My latest carving project

The wildfires in Utah today are unreal. Apparently, there is a huge fire by Schofield. The smoke from that fire has blown to Mt. Pleasant and beyond. It is so heavy that I can see only 3-4 blocks from our house. And the smell is so bad that we can't use the cooler. Oh, poor me. I should think about the poor people whose homes and property are being threatened and actually burned by these fires. I believe that several homes have been destroyed by Schofield, not to mention the other destruction by fire around the state. I hate wildfires. They seem so destructive and senseless. Thankfully, there hasn't been and lives lost from what I have heard.

I call it "Zombie Cat"

I am back to carving fairly regularly again. It's hard to keep anything going with much momentum in the summer. I finally finished a project I started in the spring. I get too many projects going. I need to finish some before I start on anything else. I love my Halloween carving book that Eric, Angela and Adam gave me for my birthday. I want to do everything in it, but I have backed myself into a corner with my projects. I have several Christmas things I have started and need to get finished also. If I can get my Nativity finished before too long, I can do another one or two Halloween projects.

It's great that I have another obsessive, oops I mean eager, carving fan to share things with. I knew Todd would be good at it because he is so artistic anyway. And I was right. He has a real eye for things and doesn't need the step-by-step instructions like I do. My things have their own primitive charm, but I think he has some real talent and will make me proud with his carvings in the future. Angela said that carving is good for him because it is both destructive and artistic, which describes Todd perfectly.


We went to DI's on Saturday. It was Janae's first time there. I'm a bad mom, depriving her of such a great store. We had a great time and found many wonderful things, which brings me to this next picture. I got this for $2. I think it's wonderful and I know I can do something great with it. I just want to know, though, if anyone knows what it is. I think I'm going to make a planter out of it, maybe, for the porch or something like that. So, what is it and what do you think I can do with it?

Just another day

Isn't she precious?

I've been awake since 4:30 am. I made myself stay in bed until 5:30 so I wouldn't bother Jim too much, but by then I just had to get up. So it's about 9:00 am now and so far I have read my scriptures, watched an episode of Project Runway, made pancakes, buttermilk syrup, and huckleberry syrup, all from scratch, fed and watered 13 animals (not my family), fed my family, took pictures of Janae, because it's her first day of school (big sophomore), bottled and processed huckleberry syrup, made lunch for Jim and got him off to work. Now I'm going to go workout in my exercise room, shower, return some things to the library, grocery shop, clean up the house,put some bread in to bake, go to my carving group and by the time I get home it will only be 2:30. I don't know what I will do after that besides make dinner and go to bed. Then tomorrow, I will pretty much do the same things again. Now you know why I write about other people; they are much more interesting than I am.

Birthdays

Today is Janae's birthday. She is fifteen. Everyone has been here at one time or another for the past two days. We had a joint birthday dinner for Janae and Eric. His birthday was on Friday. They are eleven years and four days apart. Fortunately for me, they both wanted the same thing for their dinner. Janae used to want hotdogs and macaroni and cheese. Now she has roast, potatoes and gravy and cheese cake. It's been great to see all the kids. It was so Special!

Janae and Eric opening gifts, with Adam checking out Uncle Todd's feet.

Kristine, Angela, Todd and Lisa.

Adam enjoying Grandma's toys from yesteryear.

The dogs are eating one of your mandibles!

I had just come in from taking care of the animals. I walked down the hallway and called to Janae,"The dogs are eating one of your mandibles!" And then I stopped and thought, now there's a sentence you won't hear very often.

Janae collects old bones as we go on our hikes. She has several mandibles (or jaw bones if you prefer) and a couple of sculls, I think sheep and cow. "What is she going to do with these?", you might ask. Draw them, for one thing. And she just likes them for some reason. What? Doesn't everyone have a child that collects old bones? Well, you should.

A few years ago when Lisa was in high school, she went into her seminary class and announced to her teacher, "I feel so lethargic today." He laughed at her and said, "Lethargic? Lethargic?" Yes, she knew what it meant and it described her mood perfectly. Yes, we use words like mandible and lethargic and plethora and pugnacious in our family all the time. Maybe it comes from me being a librarian. Or maybe we are just weird.

Lisa and Todd are here visiting. They came last night. We are going to celebrate the joint birthdays this evening, Eric's and Janae's. Eric and family will be here this afternoon. I don't know when we will be able to get together again. We will have to schedule around four different school schedules, five different work schedules, and two in-law families that we share our kids with. It's hard to get together as much as I would like, but it makes the times we are together really (dare I say it?) uhmm special.


I'm feeling unloved at the moment. I checked on my blogsite and I have NO followers. How can this be? People tell me they read my blog, but I HAVE NO FOLLOWERS!!! Sigh, sniffle, sob!

Oquirrh Mountain Temple Dedication

We are attending the dedication of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple this afternoon.

Interesting facts about the temple:

*The Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple sits at the foot of the Oquirrh (pronounced O'-ker) Mountains, facing east toward the Wasatch Mountains.

*The Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple was the thirteenth temple built in Utah and the fourth built in the Salt Lake Valley.

*The Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple and the Jordan River Utah Temple are the only two temples in the world located in the same city.

*Lightning struck the angel Moroni statue atop the Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple on Saturday afternoon, June 13, 2009, during the public open house. The powerful bolt of lightning blackened Moroni's trumpet and face. A replacement statue was installed on August 11, 2009, 10 days before the dedicatory services began.

*The ordinance room murals in the Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple were painted by artists who were called as "art missionaries" for the Church.

*President Thomas S. Monson dedicated the Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple on his 82nd birthday. The crowd gathered for the cornerstone ceremony spontaneously sang him a birthday song.

*The temple will open for ordinance work beginning Tuesday, August 25, 2009.

Jim's overnight backpacking trip

Yesterday, I did laundry, dishes and cooked. Today I mowed the lawn. Now isn't that really interesting. So, I'll tell you about Jim's trip.

Jim wanted to go on a short overnighter on the Oak Creek trail, only this time he was going to start from the bottom and go up to where the trail meets the creek so he could fish. I wasn't really feeling up to it and Janae was busy with her so-called lame sci-fi movies. Kristine was with John for part of the time and she was tired. So poor Jim. He decided to go without us and take his friends, Jack, Smith & Wesson.

We loaded Jack and the gear in the back of the truck. Dori was beside herself when she realized that she wasn't going too. I dropped them off at the base of the trail, after we had made plans for picking them up the next day in case he didn't have cell service. It turned out that he had service way up the mountain. He called about an hour after they left to tell me that Jack was tired and had tried to turn around and go home. I found out about the rest of the trip after they got home.

Jim called this morning at 8:00 am to tell me that he would be down in about an hour. I took Dori with me to go and pick them up. I opened the back window in the truck cab so I could talk to her in the back of the truck. She was very agitated and kept yipping. Then she climbed in the window and tried to climb into the front seat and sit on my lap. I made her stay in the back seat, but she kept hanging over the seat on my neck, my arm, my head. The truck was weaving all over the road until I got her calmed down and sitting relatively still.

We got to the trail head and met them coming down down the road. The dogs had a joyous reunion and Jim started telling me about the trip. Jack was seriously going to turn back and go home, until Jim had to really yell at him to get him to come back. They sat down and had some water, Jack drinking a quart or more. He was just thirsty, apparently. They continued on and found a rattlesnake, which they gave a wide berth to. They got to the place they were going to camp and went fishing. Jack was a great fisherdog. He stayed behind Jim while he was fly fishing and didn't disturb the fish at all. Later, they both enjoyed a fish dinner.

Jim says that sleeping with Jack is worse than sleeping with me. He didn't take a tent, so they both slept under the stars. Jim woke up with Jack's leg over him. Jim woke up with Jack's head on him. Jim woke up with Jack laying halfway over him. Jim woke up with Jack pushing against him with all four legs (good thing they weren't on a ledge). Jim woke up with Jack's face 2" from his own, with Jack laying on his back, 4 legs in the air, staring into his face. When they settled down to sleep, Jim made Jack lay down. He looked over at him and Jack was laying perfectly still, eyes open, tongue out, not breathing. Jim poked him and he was stiff. So Jim thinks, "I've killed him." He called his name two or three times and finally Jack "came to" and just jumped up like nothing was wrong.

So to say that a good time was had by all would be a great exaggeration. But they had a good enough time that maybe they will do it again sometime in the far future.

My kids are more interesting than I am

My life isn't very interesting, so I'll write about two of my kids today. Janae first. Yesterday she went with Cousin Roy to the livestock auction in Monroe. We cautioned each of them several times not to come home with anything for Janae. The last time Roy went, he bought a horse that had a baby and he wants to let Janae raise the baby. That's all fine and dandy as long as he keeps it at his place, which he is doing. So yesterday they came home with another horse, a two year old. It just so happens that this new horse is a full-blooded sister to the other baby. Apparently, there was a joyous reunion between mother and older baby. I had no idea that animals would remember each other after over a year's time. Janae says she wants to take her kids to auctions and buy horses and cattle and goats and who knows what else. She wants to live in Scipio and have a big farm close to some mountains. Scipio is close so that's okay with me.

Kristine is enjoying her roommates and school this year. Tuesday night she was at her friend, Katie's, apartment, just visiting. Katie's roommates were baking bread and getting unpacked, etc, when one of them started to cough. Then another started to cough and then they all started coughing. They were trying to laugh at the coincidence that they were all coughing at the same time, but they couldn't laugh because they were all coughing so hard. Then Katie checks her purse and exclaims, "My pepper spray went off!" They all ran for the door to get it cleared from their lungs. Everyone was okay. Then Kristine went to an apartment social where two little freshman boys fell in love with her.

Today I drove up to Provo to pick up a little, antique organ that we have been working on for a client. We have replaced one of the bellows, now a friend of ours has replace the reserve bellows. But the stupid thing still doesn't work!!! So our friend is going to replace the last bellows thingy that you don't know needs replacing until you replace the other two bellows. We hate this organ. We've been working on it for years, maybe two years; since before Lisa and Todd got married; maybe even before Eric went on his mission. It seems like forever. So I drove up to Provo for nothing, except that I got Janae and me some lunch at Arby's and I got a yummy strawberry limeade from Sonic.

After I got home I went to my carving group. We have been meeting very sporadically during the summer because our leader had a knee replacement in June. She is doing well now, but she has to have her other knee done in a few weeks. I have been planning out my project for the remainder of the year. It seems that I have my work cut out for me. Ha ha ha, bad pun! Anyway, I need to finish my nativity, make my Santa gifts, finish Noah and his dove, finish my Halloween stuff I have started, make more animal pairs for the arks and I don't know after that. I need to get serious again.

Gardening at the Busbys

Our garden this year has been a total mess. Most of this is my fault because I haven't been able to keep up with it for one reason or another. The weeds have absolutely taken over, as have the grasshoppers. Some of the plants didn't even bother to come up after I took all that time to plant them, the ingrates.

Our garden is bordered on one side by a big empty field. This field must be the breeding ground for all of the grasshoppers in the county. And they have found their way over the fence into our garden. Well, we released the secret weapon on them, the four ducks named Goose, Nigel, Oscar, and Elmer (*by the way, all these ducks are female, having been named before we could tell their sex) and the six chickens named Shanikwa the rooster (*see above note about names), the Gwens (hard to tell apart), Squirrel, Zsa Zsa, and Judy. The birds love grasshoppers and did their job very well. Then they ran out of grasshoppers so they started eating my pumpkins, green bean blossoms, tomatoes, and other suculant vegetables. They also started laying their eggs in the garden so every day was like an Easter Egg hunt. The dogs were the best at finding the eggs, but they immediately eat what they find or hide the eggs from eachother and me. So now I have to lock the birds out of the garden and the grasshoppers are starting to come back and eat my plants. Can you say viscious cycle?

In spite of all of this, my garden is actually producing some things very nicely: zucchini of course, peas, onions, yellow squash, cabbage, tomatoes, carrots and corn. And my grapes that I just planted are looking really nice and I have great hopes for them in the future years. Our apple trees are loaded, as are the pears and we have some peaches on our new little trees. I planted a few raspberries last year and they are really taking off. We have gotten a few berries from them also.

I bottled some green beans on Saturday, thanks to a friend who had pity on me and gave me some of the their extras. I love green beans that I can myself. They taste so much better than the store bought kind. Today I am going to make some zucchini bread from a gigantor that grew while I was hiking in the Uintahs. I'm also going to make some whole wheat bread, ground from my own years supply of wheat. And lest you think I'm too good, I borrowed my neighbor's electric wheat grinder so I didn't have to grind by hand, which I usually do. Then there is the laundry. And I hope I have time to carve a little. Connie says she doesn't blog because her life is too boring, but as you can see that doesn't seem to stop me.

High School Registration

I went with Janae to get her registered for high school. It took 20 minutes to get her registered, pay fees and get her picture taken and 2 1/2 hours to get her schedule changed. I don't know why it took so long. One person took over 20 minutes by herself. She was a senior. How much did she need to do? Janae's schedule didn't have an English class on it, so we had to make some changes. We finally got to the counselor and it took us less than 5 minutes and we had to change just about everything. Oh well. It's all taken care of for this year.

Meanwhile, Kristine was at home packing to move down to Snow College. She says she finally can see carpet on her closet floor. She has had everything stored for the summer and hasn't been able to use her closet or her floor or under her bed or her dresser or her bookcase or her. . . . I'm sure you get my meaning. Olive Juice, Kristine!

After mega hiking and backpacking, the number on the scale has finally started falling again. I have been stuck at the same weight for over a month now. I know that part of it is that I'm making muscle. My measurements have been getting smaller but not my weight. Finally a breakthrough.

I love Sundays, usually

I hate it when I can't sleep. It doesn't happen very often, thankfully. This morning I decided to just get up. I'm going to finish preparing my YW lesson. Usually I sleep in on Sunday, get up later, have a leisurely breakfast, take my time getting ready for Church, go to Church, have dinner, mess around and go to bed. What's not to love about Sundays, except for maybe Fast Sunday?

Today my Young Women's lesson is on repentance. I'm having a little bit of trouble preparing it. It's one of those basic principles that they have heard all of their lives. There is a lot of material I can pull from, but I want to approach it in a different way. So I'm having to think. Isn't that awful, having to think? Anyway, I'm slowly pulling all of my thoughts and ideas together into what I hope will be and interesting, spiritual, and useful lesson.

Kristine is moving back to school tomorrow. I'm glad to see my kids grow up and move on with their lives, but as they all know, I want them to do it closer to me. Kristine will be a sophomore this year, majoring in Child Care Management. Janae will be an only child again. She registers for her sophomore year in high school tomorrow also.

We just had the first annual James Arthur Busby Famly Reunion. Everyone came. That's not too hard because there are only nine of us so far, but we are growing. We were going to go backpacking, but the weather was threatening not to cooperate with us, so we stayed at the house. We played games and ate. Saturday, we did hike down to our little campsite that we like. The men hiked farther, looking for a larger, future family campsite, the women stayed at the original area and visited, and Adam entertained us all and ate dirt. A good time was had by all. Then it started to rain so we took refuge in the latrine area that is the most sheltered area of the campsite, avoiding the "toilet" and the tree sap. Then we hiked out and had a big bar-b-que. I was in much better condition than on previous trips, due to the week of backpacking in the Uintah's. I was quite pleased with myself. Oddly enough, no one thought to bring a camera, so none of this is recorded for posterity. The only pictures we took the whole weekend were of Adam, silly us.

So, do I really want to start this?

I've had a few people tell me lately that I should have my own blog. I don't know if I really want another thing to keep up on. I'm having a hard time just feeding the chickens and dogs. But I don't mind talking about my great family and sharing things about them and what they do. I'm just figuring out how all of this works so be patient. Here is a picture of me with the most handsome grandson in the world. Why yes, I do need to lose some weight. Thank you for pointing that out. I will be addressing that issue in future postings.