The end of month is already here.....

And it continues to be busy with a variety of different things going on:

Jena--She is busy preparing for the final week of long practices for "Suessical the Musical" which opens tomorrow night.  She loves it all and always seems to have a happy smile on her face.  She is certainly sleeping well at nights.

Jena eating dinner at Wendy's in between
play practice and going skiing with the YW.

Last week, she was able to enjoy some other big firsts.  She went skiing with her Laurels and Priests from our ward.  At first we thought she couldn't make it because she had play practice, but one of the leaders had to go up later so she picked up Jena along with another Laurel and they headed up for a couple of hours of skiing.  This is the FIRST time she had skied without her instructors (the YW President is an excellent skier and had fun skiing with Jena), it was the FIRST time she skied at night, and the FIRST time she skied at a different ski resort.  She was happy and everyone said she did good, even though the snow was a bit icy.

I had a FIRST as well as I flew down to Mesa by using a new airline route from Ogden to the Gateway Airport in Mesa.  I went down to attend my nephew's "farewell" as he leaves for his LDS mission.  He flew out today to Argentina to go to the MTC and then to Uruguay for his service.  Jordan did a great job on his talk.  Lots of his friends came from high school so it was a fun group.  The flight was okay but the Ogden airport (which is about 15 minutes away) is not really designed for commercial flights.  They brought all of the luggage around to the front of the building (after about 15 minutes.  They must have had just one person unloading it from the airplane.) and then she put it out on the parking lot for us to claim.  It reminded me of the small airports in Asia.  Oh, well, the price of saving some time and $200 or so.

View in Mesa when I went on a walk-
orange and lemon trees are full of fruit.
They had actually had some cold weather with
some hail and some snow just before I came but
luckily it was clear skies and great weather in the 50s.
It is supposed to be 80 degrees there on Sunday.

And I came home to....
cold and snow on the ground.
This is our backyard bird feeder and a flag
to remind me I do love snow. (sometimes :(  )

Ben is back in his apartment after bouncing around between his new apartment and the CRU inpatient unit.  He walked over to a pet store and got himself a pet on Monday.  He sent this picture of the two of them hanging out last night.

This morning when I headed back from dropping Jena off at the bus stop, the moon was so full hanging in the morning sky.  How can life not seem good and worth it when just above us the skies are so beautiful and varied!  I love the sky.

The view to the west from our backyard this morning
It doesn't really show how huge the moon looked...but you get the point.

And, one more rain chain picture---you don't have to look at it if you don't want to, but a rain chain is amazing.  It seems as if it is either pouring water down or it is frozen---just depending on the weather.  We can't believe how much water pours down it all day long when the sun is shining.  We must have more snow than we thought on our roofs.

Really!!???

It is already the 10th of February.  I am still trying to adjust to the fact that it is 2013.  Time seems to be flying by faster than usual.  However there have been moments where time did stand still as when I walked out to the mail box at sunset and saw these amazing colors on the mountains to the east of our house.  This picture doesn't even begin to do it justice.  The color was a pink-orange which was stunning.......

To the east

 I turned and took this picture through our maple trees to the west just as the sun is setting.

To the west

This was our snow pack at the beginning of the month.
It has melted down a bit and then we have had more snow.
One nice thing about winter snow is that your yard
looks just like the neighbor's....
and no mowing required.

 The rain chain did start melting in the past week and is actually now mostly unfrozen except for the first thing in the morning.  Here is a picture as it was melting.  It melted first around the chain so made weird patterns of ice left hanging out to the east side.

After the bowling tournament at the end of January, we had an end of the year Comets Family Bowling Party.  Guess who was bowling next to us.....

Jessica made these for me for Christmas so they are sitting on my kitchen window sill in celebration of Valentine's Day.  I think they are so cute and clever...............

Everyone has been busy around here:  Gary is busy with work, Webelos, and bowling leagues which has been five days a week on many weeks.  He loves it.  He bowls on Tuesday and the other days serves as the league secretary for the bowling alley.  He has also been sick with a cold which keeps coming back for a couple of days here and there.  Probably due to the fact that he continues to snow blow the neighborhood even when he is sick. 

Jessica has been working hard so that she could be ready to go on vacation today.  She text a few hours ago saying that they had made it safely to Las Vegas for four sunny days of fun. 

Scott and Chantel are so busy that we haven't seen them lately.  Scott is working at Red Lobster plus working at his internship about 30 hours a week.  He reported that his life seems like a blur....it made me laugh.  Some parts of life are like that.  Chantel has been studying for her licence tests and also looking for work--paid or unpaid to get 200 more hours of internship herself on top of working at Chuck-a-rama.

Ben is still at an inpatient unit.  He is the one complaining about how slow time is.  Hopefully he will be released this week if a suitable place can be found for him. 

Tosha has also had some slow days as she hurt her knee and had to stay home from work for awhile.  I haven't heard yet how work went this weekend. 

Jena is leading a crazy life too.  She started the week being sick again and it turned out she had a sinus infection.  She was able to go back to school and play practices on Wednesday in time for 6:00 a.m. assembly practices on Thursday and Friday.  She worked Thursday night until 10:00 at the bowling alley.  On Friday she got up at 5:00, wore her costume to the assembly practice at 6:00, performed with the cast at the assembly, watch the rest of the assembly with her class, changed clothes to school clothes, went to class, then had PE which required her to change into PE clothes and back to school clothes so that then she could go to play practice after school until 5:00.  By the time she changed clothes to her PJs at 9, she came into our room to play with one of the dogs on the bed and promptly fell asleep on my bed. (I actually took a picture and texted it to Gary in his office with the text "Sleeping kids are so cute."  However I am not going to post it because most people don't like sleeping pictures of themselves.)

I have been busying with a number of projects--preparing for a ward prep fair, doing some work for the Utah Down Syndrome Foundation (I have been asked to help chair the conference in April.  The chairman is now the President of the Foundation and he felt he would like some extra help with the details.) and I have done some writing.  I wrote a blog post about schizophrenia (with the help of Gary and my sister, Valerie) which will be part of a blog called realintent which is doing a mental health forum at the end of the month.  They needed a picture for the bio of Ben and me so on his visit last week we took this picture.  Now I am working on an article for the Disability department of the Church about Down syndrome (and they also want to have a copy of the one I wrote about schizophrenia.  Fun how these things happen at the same time.).  Family history is also a growing interest as we are trying to gather and scan information.

 

Happy Valentine's Day!!