I will learn how to put pictures in the order I want then.)

Not one....

                                                                                                                                                       

Not two....

but three festive table

Scrabble

Mother and daughter duets

Hand made table decorations, some of which were edible

What holidays are made for

Going through the humongous newspaper ads

Calvin and his great-grandmother

The chefs at work

"When do we eat?"

"Want to see my new toy?"

Inspecting the turkey

"These olives are finger-lickin' good."

Cindy and Calvin taking it easy

Festive touches wherever you looked.

Thanks to one and all who made this, our sixth Thanksgiving in  Utah, such a   memorable one.
We love you all.

Fall back...

When I was a little boy we had three ways of knowing what time it was.  There was the kitchen clock, which had to be wound every day and ticked steadily through day and night. There was something reassuring about that sound; I knew I could count on that clock as long as it kept ticking.  Another source,, and, in my young boy's mind, the most reliable, was my dad's railroad watch, which he carried in his vest.  The Union Pacific required all railroad men to carry watches at all times and these watches were checked monthly at Pear's Jewelry, the official site for keeping the watches accurate.  When Dad was "in" (at home) I always went to him to find out what time it was.  But much of the time Dad was "out" (working).  At those times I had one more reliable source; I would call "central" (the telephone operator) and say "Time please." . In just a few moments a pleasant female voice would say "At the tone, the time will be ..." The correct time was announced, followed by a solemn tone.  You could set your alarm clock by that.

Of course that was before some government agency, with too much time on their hands, came up with the inane idea that we should all set all our clocks ahead one hour in the spring , then set them back to the "real time" in the fall.  Life has never been the same since.

Friday night I dutifully followed orders: I set our clocks back.  Here's what that involved.

Saturday morning I woke up to the realization that I had (pardon the pun) jumped the clock. We were to set our clocks back on Saturday night.  I wasn't about to go through all that again, so we lived in a sort of twilight zone the rest of the day, and I kept wondering if we had really gained another hour of sleep, and if we had, was there some way we could gain another hour?

Of course no two clocks agree with each other to any reliable degree, so I rely exclusively on the one in the first picture, which, to be honest, I didn't have to set.  In a way I don't fully understand, but which I count among my blessings, an atomic clock somewhere in the world sets it for me and keeps it accurate to the very second.

If you counted the pictures, you came up with fifteen.  That doesn't include re-setting the date and time on the answering machines on three of our telephones, which I may never get around to doing because we don't get enough messages to make it worth the bother.

Lest you think we are way overloaded with ways to find out what time it is, I refer you to another member of our expanded family who had 19 clocks to set back.

Wasn't life great when you could just call "Central" and ask her?

A rare opportunity

I went to Harris Hearing Aids today to have some fine tuning done. My next appointment is two weeks from today at 11:30.  Don't you think they should have made the appointment for 19 minutes earlier? Why miss out on such a rare opportunity.
(Think about it.)

It did our souls good.

Barb drove us up Big Cottonwood Canyon today.

The temperature was just right.

Oh, it feels good to get out of the condo.

There wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Isn't fall a beautiful time of year?

We even found a little waterfall.

It did our souls good.  Thanks, Barb.