Another Batch of Old Photos

I had some additional old photos that I thought I should share.

This first one is of John at the beginning of his mission in 1997 in South Florida.

This is Sheri, Katie, Julie and Sarah at Neil and Ashley’s wedding. Cute girls.

Neil was involved in an “invention” competition in 4th grade. He made it to the finals and had to demonstrate his invention before the school board. His invention was a remote control vacuum cleaner that was made with a clever combination of a Dust Buster, a remote control car and Lego’s to provide the connecting structure. Neil did quite well in the demonstration of his invention and creativity.

Bret was highly skilled at catching frogs. This was the captive frog that they played with one summer day. Bret was not very good at keeping his clothes clean while catching frogs.

Bret, Sheri and Katie on a favorite fall activity of apple picking at Eckerts. Those were good apples.

This Sheri at age 2 while camping in July 1989. She was not as modest in those days. That orange tent went on a lot of camping trips.

This is 2 year old Joseph and 4 year old Sarah on a camping trip in 1993. Who cares about shoes?

Sarah started climbing at an early age. When she was 2, she climbed up on her dresser, but the climb must have worn her out and she fell asleep. Of course, we put her back down on her bed where she would be less likely to hurt herself. When she woke up, she found something else to climb.

This was Joseph’s first Christmas at 8 months old.

The last picture is of Sheri when she was still a tiny baby in January 1987. We should soon be able to see how much her baby looks like her baby picture.

It is beginning to look a lot like spring

Earlier this week, we had several days of warm weather and some of the spring flowers decided it was time to start blooming. The first flower out in the front of the house was a crocus. This was taken Tuesday afternoon.

There were also grape hyacinths starting to bloom.

These are the first to daffodils to start to bloom.
These were all taken Tuesday afternoon. By Wednesday, there were a lot of daffodils in bloom.

In the back yard, the apricot tree had popcorn on it.
This is a close up.

I love spring. It is a time of new life. Not just plants this year, but grandchildren too.

What goes "Crack" in the Storm?

One evening last week, we had a thunderstorm and it was raining hard but. I had to go over to the Wheeler’s to bring in their mail. I got half way out of the subdivision and was blocked by a tree that was covering the entire road. One of our neighbors was out with his chainsaw in the rain working on the tree. He said he heard a loud cracking noise as the tree broke, so he came out to see what cause the noise and saw the downed tree. Since I could not get out, I went back home and changed my cloths, put fuel and oil in my chainsaw and went back to join in the community effort to take care of the tree. When I got there the neighbor had not made much progress because his chainsaw was pinched by pressure on the branch he was trying to cut.. His chainsaw was “wedged in great tightness”. I got out my chainsaw and cut the branch that held his chainsaw captive and then cut up the rest of the tree. He could see that my chainsaw was doing a good job, so he put his chainsaw down and decided he could most effective by moving the branches that I cut off the road. When we half way done, his wife came out in the rain with us and helped pull branches off the road. Just was we finished getting everything cleared, it stopped raining. A couple of minutes after that, another neighbor came to help.

This is a photo of the broken tree and its cut up sections at the side of the road. This is across the sink hole from our house.

More Random Old Photos

This is Sarah and Joseph In Jamaica in November 2001.

This is John, Julie, Neil, Bret and Katie on Halloween, 1985.

Sheri in January 1987.

Bret in October 1985. He was a very happy child. I believe this was taken on a Sunday afternoon. Even though he has no shirt and a "bonnett", he still has his church pants on. He really gave that horse a workout.

These next two were taken on a vacation trip to Crater Lake, Olympic National Park, and Mount Rainier in July 1985. At our campground at Mout Rainier, there were a lot of trees down that were a lot of fun to climb and walk on.
An of course, there was always the family on the log photo. Katie was the baby in the backpack.

I will have more old photos in a few more days.

Random Old Photos

We were going through old photos, looking for pictures of when Sheri was a baby and found several old phots that I thought I should share. These first two were taken in July 1987 an a trip from California to Utah, Alberta, and Yellowstone. It was a great trip. This first one is me with Sheri while we were in Yellostone. Sheri and I are both much younger than today.

This next photo was taken with John, Julie, Neil, Bret and Katie in a tree with Sheri on the grass. This tree is in Salt Lake City. This tree was actually an important part of my life as a child. It was in front of the house that I lived in when I was 5 to 6 years old. My grandfather build the house, but when this photo was taken in 1987, the house was gone, but the tree was still there. I knew it was "my" tree because as a 5-6 year old, it was my "rocket ship". I had carved all of the rocket controls and dials in the bark of the branches with a pocket knife. In 1987, the markings I had carved were still visible enough that I could confirm that it was my Rocket Ship. I have no idea if the tree is still there now, 22 years after this photo and 52 years after the rocket controls were carved.


This is a photo of Bret and Katie at Yellowstone.

This photo was taken on the first day of school in September 1986. It was the first day of 3rd grade for John, 2nd grade for Julie, and kindergarten for Neil. Bret was three and just in the picture for fun.

This one was taken a few years later of Bret, Katie, Sheri, Sarah and Joseph.

This is Mom and Sheri at Yosemite in November 1987.

Scout Campout at Beaumont Feb 6-7

We had a scout campout at Beaumont Scout Reservation on Friday night and Saturday. More than a week earlier, we had lots of snow. Then we had very cold temperatures. Two days before the campout, it was 13 degrees, but we knew that they were forecasting a low in the 40s for Friday night and a high of 60 for Saturday. The temperatures were great for the campout, but the field we were camping in was frozen about an inch below the surface. As the ground thawed, it became very muddy, especially around the campfire. I am putting a few of the photos and one video in this blog entry, but I will put more on Facebook.

On Saturday, we went on a hike starting at Cub World, where they have some cool things for “younger” scouts to play on, like a pirate ship next to the creek. This is Joseph climbing on the pirate ship.

There is also a maze for scouts to go through. We lined everyone up to race through the maze.
Alex Landgrave finished first with Joseph (behind the wall) coming out 2nd about 3 steps behind Alex.

This is the maze as seen in Google Maps. You can almost see how to solve the maze, but it is a bit too fuzzy.

We next hiked up to the castle and the lookout tower. This is Joseph making some repairs with a rock on the castle drawbridge.

Next the boys climbed on grape vines.

When we got back down to the stream by the pirate ship, the boys had fun playing in and on the partially frozen stream. The temperatures had only been above freezing for about one day, so there was still a lot of ice. These next two photos look like the scouts are walking on water, but there was a huge shelf of ice about a half inch below the water surface.

Joseph is taking his shirt off so he can climb down the tree roots to dunk his head under the icy water.

This is the video clip of Joseph putting his head under the water.

After I turned the camera off, Joseph put his head under a 2nd time and got a “brain freeze”. He recovered.

Cruise Day 6, 7 and departure (Jan 16-18)

Days 6 and 7 were both at sea days. After getting up early and exploring the Mayan Ruins the day before, no one wanted to get up early on day 6. When we did get up, we had a very fine breakfast. We did not do much after breakfast but we had a very fine lunch in the main dining room. The made to order salad was incredibly good. Joseph was getting really good at the art of making ice cream cones. Here is one of his creations.In the afternoon we found a deck of cards and played hearts. I won! I got to 100 points first!! Oh wait a minute, that’s not winning.

We saw a couple of dolphins swimming along side our ship, so I tried several times to take a picture. This shot was a little late, but it was the best.

This was the sunset through the clouds as viewed from our balcony.

On day 7, we ate breakfast in the main dining room and had Juan for our waiter. He was our waiter for dinner each night. He was great. He really took care of us.

One of the guys at our dinner table each night was Snider York. He and the rest of his group were very entertaining. He had entered in the Texas Hold’Em tournament on the ship and won his table in the first round. The final round was on the last day at sea, so we all went to watch him and root for him. If he won the final round, he would win a cruise for two, and the big championship tournament would be on that cruise and the winner would get $100,000. He said if he won both tournaments, he would take us all on a cruise with him, so we wanted to cheer him on.

This is Joseph not sure if he is allowed to be in the casino.

This is the tournament in process. I did not want to photograph too closely while they were playing and have anyone get cranky. Out of 7 people in the final round, Snider was the 3rd to be eliminated. I guess we will have to pay for our next cruise.

We got off the ship early Sunday morning. We did the express checkout where you leave early and take all of your luggage with you. We were through customs about 8am. We were dressed in our church clothes and planned on going back to the same 9am sacrament meeting we attended the week before. As we were standing in line for customs, a lady in a dress came up to me and asked which ward we were planning on attending. I told her and then got her cell phone number so we could call with the details on how to get there after we got back to our car. They got to church the same time as us.

This is the last photo in the parking lot with our ship in the background.

In spite of the rainy and colder than normal weather, we really had a great time.
It was still way warmer than the -2 degrees Fahrenheit in St. Louis.