Saturday, October 10, 2009

Erin's Moving

Spencer has been in Hawaii for a few weeks now. He's making friends and really enjoying his work. But it's killing him and Erin that they haven't been able to be together as a family. The real estate market is really slow right now, so they haven't been able to sell their house. So they've reached the decision to rent it. Looks like they may have someone lined up. She and the kids will be leaving on October 24th. Ed's going to drive a UHaul truck to L.A. (it will save a lot of money on the shipping of their belonging is she can get it there herself). Ed will fly back on Monday.

Wow. It's really happening. *sob*

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Trips to Gardner Village

Since we managed to sneak in one more October visit to Gardner Village before Erin's family joins Spencer in Hawaii, I've added snap shots to the longer video and added to the following that I had previously posted in September (now deleted).

In 2006, my daughter Erin and I started making trips to a local shopping area in West Jordan called Gardner Village. It was once a grist mill in the early days of the community, and the original silo is still there, including the water wheel. The atmosphere there is wonderful. They've relocated some small old homes, which have shops in them. There's a nice restaurant called Archibalds. There used to be a bookstore there called The Storybook Nook, and that's where we decided to go for the release party for the last Harry Potter book. It was perfect for the experience with the quaint atmosphere.

Gardner Villages puts up some minor Easter decorations, but they really go all out decorating for Halloween (lots of witches) and Christmas (Elves). It's always been too cold to take the grandkids, when we wanted to go around Christmas, but the fall visit has become a tradition.

One of the things I enjoy the most of watching this particular show it how much the kids have grown over the last three years. You can see it especially in Mad, who make her first showing as a newborn and sits eyeing the candy in the most recent visit.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Madelyn's Animal Sounds

Madelyn, who turned 2 earlier last month has started talking now, and she's learning her animal sounds.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Video of Dave's 3-Wheel Scooter

Dave sent this little video, so I thought I'd share it. You can tell that Tyson and Savy are loving it. =D

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Update from Dave's Family in China

Got this message via Skype from Dave today:

Things are going well. We finally have our first holiday break next week. We get 9 straight days off for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Our school gave us a bunch of moon cakes and giant melons. They kind of treat this holiday like we do Thanksgiving. Its a big family type holiday.Families gather from all around and get together and usually just hang out and eat Moon Cake and sit under the moon. Kind of interesting. We weren't sure what we were going to do during the break.

I think we will give the tree house trip another go some other time, as our friends decided they can't go. We are probably going to go to Hong Kong for a few days during the break. It should be fun. One of Shannon's good friends from Seattle has a younger brother there and he can show us around a bit. An interesting bit of information, if we go for a temple trip, the Church has small apartments that they rent for super cheap, so we will probly make it a temple trip as well so we can stay in a cheap place .

We just bought a 3 person scooter yesterday. It is great to get around our garden area in. So much faster and easier than walking and waiting for buses with the kids. We can only drive it legally within the confines of garden area and some small streets right around it, unless we want to get our Chinese Driver's license, which would cost us about 750 US dollars to get. No thank you! This is just fine. The kids absolutely love it.

We'll send some pics soon. We've been hoping to do some blogging, but seems like either the internet is down, we can't bypass the blocks for the internet, or we friends we are hanging out with. We've got some great pics and some great video of some stuff. But just thought I would drop a line and let you know how we are doing.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Fall Colors at Sundance

Saturday was my birthday, and I chose to go to Sundance up Provo Canyon to see the fall colors. I LOVE to do this every year, riding the ski lift. It takes about 45 minutes all told, and I love the smells of the trees and the glorious views.


Here's Ed after we bought out tickets and are heading up to the lift.


It was a little scary for me the first time I went up, but not anymore.


This is the back of Mt. Timpanogos, where there's a glacier that I think stays icy all year round.


The yellows weren't out yet, but the reds and oranges were awesome.


Rough life, huh?

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Madelyn's 2nd Birthday

Friday was Madelyn's second birthday, so Erin and I took her and Aidan to the new Pirate Island restaurant/play place.