Final Week of Trip

Yes, we are finally home again.  We actually got home Monday evening after driving straight through from Lake Tahoe.  We made it in 9 1/2 hours, the last three hours being absolutely horrible travelling on a two-lane highway with so much slow traffic that we had no way of going much over 50 mph in a 65 mile speed limit.  I was beginning to wonder if we would ever get to a decent freeway, which we had about the last 1 1/2 hours.  Needless to say, it was great to be able to sleep in our comfortable beds once again.  I do have to say though that the beds we did sleep in at Rich's and in Reno were very good beds, so it could have been a lot worse.  The biggest problem in Tahoe, of course, was the altitude, about 6500.  Dick and I both had trouble breathing, especially Dick.  We couldn't move around too quickly or we would get out of breath, so we had to move in slow motion.  At least we didn't have to get oxygen though!

We met our niece, Nancy Lee, in Tahoe where we spent her birthday.  Unfortunately, we didn't get many pictures at all and the ones we did get weren't very good but will at least post what we have:

 

This table is very long. Stacy's three darling children (my new grandchildren) are pictured 

with Nancy Lee, Dick and me. Trent is on Nancy's right, Troy and Lilly are to my right.

 

I'm not quite sure that I am the only one that had their picture taken with Nancy's birthday cake. It was truly delicious and we ate the whole thing, except for two pieces between the ten of us. I think we all had at least two pieces.

Stacy and Rich behind their super wide bar preparing salad.

 

Rich's boys, Sean on left and Blaine. They are such great kids and are so good with Stacy's three.  These two families have blended perfectly.

Trent, Lilly and Troy with Winnie in the foreground

Rich has a huge backyard with many many trees. There were a lot to begin with and Rich bought 40 more. I wish I had a picture that showed the whole yard, along with a terrific deck where I love to sit in the sun.

View of another corner of the yard

The next three days we spent in Reno where we attended the Four Freshmen Convention.  It was truly a great success and everyone that attended were so glad they did.  We plan to go to next year's convention which will be held in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  Each day was pretty well packed with different events, which we attended.  We had two different sesssions that were called "The Wannabe's" where we sang Four Freshmen songs from musical scores that had all four parts.  At times we sounded pretty darned good, but the idea was just to have fun, which we all did.  We also had a session where people related stories about interesting things that happened to them when they were with any of the many groups that toured over the years.  It was really fun to hear about those experiences.  We had a fairly interesting experience with the current group when we ran into them at the elevator.  We had quite a nice talk with the four of them and Nancy particularly enjoyed talking with Vincent (the bass player) about the years she spent when she worked at Capitol Records in Hollywood when the original group was recording there.  Vincent was really interested in hearing about that time.  I got into a pretty interesting conversation myself with Brian (the lead singer) about Jim Pike who lives in our ward and who we have become pretty close friends with.  Jim was the one who started the Lettermen.  He happened to be at a Freshmen concert and he went up to Brian  afterward and started to introduce himself to Brian and Brian must have had a lot on his mind, because he pretty much ignored Jim.  When I told him about this, he could hardly believe it and he was really sorry that happened. 

I just have to mention how wonderful the hotel was.  The whole affair  was at Harrah's in Reno and they were all so helpful and happy to have us there.  The two dinners they served to us on Friday and Saturday nights were absolutely incredible.  They did such a wonderful job and the food was presented in such an appealing way each night.  We had chicken the first night and it had the most delicious sauce on it.  We had key lime pie for dessert, which is one of my favorites.  Saturday night they served prime rib and it was all beautiful too.  I have a picture of the dessert they served.  It was really terrific, but I can't remember what they called it.  

The Freshmen were amazing both nights and they sang so many neat songs.  The second night was devoted to performing a lot of the love songs from their new album.  We enjoyed it all so much that we were hating the fact that it was over.  But all good things must end and the next morning we were off to Rich's again.  Nancy came back with us as she wanted to spend a little more time with the family, even though she had to get up pretty early to go back to Reno to catch her flight home.  The shuttle didn't work with her schedule so Stacy arranged for her to have a driver who drove her to the airport in Reno.  It is about an hour and twenty minutes from Tahoe.  Everything went smoothly for her and she was quite excited when her seat mates turned out to be a couple of board members whom she had been talking with.  They had to change planes in Dallas to go back to their home in Fort Wayne where the convention will be held next year.  In fact they are in charge of it, so Nancy really did get the inside scoop on what woud be going on there. 

We had an enjoyable day with the family on Sunday as Rich and Stacy were both home so we spent a very relaxing day with them before we both had to leave Monday morning.  Here are a few pictures we got at the concert Saturday night.

 Here they are, "The Four Freshmen."

Here we are with our name tags.

  

These are four lovely Filipino women who were at our table. We all got along so well together and Dick was the only man so of course we called ourselves his "Harem." We had the same table and seats both nights, so we really did get to know these four.

This is the lovely dessert I mentioned. The "25 years" was written in chocolate on our plates. It was actually the 25th anniversary of the Freshmen Society, which is their amazing fan club. We have only been members for four or five years. The membership is between 2500 and 3000, so it is quite a large Society.

Our last day in Tahoe was a very relaxing one and Stacy and Rich fixed an amazing dinner  for us.  Rich did cornish game hens on the barbecue.  He cooks them really slow for for almost two hours.  He also did snap peas and fresh mushrooms wrapped in foil on the barbecue.  It was so delicious.  The hens were so tender and juicy.  The veggies were outstanding.  I don't know what seasoning he put on them but it was perfect!!  Stacy made a huge ceasar salad and we had three desserts!!!  Everyone had to have a taste of all three, chocolate pie, lemon pie and strawberries with lots and lots of really thick whipped cream.  We were all so full we could hardly move.  We took enough of everything home in our freezer so that when we got home we had another great meal and all we had to do was warm it up.  Unfortunately Dick gained six pounds during that week and I gained six and a half!!!  Darn............at this rate, our doctor is going to win the bet, but we are right back on it so hopefully we will lose it quickly plus lots more.  We'll see.

Here are a couple more pictures we got of the kids in their Halloween costumes.  They were happy to model them for us.

 Trent and Troy

Lilly and Winnie. We didn't get Winnie in her costume, but she did have one which she modeled for us later but unfortunately we didn't get a picture of her. She had a rufferie uniform. I was told because she was a dog it was a rufferie uniform instead of a referee one.

 

Oh, by the way, I am now going to do my blog on Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays.  I still have to get Dick's help and he is too busy to help me on Tuesdays.

A Great New Recipe

      I've told you before what a great cook Dick is.  I am very fortunate in that respect.  Usually the meals he cooks are very simple but flavorful.  He NEVER uses a recipe.  He just starts throwing things together and they always seem to turn out very tasty.

      Well, this last week he really pulled a surprise on me.  He decided he was going to make Chili Verde.  It is one of my favorite meals, and one of my specialties.  I love making it and usually make a huge batch.  I use about five pounds of pork, cut it up in small bite size pieces, brown it and put all the rest of the ingredients into a very large pan and finish cooking it on the top of the stove.  He decided he wanted to make it easier and had a package of pork chops that he decided to use, instead of the shoulder I usually use.  The pork chops he used were shoulder chops though, so there wasn't much difference there.  He threw all those cut up pork chops in the crock pot, added all the rest of the ingredients and put it on to cook.  He actually used my recipe, but he cut it in half as he only had about 2 1/2 pounds by the time he got it all cut up and off the bones.  It sure didn't take him very long.  He cooked it all about 6 hours on high.  It turned out to be delicious.  In fact, I thought it was every bit as good as mine, and mine took a lot more work.  So now, I have a new way to cook Chili Verde.  He actually made it twice this week.  We had a couple of our friends over last night, and we enjoyed it and the company so much that we decided to do it again tonight, only we had a different couple of friends over.  I have decided to share HIS recipe with you tonight.  Yes, he went to the church tonight so I will have to wait until he comes back to post the picture he took of it last night.  I might have tried again, but it is still on his i-phone so will have to wait until he gets home so that he can first put it on the computer before he can transfer it.  I hope it all works out. 

 

      Here it is and I truly hope that you will give it a try.  I'll give you the 2 1/2 pound recipe and you can double it if you like. 

      Chili Verde:

2 1/2 pounds pork, cut up
1 can stewed tomatoes ( 14 1/2 oz)
1 can diced tomatoes (14 1/2 oz)
7 green chilis (canned)
3 stalks celery, diced fine
4 cloves garlic finely chopped
1/2 can water (use tomato can in measuring
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. pepper
3/4 t. cumin

Put pork pieces in bottom of crock pot and add the rest of the ingredients.  Turn to high and cook for 6 hours.   Enjoy! 

Or, if you want to cook it on top of the stove, brown the meat before, I use a 12 inch frying pan with lid, and after pork is browned, put in the rest of the ingredients, cover and cook on top of stove on medium for 2 1/2 to 3 hours or until pork is very tender.

By the way.............I will be posting on Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays from now on.  Dick prefers not having to do this after he gets home from church and I don't think I will get quite as stressed as I do on Wednesdays.  I don't think I will be able to post at all next week though because we will be VERY busy on this 7 or 8 day trip.  I'll try though.

     

     



     

    

    

Trip Highlights

On my way to find a place for me to sit down. I'll admit, I'm in a bit of a hurry.

At last! I'm pretty sure mom won't mind.
Kristin, Andelin and Sullivan, not long after Andelin was born.

It may be that her hair is a bit red

Proud Great Granadma with Andelin

Kristin and Craig

A better picture of Kristin and Craig

As usual, I have spent the last hour or so trying to download some pictures so that this post will be a bit more interesting. I guess I will have to just do the written part and hope that Dick won't be too late getting home from his meeting with the Bishopric tonight. I really would love to be able to show you some pictures of my newest great granddaughter, Andelin Grace Mills. A few of you have expressed interest in knowing how the induced birth of her mom, my adorable granddaughter, Kristin, went. Actually she did give birth that very night and the baby was totally perfect. She had a lot of black hair, but the latest picture of her shows that her hair is turning a bit auburn. It looks to have quite a bit of red in it. That wouldn't be too surprising because her grandfather, Perry, has red hair. I guess time will tell.

Kristin herself has had a rough time since. She lost so much blood that she came within a hair of having to have blood transfusions, but managed to avoid that. Her sisters-in-law have provided so much support though. One of them took Sullivan (her two and half year old, enough said ) on Wednesdays and Thursdays and the other one took him on Fridays. That was disappointing to me, because I didn't get to see nearly enough of him to suit me. I think you will all remember how besotted I have been with him since he was born. She had a Nanny who came in to help on Mondays and Tuesdays. That pretty much took up the week. Craig was there to help on weekends. I am pretty sure she is doing much better by now. I need to call her myself to see if I am correct in my assumption. I don't think I've mentioned before that my first name is Grace. They named the baby Andelin (a family name on Perry's side of the family and Grace, after me, as her middle name. Pretty cool, huh?

I seem to have been pretty busy myself this past week:

I knew I needed to see my doctor, so made an appointment for a complete physical for Thursday. Before that, I pretty much didn't do a thing but rest and sleep. We were in the doctor's office for an hour and ten minutes!! He never rushes me whenever I go. He had some great suggestions and I am trying very hard to do what he said. It is really quite funny what happened. He told me that my legs would feel much better if I could lose some weight. Whenever he mentions that (which I know that of course it would help me) I remind him that he could also lose a few pounds and that invariably leads to my asking him if he remembers a bet we had some years ago to see which of us could lose ten pounds the quickest. (I don't remember who won, but the jist of the conversation is that we finally ended up having a three way bet, $1.00 each, to see who could lose 40 pounds by January 13. We each had to put up the money, and he put it in my folder. At the end, the one who has lost the most, wins the whole pot! Dick has by far the most to lose, so he probably will win.

So far, both of us have done very very well. Dick has lost 7 1/2 pounds in five days. I have lost 3 l/2 pounds. We write every single thing we eat for the whole three meals (nothing in between) and total up the calories for the day. Dick can't go over 1200 and I can't go over 800. Well see how it goes. I am feeling much better doing that plus exercising. He is really stressing that! I have to walk on the treadmill for five minutes every morning and on the stationary bike for another five minutes. I am supposed to increase that by 10% every week. Plus we do our 40 minute pool exercises that are supposed to exercise every muscle in our bodies. So far we have done it and between doing those two things, I really have improved. I seem to feel a little bit stronger every day. On Jan. 13 I will post before and after pictures. Hopefully I will have learned to transfer pictures to by blog on my own by then. (Don't count on it though).

I didn't post ALL the highlights of our 10 day Salt Lake trip. We did do more than just enjoy our three day family reunion. I didn't tell about our trip to the cemetary at the end of our reunion. My mom and dad and others in our family were buried in Lund, Idaho, which is a little farming community on the other side of the divide from Lava Hot Springs. We did enjoy the peaceful feeling we all had there. It was so beautiful. The caretaker does such a wonderful job of keeping it up. I may post a picture of me and my grand niece, Beth-Anee. I was pretty worn out just walking to the gravesites and the guy who was supposed to have brought a chair for me to sit on forgot to load it in the car. I had to sit, so had to make do by sitting on Mom's gravestone!! Beth-Anee is standing behind me. She lives in South Carolina and I was so glad that she could be there to represent her family. After we had been there for awhile, just visiting and taking pictures, we left to go back over the mountain where we all had lunch and then disbursed as the reunion was declared to be over. We are going to meet again in two years instead of the usual three because everyone who went enjoyed it so much, even my daughter, Jayne, who insisted on driving her own car there because she expected to be bored, but she had so much fun that we were about the last ones to leave. I am the youngest in my family by far, so all of her first cousins were way older than she and actually she hadn't met a lot of the older ones. She knew the three youngest as they spent most of a lot of their summers staying with us as they were growing up.

This post is a bit jumbled up, but at least I was able to write one. When I started, I can tell you that I sure wasn't in the mood. Thank heaven, Dick came home early tonight. Sometimes he doesn't get home until after 10.00p.m. I am going to turn this over to him and see if he can find a few pictures to post for me. Love to you all.....................

I'm going to post now, so if you find all of the paragraphs and the spacing messed up, I can tell you it was fine at this point and I AM NOT going to call Sue to have her fix it for me.

Home Again

Dick, Jayne, and me at the reunion.

Our six weeks trip didn't last very long, I'm afraid. We were in Salt Lake for ten days and attended my family reunion. I am so glad we were able to be there for that, because it wasn't long after that Dick and I realized that I would not be able to do the whole trip. I am just not strong enough for a road trip lasting that long. Hopefully next year we can do the middle part by flying instead of trying to drive. I could hardly wait to get back to my chair. I couldn't find a comfortable place to sit at Jayne's. I had a wonderful chair there, but her daughter, our 21-year-old autistic granddaughter, Kirsten, broke it. Bless her heart, Jayne did try very hard to find something that would do, by bringing up a chaise and another chair from the basement, where she spends most of her time. She has a large living area down there, incuding living room, bedroom, bath and office. I don't blame her for living down there as it is much cooler and far more spacious than upstairs where the bedrooms are small, along with the bathroom. I really couldn't spend much time down there because of having to go up and down stairs. Dick was up and down quite a lot because before we left his legs were aching pretty badly.

I am so sorry that Dick didn't get to attend his high school reunion because so many of the things were prepaid and not refundable, hotels, meals etc. I wanted him to fly back and attend anyway, but after figuring it out, he decided not to go, because the people he really wanted to see were not going to be attending or had died. I hope he won't be sorry in the future.

We got home Friday night (drove straight through). I haven't done very much since then and am hopeful that I will start to feel better soon. I have made an appointment to see the doctor Thursday. I don't expect he can do anything for me as my biggest problem is pain, hot pain in the back of my calves in both legs, and hot pain in my shoulders and upper arms. I can't imagine why it is so bad. Of course I can't take pain pills so I don't know what the heck he can do. I have had so many cortisone shots that I don't suppose that would help either. I actually think that I will just have to rest a lot for quite a period. I hope it feels better in three weeks though, because we still want to try to make the end of our trip as we are scheduled to attend the Four Freshmen convention in Reno in October, and I surely do not want to miss that! Also, our son lives in Lake Tahoe, so we were planning to stay three or four days with him. I am going to think positive thoughts. My niece Nancy, from Dallas, is meeting us there and she says if we don't go, she won't either! Another good reason to go! I didn't get to see enough of her at the reunion, so wish me well, everyone, because both Dick and I really want to go. We do love the Four Freshmen!!

I am so darned disappointed that we didn't get to do the middle of our trip as I truly wanted to see our friends in Canada, to say nothing about longing to be with Kathy (Yaya) and Donna, my wonderful blogging friends. We had planned to stay with Kathy for three days!! Some of you are blogging friends to them too, so you know that Donna is finished with her chemo and is now taking daily radiation treatments. That gal has been through a lot, and she has even managed to work part of the time throughout all of this. I just hope we can make that trip one day and if we do, you can be sure we will fly.

Well, my dear friends, I am about finished, I think..........'til next Tuesday then...........................

Darlene

Trip Notes and Brownies

We seem to be very busy trying to get ready to leave on our trip a week from today. I am wanting to be completely ready to go two days before the day we leave. Today I am trying to get my clothes ready. We both want to travel with just enough to get by. We will have to do laundry about once a week while we are gone, but I'm sure we can do that wherever we are. There are so many things to do at the last minute. We are very fortunate that our neighbor across the street is going to take care of our house while we are gone. She does this for a living, so she will be very careful and caring. We will have her take in our mail, check everything in the house and outside. We are going to pay her for her services, even though she would have done it for free. It will be nice not to worry about the house while we are gone. Six weeks is a long time!!

Our weekend was pretty busy. I made brownies to take to one of our friends that we visit each month (visiting teaching). I love to bake, but am getting so slow at it because I have to sit down so often. My time standing keeps getting less and less, and now it is about five minutes. I can walk a bit longer than that because it is much easier for me to walk than to stand. My brownies are pretty darned good if I do say so myself, and I will post the recipe at the end of this blog, if I remember. They are easy but delicious. By the way, I NEVER use mixes but I do like to bake things that are easy to put together.

After our V.T. I got my hair cut again. It grows so slowly, and I guess I am fortunate for that, but the last time I got it cut, my regular gal was on vacation, so had to use another one and unfortunately, she cut it so short and it was all choppy. It looked awful because it stuck out in many places. Honestly, I thought it would never grow out long enough to cut it right before we were to leave. As it was, it was almost 12 weeks, and it was still pretty short. Alma, my regular girl, mostly trimmed it and tried to correct it, but now it looks pretty normal again, thank heavens.

Sunday we didn't do anything but go to church, come home and rest. Our new schedule starts in September (our Stake President's idea, since he thinks we ought to make the change when school starts, instead of at the beginning of the year) and we will be going to church from 1:00 in the afternoon until 4:00! I really hate this schedule, but we have three wards meeeting in our chapel, so have to take our turn.

Yesterday was a pretty crazy day! We went shopping in the morning because we needed to get Dick some new clothes for going to church. His are all so tight because neither of us has been able to lose the weight we gained over the holidays. Goodness knows we have tried and we will lose a few, but then something happens to get us off track........celebration dinners out, having company, dinner invitations, or just too much candy on "chocolate Sundays". At any rate, we bought him a new suit and also a sport jacket, so at least he will look decent. I also bought two pairs of sandals. I can't wear a closed toe because my right big toe hurts when I try. I lost the nail a few weeks ago, and it takes about a year for the nail to grow back. It is okay in the summer, but I am not sure how I will make out when the weather gets cold on our trip. I'll just have to freeze, I guess. About two o'clock in the afternoon I got a call from my daughter, Nikki, telling me that Kristin (my darling little Sullivan's mom) had preeclampsia and the doctor's were going to induce her, a little over three weeks early. She had terrible stomach cramps and was throwing up way too much. We were both upset, but I was about to go crazy with worry. We had company coming for dinner that night, and I was so grateful our friends, Jim and Verna were coming because it helped so much to keep my brain occupied. They had missed the celebration of President Monson's birthday concert on BYU TV and we had taped it, so we watched it again and that helped too as we did enjoy it the second time. It was such an excellent concert. Later that night, Nikki called to say they had decided to wait and see how Kristin was today. Nikki had already made plans to catch the earliest flight out, plus she is a school teacher and I suppose they had a substitute in place, but I suppose she managed to undo all that as she didn't want to leave until they actually did induce her. She called me just a little while ago from her school and told me they were going to induce her within the hour so I guess she is in labor right now. I do feel so sorry for her as she doesn't handle pain too well, and had to have an epidural for Sullivan. I had to be induced when I had my first with Sue. I had all my babies naturally because I CAN stand a lot of pain, but I will have to say, that birth with Sue was so super painful. I thought it would last forever. The last three were a piece of cake in comparison. We are both praying mightily that all will go well for her and the baby.

I think I am about to the end, and guess what? I remembered to post the recipe so here it is:

Grandma Robbins' Chocolate Brownies: (This can easily be mixed by hand)

1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cocoa
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cups flour
6 tablespoons margarine or butter (1 cube +2 tablespoons)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Mix sugar and cocoa in small bowl. Add eggs and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Stir in flour. Add margarine or butter and mix well. turn into buttered 8X8 pan and bake @ 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes (check with toothpick)
You can sprinkle with powdered sugar but I prefer to ice it with the following:

Great chocolate icing:

1/2 cube plus 1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons cocoa
1/4 cup milk
Cook these three ingredients over low heat until it comes to a boil, stirring so that it doesn't stick. Pour this mixture over 2 cups powdered sugar that has been sifted into a bowl. Add 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and 1/2 chopped walnuts. If too thick, thin with milk or hot water, just a teaspoon at a time until right consistancy for spreading. If too thin, add a spoonful of powdered sugar until perfect for spreading. Pour over cake and spread evenly. Yum!

Celebrations

Here we are at the beautiful shower for us hosted by our Stake Patriarch in Chatsworth, CA.

And here we are in the Relief Society Room right after we were married by my Bishop.

Where did I get all that hair? It looks so dark too; I never had dark hair. My daughter Nancy and her husband Charles were to give us wedding pictures for our present. Charles owns expensive cameras and was going to really make a lot of pics for us. When he went to develop them, he found they were all ruined. Light somehow got into the camera and none of them were any good. I was absolutely sick because we had wanted to hire a professional photographer, but he talked us into letting him do it. It was a very small wedding, only family and a few good friends. I had to ask those that were there for copies of any snapshots they had taken, and I did receive a few, but none of them were very good, I'm sad to say. No formal shots at all. I cried a few bitter tears over the situation, but have tried to get over it. I wonder if I ever will.

It seems like our weekends are full with interesting events lately. This last weekend was no exception. Last Saturday we celebrated our 40th anniversary by going out to dinner with our long time friends, Dick and Lee Child. Dick Child was our Bishop when Dick finally decided to join our church and the two of them were our close friends even before Dick joined the church. We went to the Red Lobster. Our whole town has been waiting for quite a few weeks for the franchise to come to Palm Desert, and finally it opened a few weeks ago. For a long time there were lines outside waiting to get in. We still had to wait quite a while even now, though we went early. We had a very nice dinner, and it was a four-course meal which included dessert. We all ordered key lime pie, except for Dick C. All he ever wants for dessert is something chocolate, so he ordered a brownie with ice cream. I had baked a cake earlier that day so that we could stop at home and have dessert after dinner. We usually do that when we go out. I love to bake so it usually worked out that way. We did have a whole cake left over, but I had plans for it.

The next day was our anniversary, August 12. Dick did his usual church thing, leaving the house at 8:00 a.m. It was my Sunday to go to R.S. as I like to go at least once a month. I just can't sit through the whole three hours. Dick came home after Sacrament meeting and picked me up for R. S., and after that was over I had an appointment with the Bishop to get my Temple Recommend renewed. After that we came home, cut the cake in half, and took it with us to visit Irene in her assisted living place. Irene Stewart is a lovely woman who played the organ in church for us for many years. She is also one of the people Dick and I visit and home teach each month. She has been quite ill and had to stop living in her home as her daughter, who lived with her, got married and she couldn't live alone. She has had a heck of a time going to the hospital for a couple of lengthy stays and also a couple of rehab places before finally getting released to live in this lovely home with four other ladies and three very lovely caretakers. She really loves it there. It will be her 88th birthday on Thursday, so we took the cake so that everyone there could have it for dinner and an early birthday celebration. We didn't stay too long, but went home to call all of our children and most of our grandchildren to thank them for a wonderful video they had made for us for our anniversary. They all made special videos, some of them sang songs, one wrote us a lovely poem which she recited, and many just expressed their love for us in touching ways. I must admit that I cried through the whole thing, but I did have a couple of laughs too. All in all, it was just a wonderful tribute. They had all sent their videos to our grandson, Jordan, who just graduated this year from NYU and who still lives in New York. He majored in film and I must say, he did a great job putting all the little videos into one large one. What a great time we had watching and listening to that precious video. Even the great grandchildren were a part of it.

Yesterday we went shopping. There were a few things I wanted to get at Walmart and poor Dick had to walk, while I got to ride in one of their electric carts. I felt so sorry for him because we had a heck of a time trying to find practically everything we finally did buy. He never did find the right size battery for our flashlight. It is one of those really big ones, and I thought Walmart had just about anything a person would want. He walked all over that huge store. We were there for two hours and only bought about five things. He was one tired guy, and we still had one stop to make at Costco. I wanted to get a couple of their big Danish pastries. They are almost as good as Dick's, and I love to have a half one for breakfast every day, (one of my bad habits). It seemed so strange to just buy that one thing because practically every time we go shopping there, we come home with a huge cart full of stuff. We are trying not to buy anthing we can't actually eat before we leave. Can you imagine? We are leaving on our six weeks trip in just two weeks from today. We will be leaving early Tuesday morning and I doubt that you will see a post from me that night. I'm sure we will be pretty tired as we are driving straight through to Salt Lake, although we will stop in Saratoga Springs to stay with our 98 year old friend, Connie Server, for a couple of nights. That is just about an hour on this side of Salt Lake, but we have so many friends that live in that area that we want to see. I am going to have to make a list of everyone we want to see in the Salt Lake area or I'm afraid I will forget someone. My memory is getting worse every day, I'm afraid.

It's not quite 9:30 p.m., and I am getting sleepy. I never go to bed before midnight but for some reason I am really tired tonight. I certainly haven't done much today. It was truly a rest day for me but Dick did laundry all morning it seems. I am so fortunate that he does that for me. He has done it for years, even when I was feeling fit as a fiddle!! I can't even remember when he took over that job but all I can say is that I am really grateful as I hate it!

So, I'm off to my chair for a little bit of R&R. Dick is home watching television. How fun for me!

'Til next time.....................love to all.....................

A Great Weekend

Last week was an enjoyable one, I must say. The beginning started out slowly, but the weekend was VERY busy. On Friday, our friends, Bonnie Nelson and Rosemary Oblock brought lunch over and stayed to eat it with us. Was it ever good! They brought four HUGE salads from Costco and Bonnie made a wonderful lemon pie. It was all soooo good but of course I ate too much. Believe it or not, we ate the last of the salad tonight! I can tell you that we didn't eat much dinner Friday night.

Saturday night we went to Tony Roma's with our friends, Dick and Lee Child to celebrate my Dick's birthday. Actually, Dick's birthday in July 29, but Saturday night was the first time we could get together. It is a tradition from way back to celebrate the guys' birthdays together. We always go to Tony Roma's for baby back ribs. They are just so good. They stopped at our house after for dessert and we finished off the last of the lemon pie.

Sunday was a very special day too. We spent the afternoon at the Pikes house with Jim and Sue. I mentioned sometime ago that we had a celebrity that moved into our ward. His name is Jim Pike and he was the guy that started the well known singing group "The Lettermen" way back when.

I always loved the Lettermen. I actually loved the fifties when so many men's groups became popular. I had personal experience with the Four Preps as the baritone in that group, Glen Larson was in our ward when my first husband and I lived in Westwood Ward. He and Bruce Belland, another of the Preps used to come over to our house when we lived on LaCienega Blvd to play badminton in our back yard badminton court.

I didn't know until Sunday that Jim once sang and performed with the Four Preps too. When Jim's voice went away after singing with the Lettermen for so long during their really successful years, he had to quit singing for ten years. It then returned and he spent a few years with the Four Preps. This was after Glen had left the group.

It's amazing how many people we both know. He moved into Wilshire Ward a few years after we left and knew so many of the same people there. One of the ones we both knew was Janie Tompson, who wrote and directed many musicals that were presented in Wilshire Ward. This was before she joined the faculty at Brigham Young University. I was in some of those musicals, and so was Jim.

It was such fun to reminisce about those great old days. Jim is now very active in a new group he formed. They call it "Reunion". The other guys in the group are his brother, Gary Pike and Ric de Azevido. They are really good too!! I have three of their cds. They gave me another one with just Jim doing solos that he did when he was with The Lettermen. Boy, is it ever good!! He sounds a lot like Sinatra, and his sweet wife Sue kids him about that.

I really like Sue too. She is a counselor in our Relief Society. She used to be a R,S.teacher and she was a great teacher too!! Altogether, they are a wonderful addition to our ward. Jim used to be a counselor in our High Priest Group but they just recently reorganized it as our former Leader moved away. We still don't have a replacement as the man they called to that position bought a house in another ward. I swear our ward is getting smaller and smaller.

We didn't even get home until after 5:00. Time really goes by fast when you are having fun. They left the next morning for Big Bear and won't be back for a couple of weeks, and then we will be on our way, so we won't see them until we get back, which will be in October, but as soon as we do, we are going to get together with them again. We have so much in common that I think we will become good social friends. Dick and Jim are the same age and I am nine years older than Dick and Sue is nine years younger than Jim.

Dick is at his bishopric meeting at the church and I would really like to post a few pictures of Jim with his groups but of course, I probably will get it all messed up. I'm just hoping I can get them onto this blog at all. We'll see.

An album The Lettermen made after they had been around for a little while.

This is one The Lettermen made when they were still a pretty new group

This is a picture I had Dick take off the very first album The Lettermen made with Capitol Records. Jim is the handsome one on the left.

This is a picture of the three of them, Jim, Gary and Ric on their Reunion CD. Jim is the one with the white hair.....he looks like this now.