Wonderwood Academy

On Wednesday evening, Jena goes to Wonderwood Academy, a new program, to provide education classes to people with Down syndrome.  They hope to eventually open a school for people with Down syndrome ages 14-26.  They are teaching reading, math and speech along with a social activity each week which are based on research specifically for individuals with DS.  It is a great group of kids and also teachers and Jena loves going.

Here is a picture when they had a artist come and teach them some painting skills.  They were focusing on birds.  Here they are painting their skies.  Jena painted a falcon--she is truly a

Clearfield Falcon at heart. 

Thoughts about Family Photos...

As a kid, I thought everyone was forced to participate in the "Family Photo" experience.  My parents didn't have a lot of extra money when we were little but they still had pictures taken throughout the years.  I love those pictures (and we love to make fun of the clothes we wore.  Back then we just wore our best clothes and often they didn't match at all.)

This is the first formal picture, I think.  All of our relatives had this picture in their houses for YEARS!  Todd and I were always wishing they would take them down.  At 12 and 11, we weren't sure this picture fit our images.

My brother Todd and me

 It helped that my Uncle Grant was a photographer and some of our family pictures were taken in their front room with a white screen in back of us.  (When the pictures were black and white, it didn't matter so much that our clothes didn't match.

Dad, Mom holding Valerie
Mike, Robin, Todd, me

 This was taken in our back yard in Amarillo, Texas and one of the pictures we love to make fun of because our clothes did not match.  It was also windy (it was in Amarillo after all where it is always windy.) so some of the pictures have our hair flying in the wind.

Valerie, Mike, me, Todd, Robin, Lynette
Rick, Dad, Mom, Scott

 This is the first family picture with in-laws and grandchildren in it.  This was in 1983.

Rick, Valerie holding Jarom, Lance, Joann, Todd, Mike holding Paul, Me holding Jessica, Gary, Scott
Lynette, Mom, Margaret with Lisa, Dad, Robin

This is a scanned picture of the last extended family picture which we had taken the summer before my mom passed away.  It was taken at a park in Plano, Texas as part of our family reunion in 1994.

For Family History purposes:Sitting:  Ben Hall, Jessica Hall holding Tosha, Sierra, Jordan, Lora, Zech, and David Giberson, Paul Giberson, Scott Hall, Jarom Ipson
First row standing:  Megan Ipson, Niles Giberson, Justin Ipson, Rick and Linda Giberson holding Katie, Mom and Dad Giberson (Richard and Eileen) Valerie and Lance Ipson with Kristen, Kara, and Jordan Ipson, Landi Ipson, Lisa Giberson
Back row:  Robin Giberson, Scott Giberson, Gary and Judy Hall, Linda and Todd Giberson, Lynette, Mike Giberson

And although I am sure that I might have complained along the way about getting dressed up or having my hair done, I am so glad that I have these pictures of my family and of course, I continued that tradition with my own family.

It hasn't been always easy.  In fact the phrase, "We are doing this for your mother so be happy about it." was frequently heard as kids were getting ready in the clothes I had picked out for them (because we are in the time where clothes need to "blend" artful in family photos.)  And I love our family photos over the years.  Each one captures a time and place in our family.  Just looking at them can bring a flood of memories of the day the picture was taken or where we were living or what was going on in our lives.  In fact I love them so much I couldn't bear to put them away when we took the next new family photo.  So in our hallway, I have several of them posted so in a flash we can see our family and how they have grown.

(Side story:  One day when Scott was in high school he had a girl over who needed to use the bathroom.  Instead of directing her to our powder room, he instead sent her off to the main bathroom which meant she walked down this hall. I tried to redirect her but she had already made the corner and I heard her call out to Scott;" Scott, you were so cute."  He smiled at me and headed to the hall where he stood to hear her comments about each of the pictures.  After that, most times when he had a girl over we pointed her in the direction of the family pictures--just to get it over with, we said.)

I was thinking about family pictures because I finally got around to hanging up our most recent family pictures and the first ones to included our 3 little grandchildren.  I removed our former collage of family pictures which were taken in 2010 right before Scott and Chantel got married and also a set of pictures of each of the kids which they gave to me for Mother's Day one year (2009?).  I have always loved those pictures, both because they were darling but also because they had arranged it between the five of them and even had their clothes blend in blues and yellows. And even Jena had kept the secret.  I was totally shocked and I love them all.

And here is the new arrangement:

Family picture taken in April of 2015
Niki and Scarlett together in April of 2015
Liam in November of 2015

Jessica, Elessia and Liam taken in November)
Everyone else in April during the family picture

Already, our grandchildren have grown so much.  I can't wait to take another family picture.  It will be so fun to see the three grandchildren sitting all together.  It will be a few years since Tosha and family are in Japan but someday.  Until then, I get to enjoy these gorgeous pictures (thanks again, Ashlee Hair.)!

I LOVE these peoples!

and I love the history these pictures hold for me.

I hope that my children love them, too.

The Simplifying Project--Round 2 and 3

As last reported, I was in the middle of a huge mess with everything out of our storage room.  We are so lucky in Utah to have a basement with a very large storage room.  Unfortunately it also makes it easier to save stuff when really I should get rid of it.  I was determined to only keep what we would need (although need is a very hard term to define.  Gary pointed out that he doesn't "need" any of our holiday decorations.  I think he would miss them--well at least the Christmas tree and decorations.)

This is what things look like now.  (Normally people would do a before and after--but the before was such a mess that I would never take a picture of it like that.)

 I don't think that I have cleaned out the "long term storage" since we packed it with our long term storage of wheat, flour, etc.  However we had a mouse (or mice) so I took everything out to clean.

Here is my "holiday decorations".  One each for Valentine's Day, Easter, and the 4th of July, two each for Halloween and Thanksgiving with a couple of extra things (such as the smiling pumpkin) and a "whopping" 11 totes of different sizes for Christmas and 2 Christmas trees!  And that is after giving away and throwing away stuff.  New goal--no new decorations which don't fit in the existing toes and shelves for the holidays!

Everything has its place--so hopefully we can keep it that way.  Nice to have our food organized again.  Had to throw away some food which were way out of date, but not too much.

In the middle of working through this mess, our new bed arrived so I focused for a few days on the master bedroom.  For Christmas, we decided to give each other a Sleep number bed.  It arrived on Jan. 22.  We were expecting it to fit into our old bed frame which was suppose to be a California King.  However our new bed was about 6 inches longer so out to the DI went our bed after I had cleaned and re-polished the whole thing.  That was a bit of a shock, but already I am happy not to dust it.  Funny how I couldn't wait to have a actual bed set as we went years without one and now I am happy not to have one.

Our "bed frame-less" new bed

 I decided not to get another book shelf but instead I gathered some baskets and bins which I already had and bought a wire one plus new shelves and this is our new bedroom wall.

I got this for Gary for Valentine's Day but

once I got the wall put together I wanted to add it.

And for those of you who are wondering--after some adjustments we are liking our new bed although the jury is still out if we will love it so much to make it worth the money.  We do like the adjustable part--both the head and the foot move up and down.  We found that we both enjoy sleeping with our feet elevated just a bit.  I am sleeping with it much softer than I expected and my shoulders and hips are liking that a lot.

Another by-product of cleaning up the master bedroom was that I moved a smaller shelf into the bathroom to hold our towels and removed a bigger one (to the DI).  Again I am loving more space and less dusting.  (Although while in graduate school dusting has been pretty low on the "to do" list!  But we are talking about the principle of dusting less.)

Today (Jan. 30th), I continued to finish up the odds and ends in the game room downstairs and also did some reorganizing in the two basement bedrooms.  I think I will have to take a break from simplifying and started writing papers for school now.  I have to say that it has been a great experience so far.

The "Grands" update

Liam spent a couple of hours with us this week.

He loved banging the rings together.

Tosha sent this picture of Niki

licking the brownie mixing spoon.

Life doesn't get much better than that.

You can notice that he has his first serious hair cut 

as Tosha cut it into a "big" boy cut--

clean on the sizes and longer on top.

She is very brave.  I would trim my kids' hair but not try to style it.

Chantel posted this picture on Facebook today.

We had snow most of the morning and some sun this

afternoon so Scott and Scarlett went out to play.

We love these little people!

The Costume Department

Since Jena was in junior high, she has wanted to work in the costume department at the Hale Theatre and help make hats and props.  She has taken a step closer to that goal as she started volunteering in the costume department of Centerpoint theatre for an hour a week just before she ushers.  She puts away fabric and cleans the closet one shelf at a time.

If you love fabric, this would be the job for you.  Jena and I talk about what type of costumes the fabric could be used for or what show would this fabric be good for?  My mom would have enjoyed this with Jena.  (I like being with Jena but folding isn't my favorite task.)

These pictures were taken on the day we worked on the "white" shelves.  We learned that there are lots of different colors of white.

 Here is a look at the closet from the white section looking towards the door.  There are shelves along the other side as well filled with the pinks, yellows, and reds plus curtain and furniture fabrics.  Blacks, greys and silver are behind us as well as costume parts of all kinds waiting to be used again.

Jena learned to fold as part of the Montessori curriculum in pre-school.  She is a great helper with folding laundry and now it is helping her towards her goal.

Simplifying--Round One

 In response to a talk I heard in November, I decided to reorganize and cut down on the things which we own.  We are now in the midst of the "purge" of all we own as I think about what we need and what might be better off at someone else's house or thrown away.

I started with books and games.......

We cleared off shelves in the basement....gave this away to a friend who likes to refinish wood (she loves it by the way and is excited to fix the broken pieces and make it all better (something that I was never going to get to on my list).....

 Then we moved down our entertainment center parts from our bedroom downstairs as well as games from all their locations around the house.

Thankful Scott came to help Gary move the heavy stuff!!

This is what all of our games looks like when they are spread over the game room floor.  I threw incomplete games away, donate some to others and the DI, and then organized the remaining games into these shelves.

And here is the final project.  It is so nice to have them all in one place.  It reminded me of some of our old games which we haven't played for years.  They were fun and I need to have friends over to PLAY SOME GAMES!!!

Phase one done.

Now the game room is covered with everything out of our storage room.  I spent the day yesterday taking everything out and starting the sorting process.  I am determined to weed the decorations I don't use, the clothes we no longer need, and the list goes on.....

One odd thing about all of this simplifying is that after giving away lots of books and reorganizing many shelves, I need a new book shelf in the master bedroom to hold my books I want to keep in there.  Gary isn't sure exactly the logic of that---it is one of those homemaking mysteries!

I am sure I will post other pictures along this journey.  However with school starting back this week, I am just hoping I can get the storage room put together by the end of the month.  Otherwise no one can come and play games with us.

Rain Chain post-#109....

I actually don't know how many pictures I have posted of our rain chain but I know it is a lot.  Truly it is one of the best "simple" things to have outside your kitchen window.  I glanced out one day in the holiday break and the ice on the chain seemed to be lighted from within.  The setting sun was at just the right angle so the ice glowed.  Again the pictures couldn't capture it quite fully and it only lasted about 5 minutes, but it was gorgeous!  I bet you wished you had been there!

The reason for the season

This isn't a good picture at all but it represents a moment that I would like to share.  As we walked through Temple Square on the first Sunday of December, we turned west to walk to the nativity and I got a glimpse of the beautiful statue of Christ that is located in the central area of the north visitor center on Temple Square.  You know how it is, I have seen that statue many times, I have stood at the feet of it and considered the life of our God who it represents, and I have had peaceful moments in the beautiful setting with the celestial skies covering the ceiling--yet, this time, I gasp unexpectedly at the beautiful reminder of the reason for the season.

I know on that Holy Night our Savior was born as a newborn baby to Mary in Bethlehem. Angels proclaimed His birth to shepherds who were watching in their fields.  Wise men saw the signs of the heavens and begun their journey to worship him. And on this side of the earth, believers were saved because of the appearance of the sign given to them of his birth--a day a night and a day without darkness.  He lived as an example to us of how to live, how to love each other and to honor His Father and our Father, God.  And then he died for me and for you so that we can repent and make ourselves clean--time and time again as we go through our mortal journey.  Then He rose on that Easter morning loosening the bounds of death for all mankind.  We will live again and through the Atonement we can live that life with our families in the kingdom of Our Heavenly Father.  To quote from the document "The Living Christ":  "God be thanked for the matchless gift of His divine Son."  I have included a link to that document as it is a great summary of the Christ who I worship at this time of the year and all year through.

The Living Christ

Truly, it is always a Merry Christmas no matter the gifts, or troubles, or disappointments.  Christ did come, He did live and die for us  and made the way for us to return back home to the place we all started from.

So Merry Christmas and have a great new Year!

Christmas Family Times

Monday Night Hall Family Christmas "Eve"--

I think we were around 45 people for dinner in Mom Hall's basement.  Food was catered by Kneaders (awesome for those of you who have never tried it.  I think it is around the west coast area).  It is nice to not have to worry about making food...especially this year when I had to do a home visit for my internship until 5 so I was heading from there to Mom Hall's.

Watching some short Christmas videos from lds.org.

Liam and Scarlett with Great-grandma Hall

Notice the white dog!
Gary sent me back to the store to buy one for his mom
as a Christmas Eve gift.  Liam LOVED it and would laugh
so hard every time the dog would dance and play music.
He is wearing his new pjs from his great grand mother Hall.
See the dragon feet---so cute!

Milo, Taya, Halle, and Alyeah (Charon's grandchildren) help tell a Christmas story!

Jena and I decided to make some cookies which was fun except I forgot to set the timer and we burned the first batch.  Ugh!

Then came the main event---Christmas Day.

Jena's new robe

Ben

Mowgli and Jasper enjoying their new bones

Ben and Jena slept in so we didn't open gifts until about 10:00.  Then Scott, Chantel, and Scarlett came over and spent some time playing with us including heading out to the snow with a new sled.

She didn't have a cap so I shared!
Go, BYU!

One of the best moments of the day was watching Ben pulling Scarlett around in our front yard in the new sled.  For a few moments he could just be in the moment and be present with her.  We all took turns as our endurance as pullers were much shorter than her desire to be pulled.

New toys are fun.

Scott and Chantel headed up for naptime and we headed to Mom Hall's to play our new game "Fruit Basket".  It is a card game which changes each hand.  It is fun.  We were introduced to it by the Ipsons.  And actually one of their friends designed the game and had it self-published.  Gary ordered it for me for Christmas which was exciting.

Because of the success of the sled, we decided to meet back at Scott and Chantel's after nap time to try out the sled on the tiny hill behind their townhouse.  Jessica, Elessia, and Liam met us there for some snow play (although they stayed indoors.)

Then we headed home for a dinner of BBQ ribs and family time.  It is times like this that I really feel the distance between us and Tosha and her family.  Oh how I wished we could twitch our nose like Bewitched  (old TV show) and transport them from there to here for an day.

It was a great day.  It is fun to start watching Christmas, snow, and other wonders of the world through the eyes of these sweet grandchildren in our family.

I hope your day was great as well.

Holiday fun and snowy days

We attended "Babes in Toyland" at the Centerpoint theatre with Mom Hall, my sister in law, Vonette, her husband and two daughters.  It was fun although not my most favorite play or performance at Centerpoint.

Jena also started a new assignment at the theatre. We now go about an hour early and Jena (and I ) work in the costume department.  Jena's responsibilities are to put away fabrics which have been pulled out of the fabric closet away (it is organized by colors) and to organize each shelf and clean it up.  I will get a picture but imagine a room about 30 feet long, 8 feet wide and about 14 feet tall lined with shelves from top to bottom filled with all types of fabric.  I don't like to sew but I have a mother who loved fabric and I can appreciate it through her eyes.  Jena is delighted with this new assignment.  It takes her a bit closer to her life goal to work in the costume department of a theatre.

Jena had some fun parties throughout December in addition to her normal busy schedule. She is part of a choir at STEPS and they performed an outside Christmas concert at Farmington Station and then an indoor concert at the Kaysville Police Station and City Hall.  Here she is waiting for the concert to get started at the Police Station.  She loves to sing and be part of the group.

Saturday December 12 we had our 24th Hall Almost Annual Adult Christmas Party.  It was hard to narrow the invitation list down.  We had our good friends who we have shared the holiday with over the years but also a new ward family who we are trying to get to know.  We invited 14 couples which included four from the new section of our ward.  Only one from the new section attended so it was really like a Family reunion. How great it was to be with these sweet friends who although still live only a block or so away--we never see them!  Our new ward is in another building so we can't even run into each other in the hallways at Church on Sundays.  It feels like they have moved to the other side of the world.  Our invitation was done in the style of a Wikipedia page defining "Hall Almost Annual Adult Christmas Party".  As usual we did a white elephant gift exchange and this year I was in charge for the first time ever.  Our goal is to also have something different as we exchange gifts. This time we had a "Handle Exchange".  Gifts were tagged each time they switched people and when they had the eight dot placed they were frozen there and that person kept the gift for the rest of the game and was exempt from all other types of exchanges.  Some people figured out how to work that to their advantage and some of us were not so lucky.

This gift was a favorite (and actually one that we brought).  Kevin and Jolie Watson figured out how to conspire to end up with it by counting the exchanges carefully and making a smart move at the right time.

This was the gift I ended up with--a bath towel with directions for drying! I apparently was not as skilled as the Watsons.

As usual the lizard made his appearance and ended up going home with the family from the new section of our ward.  They only have adult children but I guess it scared one of their daughters when she stopped by and saw it on their kitchen counter.  She said she would definitely have not taken that home. It was fun and always reminds us of our many other parties and friends from all over the place.  Perhaps someday we can have a Christmas party reunion with our friends from everywhere.  Do you think we will have time for that in Heaven?

And since it is December, I guess it is okay that it snowed a few weeks before Christmas.  I am not a snow fan but I tolerate it in December for the whole white Christmas tradition.  Jena helps out while waiting for her bus while Gary starts his busy morning of snow blowing up and down and all around the neighborhood.

The snow was very heavy.  This is the view out the middle front window of our house where the branches were so filled with snow that they covered almost the whole view.

Okay, even for an "un-fan" of snow, there is something magical about the new fallen snow.  Even I can see that.

Our maple trees

The view out of our dining room window

During these snows, Ben was down in UNI in Salt Lake.  It is located near the University of Utah up in the benches of eastern Salt Lake.  As I pulled into the parking lot one night to visit him, my headlines hit upon this deer just a few feet from the end of the parking stall.  There were about 4 deer grazing on the bushes.  He didn't even move when I got out of the car to walk to the door.  They must eat there a lot and are used to people coming and going. Look how high the snow is on the deer who was fairly good sized.

Jena spent a couple of evenings putting together her mission newsletter and Christmas cards for all those serving from our ward or her friends.  That was 25 cards she sent out and she wrote a personal message to each one.  I am sure they loved them.  (And her Christmas cards got mailed out before Christmas....mine were the week after Christmas!)

Despite my best efforts for time to slow down so that I could get done the things I wanted to get done, Christmas came on time--first with our Monday Night Hall Christmas Eve dinner and then actual Christmas Day....that will be the next post.