Feel the Beat

Another good, family-friendly show I watched with my granddaughter.  It is on Netflix.  We liked some of the scenes so much we rewound and watched them again.

Pride and Prejudice 2005

With my fourteen year old granddaughter here, we looked for age-appropriate movies on Netflix.  She just finished reading this book and had never seen the movie.  It was so fun to rewatch it and watch it with her.  It is on Netflix.

Madam Secretery

We love this show and I have already posted about it.  But then Netflix put up the last season of it.  We loved it.  It is on Netflix.

Other movies and shows to check out.

Brielle Comes to Visit

 Lucky us!  Our oldest grandchild, the precious little girl that made us grandparents fourteen years ago, came to visit for two weeks.  Her name is Brielle.  She, since moving to Colorado, goes by Bria (her dad, when presenting to the family the opportunity to move to Colorado suggested many great things about moving, including that they could even change their name, among many other things.  Brielle picked up on that and said she was now Bria.  Her dad, grandpa, and I are hold- outs on keeping her Brielle name and she says that's fine.  Actually, I often call her Brielly or Brielly Lu)  Ken drove to Grand Junction to meet she and her mom there on Saturday, July 25th.  They had lunch together, then Ken and Brielle came here.  It was a wonderful two weeks.  She chose to stay in the other bedroom that is upstairs by us (she had her pick.)  Bria is the oldest of six children.  I think she really enjoyed the peace and quiet. She swore up and down that we weren't boring!

On Sunday, the Prince family stopped on their way to their reunion in northern Utah to go to the bathroom and get their wiggles out.  Kenny challenged Grandpa to a race around the house.  It was hot out, but Grandpa raced him several times.  Grandpa Ken played a trick on him.  They would start out.  Ken would wait until Kenny went around the corner, then Ken would sneak back to the start/ finish line and be there when Kenny got there.  Grandpa would declare himself the winner.  Kenny could not figure out how he could have won.  They did that a couple of times, then Grandpa explained it to him.  Kenny thought it was hilarious and was so cute when they came in and he told the rest of us the story of how his grandpa tricked him.  It was a great trick to a five-year-old.

This is Grandpa helping little William race later

This is Kenny just sure he is winning the race!  He is a fast little runner, as is his brother, Jaron.

They were just here for a few minutes, but it was a fun stop.

For my birthday and Father's Day the kids had a puzzle made with family pictures.  We put that together on Sunday.  It was fun.

Cinnamon rolls

We cooked and baked together.  Brielle is a great help in the kitchen.

We played lots of games together, mostly SkipBo, but also Rook and UNO.  I sent her home with a SkipBo deck and now she and her siblings play a lot.

In the evenings, we watched an entire season of Relative Race together and several movies.  She said the best one we watched was the 2005 Pride and Prejudice.  She had just finished reading the book and loved seeing the movie.  At first, she didn't want to watch it here because she said it was her and her mom's tradition to watch a movie after she finished the book.  But over the week, she wore down and said she wanted to watch it.  She would just watch it again with her mom.

Brielle is writing a YA novel.  She has studied several websites on writing a novel.  She has hers outlined and, when she left, was about 40% done with what she estimates will be about 80,000 words.  She reads a lot and that has sparked her interest in writing her own book.

I told her she should dedicate her book to Grandpa and Grandma's naps.  She would write while we took naps.

She helped me prepare temple ready cards so she could take them with her.  When the temples reopen, she and her brother, Nathan will have a lot of baptisms and confirmations to do!

She and Grandpa had watermelon parties. ( I'm not a watermelon fan.) They stopped in Green River, Utah on their way here to buy the melons.  Green River claims to be the watermelon capital of America. And neither Brielle nor Grandpa argued that claim.

Brielle has just blossomed on the piano during COVID.  She practiced while she was here most every day.  She just got a new teacher at home and is very motivated.

We enjoyed our home church with her.  She gave a talk on the new childrens/ youth program and the first part of the new theme.

On the next Sunday evening, the Prince family came back on their way home from the Prince family reunion.  As you can see, they purchased kayaks while they were up there.  They had kayak trauma on the way here as one of the kayaks kept slipping, but they have that solved now.

Brielle, Ken and I prepared a pasta bar for them for Sunday dinner.  Brielle made alfredo sauce, we made roasted vegetables, marinara sauce, chicken, cantaloupe, sliced tomatoes, and three kinds of pasta, with ice cream treats for dessert.

William and Kenny weren't interested in eating and were downstairs playing.

Suddenly William was interested!  But he wanted to eat the cone first.  Brielle convinced him otherwise and got him a bowl.

I love this picture taken just before they left.  How I love all these people!

While Brielle was here, there were fires burning all around us.  It made for beautiful sunsets, but smoky air.  Ken got several pictures.

It was such a delightful two weeks.  Brielle flew home on Friday, August 7th.  Because she was an unaccompanied minor, Ken was able to go the gate and wait for the plane with her.  Her mom was able to go the gate in Denver to pick her up.  We love you, Brielly!  Thanks for coming!

Cancer Free

July was a landmark time for me and cancer.  My cancer doctor had mapped a plan (I think it must be the hospital/cancer center's plan) for me early on after my diagnosis.  July, 2020 marked the end of my 6-month diagnostic mammograms, declaring me cured.  I would still see him every six months for a check-up, but I guess the risk of cancer returning decreases after this date.  I am happy to report that I was found cancer-free on July 21st.  Yea!  I feel so blessed.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A delightful and precocious seven-year-old is our narrator. She is different. She tells you all through the book that she is different. Her best friend is her grandmother who takes her on frequent journeys to the Land of Almost Awake- a land of fantasy. But Grandmother has cancer and spends her last days writing letters to all who she may have offended. She leaves these letters in various places and charges her little granddaughter with delivering them after she is gone. Each letter also contains a charge to the recipient to watch out for her granddaughter.
The book is as different as the child, but somehow it is delightful. It has themes of death and dying, bullying, mystery, family relationships, divorce, society’s outcasts, PTSD, OCD, service, forgiveness (a lot on forgiveness,) etc. There’s a lot in there. But it all weaves together into a wonderful story. I think you would enjoy it. From 4 to 3 stars because of the language.


View all my reviews

Pele'

I have had this movie on our Netflix DVD queue for literally years.  We finally watched it.  It is the story of the greatest soccer player to ever live.  It is really good. We both really enjoyed it.

Avon, Colorado

On Saturday, July 11th, we checked out of the condo in Park City and drove to Avon, Colorado.  The road took us through some country that we had never seen.  It was a nice, but long drive with considerable trauma at the end.  But we'll get to that later.

We made a picnic lunch before we left and stopped in Roosevelt, Utah at a nice park to eat our lunch.  It was so beautiful and peaceful.  Perfect weather; perfect company!

We then drove into Vernal as we wanted to see the temple there.  The tabernacle there has been transformed  into a temple.  It is beautiful!

Flowers on the grounds of temples are always beautiful.

 We had a lowlight when we stopped at a rest area which was just a horrible, filthy outhouse.  I shudder and cringe when I think about it.  For the next hour in the car, I poured hand sanitizer again and again.  We were both surprised at how much of the terrain from Strawberry Reservoir to Rifle, Colorado looked like southern Utah- much more desert-like than anticipated. We enjoyed listening to a book, "Hearts of Resistance" as we traveled. 

We arrived in Avon around 6:30pm and had to go straight to Walmart to do our order pick-up, which included ice cream (important information for later.)  We got to our very nice resort and checked in.  We each filled our arms with groceries, etc, and headed up to our room on the fourth floor.  Imagine the not good surprise when we walked in and found our suite had not been cleaned.  Towels piled everywhere and unmade beds. Ahh.  We called the front desk and they asked us to come to down to sort it out.  So, with our arms filled with groceries and already exhausted from the trip, we went down.  They found us another suite for the night on the 2^nd floor, but said we had to move into our original 4^th floor suite the next day, after it was cleaned.  They apologized that, because of COVID restrictions, they couldn't help us.  Now, that’s bad enough if it’s just your suitcases, etc, but we had a car full of groceries.  Plus, I wanted to sanitize the whole thing before we moved in.  Remember the ice cream?  Well, we did too and got into the freezer only just in time.  I sanitized the whole place (I brought Clorox wipes and spray.)  We were SO tired when we got the final loads in and put away.  It was now nearly 9:00pm.  We drove through the drive- through at Wendy’s, brought the food home, ate, perfunctorily read scriptures, and fell into bed. You’ve heard the expression, “I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.”  Well, I think it happened that night.

We got up the next morning, ate breakfast, showered and got ready, and did our at -condo church.  Then they called and said the fourth floor room was ready.  So we loaded everything up.  And, again, I scrubbed the whole new place, and we got moved in.  I was so grateful to Ken as he unpacked the whole kitchen.  It took a couple of hours to get moved in. He went in to unpack his clothes and I got everything out to make sandwiches for lunch and went to cut a lemon to make the marinade for our barbecue chicken that evening.  The knife slipped and cut my thumb.  It was deep and there was no small amount of blood.  I washed and washed it.  There was a bottle of hand sanitizer there and I poured a bunch in, then went to wash it in the bathroom with soap.  Did I mention there was a lot of blood?   I wrapped it and held my hand in the air while Ken finished the marinade and sandwiches.  He patched me up with Neosporin and band-aids and we had a nice lunch.  By then, we both needed naps.  So began our stay in Avon.  

But things got better from there.  Again, Ken enjoyed morning hikes and I enjoyed the wonderful pool to myself each morning.  Ken joined me when he got back in time.  In the end, we were glad to have the fourth floor room.  It was the highest floor and so the ceilings were vaulted, with high windows, allowing us to see the whole of the mountain.  Following are some pictures from Ken's morning hikes:

Map of trails and ski runs in Beaver Creek.

Colorado state flower: columbine "The columbine were bending their heads in the rain."

Bluebells

This is a large bee that Ken caught in mid-flight

He hiked up to gorgeous Beaver Creek Lake

Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel

Purple penstemon

Fireweed

Green gentian

Lupine

Sego lily- Utah state flower

Doe Mule deer

View of Beaver Creek

Field of lupine

He got up early and was the first on the mountain most mornings.  One morning, he surprised this grizzly bear as she was foraging.  They just looked at each other.  How Ken had the presence of mind to snap a picture, I don't know.  She then took off.  It was then that Ken found out she had a cub as it scampered up a tree.  Thank goodness he didn't get between them. 

Ken's pictures, through google photo, come to my google account. Often it takes days for them to arrive and update.  But for some reason, that day, they updated immediately.  I got on my phone and there is this picture. Ahhhh! I immediately texted, "Run for your life!" 

Canada Jay

The Canada Jay came down and posed for him.

Friendly little Canada Jay up close and personal. He was at Ken's feet.

View of Avon from the mountainside.

A restaurant at the top of the ski lifts

View of the top of the Colorado rockies.

Chickory or Pine Squirrel (I think this was the species that played in our Caldwell yard)

Ken was excited to add the Dusky Grouse to his life list.  Because of the lighting the pictures aren't great, but it was very tame- only about four feet from Ken)

Flax

Female broad-tailed hummingbird

He rode up to Vail, Colorado and took this selfie.

Taken from the deck of our unit.

This was my view as we read, studied.  Pretty fine 😉

              

Inside the condo

Out on the deck of our unit

While we were there, I developed quite a bad sinus infection and eye infection.  I contacted our eye doctor, who is also our bishop, and he sent a prescription for my eye to a local pharmacy.  I was so grateful.  I paid him in cookies when we got home.  On the Monday after we got home, I did a virtual doctor visit with my doctor and got antibiotics for my sinus infection.  Though it didn't spoil our time there, the drive home was a bit grueling for me.  But overall, it was a delightful break from the norm in Avon, Colorado.

Our welcome home sunrise