A Few New Things

Last week, my niece and nephew came over for the evening while their parents were at meetings. Todd asked if we always decorated for every holiday. Alyna told him that we decorate for every holiday and every season. Yep. I guess I'm kind of crazy that way.

For many years, this has been the main table decoration for Halloween. It consists of a wooden napkin holder I made about 22 years ago and a table runner I made when I was first learning to quilt, about 10 years ago.

This year I found this darling witches hat and loved it but didn't know what to do with it so I set it out on the table in place of the napkin holder.

Well, I didn't think the satin and feathers and such of the hat looked very good with the

cotton table runner so I went to my miscellaneous shiny fabric stash and bought a few more Halloween ones and - Wha-La! A whole new look. The boo candy plate is just waiting

to be filled but since we all have serious sweet tooths around here and some people

choose to eat candy for breakfast, lunch or dinner - well the plate

will just have to stay empty till closer to the big day.

Several weeks ago, we gave our big aquarium to a nephew that needed a low maintenance

pet. After having an aquarium for 18 years and having it sitting in the corner of our

kitchen ever since we moved into this house, it feels a little strange not having anything

there. I wasn't sad about not having to remember to feed the fish everyday as I was

running out the door, but I sure missed the cabinet that the aquarium sat on. It had stored

all our games that we play at the kitchen table as well as cookbooks and a few baby toys.

I thought it would be easy to find a new cabinet that would fit in the same spot but after perusing all the furniture stores in town, I was beginning to think I shouldn't have been so hasty in giving our old particle board one away. I decided to try the antique stores in town and finally found just what I was looking for. It was an old radio cabinet that the radio had been stripped out of. The seller was willing to fix up the inside and get it all ready for me so all I had to do was paint it. I am really happy about the way it turned out and it fits perfectly into the space. I'm even more happy not to have boxes of games and such sitting on my bedroom floor to stubble around!

I figure when grandbabies come, we can replace the plant under the shelf

with a basket of toys and books.

So, who wants to come play?

The Rest of the Vacation

Here are a few more pictures that I got before my camera was dropped in the water. That's one of the hazards of being someplace where one of the main attractions is water.

We hiked up the Diamond Head crater. It was a fairly strenous hike

but for old folks we did pretty good.

The last part was about a hundred steps - that was the hard

but the view from the top was spectacular.

We drove up around the coast, stopping at the blow hole and

various beautiful scenic beaches along the way.

We got to this bay at low tide but it was very different from the places we had explored in California at low tide. Dennis came equipped with the appropriate shoes and was able to get out on the far side of the bay and saw more than the little fish that I was able to spot from shore.

We went to the Waimea Arboretum & Botanical Garden.

Dennis swam out to the little waterfall. It hadn't rained much on the island

for a while so all the waterfalls were a bit anemic.

We stopped and got a plate of fresh shrimp at Giovaoni's shrimp truck.

The next day we took the bus in and walked around the old town part of Hololulu, seeing the palace, and other historic sites. We walked around China town and got some lunch there.

Other things we did included going to the Polynesian Cultural Center, and the Dole Pineapple Plantation. We shopped and ate and just enjoyed being in such a beautiful part of the world.

What is a Vacation?

Dennis and I are in Hawaii on VACATION! We have to remind ourselves what that means.

Vacation: A period of time devoted to pleasure, rest, or relaxation

We left home early Saturday morning. Mom and Dad Hatch drove us down to the airport and it was nice to be able to visit with them for a few minutes before we left. We flew to Honolulu thru Seattle and Dennis was able to arrange it so that we could have some time in Seattle.

We spent the day with a college roommate, Karen, and her husband, Greg. We've kept in touch through the years with the annual Christmas card and an actual visit every 10 or so years. We had a wonderful time doing some sight seeing in downtown Seattle and eating fresh sea food.

Our flight to Honolulu was fine. We arrived at about 8:30 PM so by the time we got the rental car, picked up some groceries to get us through the weekend and got to the condo, it was almost 10:30 local time (1:30 MST). Needless to say, we went to bed pretty quickly.

Sunday was pretty relaxed. We went to church, ate dinner and then went down and walked on the beach for a couple of hours.

This is the view from our condo. If you look in the distance between the buildings you can see the ocean.

The building center front there is the Marriot.

The church is a large complex with buildings around a center courtyard. This reflecting pool is at the back of the chapel and next to the Relief Society building. It is very beautiful.

Did you notice the bride and groom in the background? There were 4 or 5 different bridal parties we saw during our walk.

Monday, Dennis had business calls starting at 5 AM. By the time he got all done with work it was about 9:00. We went out and did some shopping. Dennis wanted to go get some clothes at the Goodwill. We also hit Costco, Walmart, Sam's Club and the Ala Moana shopping mall. F

When the sky cleared up a bit, we went up to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. (The Punchbowl) It was beautiful and a so peaceful compared to the hustle and bustle of the city.

For dinner we went to Ono's. It is a little tiny place that normally you would never notice except that there are always people standing around outside it. It is suppose to have the best typically Hawaiian food in the area. We went early enough to not have to wait. The food was good but nothing that would make me want to hurry back to get more of. After dinner we drove out around the east side of the island.

More to Come...

The Shed Moving Project

Just before we moved to Holland, we bought a metal shed from a neighbor. We had many things going on at the time and didn't have time to properly prepare the site for the shed to sit on. Now, two years later, the floor of the shed was beginning to rot and sag. It became apparent that we needed to do something or before long we would completely lose the floor.

So yesterday we got a great crew of family and friends together to help move the shed, dig out the area and fill it with gravel. Here are a few pictures from that project.

Ralph had gone out during the week and gotten a couple of loads of gravel for us.

Andrew was the project manager with Dave as overseer.

(Dennis had to repair Jessica's truck so she could get back to BYU on Sunday)

It was a beautiful day and we were able to get the project done and get everyone fed between the General Conference sessions.

The Girls Outing

It has now been about 4 years since Peggy, Trish, Lori and I were released from the Stake Young Women's presidency. We use to take such fun trips to Salt Lake every spring and fall to attend the axillary training meetings. Once, we spent a night at the Kimball and had so much fun. We don't remember much about the meetings we attended but we remember the laughter, food and games. We had always talked of doing it again but never got around to it - till last week.

So this past Tuesday afternoon, I got home from work and got my things together and was all ready when Peggy picked me up. We were on the road to SLC by 2:30. We stopped at Tai-Pan and did a little shopping on the way down. When we got to SLC we went to get dinner at the Red Iguana. We got there at 5:00 and were able to get seated immediately. By the time we were done eating, there were quite a few people waiting to be seated.

We went and checked into the Kimball and then headed up to the SLC cemetery. On our previous overnighter, we had gone to the Brigham Young burial site. This time we wanted to see the headstones of the prophets and the Angle Tree statue in the Salt Lake Cemetery. Unfortunately, we weren’t as prepared as we should have been and didn’t have a plot map so we only found the headstones of 4 of the prophets before it was dark; John Taylor, Heber J Grant, David O McKay and Gordon B Hinkley.

Back at the Kimball, we got our jammies on and got out all our junk food. We played a game or two of Zilch (a dice game) and then we watched “Letters to Juliette.” All to soon, it was time for bed.

The next morning, I was up early and went out for a walk. I walked up through City Creek Park, Memory Grove and Brigham Young Memorial Park. It was perfect temperature and a beautiful morning.

Back at the Kimball, we had breakfast and got ready for the day. After checking out, we walked to the new Church History Museum. I didn’t think we would want to spend much time there, mostly just look at the architecture and décor. It was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of church history from minutes and programs for important meetings to journals of saints from all over the world. All the magazines, books and histories written over the years are kept here. They reported that before the museum was completed, the church received about 40 items a month that were achieved into the collection. Now they are receiving 4,000 a month.

We enjoyed a walk through the beautiful grounds of temple square as we made our way to the South Visitors Center.

There is a very interesting display up right now on the temple, how it is constructed and what it looks like on the inside.

We caught the Trax train and rode down to the Grand America. It is probably the most luxurious hotel in Utah. It was nice. We bought some chocolates from the Sweet Shop.

Our next stop was the This the Place monument. The entrance and surrounding of the monument has changed a lot since we were kids.

We were wondering where the road ended up if you were to head up Immigration Canyon. So we headed out into the mountains and ended up having to choose whether to go to East Canyon or join back up with I-80. We opted for taking I 80 since that was a known route.

We stopped in Ogden for some lunch, (I won't name the spot but I wouldn't recommend it to any friend) and to check out some furniture that Trish was thinking of getting. It was so comfortable, we were tempted to spend the rest of the day there.

Our last stop was at the Brigham City cememetery to see the headstone for President Lorenzo Snow,

We had such a good time and I hope that we don't have to wait another 5 years before we can go on another outing.