The lost days

11-14 May 2025

 Yeah, I fell behind. This is the problem with trying to blog a vacation: you are too busy getting somewhere to post, too busy enjoying your vacation to post, or to tired from getting somewhere or enjoying yourself to post. It's a vicious cycle.

Last Sunday was Mother's Day in Broomfield, and other places, too. We went to church and honored mothers with talks. I have thoughts, but I won't share them now. The Relief Society had a brunch with chicken salad and croissants and the priesthood talked about faith, I think. After that, a quick lunch, and scanning some pictures (by which I realized that the power source that I faithfully carried through the Rocky Mountain in no way fit my computer and which used the remainder of my battery) we headed out to Boulder.

This is from a view point on the way to Boulder. The cliffs behind us are the Flatirons.

 This is a park in Boulder. Some cities get all of the best scenic perks.

This is from NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research). They build the facility high in the foothills to get above the effects of pollution, so they say. My suspicion is that they wanted a nice view and used that as an excuse. If you look close in the middle of the city you'll see the lake in the park.

 

 

This is Sylvia with us.

Pasta ala carbonara ala Sylvia. Her recipe differs slightly from mine (particularly in the amount butter and Parmesan) but tasted a lot like how I make it. We finished it with pound cake and strawberries.

Travel day

The next day we said goodbye to Sylvia and Loree (Loree Miles, as in Hezekiah Miles, I think?) and made for Muscatine, Iowa. It was a long day with long stretches of farmland and not much else. I personally did not take any pictures.

We made a brief stop at a rest area in Sterling, Colorado. Incidentally, (and I had forgotten this) this is where my Dad had his first official Physical Therapy job. They left as soon as they could. We didn't stay long enough to determine why they were so eager to leave.

This is the typical scenery through Nebraska and Iowa. Just stretch it out really long if you want to know what our drive was like.

But with flat topography like that, you get sunsets like this. I was too strung out and hungry to enjoy it. We ate at Cheddars. I burnt my tongue on a chicken pot pie. Life is such

Iowa to Michigan

We left late for Mattawan, so we didn't make it to Jim and Jenni's house until after 8 their time. 

Day 1 in Mattawan

 This day was spent helping around the house and visiting.

We (meaining Judy) worked on removing some old paint from the siding next to the deck. We still haven't completed that job yet.

On Monday, Jim went fishing in Canada with some friends and caught some walleye. He baked it, and Jenni added some chicken for those of us who think fish is gross (actually, I tried the walleye and liked it; it was not at all as gamey as I was afraid it might be; the chicken was also good; the roasted vegetables were the best!).

 We finished off the day with s'mores. There are no s'mores in the picture.

 

 

 5 May 2025

Today was for the birds. No, really. We went to look for birds. Sylvia's place is near a city park that attracts birds and frogs. The frogs aren't all that interesting and the water isn't all that clear, so birds it is. We saw a bunch of red wing blackbirds (pretty, but flighty) a cormorant (interesting, but it spent a lot of time underwater), and a heron (showed up late and annoyed the heck out of the red wing blackbirds; the cormorant didn't seem to care).

We then drove to a farm to look at more birds. More herons, another cormorant, and and some canadian geese with their kids.

 

But for some reason, what really struck me was an old gate, put up sometime in the 50s, I would guess. 

Yeah, weird. For some reason it hit some melancholy chord in me. I remember these gates from my youth, but I didn't think that this one would resonate with me like it did. I suppose I should have frolicked through it a few times to relive my childhood, but I just took this picture instead. 

We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant, reminisced with Sylvia about our time in Italy, had nachos at the church, and finished by matching movie quotes to unfortunate photos. It was a pretty good day.

Okay, about Sylvia. When I was in the mission office in Catania, Sylvia Martindale came to the mission. I forwarded a few letters to her in Syracusa that came to the office. Years later I found out that Judy had been writing to her at that time and I remember some wheat stems next to someone's return address for some reason. Just a strange coincidence that brings us together.

Tripping through Colorado

 Friday, May 9.

I'm trying this out as a way to share our trip. Probably should have thought of it for Puerto Rico, but, you know. The plus for this trip is that I have access to a computer to make composition easier.

We typically would go through Price down to I-70 into Denver, but I'm tired of that drive. Yes, Spanish Fork Canyon is beautiful, but after Price it gets a bit more dismal. I needed a change. So, we went through Vernal. I've got to say, it was pretty nice. It might have something to do with the time of year. Come August, it might be all brown, but in mid spring it's rather green (by Utah standards). 

Vernal also had a surprise for us. As we got to the middle of town, Judy started noticing people along the side of the road and insisted that there must be a parade happening sometime. We got stopped by a police barracade, and then fire trucks pulled onto the road, followed by people marching down the street, and more fire trucks and things. No floats. No bands. It was a parade for the Special Olympics participants,

 

 

 

 

 

 

We sat in our car in the Eastbound lane while they passed by in the Westbound lane. After 15 minutes they had all passed by and we were on our way again. Oh, and they didn't throw candy, which was disappointing. But they did get excited when I waved to them.

Here are a couple of pictures from the rest of our trip. I loved northwest Colorado. Lonely and beautiful. And later, on our way over the pass, there was still snow in the mountains.

Pictures for the calendar

I’ve decided that I need to get on the ball and get our pictures to Grandpa for the calendar.

 

More Lia videos

Curse you shiny glare! A decent part of the days leading up to the wedding were spent looking for a good, fair-sized monitor for showcasing our daughter and son-in-law in slides. We ended up using our old television (I think Urg carved it out of granite right after he finished his prototype for the wheel; feels like it, anyway). After we got it set up it was clear that it wasn’t clear; everything was obscured by the reflection of the beautiful flowers in the garden. It’s hard to curse the flowers so I’ll curse the light. Anyway, I’ve included the slideshows below for your entertainment.
Kyle and Lia from birth to ‘tween years

Kyle and Lia from their ‘tween years to couple-hood.

And a bonus clip just for fun.

Engagement photos

As you can guess, things have been a bit crazy around here lately. Right now, my eyes are spinning counter-clockwise while Judy’s are spinning clockwise, which means that we can still look deeply into each other’s correspondingly spinny eyes and say: “Why did we have kids?”

But as I was looking back through our family pictures to harvest photos for Lia’s slideshow, I remembered. And for those of you who can’t be there, or who want a sneak peak, here is one that I put together from the engagement photos that Rob took (isn’t he great?).

The secret life of rocks

Last summer we finally made some changes at our house. As you probably have observed (as I’m sure our neighbors have), I don’t really enjoy yard work. It’s not that I don’t like being outside or that I don’t particularly like physical labor (okay, maybe that has something to do with it), it has more to do with inertia and the fear of getting into a project and ending up over my head. I’ve found that if I start thinking my way through the steps that it doesn’t seem so bad and I might, but by then I’ve thought myself into a nap (and that feels so much nicer and I don’t need a shower afterward).
Anyway, Judy started insisting that we make some changes with the landscape in front of our house. We thought it over, made some drawings, and looked at options. We decided on enhancing the current grass motif with a rock garden/desert motif. Just as I was settling down into going-over-the-steps mode, Judy said, “Well, let’s go.” She obviously didn’t understand that I was still processing the steps; she was ready to get the rocks and I hadn’t even closed my eyes yet. Forty-five minutes later we were wallowing down I-15 in Dad’s truck (he likes cool cars, but I don’t think he ever envisioned his truck as a low-rider, and fortunately he wasn’t around to witness it). By the end of the day, we had a layer of rocks snaking up the side of our front stairs, taking care of that patch in the front yard that would always brown in the summer.
 
So, here you see our rocks; stream bed leading from the down spout; drought-tolerant, native plants; and rustic, period lamp post. Now Judy’s only concern was that the neighborhood kids would walk off with all of our pretty rocks. Yeah, right. As if.
Well, our rocks haven’t exactly walked off, but it does appear that they have walked. Now, I’ve studied biology and seriously don’t remember rocks being classified with a genus and family. Hindus, I’m pretty sure, don’t lay awake at night worrying about returning as a chunk of granite in some ornamental garden. But these rocks move! I’m constantly returning rocks of all sizes from their excursions into the gutter or onto the lawn, although that doesn’t surprise me too much. But I took literally minutes positioning larger rocks carefully selected random spots, only to have them change places with other rocks.
One day, I caught them in the act. The beauty of our front window is not that we have an unfettered and superior view of our neighbor’s front window, it’s that we can view nature as it happens naturally around us without having to go outside. I was thus observing one morning (probably just starting through the steps of the next big project I needed to avoid) when two neighbor girls, around 3 or 4 years old, wandered into our yard and right up ONTO our newly planted rocks! They proceeded to consider my streambed and random accent stones. They would pick one up, examine it from all angles, and then carefully place it down somewhere else, as though tucking it into its rightful bed. They then started rearranging my streambed, as though they knew better what a randomly placed, naturally occurring streambed should look like.
I know the proper technique for discouraging cats and dogs from decoration my lawn (and through years of experience have learned to do it without breaking windows), but I don’t think that it’s the same technique to use on little girls. “Scat!” doesn’t seem appropriate, somehow. So I let them continue with their rearrangement, knowing that I could remedy their amateur arrangements later when they weren’t looking. Judy is a bit wiser, however, and fell upon the perfect plan: she committed the girls to police the rock garden and prevent other girls from messing with it.
Still, my rocks wander daily. I wonder if they dream.