YW cupcakes and Pinewood derbies

The Laurels decorated cupcakes one night and Jena wanted me to take a picture for the blog so here you go.  They however are no longer available as we have eaten them or given them away so don't stop by for one.

Word is getting around that Gary will do pinewood derbies for a plate of cookies.  This ward in our stake made these cute trophies.  It is just a block of wood with a plastic trophy glued on top.  Around the sides it had the place, the pack-shown, and the year.  It was darling so I took a picture for the next time I am in Cub Scouts (I am not too old yet I hope.)

Emergency Prepardness Coordinator

I know that I have mentioned that I have this calling in our ward and also in our city (as in Syracuse the city uses the Church's ward and stake boundaries to organize the city for emergencies.)  Now this is not something that I know alot about or am very organized in.  This surprises some people because I am know to be an organized person but that is only in some things, mainly I can plan a party!  Anyway here is my CERT stuff which shows that I am officially a trained CERT person in Syracuse City.

As part of my responsibilities I had to help the Ward council develop a neighborhood emergency response plan.  We finished that at the end of February so the next step was to share that information with our neighborhood.  That sounded like a good enough reason to have a party so on March 15, we had the Walnut Grove Family Emergency Preparedness Fair.  It was for the family and it was a fair.

Information from the state for Earthquake prep.

Photo corner for family pictures, although mostly it was kids and their friends posing.



Before it started

Tail end of our parade by the Cub Scouts
They had made floats and posters related
to emergency preparation

We gave everyone who came a copy of the neighborhood plan (since then I have continued to pass them out to the neighborhood.  I have about 1/4 left to do.)  We had booths about different topics including water, 72 hour kits, first aid, home safety, gardening, and then we had mini mini classes on fire, earthquakes, and 3 month supply of food.  In between all of that we had simple carnival games that the kids could play while the parents learned and talked. We had about 160 people there from about 42 families in our neighborhood.  And it was fun.  At the last minute one of my friends suggested that we demonstrate a couple of different hand wheat grinders.  That turned out to be one of the favorite activities for the kids.  They loved grinding the wheat.  We could have charged them tickets to do that.  There was a long line to try it.

One of my personal goals is to get our neighborhood stocked with water.  Life is just not fun without enough water to go around and we do live in a desert.  We showed a 250 gal. tank and a group got together and we ordered several for families within our neighborhood.  They arrive tomorrow.  So at least some families will have more water than before.  Now if we just get them filled before a disaster strikes.............

Now all of you need to make sure you have enough water...

1 gal per day per person in your family for at least 14 days.

If you have a baby or small children you will want more.

That is a very small amount of water compared to most daily lives in America.

So get some water stored!!!



And March "marches" on

It is amazing how busy we can be with just one child living at home.  I know I said this in February but I am still amazed how quickly this year is flying by.  2013 looks like it will be a very interesting year for us.  All we can do is hold on and hang on for the ride.

At the Roots Tech conference that I attended this past week (a family history conference in Salt Lake--more about that later), a presenter talked about the "WOWs" of our lives and we need to experience, remember, record, and share these things, big and small.  She commented that in her family her grandmother was famous for banana chocolate chip cookies and it had grown to be quite a big deal within the extended family.  However after her death, they realized that they had no pictures of her making those cookies at all.  Nothing could be done about that, but she and her sisters all gathered to Arizona one weekend to make Grandma's banana chocolate cookies with her recipe in their grandmother's kitchen.  They made a YouTube video as they made the cookies and shared her kitchen with their extended family which could last for generations. I loved that. 

One great advantage of our technology is that it is so much easier to take pictures and to share the details of our lives for people now and in the future.  Blogs are certainly one way but the list is really endless.  In the past, cameras were harder to use and printing pictures was expensive.  It was more something that you did for vacations or special events.  How great it is to pull out your phone and take a picture of a beautiful flower or amazing clouds.......

This was one day last week when we were having beautiful sunshine
and then snow would fall and then the sun would come out again.
Utah weather is crazy, although I think where ever I have lived
people always talk about the weather being crazy there.
Weather is just changeable......adds a little spice to life.
This is taken from our Church's parking lot to the west.

That technology is so great for those little moments in life and I wish that I had been able to do that through our whole lives.  How great to have that type of record of life. (Of course, I knew I should have kept a journal where I could have written those things.  However having the pictures with the words seems so much easier.)  The past three days were the Roots Tech Conference in Salt Lake.  I was able to attend a part of Thursday and all of Friday.  It was overwhelming and amazing at the same time.  There is so much that can be done in family history both in the searching for our ancestors and in recording our own lives and those of other family members.  I wanted to rush home and start scanning pictures, writing histories, and studying more about the times and places of my forefathers.  I text my sister Valerie during the conference and told her that we never needed to buy a book again.  The Library of Congress has so many things to read and see that it would take more than a lifetime to read it all.  And we can get it all on our computer, smart phones and ipads.  We are so blessed to live in this time of history.  And while at the conference, I also learned about that other type of cloud--"The Cloud" of the Internet where we can share and work on things together. Hopefully soon the "Giberson" family will be building a piece of the cloud to share and exchange ideas about our forefathers.

This conference was "overlaid" with the death and then the funeral of Gary's uncle Vaun.  He was a kind hard working person who never gained much in the way of earthly possessions or status.  He had to help his family as a young teenager as his father was killed just weeks before Gary's mom was born.  He was 10 or so at the time.  He and his wife were always involved in family history and in his later years went to the temple in Ogden almost every day to do temple work, especially after his wife died 10 years ago.  He had recorded his own life history and one of his brother-in-laws shared some of the simple but poweful experiences from his life.  He was a simple man yet his life was full of strength and courage and faith.  In life, he has trouble speaking and it was often hard to understand him, but in written word there was no difficulty.  We all are excited that we will be able to read and learn more about Uncle Vaun and his life but also about his father, who my mother-in-law never knew.  So go dust off your journals, grab your cameras, and start experience, remembering, recording and sharing the pieces of your life.


The last post dealt with Jena's play and as I mentioned this month has been very busy.  First Jena was able to finally go skiing again after a break of a month due to play practice.  This time she met her teacher Terrie and her husband at Power Mountain ski resort which is located further north in Ogden Canyon from Snowbasin.  Instead of just going up the life and down the mountain, at Powder Mountain they went on an almost 2 hour ski "trip".  They started at this yurt...

Then skied down the mountain side and then continue to ski on some trails throughout the resort.  They took two different ski lifts up different mountain sides and ended up skiing about 5 miles during that time, some down hill and down cross country.

Terrie and Jena in front of the map of the resort
after they finished skiing.

They had hoped to take pictures along the way but the resort was very foggy so we just took these pictures at the end.


Jim, Jena, and Terrie inside the yurt

From the Powder Mountain parking lot
It was a foggy day there.

As we drove away that day, Jena said, "I love skiing."  And I love watching her ski.  One more ski day on Tuesday for the season.  I will miss our quiet times in the snow of the mountains. 

The weekend after "Suessical". Jena's friend Kaitlyn was in a play at her high school.  She was a dance in Aladdin.  At their high school, they do a play with the special needs classroom students plus the drama club students.  It is a fun production and is a fund raiser for their classroom.

Jena also headed back to work after missing a week or so during play practices as well.  She was thrilled to be back.  It is such a great experience for her.  It helps her so much to learn the routine of working and all that goes along with it.  She likes to keep busy so she is a good example to the other employees who work there.  The skills came in handy for the Special Olympics fundraiser that we did on March 16th.  We had to sale root beer floats at a Harmon's grocery store.  Jena did great and was a hard worker.

Here is the group during our shift from 1-3.  It was a fun time.

Jena preferred making the floats rather than trying to get business.

Jena poured the pop for the first hour and
then held a sign for the last hour.
 

Here is some of the workers
Kaitlyn, Jena, Edward, and Jeremiah

Having their own root beer floats when their shift was done!
Jena and Kaitlyn

This post is quite long enough.  Time to end it and start the next one.  You at least can see what Jena has been up to this month.  She has a couple of big things this week--a Regional Choir Festival in Salt Lake and then flying to Texas for six days to attend her cousin, Katie's "talk" prior to her mission to Portugal.  Exciting times ahead.


The final curtain

This was the last night for "Suessical"---Gary and I celebrated our anniversary witha dinner at Wendy's and one last showing of "Suessical" at Clearfield High School.

School girl for the begining scenes



When they appear as colorful "whos"," struggling to stay a life"

This is the other half of the stage when Horton sat on the egg, in nest, in a tree!

Dance numbers at the end of the play
"Oh the things that you think"

"Green eggs and Ham"

 Awesome job to all of the cast, the directors--Mr. Uminski and Mrs. Sowby and of course to our favorite Who of all, Jena.  We never got a picture of her in her who outfit but she had the cutest suspenders which were red with white hearts.  Maybe I will get a picture of them someimtes.

What a disaster...

I was so excited to share our 35th anniversary post that I completed forgot (despite my aching muscles) to report on my MOCK Disaster the morning before.  After 21 hours of classroom work, hours of reading our text, and a 3 hr. computer course, our class of 18 appeared bright and early on Saturday morning to have our 3 hr. final--which was a mock disaster.  An earthquake had hit our fire station and while the building was basically okay except for a small fire outside.....people were trapped and hurt and we had to go into the dark building and save them and ourselves too.  We did eventually find and save everyone but one of our CERT members died as he stepped out of line of side of his buddy.  Luckily he was brought back to life to help us transport others out of the building to our treatment areas.  It was physical and mental work, assesing our victims and following our guidelines for triage, treatment and transportation.

After finishing CERT, I have three comments:

1. Every teenager and adult should take a CERT class.  Like they repeated often, CERT was developed because in large disasters there are usually more victims than trained personnel. and people will want to help.  Let train them so they can really help safely and wisely and in a prepared fashion.
2. In order to help others, we ourselves mus be prepared,  We can't leave our own family without food, water, light, and shelter and feel comfortable helping others.
3. I hope I NEVER EVER have to use most of the things that I have learned.  To have to walk past an injured person calling for help to first make sure the building is safe or to tag a person dead because I can't get a breath from them in two tries of clearing their airways would demand a lot from me as a person.

The truth is that if something terrible does happen in my neighborhood, there won't be enough firemen and policemen to help everyone and I will want to help my neighbors.  I am glad that I know a few more things so that my help might be a bit more helpful to those I love.

TAKE A CERT CLASS and I will actually pay for anyone of my children who want to take the class!!!  (This will be a text to see if you really do read the blog.  :)     )

Happy Anniversary to Us! 35 years and counting....

As I came into the kitchen as we were leaving for Stake Conference, this is what I found.  Cherry pie, my favorite and a sweet card from Gary.  Since we hadn't really talked about what we were going to do for our anniversary, it was a big and awesome surprise.  I love Gary and I am so lucky that Heavenly Father made it so clear to us (after 4 1/2 years of being friends) that we should get married.  As his card said we make the bad times easier and the good times even better by being together.

He was sure that Jena had given away the surprise as they had bought the pie and card together last night.  He happened to come by as I was brushing her hair this morning so I mentioned to her that it was our anniversary.  She said, "I know, Pie."  I didn't pick up on it at the time until I saw the pie a little while later.  I just thought it was a funny comment and as we often might get pie to celebrate special events it made some sense.  So despite Jena telling me, I was still very surprised.  Thanks, Gary.

Earlier in the year when I noticed our anniversary was on Sunday and a Stake Conference day, I was thinking that Sunday wasn't the "best" day to celebrate our anniversary.  However, it turned out to a nice quiet (we are old enough to enjoy some quiet now and then) day and also nice to sit next to Gary throughout our sweet Stake Conference meeting this morning.  My mind thought of so many of the things which being married to Gary has brought me over the past 35 years and the years and eternity which we have ahead of us. 

This past week (and one more day to go) has been "Suessical" week at our house.  Jena has had a week of late night rehearsals and then performances starting on Thursday night.  I haven't gotten any pictures of her in her costumes yet, but hopefully tomorrow.  She is loving every minute of it.  She comes on stage with big smiles and sings and dances away as a little "Who".  Thursday night, Jessica, Elessia and I went, Friday it was Grandma Hall, Scott and Chantel, Aunt Charon and Uncle Mike, Cousins Chris and Jen with Natalie and Lisa, and Gary and I.  Last night, Gary went on his own as I attended the adult session of our Stake Conference.  Tomorrow night Grandpa Giberson and Karla will attend with Gary and I.  I don't know about Jena, but my dreams and daylight hours are filled with the songs from the show.  It has been awesome.  The cast has been good with her and she in turn has been great for them.  The director, music director, and the dance instructor have also been wonderful with her.

One thing she wasn't fond of was "Dress-up" day for the cast on Thursday when they were to wear Sunday clothes to school.  She looked darling, but it wasn't her favorite and she said her feet hurt at the end of the day wearing her Church shoes.

No smiles this morning!

Friday was better as the whos all wore their
"Suessical" shirts with suspenders.

Friday night--after the show.

It is a great show.  If you can come, join us tomorrow night at 7 at Clearfield High School.

Jena with one of her new friends, Celeste (Mrs. Mayor of the Whos)