The Garden

I am not a gardener, but we did manage to add a few more touches to our crazy backyard.  This continues to be a work in progress but the flowers are beautiful.

Our new orange gate--I know it is quirky but I like it.

Flowers lining our sidewalk

I love sunflowers and have three or four different
types in the backyard.
The finches love them.

Our square garden.

Jena is posing with our first carrot.  I don't think our garden boxes are quite deep enough for our carrots as they all have a "J" form.  Picked several red peppers today but my tomatoes aren't quite ready to be picked and made into salsa--my goal when I planted the peppers.

And the fun times keep rolling...

or hopping in my case.

After living my whole life without breaking a bone, I fell on Friday and managed to break one.  I walked out of my house into the garage and missed a step.  I went flyng on to the hood of my car and slipped to the floor.  No major damage (except to my phone which fell into three pieces. Fortunately I put it together after climbing after the piece on the floor and it worked. ) I called Gary in his office to come and help me off the garage floor.  I thought I had twisted my foot and headed off shopping with Ben for pictures for his new apartment.  After a couple of hours, my foot started hurting much worse so I headed home to stick it in ice.  When that didn't help that much, we went to the doctor and sure enough I had broken off a piece of bone in my foot.  I am now in a walking cast for 4-6 weeks...not the way I watned to spend the last weeks of summer---no swimming, no bowling, etc.

August--Helicopter rides and Moving Day

Scott and Chantel headed to Grand Canyon to hike to the famous waterfall (which I can't spell).  They went with another couple and hiked down the canyon to within one mile of the falls.  At that time, they were stopped at a village because of some flash floos in the area.  After waiting most of the day,  they finally were told that they couldn't go any further and had to leave.  They had to be helicoptered out--4 minute ride for $85 each.  Sometimes adventures come in different ways that we thought!

Ben had his own adventure as he moved into his own apartment over the first weekend of August.  He is living in a two bedroom apartment in Sunset which is a half a block from where Gary and I lived over 33 years ago...small world.  It is a big change for him and for all of us, but he is working hard to make it work for him.  He likes organizing and managing his own space.

Ben's front door

Upstairs Apartment

Figuring out the kitchen



Unpacking

When I walked into the bathroom and saw Ben's stuff organized on the counter,
it hit me that this is really Ben's place.
We are so proud of him.

Jena was taking a break while we were working.

Ben washing some of his dishes.

Repeat

Our first repeat of the week was our annual Hall 24th of July BBQ at Mom Hall's house.  We had the usual BBQ fixing and great salads and desserts.  In addition, we did our first Hall Pinewood Derby in the backyard (our first outdoor race).  It worked well after a couple of computer problems.  The little kids especially loved watching their cars cross the finish line.

For me...as Gary, Jena and I headed back to Logan the next day to attend "My Fair Lady".  Jena loves that play and I thought she would love to see it at the Utah Opera Festival.  At first I had only ordered tickets for Jena and I, but when I was in Logan last week I ordered an additional ticket for Gary.  His seat was a row behind ours and down a bit, but it was still a fun evening.

Heading to the theatre

The orchestra pit

We attended a pre-show where a volunteer talked about "My Fair Lady" and it's history.  It was fun.  Before it started, Jena and I went up and were able to look down into the orchestra pit.  I was amazed that it went all the way under the stage rather than being in front of the stage like you might see in other theaters.  Music for musicals is usually written for 32 piece orchestra but often is only played by 13-15 people now days because of cost.  Here they use the complete 32 people, one of the few places which still do.

These is an old style theatre which was redone 20 years ago.
 Here is a sample of one of the wall panels.

We all loved the show.  And we enjoyed the cookies and Aggie ice cream during the intermission. 

We headed back to Syracuse after the play and got home around midnight on Wednesday.  We needed our sleep since the next day, on Thursday, we had tickets to the Hale Theatre's production of "Sound of Music".  It was fun to again do two plays in two nights.  It was fun to compare the traditional stage and the theater in the round at the Hale Theatre.  It was different but awesome as well.  As I mentioned before, it is almost as much fun watching Jena enjoying a play as watching the play itself.  "Sound of Music" is another favorite for her so we had another great night.

Jena with her friend, Kaitlyn

Friday was "Cherry Hills Day" for the social club we are doing for the Utah Down syndrome Foundation.  Jena and I played in the water, especially the lazy river.  Gary drove the motorhome down in the afternoon and join us to play in the water for the evening.  Next to the water park was a campground where we spent the night.  We decided to have a little campout and try out some other features of the RV.  Our plan was to use the oven and the stove.  However when we finally got to the RV to start dinner, we realized we didn't have any matches to start the oven to cook our foil dinners.  I ended up just cooking them on the stove which was probably quicker anyway.  Then we headed to the miniature golf course and golfed form 10 to 11:30 at night.

Everything other than the oven worked great and we enjoyed out little night away.  We headed back to Syracuse (a trip of about 20 minutes) on Saturday.  We cleaned up the motorhome and parked it away until our next little trip.

Then Gary and I got cleaned up and headed for the final event of our party and production week.....a "Neil Diamond" concert in Salt Lake inside the REAL soccer stadium.  Yes, he is old, but it still was an amazing concert with him singing (and lots of the audience) many of his great hits. 

Preparing for the concert

Our self-picture--
after teasing our girls about doing it all these years.

We loved it.  It was a great end to a month which started off with fireworks and the Beach Boys and included so many great productions.  It was our "stay-cation" this year.