Monday was Labor Day which meant Jeff had the day off of work- YAH! Ashtyn and Ethan were still up at the cabin and Whitney had plans with her friends so Jeff and I headed up to Red Butte Gardens for their free admission day. They do this five times a year. This is probably one of my very favorite places. It is beautiful and so peaceful and serene. I love all the different plants and smells. I could have spent the whole day there relaxing. Afterward we went down town and walked around City Creek. There are some pretty awesome stores there and some pretty expensive ones too. I don't really think of Salt Lake as a high end kind of town- but there must be a lot of very rich people that live here to have stores like Michael Kors, Tiffanys, Rolex...We grabbed some lunch in the food court. I tired a place called Bocata's. That is a slang word for Bocadilla which in Spain means sandwhich. I had the BLT. It is served with an over easy egg and was so dang good. In fact I think I will always put an egg on my BLT's from now on. The bread is cooked in a brick oven and was divine. Jeff had a gyro that took 30 minutes to get so by the time he came to the table I was done ha ha. When we came home we found Whitney had been ditched by her friends so I took her to rent a Red Box and get a snow cone from Bahama Bucks.
We watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding Two. It was pretty cute.
Wednesday night was a court of honor for scouts. Ethan finally earned his first merit badge. In fact he earned the Environmental Science, First Aid, Wood Carving, Swimming and Emergency Prepardness merit badges. He is really close to receiving another rank advancement. I am very proud of Ethan because he is the only boy that ever tells the leaders thank you at the end of the night. When we went out to the car to go home it was dead. I had to call Jeff and have him come back to jumpstart it. He had come straight from work. I had left the lights on. Ever since our sun visor got taken down the indicator noise that is suppose to sound if you leave your lights on no longer works so if it is a day where it is still dusk but not quite dark I can't see that the light is still on and forget. This has happened a few times.
My friend Jill leads a hiking group each week and I have never been able to go. They meet at 9 AM up in Suncrest and I always was dropping off the elementary kids then. But now all the kids are gone by 7:20 so I have been dying to get in some hikes with her. The night before Ashtyn "forgot" about an assigment that was due the next day so I stayed up till midnight trying to help her. Then I got woken up by the dumb dog really early so when I finally did get up at 6 to get the kids off I was so so tired. I wanted to call Jill and cancel but I had been wanting to go with her forever so I sucked it up and got ready. I packed my pack and went to get in the car only to find it completely dead again. I called my neighbor to come jump it. It took a few minutes for her to find the latch to pop the hood and then when she finally did there was a massive vent completely covering the battery so we couldn't even do it. By then it was 9:15 and they would have been at the base of the canyon at 9:20 so I knew I would not have made it. I was so so upset. Not so much about missing the hike but that I had killed myself to make the effort to go. It was a real bummer.
That night we had planned to stop by Jeff's parents house to check on it and when I went to start the car it was dead again so we took it to O'Reilly and the battery was bad. What are the odds that both of our cars would need new batteries. There goes another $100.
I've started walking with a new group this week. I still walk with my friend Amee on Tuesday and Thursdays but this week she was out of town and my friend Linda invited me to go. She and our friend Penny go every day. We were all in the Primary Presidency when we first moved into this ward. They are both old enough to be my mom. They may be older then me but wow are they way more fit. They walk over five miles each day and they try to keep a pace of 15 minute or less miles. Amee and I walk around two to three miles and we pull her daughter in a wagon so we don't go fast. It was a great work out to go with Linda but I was dead when we got back. It felt great!
Saturday I got to go to the baptism of a cute new little boy in our ward. They did it in his old ward because his birthday was the day after our stake baptism. This is one of my favorite things about being the Primary President. I love seeing all of these cute little people make this very important decision in their lives. After the baptism Ethan and I helped with an eagle project for a boy in his troop sewing blankets for NICU babies.
Saturday night we went to Sue and Allen Tanner's 50th wedding anniversary party. They are the parents of our friend Andy. Jeff grew up a few houses down from them and has known them almost his whole life. They are so great and it was fun to see so many old friends and neighbors. It was held in Andy and Hollie's back yard. We didn't stay really long because it was killing Jeff that we were missing the "Big Game". We headed to Paul and Kellie's to watch the BYU/Utah game. Maddie drove with us. She is a little talker and was telling us all kinds of things. She is so darn cute. It was a close game. I didn't watch it too closeley because I was playing a game of Life with Bryant. Kellie was pretty happy about the out come- Jeff and Paul not so much.
Sunday we had a Regional Conference broadcast instead of regular meetings. It was for the whole Salt Lake Valley. Elder Ballard was the presiding General Authority. The talks were very good. They spoke about the importance of the Book of Mormon and how it needs to be more then just a story to us, about being a disciple of Christ and if others would know we were by our actions, about the work of salvation and what our part needs to be and then Elder Ballard spoke about just how very blessed we are in this valley and how we sometimes forget that. He was very direct about the things we are doing wrong here. He said because we live in the valley of the prophets sometimes we don't listen to them like we should. He said we spend too much, we are on electronics too much, we haven't listened to the prophet about not holding huge missionary open houses, etc. It was very very good to hear and definitley hit home with our city for sure.
It is finally feeling like Fall around here and that makes me so happy. We decided after the broadcast that we would drive up Big Cottonwood and check out the leaves. I packed us dinner and we went up to Silver Lake. Ashtyn was not at all happy about going. For some reason she loathes the mountains so it took some coaxing to get her into the car. In fact that is a story for a whole blog post of it's own but needless to say she always ends up having fun once we get there so it's worth the hasseling in the end. We walked around snapping pictures along the way. A lot of these Ashtyn took. She has a great eye for photography that girl. During dinner Ethan asked us if we have ever had to pay for healthcare. We said yes we do pay for healthcare and then he said well if you don't want to pay for healthcare then vote for the third party candidate. We busted up laughing. He had seen a news story on Channel One news at school about it. That was a great conversation starter. We ran into three families that we know and stopped to chat. It was a really beautiful night.
