The presence of presents

I was planning on putting this on my blog a few weeks ago, but haven't had time.

Abe said that he can't ever think of anything to buy for me. Anyway, a co-worker of his found this Book of Mormon at a yard sale and picked it up. The lady didn't charge him anything for it. He offered it to abe, because he thought abe might want it. So abe decided to give it to me for my birthday.

The publication date is 1874. The leather cover is a little worn, but it appears like new on the inside. Okay, to get really corny, we met in 1974, 100 years after this book was published. What a really neat gift, and so much neater than anything you could buy at the store.

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Now for the other "notable" present from my birthday - yes leaner and hairball, you know what I'm referring to - your gift to me. Let me just say it came in a bag with the word Castle written on it. It is a modified version of my favorite game - Yahtzee. I can't even leave it sitting around as the picture on the front is too descriptive.

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If these two presents aren't opposite sides of the coin, I don't know what are. I will not share my experiences with one of these gifts, but I may share from the other. You can just decide for yourself which of these is most like me.

Survival of the fittest

Yeah! it is Saturday! We survived this week. It was wild and crazy and pure chaos. On Wednesday, we had over 380 students touring the high school. Everything went well and even when the buses arrived late to bring the kids from the valley, we had enough time to adjust and allow each group a shortened time for their tours.

Thursday evening we had around 90 people at our expo. This doesn't sound like a lot, we were glad because we had over 15 8th graders and their parents there. I don't think we've ever had that many. We even had fabulous prizes, including a two-night stay for two at the Embassy Suites.

The best thing about this week is that on Monday we did manage our hike and geocache. On Tuesday there was time for a bike ride and on Wednesday enough time for another bike ride.

Not that fit, but yes, we survived.

It's all downhill from here

That should mean that it is getting easier to meet your goal, but if you are on a downhill slide that is a bad thing. This week that is what it was--a bad thing. Monday was great 30 minutes on the bike then a 2.5 mile walk with abe. Tuesday-- a late meeting then no time left to get anything done. Wednesday--to CG with abe for supper before the Stake Youth Valentine's Dance. We got out of here late and then of course everyone was eating out, so we didn't have enough time to go to a real restaurant. Supper at Filiberto's then off to the dance. I had planned on leaving him there and then returning home with ample time to exercise. Instead we stood around until 8 and we both left, bishop had finally arrived and we thought it would be okay to go. Thursday - well that is the blog prior to this one. Friday - my job is quite interesting, and this day I got to play bus driver so at 5:30PM I was on my way back from CG where I was picking up students. Saturday I actually had a meeting all morning and by afternoon I had to get home and clean the house. Can't convince it to clean itself unfortunately.

I am not looking forward to next week being any better as I have two huge events (my fault, I planned them) taking place at our school. Our annual 8th grade visitation, and our annual Career Expo. Since we are responsible for every aspect of this Wednesday and Thursday activity, not counting the two state meetings in Mesa, I also have to attend this week. I know Monday will be good as we will plan a hike or geocaching adventure, but the rest of the week does not bode well. If I gave up sleeping I may have time to get everything done. Needless to say, the last week in February I WILL SUCCEED!!!

Happy Birthday to me

To celebrate my very last birthday ever I took the day off work. I had decided that this would be the ideal time to sew the dress I was supposed to make for Rhayn's Christmas Present. We cut it out in January, and hadn't even sewn one stitch.

After pulling out my machine and having nothing but problems with everything I almost threw it in the trash. Finally I got the top done and realized that I hadn't cut out the skirt right. There were supposed to be two pieces and somehow I had cut only one. So I cut that one in half and also cut the band for the bottom in half. It made a shorter dress, but I really wanted to get it done. Abe called about 11 and told me he would be home at 11:30 so we could go do something. I managed to get the dress done before he got home.

We got in the truck and drove to leaner's house to give Rhayn the dress. We stopped along the way at Joanne's to see if they had any wonderful Valentine things on sale. They didn't but we found a wonderful pair of socks for Rhayn and a weird chicken thing for Gwennie that makes funny noises when you throw it. Rhayn loved her new dress and socks, but we told her not to wear them together.

Rhayn and I went for a drive and spent a little time together without g'pa and mom.

After that abe and I went to the theater and saw "the Work and the Glory".

Home by 8:30 so that we could both get some sleep (we are getting old after all).

No cake, but it was a nice day after all.

Weak too - or is that week two?

Were there really seven days this week? I think that this was one of those short weeks with only five days, no quantity, not much quality, and just barely meeting my goal- we got two walks in, plus a bike ride. I hope that next week will be better.

Lots of bubbles

Thursday I got to do something I haven't gotten to do in a really long time. Take a bath! Now that isn't as weird as it seems. We have two bathrooms, one with a shower, one with a bathtub. The hot water going into our "big" bathroom has slowly gotten worse over the past few years to the point that it wasn't much more than a drip. The plumbers came to replace the water pipes in the entire house on Thursday morning and by that night we had all new plumbing. Complete with water pressure that is amazing.

I told abe at 9 that I was going to take a bath, at 9:30 when I returned to our room he told me that I didn't stay in very long. So I explained to him that when you can fill the tub that quickly it doesn't take as long to take a bath.

We also have hot water to our kitchen, it too had slowed to a drizzle and was getting worse by the day. We had them replace the 15 year old water heater with one of the new tankless kind. It heats water as you need it and doesn't waste so much energy. They claim it can pay for itself in around three years.

Can't wait for one of those cold rainy days again, thats when I love doing dishes and soaking in a tub.

Super Bowl Sunday

After hearing that Superbowl is second in caloric intake only to Thanksgiving, I realized that we have been doing this right all along. We usually go over to our friends house and have hot-wings, chips, dip, potato salad, spinach dip, and on, and on, and on.

This year we missed the kick-off as we hadn't really gotten home from church early enough. But that didn't stop us from enjoying good food and good friends.

After eating an assortment of non-sweets we broke out the dessert around half-time: one Texas Sheet cake to celebrate mr. briep's birthday; a chocolate torte; and a cute cake decorated like a football field which included Peanut M&M players, a tootsie roll football, Hershey Hug's for refs and pretzel goal posts. We even turned off Prince long enough to sing Happy-Birthday to the birthday boy.


Then briep and SLA cleaned off the table and we pulled out the sewing machine, material, patterns, etc. To sew up a scrub top for SLA. Amazingly enough we were sewing the last seam just as the Bears bit the dust and the Colts came forth in a victorious miracle. Peyton Manning won that long waited for Super Bowl Ring.

After it was all over I realized that I didn't watch even a second of the game. Usually we move from the dining room to the living room off and on during the game, but not this year. So I just had to take the sad look on some of the faces that the Bears had indeed lost.

I forgot to ask abe this year who he thought would win, he has been right for the past 30 years, if we were just betting people we could be rich by now. Maybe next year? Nope we can't start now.

Ragged top

Yesterday we took JVA and SLA for a little geocaching adventure disguised as a hike. My thought was that we could find a geocache at the end of a trail somewhere. I found several in the Ironwood National Forest area down by Picacho Peak. The first obstacle we encountered was the Santa Cruz River, which had the nice sign "Do not enter when flooded". We stopped and talked about our options and about that time a truck drove up, and stopped to survey the situation. They too pulled out a map to see what their options were.

We told them that if they would drive through we would pull them out. They seemed a little adverse to swimming since it was less than 50 degrees out, and who knows how cold that water might be. About that time we saw a truck pulling a trailer driving quite fast towards us. He got to the River and went ahead and crossed. So we went ahead and drove through. The water was wide, and deep enough that it went up to the bottom of the doors on our truck.

We stopped at the Sasco ghost town. http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/az/sasco.html. Our friend Bob had told JVA about a really cool place to have a paint ball war. Abe and I knew where this was as we had been there a couple of years ago on another geo adventure. We took a pic of JVA in one of the Smelters. Climbed around in the basement of the old Rockland hotel and also walked along the Railroad platforms. Fortunately the river must have kept the paintballers away on this day as there weren't any at war. Last time we were there they were having a great time.

Our next stop was at the Big Bull Nose geocache. We got to within a half mile and decided to take another route since there was a deep wash between us and the cache. After driving down another road and getting to within a half mile we decided we could walk as opposed to driving around all day looking for the right road. After grabbing the cache we had lunch back at the truck.

Instead of finding the other two caches we decided that we would go over to Ragged Top (a huge outcropping similar to Picacho). We drove around looking for the closest road in and after three mis attempts finally found one that got us to within .43 of the cache at the Summit. JVA got really excited and wants to tackle this bad boy. It is about 500 feet taller than Picacho, there are no established trails to the top, there are no lines to help you attain the acme. He is now looking for any takers who want to go with him. We actually got out and climbed up to the foot of the cliff face. He got to within .10 of the cache, which is a little more than two football fields. Of course that was as the crow flies, and he hit an impassible point. http://www.localhikes.com/Hikes/Ragged_top_8520.asp While there was a lot of sheep scat around we didn't see any of the desert bighorn that live on this mountain. It is apparently their lambing season and not the best time to attempt the climb.

After climbing back to the truck we headed off towards Cortaro Road in Tucson for some Texas Roadhouse fare. Steak, and pulled pork and fresh hot rolls dripping with cinnamon butter. http://www.recipezaar.com/66307. What could be better?

TIF (thankfully it's Friday)

Week one:

Riding our new bike, while watching tv=2 nights
Walking for 2 miles in the rain with abe=1 night

Yup, I made it this week.

Here is a picture of me taken recently. I'm on your right (the left side of the picture) in the waffle looking dress. Bet you can't wait to see my "after picture"!!!