MAKES me SHUTTER (Stanfield Shutters that is.)

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24, 2009 Nine this morning Niki called and invited me to help her move stuff away from the windows in her garage. Stanfield Shutters were coming somewhere between ten and noon to install new shutters in her house. We had stored a lot of stuff along that wall in the garage when we made room to park their cars. All this was leftover from their moving in. A lot of stuff will go in the basement I’m sure, but the basement hasn’t been finished yet. The shutter people arrived at about eleven thirty. They had told Niki they would take up to five hours but there was little in their way and they were out of there at about two p.m. While we were waiting for the shutter men, Alexa and I blew bubbles on the back deck. Then Niki took a shower so I went in where I could listen for the doorbell. At twelve-thirty or so, Niki started making Café Rio Chicken Salad. She put five pounds of Chicken breast in the slow cooker but decided it didn’t smell really fresh—it was two days past the sell by date, so I ran to Smith’s and bought some more. When I got back she couldn’t find the garlic and she also realized she needed some other ingredients for the dressing to put on it after it is cooked, so I made another trip to Smith’s. I got romaine lettuce, cilantro, a jalapeño, two tomatillos and a packet of buttermilk ranch salad dressing powder. After the men were finished I excused myself and came home. I had forgotten my cell phone and it was driving me a little nuts wondering if I had missed any calls.

HODGEPODGE

MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2009 Stars National dance competition was this last Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Las Vegas. I drove the paperwork, Judy’s computer and our suitcases etc down Wednesday and met Judy at the Las Vegas airport. We stayed at the Sun Coast Casino, well west of the Strip. Spring Valley High School where the competition was held is out that way also so we were able to miss the worst of the traffic. Jim and Molly drove down separately but shared our hotel room. Molly helped Judy in Tabulation and running back and forth gathering score sheets helping at the trophy table at the end of the competition etc. On their way to Las Vegas, Jim and Molly stopped at some hot springs in Meadow (?), and planned on swimming in them on their way home though I don’t think they did. They were running late. I understand Sierra and her team; Salt City Stars did well but I was working admissions and missed seeing her. Chris and Lynn were there but I only saw them as they were coming and going. This morning Niki called. She wanted to buy me lunch for Fathers Day. Mondays and Fridays Stacey works and I watch Jayden and Bailey so of course they went with me. We went to Niki’s house first and the moment we walked in the door Alexa saw Bailey and Jayden and the house burst open with yelling and screaming and running to and fro. I am afraid it was a bit much on Niki’s nerves though I was glad to see them enjoying each other’s company and having fun. We ate lunch at I-HOP. Oh, while we were waiting for Niki to get ready to go to IHOP, I walked Gavin. He is now comfortable holding onto JUST ONE HAND. At one time I held his hand, not the other way around. Doing this I was able to let go of him. At one time when he was good and stable, I let go and he took seven steps on his own. Of course Niki lamented not seeing it. We ate lunch at I-HOP then Jayden and Bailey and I went to my house. We donned our swim suits and spent two hours at the pool. At one point Jayden and Bailey were goofing off and Jayden grabbed her with one hand, held his other hand to the square and said, “In the name of Jesus Christ amen!” then shoved her under water. Bailey came up sputtering and gasping for air, grabbed him, said, “I take you for my husband” and shoved him under. He came up, grabbed her and said, “I take you for my girlfriend” and shoved her back under. Another time they were doing somersaults under water and a couple of times they faced each other, did a backward somersault, came up and did a front somersault…synchronized swimming. Hmm! My observation is that Jayden and Bailey are the best of friends/worst of enemies; the worst of enemies part lasting for no more that a minute or two; often only seconds. They are so competitive. Both Jayden’s and Bailey’s swimming abilities are improving quickly. For a while the game of the moment was, swim to Grandpa and wrestle with him. One time when I was able to get a good head start, we chased in a big circle in total amounting in distance to about one an a half widths of the pool. And they did it at a fast pace. Bailey also has pretty good form when she dives though I don’t think they went to the deep end once today.

WHAT A DAY!

MONDAY, JUNE 15, 2009 Corey flew out to Atlanta for work this morning. Stacey also had to work. That meant I had the two hellions for the day. The hellion part is said tongue in cheek. They were really good, just comically mischievous. Since Stacey left her car at her work (a long story), I showed up at their house around 8:30 this morning. We took her to FEDEX Kinko. The rest of us got breakfast at Sonic. We stopped at Corey’s office for a couple of minutes. We took him to the airport then Jayden, Bailey and I took their house payment to Provo and dropped that off. Since we were in the neighborhood, we went to the Provo Towne Centre Mall and looked around a little. It was approaching noon by this time so I got them burgers at McDonald’s. Bailey got a child’s cheeseburger. Jayden ordered a double quarter pounder. I thought, “No way is he going to eat all that.” So I didn’t get anything for myself. I told him I would eat what he didn’t. He took that as a challenge and stuffed down the whole thing. I think he had to borrow a gut to accomplish it…and was he proud of himself. Bailey only ate half of hers so I did get a nibble. From the mall to our house the two rascals chanted “Are we there yet?” over and over until we finally arrived—twenty to thirty minutes. Of course I pretended to be totally exasperated and yelled at them, mimicked them, yelled “shut up” and generally pretended to be going nuts with the din. That of course egged them on and they only slowed down to giggle at how badly they were “getting to me”. We were at the pool at a couple of minutes after 1:00 and stayed for at least two and a half hours. The first hour was spent (mostly) in the deep end. Jayden and I did a lot of diving to the bottom. He is amazing at how far down he can dive and how long he can stay under water. There were two boys around his age, one named Lane Benson who latched on to him asking him to teach them to dive and stay under water. Jayden of course was eating it up and worked with them a long time. They improved their skills but never came close to what he could do. The next hour an a half was spent in the shallow end “drowning Grandpa.” And what a fine job of it they did. At some point the bishop’s wife and four children came to the pool and their youngest, seven year-old (daughter) Teanu joined the fracas. (The Hansen kids are all large for their ages.) others; strangers also joined in and I got really beat-up. Leah, the mother expressed amazement at my endurance and swimming speed. I thought I had lost a lot in my swimming ability with age but I will accept the complement. I finally dragged the kids out of the pool. We got dressed and drove to their house in Eagle Mountain. We weren’t there too long when Judy called and asked what was for dinner. We settled on Fuddruckers by the South town Mall. We got hold of Stacey and we all met up. From their place to Fuddruckers, a good half hour, I endured the “Are we their yet” thing all over again. This time they got creative and changed up the tempo and volume and even the wording. E-gads, was I glad when we finally arrived and the chanting was over. Love them to pieces but it was nice to drive home all by myself. Whew

IMAGINE THAT

WEDNESDAY,JUNE 10, 2009 First thing this morning in spite of the cool breezy weather, I did my hour in the pool. As I was walking back in the door, the phone was ringing. It was Corey telling me Stacey, Jayden and Bailey were coming over to go swimming so in a little while I was back at the pool, this time playing with kids. We didn’t stay long though. It began to rain which wasn’t too bad but then we started hearing thunder and then lightening appeared in the area and we of course got out and headed back to the house. They went grocery shopping and I flopped back and relaxed for a while. Last night, Corey called telling me he e-mailed me a link to get free tickets for the preview of the new Eddy Murphy movie, Imagine That. Corey walked me through it and in a couple of minutes I had printed a coupon for Judy and me to see it. It was at 7:00 p.m. tonight. Corey of course printed off coupons for his family. I met Stacey and the kids at their credit union by Smith’s and we met Corey and Stacey at Jordon Commons. We got there early enough to have dinner at Ruby River Steak House before the show. Judy was running a little late, partly at least due to bad traffic from downtown. The movie was hilarious. I am not the good story teller so I will spare trying to tell you the storyline. Suffice it to say Jayden who was sitting next to me was rolling in the aisles and predicting what would happen next.

DANCING IN THE RAIN

MONDAY, JUNE 08, 2009 This morning Niki called and asked if I would be interested in going with her to pick out a couple of urn pots and some flowers for their front porch. She said she and the kids wouldn’t be ready to go until the kids wake up from their naps around noon. I showed up at about that time. We started out going to Mark Anthony’s Italian restaurant for lunch. Shortly before our entrees arrived, Corey called. He was hoping I was somewhere near home so I could meet Stacey with a new shirt for him. He did it again; he spilled lunch on the shirt he was wearing; salsa if I remember correctly. I must confess. I am no better. I do it often. We decided to meet at JC Penney’s at the South Town mall to get a new shirt. They are having a half price sale. We met at Penney’s after we finished eating. Corey was going on an appointment with one of his new agents and of course needed to look professional. From there, we (sans Corey) drove to Sam’s Club and picked up two black urns/pots. After that we went to Home Depot on 12600 and Bangerter and bought two hanging pots. Niki decided to take the already organized plants in the hanging pot, take them out enmass and transfer them to the new pots. It appears to be working well. Alexa of course helped with the work. At one point she said to me (I don’t remember the exact words.) “You do (?), I’ll do (?) and you say, ‘Good job Alexa!’” It started raining about the time we were finishing the flower job. There was some thunder and lightening though not too close. Alexa was in heaven running and dancing in the rain. She even kept talking about “dancing in the rain”. Niki ran for her camera and got a few good shots. Alexa started teasing her. When Niki, standing out of the rain at the garage door asked her to smile, Alexa would laugh and say no and run around to the front door. When Niki showed up at the front door with her camera Alexa would laugh again and run around to the garage. We went through this several times. Alexa and I were pretty wet when I gave up and went home.

AUBURN, CALIFORNIA BOUND

SATURDAY, JUNE 06, 2009 Thursday morning I hopped in a U-Haul (Penske) truck here in Saratoga Springs and headed out for Auburn, California. Francesca Saboe, A ward member and her twelve year old son Dustin were moving. I guess she is originally from that area or at least has connections there. She is a widow. Her husband Scott was killed in Mosul, Iraq 15 November, 2003. She had a few things left to pack in her pickup truck. She told me to go ahead and that she would leave in a little while and catch up—RIGHT! Dustin rode with me back to their house from where we got the truck. He wanted to ride in the truck with me to California. His mother said he could after they caught up with me. I called her from Elko, Nevada at around 1:30. They were just leaving. She had packed her pickup—unpacked and packed it again. She said they looked like the Beverly Hillbillies. Hmm! I needed to refuel. She said she would repay me. I filled the tank and headed out again. An hour or two before reaching Reno a little white car a few hundred yards ahead of me suddenly swerved to the right. She must have hit the rumble strip at that point. She over corrected and flew across the two lanes at a ninety degree angle, still at freeway speed and tore off into the meridian. There was a cloud of dust so thick I could not see a thing. Fortunately the east bound lanes were several hundred yards away at that point. When I got to where they were, the car had turned around and was stopped not too far from the westbound lanes again and two women were standing outside the car hugging each other. The car looked a bit beat up, especially in the front but there were two other stopped vehicles so I kept on driving. A while later Dustin called me on his cell phone lamenting not being with me. It is a good thing he wasn’t with me as by the time I reached their Auburn home they were still three hours behind, and I had had to refuel again in Sparks. That time I only put in enough to safely reach Auburn. She said she would send me a check for the $135.00 but who knows if that will actually happen. Oh well! Wednesday I called Janette, my niece in Roseville and told her what I was doing. She said she would meet me in Auburn and I could spend the night with her and her family. She did and we had a nice visit. They have a lovely family with four cute kids. Eric will be a senior at Roseville high school next year, Nina is thirteen, Adam is ten (or is it eleven), and Kate is eight. Kate was on my lap or sitting next to me that night and again the next morning before school with her webkinz (little stuffed animals) yakking up a storm. Yesterday morning after we dropped Adam and Kate off a school, Janette drove me around the area and showed me the home my parents lived in, in Rocklin, Gerald’s old meat shop, a couple of the housed he and Pauling lived in etc., then she dropped me off at the Sacramento Airport for my flight home. We had a good long talk as we drove. Judy picked my up in Salt Lake and we drove to Chris and Sierra’s and helped them and Niki get ready for Sierra’s Birthday party. Judy and Niki worked downstairs with the food, decorations etc. I helped Chris put up some wallpaper in Sierra’s bedroom. It turned out really nice. Sierra’s friends came, we excused ourselves and Judy and I drove to The Old Spaghetti Factory to eat. Judy drove us home; I hit the pillow and crashed.

BABYSITTING AT THE POOL

MONDAY, JUNE 01, 2009 Today was the first day of summer vacation in the Alpine School District and Stacey had to work. That meant Grandpa spent the day babysitting. I was given the option of having Jayden and Bailey at our place or me spending the day at theirs. I opted to have them come here. It must have been 9:30ish that Stacey dropped them off. We donned our suits, Jayden grabbed the pool key and we were at the pool at about 9:45 a.m. diving much of the time though they did a lot of wrestling with Grandpa too. We were there for about an hour when they decided they needed to eat more than swim. I made waffles from scratch and Jayden made eggs. He called it boiling but what he did was crack and drop three eggs into some butter in a frying pan and sort of stir them. When I mentioned that he got a piece of shell in it, he said, “That’s ok, I like shell!” He ate all three eggs as well as some waffles. Bailey ate lots of waffles. I think they are on the verge of a growing spurt. Jayden saw my glucose meter and announced he needed to “check my blood sugar.” He had me supervise his doing it including installing a new lancet, and then he poked my finger and checked my blood sugar too. At the pool Jayden was talking to a boy who mentioned that he was getting $10.00 for watering some plants for someone, so when we got home, Jayden watered our hanging plants and sprinkled a little water on a few plants in the flower beds and announced that I owed him $76.00. He and Bailey are again amazing me at how well they are reading. We put the video, Bolt into the DVD player in our bedroom and we soon fell asleep. When we woke up we decided to go to the pool again; again for about an hour and again followed by waffles and “Bolt.” This time at the pool most of the time was spent swimming; underwater in Jayden’s case. He amazed me how long we can stay underwater and that he can do underwater summersaults, several at a time. This time Bailey made sure she took the pool key. They are so competitive. I may have them again tomorrow for a couple of hours starting at around 11:00.