The view from up here...

...from the top of the stairs, with Grandpa Bailey and Alice. ...from piggyback rides in Grandma Bailey's living room. (Look, we caught Connor on camera!)

...or from another piggyback ride at Uncle Kim's.Do I know these last two girls???

New blogs

Let me introduce two new blogs: Aunt Terry is now up and running with "Terry's World" at tarlady.blogspot.com (Theresa Ann Ryan).

The second blog is done by some women in our ward (myself included), to answer some of the political questions brought up by the current campaign as related to Mormonism. One of the women is a journalism major (Master's degree), and the other is an attorney. I'm the voice of the common person, I guess. I really don't know how I got included, other than having an interest in the topic. www.truthandreason.typepad.com

Check them out!

And the Christmas memories keep rolling...

Brenna and her great-grandpa looking through a seed catalog...Or Brenna enjoying Christmas oranges...
Great-grandpa holding Alastair (who is obviously teething--lots of drool at current time!)
Or catching Catherine playing with Alastair. Funny. Not too many pictures of Connor. That could be because he runs whenever a camera appears.

Or he sticks up his hand to cover his face.

And interestingly, not too many pictures of Great-grandma Bailey. Despite our efforts to order pizza or Chinese food, to make things easier, she was ALWAYS in the kitchen, just whipping up something "easy" like peach cheesecake, or apple pie, or homemade chicken noodle soup.

We've discovered that if you want to spend time with Grandma, help out in the kitchen. She appreciates the help and you get to hear some great stories from her life.

Such as:

The time on her 1st mission when the mission president had exhorted the missionaries to open their mouths in any situation--in the grocery line, on the street, etc. She was being transferred to a new area and had to ride the bus--a couple of hours. So she began talking with the man seated next to her. He wasn't really interested in her gospel message, but she "unloaded" (in her words) and gave him the whole story. When she got off, she thought he looked relieved! End of story? No.

At the next Zone Conference, another set of missionaries

asked her if she had been on the bus on such-and-such date.

Yes, she had.

Well, the woman sitting in FRONT of her had been listening. She looked up the missionaries

and was baptized!

I'm just glad I was helping peel potatoes!

Two weeks ago today...

Yes, we had plenty of snow while we were in Idaho. The normal picture here is of a lovely plum tree with green grass under it. Not so in December!I was just reflecting. Two weeks ago, right about this time of afternoon, we were trying to drive in the lane to the Bailey home. Usually, that quarter mile lane is traversed in a matter of a minute or less. Not so this time! One hour. Yes, one hour! The wind had been blowing, and all that beautiful, powdery, 12 inches of snow started moving around... drifting... filling in the lane. Justin and Darcy barely made it in with their 4-wheel drive an hour earlier. Catherine and Aaron, with 3 unhappy children, had taken 20 minutes, a few hours earlier. Here's Justin, running back to the house for another shovel. And maybe a warmer hat. It was bitterly cold with the wind!
It was a matter of shovel out under the wheels, rock the car backward and forward (with lots of yells, "don't spin the wheels!") and then move forward 10 feet before repeating the actions.

One of the major problems is that the Honda minivan has a low clearance--we were constantly high-centering on the snow drifts, and the chassis has NO place to hook on a towing cable. That would have made it all too easy--Grandpa could have just got the tractor and hauled us through all those drifts. But the owner's manual states: towing is definitely NOT recommended.

Once we made it to the house, Grandpa took the tractor out with a blade, and then later with a snow blower to clear things out. He was up at 4:30 Sunday morning to get it ready for us to go to church at 9 a.m. We were the first out. Stuck again. After 30 minutes of work, we were able to get back to the house, then go in shifts in the 4-wheel drive vehicles. We were only 20 minutes late for church, and we were providing the special musical number (Kevin-piano, Deborah, Elly and Alice on string instruments--it was beautiful!)

We'll always remember this Christmas vacation!

Images of Christmas

Whether putting together a puzzle with Grandma Beth,

gathering with the extended family at Grandma and Grandpa Bailey's,

wearing new Christmas clothing, or

waiting with anticipation for the unwrapping of gifts, Christmas brings such great memories. And Justin, sorry about making it look like you were still sleepy. I'm SURE that wasn't the case, was it?

Christmas Giving--2007

With the theme of "Variety is the Spice of Life," the sibling gift recipients of 2007 were as follows:

Catherine gave to Justin

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Aaron gave to Elizabeth

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Justin gave to Ryan

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Darcie gave to Jamie

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Ryan gave to Darcie

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Jamie gave to Aaron

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Deborah gave to Alice

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Elizabeth gave to Catherine

and

Alice gave to Deborah

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We saw varieties of hot chocolate; a gorilla variety of tri-pod (that Elizabeth hasn't stopped playing with yet); a variety of air fresheners for Deborah's car; a variety of Pride & Prejudice Soundtrack (there are so many different ones out there?); and a variety of photos and frames. I'd like to hear what the other gifts were. Aaron, what did you get? Ryan and Jamie, what spicy variety of things did you receive?

***

And, who wants to come up with next year's theme???

Did Someone Mention Snow?

Snow, snow, snow... winter has technically just begun, but snow has been around for quite a while now. Here in Cedar Falls......and on Interstate 80 between Laramie and Rawlins in Wyoming... (and this was before it got scary and Kevin took over driving)...
...at Hoback Junction, near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. This part of the journey was SO beautiful!
And the bighorn sheep didn't seem to be bothered by all the snow, though they were feeding near the roadway. It was thrilling to see them!
We were happy to make it to Idaho, safe and sound. The roads were snow-covered the last fourth of the way (about 300 miles). But the Christmas holidays were totally worth it all!

Friday, January 04, 2008

Well, it's over, and I’m looking forward to peace and quiet!

You think I’m talking about the holiday season? No. I’m talking about the Iowa Caucuses. (I’d say Hawkeye Cauckeye, but I’m not sure how to spell that.) When we returned home from vacation, the answering machine was full with political calls. The mail was full of political mailings. The airwaves had back-to-back-to-back political ads. Here in Iowa, we’ve been deluged with politics--the first ads began last January, about 30 days after the last general election. The rest of you should be grateful you don’t have to go through that!

But we do appreciate being able to see the candidates up close. Last night, our county held all our caucuses at one location (which was not nearly big enough). For an hour before the caucus starting time, candidates could speak, and they did. First came Mike Huckabee (huckster is a better term), passing himself off as a conservative, with multiple scriptural references to make sure people remember he is an evangelical Christian. Then came Ron Paul, with his fiery defense of the Constitution, followed by Ann Romney, Mitt’s wife. These were IN PERSON, and Kevin and I were in the third row. Where else could you have national presidential candidates parade by like they were local mayoral candidates??? We also heard from Dr. Hugh Cort, a presidential candidate who either is a nut-case or has a really scary scenario about suitcase-nuclear bombs being smuggled in by illegals. The other candidates had a surrogate to speak for them, except Rudy Guiliani who didn’t do anything.

We were disappointed in the preference tally, and the setback to Mitt Romney. Although not a perfect candidate, we thought he would do a good job as president. After seeing some of the campaigning Huckabee has done, if he became the Republican candidate I’d ALMOST rather vote democratic. The ugly head of religious bigotry has come forth again (I thought that was relegated to the 19th century), and Huckabee is at the front. Even more troubling is that there has been no outcry from the other candidates or the general populace. It will be interesting to see if the Huckster can delude the voters of other states.

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