Everyone Home for Christmas

We were all together for Christmas for the first time in a couple of years so we all got together and took a family picture. The home teachers happened by and pressed the shutter on a couple. We did some with the timer.Rose, Eric, and Glen opening presents on Christmas morning.

Jilly in the high chair.

Eric preparing to open his present from Santa Claus.

Jilly with Elmo.

Grandsons opening presents. They really had the hang of tearing off the wrappping paper. Rip, tear, and move on to the next present. Oh, were we supposed to look at the presents? The unwrapping is so much fun.

The kids are all here for Christmas vacation and we are so thankful that they made it. While the past few days have been cold and snowy it seems that the timing was good for Saturday travel at least coming from Utah and Idaho. It started snowing here quite hard just before Holly and family got here and has snowed pretty much since.

We drove the 4x4 to church today and were kind of glad to have it right now. The main roads and streets were plowed but the side streets were pretty snowy. After we got home from church it started snowing some more. It will be good to just hunker down here in the house for a few days now that everyone is here.

Eric is home for Christmas

Eric got home this evening. He had some bad roads through the Blue Mountains of Oregon. So glad he got home safely. What a relief when he walked in the door.

YYSO Concert at the Yakima Valley Museum

This is Rose playing at the museum on Saturday. She had a lot of playing time this past week.

Bot Competition

It has been a crazy day today. Well actually all week I guess. Rose is in the orchestra for YVCC's production of Cinderella. She has had rehersals and or performances every night this week. She also had YYSO rehersal on Mondy night. Today she had a YYSO performance. She had a solo part in one of the movements from "Carmen" and she also played duet with one of the oboe players. Then she had two performances of Cinderella. In the meantime, Glen is competing in the robot competition at the High School. After I watched Rose's YYSO performance I went over to the high school to see Glen. His team finished second over all. He is so relieved that it is done. And so am I. Not just the robot competition but also the whole busy week.

WIBC

I made a quick trip over to Seattle yesterday to see Rose perform in the Western International Band Clinic concert. There were actually two concerts with two bands each but I only went to the 10:30 am concert to see Rose. I saw her at a distance before the concert began and during the concert I could see the top of her bassoon. Afterward we did get to talk for a minute before she had to run on to other things.

She went Friday with the band director and four other students from her school. They had clinics and listened to several bands over the time they were there as well as played in their own concerts.

It was a nice day in Seattle. The sun even shone a bit and the view of Mount Rainer was impressive.

The concert was at the Double Tree Seattle Airport Hotel. It is a big hotel and the ball room was big enough for the concert. The only problem was that the seating was all at floor level so it was a bit hard to see the participants but they sounded pretty good.

It was a nice day for a drive. The only blip in the weather was just a bit of wind from Snoqualmie pass to about Issaquah.

Peas, Fall, and Other Thoughts

As you can guess this picture was not taken today. The pea blossoms in this picture just made me think about work. Right now we are in the process of labeling peas that were grown a while ago. The idea that food can be processed so that it can be stored for a long time is quite an invention. I know that salting and drying of meat has been around for a long time but the method of canning as preservation is really quite new, like maybe 150 years or so.

Anyway as fall is now upon us and it will not be long until we see snow and possibly some really cold weather it is good to know that we had a good harvest this year and we have been able to "can" food so that there will be a supply for this coming winter.

We also had a chance this summer to do some dry canning for ourselves. Sugar, flour, and other staples are good to have just in case there is a disruption of supply to our local stores.

Saturday I was able to help out at a DI event where the church is able to provide furniture, bedding, and clothing to those in need. I was a little surprised that the quantity of things provided this year was actually down a little bit from the past few years. (I have been involved in this for about the past four or five years.) I think that is a good thing as perhaps not so many are in need right now despite the economic downturn. Perhaps it is just that the downturn has not trickled down yet. We shall see.