D-Backs

Look who got to go to the Diamondbacks game today and sit in a box seat!!! Lucky! Thanks to Jay for the free ticket.

Happy Birthday, Madie!

Okay, so I"m a month late wishing Madie Happy Birthday, but my blog was so far behind, I needed to catch up before I got to that post. And, we celebrated Madie's birthday on our camping trip with them Labor Day Weekend. Madie turned 2 on August 20 (our anniversary). She is such a little firecracker - she's full of personality and smiles. We love skyping with her and we're thankful we can do that because it helps her know who we are - since we don't get to see her often. 

For Madie's birthday, we gave her a sleeping bag and a camping chair that she could use on our camping trip and a water bottle that matches her sleeping bag. She did a good job of opening her presents! 

Madie moved to a 'big girl' bed recently and she is very good to stay in her bed. She's starting to talk more and her hair is now long enough to put in pigtails. One of the cute things I noticed about Madie is that when you play peek-a-boo with her, instead of saying 'boo', she says 'peek'. It is very cute! She loves puppies, cats and likes to pick rocks up on her walks. Happy Birthday, Miss Madeleine. Nana and Papa love and miss you and look forward to the next time we can see you in person.

9/11/11

Last Sunday was the 10th anniversary of what is known as 9/11. I want to reflect a little about 9/11 in this post and some of my feelings I had at the time. None of my grandchildren were born when this day happened and they will read about it in their history books at school, but I want to document my feelings about it for them.
Our family went to New York in 2000, right after Tyler got off his mission. When we were on our ferry ride, I took a picture similar to this one of the New York City skyline. It was a beautiful skyline. We were in New York City on a Sunday morning and it was very peaceful and actually very quiet for a big city.

A little over a year later, on September 11, 2001, Michael came home from early morning seminary and had just heard on the radio that a plane crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. We immediately turned on the tv so we could see what was going on. Soon after we turned the tv on, we saw this happening pretty much live on tv. We couldn't believe what was happening! Another plane had flown into the other tower. 

Within 2 hours, both towers had collapsed into ashes.

Soon after the report of the 2nd tower being hit, there was another report of a plane being flown into the Pentagon in Arlington, VA. 

And yet another plane soon after - going down in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 

I copied the following from wikopedia:

"The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/11) were a series of four coordinated suicide attacks upon the United States in New York City and the Washington, D.C., area on September 11, 2001. On that Tuesday morning, 19 terrorists from the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger jets. The hijackers intentionally crashed two planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City; both towers collapsed within two hours. Hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth jet, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers attempted to take control before it could reach the hijacker's intended target in Washington, D.C. Nearly 3,000 died in the attacks."

My reflections of 9/11

After seeing the attacks, it was hard for me to get into motion on that Tuesday morning. I went to work, but couldn't work - and neither could anybody else, so we all went home. I sat in front of the tv most of the next few days, trying to take it all in. It was very shocking, sad, and simply unbelievable that something like this could happen. I was so sad for the families who had lost loved ones in the attacks. I remember needing a break from all the sadness on tv, so I took Spike for a walk. While we were walking a black dog came out of nowhere and attacked my Spike. In trying to fight off the other dog, I tore the knee of my pants, but I was finally able to get the other dog away from us. This just added to the turmoil I was feeling about the day.

I don't even know how to express in words how it felt on that day, but words like darkness, gloom, sadness, and fear come to mind. I was afraid that my boys might have to go off to war, especially Michael, since he was the right age. I was afraid that other attacks might occur. Tyler was just thinking about becoming a police officer and I worried about something like this happening to him as he responded to emergencies. I worried about my future grandchildren and what kind of a world they would have to live in.

This act of terrorism affected our country in so many ways. Before 9/11, the economy was flourishing. After 9/11, the economy tanked. I don't really think things have ever been or ever will be the same again. Many lives have been lost since 9/11 in the war against terrorism.

If I have to look for some positive things that came from 9/11, I remember how the country came together after the attacks. People were nicer to each other. People from all over the country and maybe the world went to NYC to help where they could. Our country came together for a short time and it didn't matter whether you were a republican or a democrat, we were united in the quest to find the people who did this. I remember using the word humbled. Our country was humbled. It's too bad more people can't remember those feelings today. I pray for our country and I honor and thank those who have given up their lives to protect our freedom. I truly mean this when I say "God Bless America" because we need His help more now than we ever have before. 9/11 was a changing day for our country, but hopefully, after 10 years, we've learned a lot, we're more watchful and alert to the things going on around us, and things will start changing for the better so that my grandchildren can live in a safer world.



Sadie, Sam and Soccer

It's great this year that Sadie and Sam are on the same soccer team. We love going to watch their games and it is very convenient that we can see two of our grandkids play at the same time.

Oh, and by the way, Kylie fractured her wrist and had to wear this brace for 6 weeks. At least it's pretty!  She just got it off this week and now needs to work on strengthening her wrist again.

Labor Day Weekend on the beach

We had a fabulous Labor Day Weekend in California. We met Michael, Mallory and Madie at a campground near Hearst Castle (San Simeon, Cambria) and camped near the beach for 3 nights. It was so much fun. See how close we were to the ocean? We could hear the waves crashing in the distance as we were falling asleep. And the waves were very large that weekend.

Here are Michael, Mallory and Madie at our campground. We're just boiling some water for hot chocolate. I love the cool, foggy mornings - I miss that so much about California.

Here's the real star of the show! 

Time for a new tent. This is our tent and our queen air mattress fit in there, but that's all. Now that we will be doing some more camping, we invested in a larger, taller tent that we can stand up in. I can't wait to use it! 

Lovin' my Madie! 

Saturday morning we went to Hearst Castle and went on a tour. I've been there 2 other times, but I took a different tour this time and it was very interesting to see the bedrooms.

My handsome hubby.

You can see the fog down in the valley. Hearst Castle is up on a hill, so it isn't usually foggy up there, but it's cool to look at it hovering below. 

The gardens at the castle were gorgeous. Great pictures, Bryan! 

Here's the Neptune Pool - so big and so beautiful. 

Madie and Papa riding the bus up to Hearst Castle

Madie and Michael inside one of the bedrooms at Hearst Castle 

You have to remember when you see this picture that I was camping. Just look at Madie, not me.

And here is the Roman Pool, which I think is absolutely amazing. 

Cute pose, Madie! I'm loving the pig tails.

We spent some time in Morro Bay. We actually went to church there on Sunday. We were able to find some showers at the campground, so we could get the campfire smell out of our hair before church! 

Madie loved playing in this pool of ocean water and water from a stream combined together.

I absolutely love these pictures of Madie!

I'm doing my favorite thing on the beach - sitting, watching the waves and doing Sudokus. 

Back at the campgroud.....enjoying our campfire and smores. 

And what's camping without a couple of games of yhatzee? 

In Cambria, they were having a little town festival on Labor Day. Michael and Mallory put Madie on this little car ride and you can see that she was doing okay the first couple times around..... 

.........but then....total meltdown! They had to stop the ride so they could get her off the ride!

We drove up the coast a little to see the elephant seals that were resting on the beach. On our way, we saw some zebras grazing with the cattle. Hearst let a lot of his animals go from his private zoo and they have increased in number and stayed around the hills by Hearst Castle.

 Papa, Madie and I right before they left for home and we left for Solvang.

And here we all are before we departed. It was such a fun weekend and we loved being with these guys! 

Here are the elephant seals. They flicked sand on themselves every now and then - otherwise, they looked like they were dead. 

After we left San Simeon, Bryan and I headed to Solvang to spend the night at Marriott. The shower felt so good and it was nice to be clean again. We actually went and walked around Solvang on Sunday with M,M & M because Mal had never been there. We knew we were going back on Monday night though. I love this city and if I'm ever anywhere close to it, have to stop in.

We left Tuesday at about noon for home, but we stopped at a few beaches along the way. Oh how I love the ocean and the beach. I got my ocean-fix and should be good for another few months until we go back to California. I need to see the ocean at least a couple times a year. 



Cabin Memories

We made so many wonderful memories at the cabin in the short 5 years we owned it. I'm going to share a few of them so I always have them recorded. Actually, there are a lot of them. I stole a lot of pictures from Tiffany's blog and tried to look for some that I know we have somewhere, but I can't seem to find them. If any of my kids want to add more pictures to this, please send them to me. The pictures are going to be in random order - I tried to organize them, but decided I would just write about them as I upload them.

We loved seeing the wildlife walk by our cabin. One morning we awoke to 2 huge elk eating apples off our tree in the front yard. Unfortunately, the camera was in the car and I couldn't go out to get pictures of them, but they had huge horns and they were able to reach pretty far up the apple tree. Besides deer and elk, we've seen javalina, skunks, and lots of squirrels. Our neighbor has seen a bear on his front porch before.

Look how little Kylie and Lexi were when we first got the cabin! All of our grandkids probably don't remember a time when we didn't have it.

One of our favorite times to go to the cabin was when it snowed. We watched the forecast and tried to plan a trip up there when snow was expected. The hills around the cabin were perfect for sledding down and we also had a favorite hill off of Highway 87 that we went to until they shut it down. 

I have to explain the writing on the drawer above. When Lexi was a baby, we put her pack & play in the mud room where it was quiet and she slept in there. One morning we woke up and Lexi had found a marker in the drawer and written all over the drawer. I actually thought it was so cute that I left it there and even had her sign her name to it. Well, when Sadie was the same age, she must have seen Lexi's artwork and thought she could add to it, because that's just what she did. You'd think I would have learned to put the marker in a different place, but we went ahead and signed Sadie's name to the drawer as well. We now have this drawer in our garage at home and I'll always remember how cute these little ones were. 

We were happy that Holly, Jeff, Claire and Michael were at our house for Christmas one year (2007, I think) and were able to go to the cabin with us when there was snow. 

This is Tyler with Sadie and BJ with Sam on one of our cabin trips.

One of my favorite things about the cabin was when the grandkids all hopped into bed with us in the mornings. I loved it! Lexi, Kylie and Sadie are here with me on this morning. 

We loved going to the Community Park in Payson. Lexi and Sadie are here with Papa.

We used to have a canoe that we took to the Community Park in Payson and floated around in. This is BJ, Shannon and Kylie. We also took the canoe to Blue Ridge Reservoir a couple of times.

More pictures at the cabin and at Community Park

We played fun games, went for lots of walks, rocked in the hammock and painted the deck with water. 

One of our favorite things to do was go for walks when it was getting dark - just before the kids went to bed. They all had a flashlight in hand and Tyler would throw rocks in the bushes and tell them it was a bear. None of the kids ever believed him though! He also told the kids that a troll lived under this bridge, so they always wanted to go down and see if the troll was there.

We snuggled and told stories.... 

We made trains out of the chairs.....

We loved sitting on the porch. Even though we had a huge deck on the back of the house, we always migrated to the front porch and crammed as many chairs as we could there. It was especially fun sitting on the porch during rain storms - another one of our favorite times to be at the cabin. We saw some pretty awesome storms from that front porch. In fact, one time Michael and I were playing Yhatzee on the front porch and came really close to being struck by lightning. 

Here is our view from the front porch..

We loved going to the Payson Community Park for fireworks on 4th of July. It was so much cooler in Pine than it was in the valley. We had lots of fun rolling down hills and anticipating the fireworks. 

BJ and Shannon waiting for the fireworks.

Sadie in Papa's hat 

Sam in Papa's hat. 

Shannon, Sam and Brodi waiting for fireworks 

Ty and Tiff waiting for fireworks

Here are my boys on the cabin back porch. 

The kids loved playing on the swings and in the sandbox. And they loved it when Tyler brought his big toys to the cabin!

Especially ETHAN!

We loved having a visit from Holly, Jeff, Claire, Ethan, Michael, Mallory, Madie and Grandma for Thanksgiving 2010. We were able to come to the cabin for a very short visit, but we had fun.

Mallory, Claire and Madie are playing ring a round the rosie...

Sadie shared her air mattress with Ethan. Their heads were each at the end of the mattress and their feet were in the middle. It was so cute - they got to be good buddies.

Mal entertained Ethan and Sadie!

And we played Don't Eat Pete.

Here is Grandma Clark holding Madie

Kylie, Tiff and Lexi

Shannon and Sam

We had the best food ever when we were at the cabin! Everything always seemed to taste better up there. We always had great breakfasts (thanks Ty) with pancakes, bacon/sausage, eggs, orange juice. A great way to wake up in the morning! We also barbecued a lot, made peach cobbler and LOTS of chocolate chip cookies. Papa even made bread a few times.

Here are BJ and Tyler having dinner with their girls.

We also liked to go on hikes. We went to Tonto Natural Bridges several times. Holly, Jeff, Claire and Ethan are on a hike in this picture.

We loved playing these games at the cabin. We get together every Sunday and never seem to play games, but at the cabin, we played games and had such a good time.

One of the sad memories I have of the cabin is July 2008 when our 13 year old dog, Spike died. I was on my way to the cabin and I had him in his crate in the back of our pick-up truck. We had transported him like this many times with no problems. For some reason and in some way, he managed to get out of his crate while I was going 70 mph and he jumped from the back of the truck. In the fall, he broke all of his legs and I knew with his age, it would be really hard for him to heal. So, I made the decisioin to go on to the cabin and knowing he would probably die on the way there, decided to bury him at the cabin. Ty and Tiff were behind me by about 20 minutes, so I knew Ty could help me when we got to the cabin. Much to my surprise, when I arrived at the cabin, Spike was still alive, but I could tell he was in pain. When Ty arrived, we went to the vet in Payson and had Spike put to sleep. It was horrible and I cried many tears for that little guy. Tyler dug a grave in the backyard and we buried him there, while Tyler whistled Amazing Grace! I'm so glad Tyler was there to help me with this. Actually, Spike was Tyler's dog in the first place, but I bonded with him. Here is Spike and also some pictures of his grave at the cabin. This was one of the biggest reasons I didn't want to sell the cabin. My Spike is buried there.

So, I hate to end on a sad note, but it is really sad for me to sell the cabin. I still have all of my decorations in a box in the garage because I hope to have another cabin someday. Here are the pictures of our moving day. I think I'm not the only one that is sad. What do you think?

Kylie and Lexi getting their favorite rocks they gathered from the rock wall Papa built.

The empty rooms

and the moving truck with some very sad girls sitting in it

I'm so thankful for this little cabin. It has brought our family closer and created a fun atmosphere for us to enjoy each other's company and get to know each other better. I can look back at the great memories we had here and look to the future for other ways to create some of these same feelings. Looks like it's time to dust off the camping gear and make some new memories.