Flags......

If you don't live in our neighborhood, you might not know that Gary is the "flagmaster" in our neighborhood. Years ago, a Scout did an eagle project and raise money and got flags for our area. Shortly after that, our wards split and Gary who was Scoutmaster then (I think that was his calling) became the guardian of the flags. It has served as a fund raiser for the Scouts and then for all of the YW and YM and then back to the Scouts over the last 10 or so years. Six holidays a year, early in the morning youth and their parents will come to pick up the flags and post them throughout the neighborhood and then in the evening they return to gather them. Gary is taken care of the flags and is involved in almost every flag posting and picking up. In the evenings of those holidays, 110 flags will be left leaning against our garage so that Gary can check them and make sure they are rolled up well. He makes sure they are cleaned, in good repair, and replaces them when they are not. Every spring he and Jena will head around the neighborhood and clean out the small pipes that hold the flags in place.

Here is Jena in her first official flag posting as a Beehive although she had helped in the past as she had gone with Gary when they needed extra helpers.


Now at the beginning of all of this, I was known to grumble from time to time about us storing the flags. Afterall, we have a two car garage while many people in our area have three car garages so certainly they might have more room. However over time, I have come to love it as I watch the care and concern Gary has over the flags and making sure that they are posted correctly. We have had people just drop checks off to us who missed the Scouts and say, "I know Gary is the flag guy so can you make sure they get this check?" I am glad he is the "flag guy" and I hope that our children and grandchildren will know that, too.

Other than saying how great Gary is (and he is), this is a long introduction to the purpose of this post which is to announce that Gary (and the rest of us) now has his very own flag pole and flag. Jena took lots of pictures of the building process so we want to document this event with her pictures and some I took. I hope that we will have some family memories on July 4th and other times as we raise and lower this symbol of our sweet country.

Gary and I bought the flag pole as our gift for our 33rd anniversary on March 3, 2011 (clever right, 33rd on 3-3-11!). The weather has been too wet and cold to install the flag until the last week. Gary did most of the work. So here are the steps to install a flag pole:

Gary dug a hole (no pictures from that day). Then on a dry day, Gary put the "sleeve" in the ground and mixed the cement.

Jena couldn't believe it when Gary stepped on the cement and started mushing it down with his bare feet. She thought it was so funny. I guess it works good to get the air bubbles out of the cement.

We let the cement set for a week and yesterday on a beautiful day we raised our flag pole. I am certainly glad to be married to a man who can tie knots and installed a flag pole. The instructions which came with the flag were missing some of the important elements. Here's the pictures from yesterday.

Putting the pole into the sleeve........

We put sand around the pole in the sleeve to both hold the pole but also to let it shift a bit in the wind to prevent it from breaking in high winds.

Jena took a picture of the "cap" which ends up at the base of the flag so that you can seal the cap to the cement and prevent water from going into the sleeve. No one will ever see it, but at the underside of the cap, I wrote our anniversary, our names, the names of our kids, and Gary and I both signed it. Corny, I know, but sweet, too.....(right?).

Gary measured and measured again to make sure the pole was straight....

I didn't realize Jena was taking pictures of us both as we checked the view of the pole from across the street. We wanted to make it sure it looked okay although at this point it was too late to do much about it. The cement, sand, and pole were in place.

We did the first flag raising together.

I had wanted a flag for a long time and had always imagined it by the rock on the east side of our driveway. Gary talked about wanting to hear the flag flying and so we stared trying to decide where and how we would put it. It was a long process, but I finally decided where I wanted it and how, and it turned out perfect.

Hope you like pictures of flags flying....

That's our flag--cloth with sewn stars, just what I wanted....

Come join us for a flag raising...anytime the weather is good. Despite the problems of our country, I am glad to be an American. There is something special about seeing an American flag flying in the wind. Now I can see it in my own yard. Thanks Gary for all of your work.

A week of "vacation" for Jena

We have actually done very well this past year, avoiding the colds and flus that spread like wildfire during the long winter months (extra long this year in Utah.) However Jena did spend the week home this past week with a sinus and eye infection. A mother with kids in high school said that there has been a rash of eye infections at the high school that isn't "pink eye" but connected with sinus infections. I guess that is what Jena has. The sinus infection cleared up quickly but her eyes have stuggled. We are on the second set of eye drops and finally on Saturday we saw some improvement. She hates missing school and YW but she was a good sport. She played WII, read books, and we worked on catching up her journal.

One day when I was at work, she worked on a puzzle in Gary's office.

We are enjoying some sunshine yesterday and got a lot of yardwork done along with most of our neighborhood. After a long winter with snow into May (snowback is over 185% of normal in the mountains), we have now been having rain (especially on Tuesdays when Gary is trying to fit in some outdoors activities for Webelos).

Summer is beginning to fill up with fun activities and two nephews getting married, one day apart in AZ and UT. Exciting stuff.

Happy Birthday to Jessica...

Jessica is 28 today which means that I now have been a Mom almost 1/2 of my life since I was 28 when she was born. She was also born on a beautiful Sunday afternoon (although I think it rained earlier that day--no windows in the room that I was in).

Jessica at the Alamo on a "Texas" bench

At Scott and Chantel's wedding last summer.

Jessica likes the color green, collects frogs, loves the Twilight series--books, movies and the conventions. She doesn't like to cook. She is living in Salt Lake and working. She and her roommate have two kittens. She likes to travel especially if she doesn't have to eat the food (she prefers American.) She likes amusement parks and the beach.

We are so glad to have her in our family and hope she had a great day celebrating. We will be celebrating later when our schedules fit together.

SIlver Wolf 5K Run with Jena and Me

This free scrapbooking design generated with Smilebox

It was a vacation week but......

One of my co-workers asked how my vaction week was going and I just laughed......I had taken the week off this past week from work because I had worked so many hours in April and I had so many things to do around the house that I couldn't get to. That was the plan....

I knew that it wasn't going to be a week totally without work since Thursday night we had our yearly Birth Parent Appreciation dinner (the day before Mother's Day is Birth Mother's day so we try to have a dinner sometime that week to honor those who have placed their babies.) And then on Friday night we had a concert "Celebrating Adoption with Michaal McLean". That meant that I had several texts and emails related to that throughout the week. Both of those events turned out great. Michael McLean played his songs related to adoption and others and inbetween he talked about the stories and feelings related to the songs. It was great. We probably had over 1000 people there.

However the week did have some fun times as well that I was able to do without worrying about work---My sister, Valerie came a day early for a conference so we could spend some time together. Soon after she arrived we headed to Provo to watch Chantel run at a track meet there, Valerie was able to visit Megan while we were there and we all joined up for dinner including Chantel's parents and some of their friends.

On Thursday Jena and I joined with our Special Olympics team for the annual Torch run. We rode in a truck while others ran and walked along following the torch caried by members of the law enforcement people in our area.

After that Valerie and I headed to Salt Lake for lunch with my Dad and Karla and an afternoon of game playing. We played "Ticket to Ride" and of course my dad won. It was a great afternoon.

So I didn't really get all the things done that I wanted to do, because life kept coming even though I was on "vacation". That is what my co-worker commented, "You forget when you take time off work it doesn't mean that the "cooking, cleaning, and caring for children" stops. It keeps coming." I did get to spend a day on Saturday in the backyard and feel like I accomplished something. Hope your week was also productive.

"Poster Man" Ben

This month is National Mental Health Month (who decides these things?). As part of that, the State Youth in Action group (a group organized by the state to involve young adults with mental illnesses in advocacy, social activities and other events) organized a photo gallery which is currently hung at the Salt Lake City Main Library. Ben was one of the people who were interviewed for this event. Here is a picture of the copy of the poster which is at the library.

We all love this picture of Ben and we are very excited about how well he did on his interview. He did a great job with his interview. The last picture is one of his comments which was highlighted on his poster.

Another snowy Track and Field Day

We arrive in Logan for Jena's area track and field meet and the snow was falling again. Last year it snowed so much they finally cancelled the afternoon events and said everyont would be invited to State who didn't get to compete.

This year the snow was very dry and after about an hour it cleared up and it was a beautiful day.

There goes Jena on her first run of the morning.

Jena ended up with a gold (50 meter run), silver (softball throw). bronze (turbo jav), and a 4th (25 meters).

She had the most fun handing out with her friend, Kaitlyn and the other kids from the team. And, of course, Dad.............