No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

 

O.K., so the heading to this post is a little misleading.  We had an incident yesterday with a neighbor who did something incredibly mean and I started to blog about it, but decided it wasn't memory worthy.  And, since I had started the blog, I decided I would rather remember this.  

This is Joseph and his cute sister, Anna.  These are sibling photos : )















Joseph and Anna were home schooled.  And their parents policy is, once they get to high school, they can choose to still be home schooled, or to attend public high school.  Joseph choose high school, Anna chose home school.  

 And since Anna isn't at the high school, they couldn't call her out of class for a siblings photo for the year book.  So we took some while I was taken Joseph's round 2, shorter hair senior pictures

 We had so much fun.  They hammed it up and I just snapped pictures - in full sun on the river bridge.  Morning sun, so it was O.K.

 

 See the photo below?  My idea.  Joseph is texting and Anna is reading a book.  Typical of both of the them, and neither one understands what the other one sees in their chosen "what I do with my spare time" occupation.  Joseph wanted a group of girls nearby so people would KNOW he was texting girls.  I said he could bring them, but they wouldn't be in the picture.  Joseph's girls aren't siblings.  Duh!

 At one point I noticed a couple of tourists waiting to cross the bridge.  I said, "Oh, you can go on across,:  They said, "We're just enjoying the show"  It was pretty entertaining.

 But not nearly as entertaining as when we finished and I turned to the tourist couple and said, "Thanks for waiting."  And they said, "No problem."  And then, as they walked past Joseph and Anna, said, "Congratulations you guys."  We could barely contain our laughter until they were out of earshot, and then it was explosive!  I laughed until tears rolled down my cheeks, and I said, "Hey, I think we just took practice engagement pictures!" 

 They were such good sports about it.  And It was a good day.  Joseph and Anna were fun, we got lots more great senior shots of Joseph both at the river and at Corona Arch, and it was so nice to see two siblings who got along so well together.  Someday I hope you guys find someone just like each other.  : )  : 0  ; *

Senior Picture Time

Over the past few years I have had a few seniors ask me to take their senior pictures.  Normally they have been young women in my ward who I work with in my ward Young Women's calling.  This year I thought I would dodge that bundle of nerves bullet because there are no senior girls in our ward Young Women's.  But I work with this crazy kid, and I happened to snap this random and not at all posed, kind of junk yard dog looking picture at a stake service project, and he liked it!!  So I got to take his senior pictures.

I was surprised that he knew just what and where he wanted his pictures done.  Guys usually don't care that much. 

 He wanted some in front of an old building.  We found this one at the BLM office near our house. 

 I love the difference colors and textures in the wood.  Especially as the sun started to come up and lit the side of the building. 

Then I noticed some nice back light coming through this lattice fence at the BLM offices,  so I threw him in front of the fence a took a few. I love the prisms of light coming through the lattices. 

 Then we headed to the mountains, because he wanted some pictures in the aspens.  I kind of love the sun flare in this one.  Not a good senior portrait picture since the sun flares across his face, but I keep coming back to it as one of my favorites.

We got some really pretty back light in these.  Don't you love the halo of light around his head in the last one?  I also used a reflector to bounce light back on his face.  First time for me - and it made SUCH a difference.  I edited almost 50 pictures for him in this shoot.  Now he wants to get a hair cut and take some more formally dressed ones.  And I'm asking myself, "What is he going to do with all these pictures?"

Instant Rememberance: The Marathon Weekend

THIS is the remembrance I was thinking about yesterday. I'm sure it was triggered by a conversation I had on my morning walk with Joan Cannon. She was talking about a dress she had that her mom wore when she was queen of the Gold and Green Ball. In what world did they used to have a QUEEN at the Gold and Green Ball? Not in MY world. And in the world today, there isn't a Gold and Green Ball to be had.  But that conversation reminded me of this:

In about 1992 or somewhere there about Dave and I were called to be the Gold and Green Ball specialists for our stake. So we were working hard on that, Dick and MaryJane were putting rock on the log house they were living in next door, and my Dad, Grandpa Johnson, was Bishop of the 4^th ward for the second time. That's a random list of things, but they all come into play in the story.  So, we hired a band, the last live band to play at a Gold and Green Ball here, arranged for them to stay at our house so we wouldn't have to pay for a motel for them, met with the youth of the stake to decide on decorations, and scheduled to have people from the 4^th ward, who were in charge of decorating the ceiling to be at the church the Friday evening before the dance at 6:00. Then Dave and I headed for Salt Lake, me in the Toyota pickup and Dave in the Peterbuilt, to pick up supplies for decorations, and, while we were at it, rock for Dick and MaryJane's house. We were coming home on Friday afternoon, trying to be on time to meet the 4^th ward people at 6:00, and cutting it pretty close, when we came to the Port of Entry. Dave went through the Port, driving slowly, both of us holding our breath hoping all would be well and they wouldn't stop him, and I followed right behind him in the pickup. He was past the Port's stop light and accelerating when the light turned from green to red. I immediately knew they had turned the light too late, that Dave was already past it and hadn't seen it, but it was a no cell phone world back then and I had no way to tell him he needed to stop. So he kept accelerating, heading back out onto the highway with me following him and trying to get his attention. I was just about to merge back on to the highway behind Dave when I noticed a man RUNNING out of the Port building. He jumped into a highway patrol car and raced ahead of me, chasing after Dave. By the time I arrived to where the angry highway patrol man had Dave pulled over, they were having a bit of a heated discussion. I walked over to kindly explain to him that he had turned the light too late, Dave hadn't seen it, but he wasn't interested in hearing about the light. He was MAD because Dave didn't stop, but I think he realized Dave was innocent in THAT, so he was very excitedly yelling at Dave about his load of rock. It wasn't fully enclosed on the sides and he thought a rock might work itself loose, come flying out and hit someone. Never mind that we had already driven all the way from Salt Lake and there wasn't a loose rock on the truck, and never mind that I was following behind Dave and if a rock DID come loose and fly out, I would be the one who got hit. Nope, he was mad and Dave was going to pay. He called another highway patrol guy because MAD highway patrol guy needed to go somewhere and do something that was never clear to any of us. Luckily the new highway patrol guy was much more reasonable. I think he was a newbie. But we still had to wait until angry highway patrol guy came back. So we waited. And waited, and waited, and waited, while the nicer highway patrol guy looked more and more uncomfortable and embarrassed.

By now it was now 6:00, the time we were supposed to meet the 4^th ward people at the church with the supplies so they could start putting up the ceiling. Dave finally convinced nicer highway patrol guy to allow him take his truck down the road a few hundred feet to a hydraulics repair place and leave it so we could go on to our appointment, promising he would come back on Monday for the truck and whatever fines went with it. Meanwhile I called the 4^th ward people and asked them if they could go home for a while and meet us back at the church at 8:00, which they did. 4^th Ward people have always been the nicest people!! But, that made it so we didn't get the ceiling done until about 2:30 A.M. Instead of midnight like we were planning on. WHICH made it so I got four hours of sleep that night before I had to be back at the church by 6:00 A.M. With a load of PVC pipe covered in colored plastic that we were using for pillars. We decorated all day, the band arrived WITH THEIR SPOUSES, whom we didn't know they were bringing, so I had to make other arrangements for some of them to stay with other people because we didn't have THAT much room, we ran home and got dressed for the dance, attended the whole thing, of course, took down decorations, delivered band members to their arranged housing, and finally hit the sack, which, for Dave and I, was the pull out coach bed in the family room, at about 1:30 A.M.

I had no sooner laid my head down to rest when the phone rang. I frantically ran to answer it before it could wake our kids or the band members who were staying with us, and Mom's voice was on the other end. They were at the hospital, Dad was having a heart attack. I quickly got dressed and rushed to the hospital in time to see them loading Dad on the life flight helicopter to head for Grand Junction.

It is now early Sunday morning, and from here, the whole rest of this instant remembrance becomes somewhat of a blur, probably because I was running on four hours of sleep. I think Mom went in the helicopter with Dad. I could be wrong. She may have driven herself to Grand Junction. My assignment was to go home and get Dalen and head over. So I did, stopping long enough, while Dalen woke up and got ready, to call my siblings and let them know what was happening. By the time we got to Grand Junction Dad was stabilized and doing well. We spent the day waiting in the Waiting Room and visiting Dad when they would let us go in. I spent the day falling asleep in the Waiting Room, and waking up to find myself alone, then wandering the halls trying to find where everyone had gone. Late that afternoon, when it was sure Dad was going to be O.K., and Mom decided she and Dalen would stay in Grand Junction for the night, I headed home.

It was now Sunday evening and I had had a measly four hours of sleep since waking up Friday morning, so I was a little groggy driving home, but I made it safely, only to find the kids home alone. “Where's Dad?” I asked. “Gone to Price to get his truck,” they answered. GREAT!!! In case you've forgotten, way back on Friday afternoon, we had to leave the Peterbuilt in Price with a promise we would come back Monday and deal with whatever the Port of Entry mad guy wanted to throw at us. The perfect end to this epic weekend would be having to bail my husband out of a Price jail! So, I loaded all the kids in the car and we headed for Price. As it turns out, Dave had talked to a neighbor who used to work for the highway patrol, and the neighbor told him that unless mad Port guy put an OUT OF COMMISSION sticker on our truck, they couldn't legally hold it. So Dave decided to go bring it home before they COULD put such a sticker on it. He roped Larry, his brother-in-law, into helping him encase the load in some fencing, since that was what the mad highway patrol guy seemed to be so angry about, and was just leaving Price in his truck when we arrived. So, we turned right around and followed him home. Where there was finally sleep for me. No Jail. No arrests. No bail. The end.

Mountain Men and Frontier Women . . .And Children

 These are Choke Cherries.  My Grandma used to like to pick them when she came to visit us a long time ago.  Although I don't remember going to the mountain to pick them, I just remember her asking, "Are the Choke Cherries ripe?"  Actually, it may have just been something to talk about. 

 But we needed an adventure last weekend, so when I found out that the Choke Cherries were, indeed, ripe, we trekked up to the mountain to pick some. To tell the truth, we weren't even sure what they looked like.  We had to google Choke Cherries and find a picture.

 Porter, Bridger, and Ford brought Charlie along to play with Gunner.  They had a good time.  Charlie was a good dog.  Gunner threw up in my car.

 Here's Bridger surrounded by Choke Cherry bushes, posing for me.  Bridger picked two cherries.  Then he was done.

 Kyle was a master picker.  He got pretty choosey.  If they weren't dark purple, big, and juicy, he didn't pick 'em.  Notice the Bath and Body Works bags we were using to pick.  They were perfect.  And an exact replica of what Frontier women would have used to pick berries in the 1800's, I'm sure.

 Porter found a little spot with an uberload of cherries.  Then he came back and got me and showed me his secret cherry picking place.  It was the best picking place I found all day.  We filled bags and bags and bags.  I misread the google article on how many cherries we needed.  Three cups for a batch of jam.  Our juiced cherries equaled two gallons.  That's not including the bag we gave to Grandma Cozzens. 

 

One of the bonuses of picking Choke Cherries at Pinhook is the view.  It is absolutely beautiful.  Pick a few cherries, look up and breath in the scenery.  What a perfect day.  And I noticed I was beginning to feel a little bit like a frontier woman preparing for the coming winter.  

Choke Cherries makes the BEST jam.  Who knew?  Right on our own mountain, free for the picking, are wild berries that will sweeten our waffles and bread for a  long time.  We're hardy folks, we are.  Mountain men and Frontier women.  With jam.











And a frontier baby.  Anyone recognize this baby hold? 

Instant Rememberances: The One In Which Kyle Takes Charge Of The Situation

Today a coworker had to take his newborn baby to the hospital because his three year old boy tried to pick him up while his mother’s back was turned and dropped him.  The baby is fine, but it reminded me of a story, and I came to a realization this morning that I need to start writing these down.  As I remembered them.  Because whatever it was I was remembering this morning is already gone from my memory.  So here is the first of my “instant remembrance”  posts. 

When Jill was just a new born, she couldn’t have been more than two or three weeks old,  and Kyle was only two, I went out to help Dave set a septic tank.  Dave worked alone back then, he didn’t have any employees, and quite often I got roped into helping him when he just had to have two people.  The septic tank was cement, and he had the bottom set in the hole already, he just needed me to help him set the top.  There was a ridge around the top of the bottom where cement was poured and the bottom of the top (confused yet?)  fit into the ridge and the cement would “glue” it on.   So I left Kyle and Jill in the little white Toyota truck that we were driving way back then, and went over the hill of dirt Dave had dug and proceeded to hold the top half of the septic tank steady in the sling while Dave was in the backhoe trying to set it on the top of the bottom before the cement in the little ridge dried.  The wind was blowing and making the septic tank top sway enough that we were having trouble getting it set.  All the sudden Kyle came up over the hill yelling for me.  I stopped and went over to see what he needed, and he said, “The baby (Jill) is crying.”  I told him I would only be a few minutes, not to worry about it, just go back and talk to her and I would be right there.  It was probably another five or ten minutes, which seemed like an eternity to me now that I knew my baby was crying in the truck, but finally we got the top set and I hurried to the truck to take care of Jill.  When I got there, she was just lying there quietly and Kyle was reading a book.  I said, “Oh, look what a good big brother you are.  You made her stop crying.”  And Kyle said, “yeah, I fed her a pine nut.”  GASP  Sure enough, a few days later when I was changing her diaper, there were the pieces of a broken pine nut shell.  Minus the nut. 

Super Hero TuesDay

 By Tuesday of Cozzens Camp, we had settled into a routine of sorts.  Get up, eat breakfast, have flag ceremony, and meet on the stairs for an orientation of what our plans were for the day.  Tuesday was Super Hero day!!  So first off, we needed to make our super hero T-shirts.  I had brought a basic outline of three different super hero logos.  Super man, Batman, and Darth Vader.  I know, Darth Vader was NOT a super hero, but, as I explained to Porter, he became a good guy in the end.  And his mask was pretty basic, so for our Cozzens Camp purposes, he was a super hero. 

 Jill and I copied the outlines of the chosen super hero onto each T-shirt using a fabric marker, and then using colored fabric markers, the kids colored theirs in.  Porter was meticulous!!  He worked for a long time coloring his Darth Vader mask.  He even had to leave it for a time while we did another activity and finish it later.  But he DID finish it.  It was very colorful and beautiful!! I loved every one of them.  Those T-shirts had SUCH personality.

 

And then Jill and I, the two most un-artistic duo on the planet, painted their cute faces.  And we did a pretty darn good job!  Here is Bat Aiden in his bat face and bat T-shirt

 And here is Brody in his Superman T-shirt and, what he liked to call his "Lighting McQueens" face.

 Capri had a Hello Kitty face for about five minutes.  Then she wanted it OFF!  But look how cute she was for that five minutes :)

I didn't paint Bridger's face, so I don't have a close up picture of it.  I think Jill does, so when she gets around to editing her pictures, we'll see Bridger up close.  But here he is in HIS Superman shirt and mask.

And Chase did NOT want his face painted.  Apparently he didn't like the crackly paint feeling when they painted his face at the Children's Museum in Oregon.  So he passed  But he also choose a Darth Vader logo for his shirt.

And here is Darth Porter in his awesome Darth mask and his remarkably professional looking Darth T-shirt.  These guys really  put on the super hero moves!!

 

 And finally, the whole gang.  Minus Capri, who was inside getting her face washed back to a normal Capri looking face.  What a fun beginning to our Super Hero Day!  But, there is more to come.  We fought villains, and had weapons training, and all kinds of exciting events.  Stay tuned!!

So Many Days Are Bitter Sweet.

Today I attended Sacrament meeting in another ward.  It was their ward conference and I am in the stake YW presidency, so there I was.  The bishop of this particular ward was a friend I grew up with, so when, in his talk he said as he was growing up he had two heroes in his life, his father and his Bishop, I knew the bishop he was talking about was my Dad.  Because Dad was our Bishop when we were growing up.  My Dad was a great bishop.  He was a people loving, caring, there for you kind of bishop.  It was thirty years ago that Dad was bishop the first time, and people still remember him, talk about him, and ask me how he's doing.  And all my life I've wanted to be just like him.  I hope I'm coming somewhat close.

Oh, the wonderful things of our childhood that make a tough life easier!  This weekend we spent time hiking in old childhood places. 

 We call this place "The Giant Stairs"  It was a rite of passage when I was a kid.  We could hike as far as "The Little Hill" until we turned six, then we could go to "The Big Hill", and when we were eight, we could hike all the way to "The Giant Stairs"

 

The Giant Stairs are just above the old Senior Center.  But yesterday we hiked from our house, up to the Brown Rocks, and then over.  It was a little bit of a hike, so the boys were glad to see them when we got there.  

 

And when we got there, Daniel said, "We could have driven here!"  I said, "And miss the experience of hiking here?  Don't ruin everyone's fun :)  He said, "I was just saying what everyone else was thinking."  We're all about the experience. 

 You know how things are SO BIG when you're little, but when you get big, those big things aren't so big anymore?  Jill said just what I had thought before when seeing these GIANT stairs after not having been here for awhile.  "Funny how these used to be a lot bigger than they are now." 

 Brody didn't think he would fit inside this little cave in the rock, but I talked him into trying.  It was a perfect fit!  If you didn't mind spending your life bent over at the waist :)

And these two boys are at that the "I need to jump off things, the bigger and higher the better"  age.  Here they are jumping off the Brown Rocks. 
The Brown Rock are a rite of passage for my kids.  They love the Brown Rocks.  These three boys and Daniel camped out at the Brown Rocks on Friday night.  Ah, the memories  they are making . . . someday it will be these little things that will see them through the tough times ahead.