Five years ago today...

...Tyler passed away. We love him and we miss him, but all is well, all is well.

Tyler's Tree

When Tyler passed away, a few friends in our Ward gave us this tree as a gift. Isn't it beautiful! We love the colors of this tree in the Autumn. The funny thing about this tree is that all the trees in our neighborhood lean to the southwest because of the strong canyon winds. Well, just like Tyler this tree is different...it leans to the north. We tried to get it to stand straight, but it resisted and has a mind of it's own and leans the way it wants to. We call it our "Tyler Tree."

I LOVE Halloween

I just LOVE Halloween. I enjoy dressing up, checking out other costumes, handing out candy to excited trick-or-treaters, and decorating our home. When our children were younger, I enjoyed making them costumes. We have boxes and boxes of costumes. I was so thrilled that my children stopped by in their costumes. The group picture that was taken with my camera was too blurry...bummer. Lacey wasn't at home when we took pictures, but she was a cave woman. Bayli was a bumblebee, Bronco was a bat, and Tyson emailed us and told us he was John the Baptist (he had a baptism on Halloween!).

Hyrum, Egyptian, with his little mummy, Zoey.

Hyrum, Courtney, & Zoey
They were headed off to a Halloween party.
Isn't Cleopatra gorgeous?

Aspen - Ladybug

Barbara (vampire) & Lindsey (pirate)

Barbara & Judy (witch)

You decide...Brigham Young or John Taylor?

Kyle's too cute.

He's ready to go preach the gospel.

My 1800's son.

Baby Blessing

On Halloween afternoon, Barbara and I went to our niece, Cami's, baby blessing. It was a perfect day, perfect weather, and a perfect blessing. After the blessing we gathered in the cultural hall for a yummy lunch. We are so glad that we were able to be a part of this special day. Thanks for inviting us Cami. We love you.

Barbara, myself, and baby David.
Barbara, Cami, myself, and baby David.
That's Dallin's silly brother in the background! Too funny.

Cami and Dallin with their new baby David. Cami's other son, Carter, was having too much fun playing to stop for a picture.

Tomatoes Galore

It was supposed to freeze outside so I went and picked all of our remaining tomatoes and tore out the bushes. There were SO MANY tomatoes! I was surprised. I wasn't prepared (or had the desire) to bottle them like I should have, but I also wasn't about to let them go to waste. I have made fresh tomato soup several times, we've eaten many tomatoes sandwiches, given many away, and I have dried some. Also, as you can see there were plenty of green tomatoes and we are still waiting for them to ripen. Next year I plan on being prepared and bottling tomatoes.

Sadies

Orem High had their "Sadie Hawkins" Dance on October 24. It was a girls choice and Lacey asked Chance Werner. She went with a bunch of people from the Cross Country team. The theme was "Welcome to the Jungle." The girls in her group decided that everyone in their group would wear an animal print sash or scarf, so we went to the fabric store and bought this fabric. She looked good, but sometime during the evening her and her date changed into our caveman and cave women costumes.

Isn't she gorgeous?
Ready to go and have fun.

Halloween Mystery Dinner

For a Young Women Combined activity we had a Halloween Mystery Dinner. It was so fun. Angie organized it and she wasn't even able to be there. She did a fabulous job with the menu. The Young Women received a menu with the following choices: Mummy Face, Body Parts, Spider, Wooden Stake, Flying Ghost, Slime Ricky, Spider Egg Sack, Witches Finger, Grave Digger, Hairy Finger, Butcher, Ghost Gargle, and Witches Broom. Some of the items on the menu were food and some were utensils. The Young Women chose from the menu what they wanted for each course (three courses). They didn't know what they were getting until they were served. When everyone was finished eating, we as leaders presented a short message of just how they were deceived with the menu, Satan tries to deceive us on a daily basis and we need to be careful with our choices in life. We had a great turnout and everyone had a great time.

Mummy Face - Pizza
The tables were decorated with such Halloween flare!
Way dark picture, sorry.
Tila, Amber, Lacey, & Rachel

Hairy Fingers - Bread Sticks

Spiders - Ding Dongs

Witches Fingers - Yummy peanuts butter treats

The Kitchen help

Melinda, Judy, Marianne, Dani, Nikki, & Linda

The Deer Hunt

Ryan flew in from Colorado to go deer hunting with Russell, his brothers, cousins, and uncle. Well, actually not everyone was hunting, some were just enjoying being together as family while camping. Ryan was lucky (well, skilled too) enough to get his first deer! On Saturday afternoon some of us drove up to camp to enjoy the evening and to drop people off and to take others home. The following afternoon, after church, Russell and I drove back up to camp to spend the night. It was perfect weather for camping, and so beautiful too.

Lacey & Kyle taking a short ATV ride.
Kyles' too funny.

I LOVE this picture of my children.

Ryan, Kyle, Hyrum, & Lacey.

The fam

Front row: Myself, Russell (with his crutches), & Ryan.

Back row: Lacey, Kyle, Hyrum, Courtney, & Zoey.

The serious deer hunters...can't ya tell by their apparel.

Brandon, Stephen, Bert, & Calvin

Camp

Russell's taking it as easy as possible. Notice his "boot" for his broken foot.

Ryan and two of his cousin shot deer. I guess this is the manly way of displaying how successful their hunt was. Everyone who drove by slowed down to take a peek.

Brothers - Bert & Russell

Russell & Judy

Ryan showing off his successful deer hunt.

CCM

This was the first picture that we received from Tyson's mission. Sister Groberg emailed this to us. Sister Groberg is the wife of the CCM president. The CCM is basically the MTC in Peru.

Tyson is on the front row, the 5th elder from the left. Look at his happy smile!

Nauvoo Day 4

Nauvoo day four...time to leave. This day was basically just a long travel day. We definitely needed another day or two to do and see all that we really wanted to.

Kyle's packing up.
Sitting in his room. Notice the picture of Joseph Smith in the background. Not too many rooms for rent can you find pictures of the prophet.

We were so blessed to be able to stay here in the historic Willard Richards Inn. It was down in the Old Nauvoo area of town.

Sisters - Debbie, Barbara, & Judy

My dad & myself...he's a great father! I gained my love of the pioneers from listening to him tell us stories of our ancestors.

Kyle, Zac (showing the keys to the Cadillac that he was the chauffeur for, for my dad and Lila), my dad, and Lila.

Judy, Lila, Dad, Barbara, & Debbie

Traditional sisters picture.

Debbie driving us to the airport as her and Barbara converse.

Dad and Lila were staying a few more days in Nauvoo to finish Lila's temple work and Debbie and Zac were staying a few extras days to visit some people in the St. Louis area from Zac's mission.

If the people at the airport only knew what Kyle was listening too. A Truman Madsen CD...his favorite.

Barbara's talking on her cell phone at the airport, doing the "mom thing" from hundreds of miles away from home.

THE END

Nauvoo Day 3

Day three in Navuoo was finally our temple day. We arrived at the temple right when it opened. You need to make appointments for temple work in this temple and that is so foreign to me. I was able to do all the ordinances in one day! I have never done that before. I did baptisms (of which Kyle did the baptizing), then inititories, then an endowment session, and then we took a lunch break and then went back later to do sealings. What a great feeling to be able to do all the ordinances, from beginning to end, in one day. I'm so grateful for the temple and for my personal temple blessings.

Kyle & myself
After some temple work and lunch and before we went back to the temple we visited a few more sites in Old Nauvoo. I think it was at Heber C. Kimball's home there was a chair and a drum that was William Clayton's. He wrote "Come, Come Ye Saints" and he is an ancestor of my friends, Bruce and Sheila Clayton, and so I had Kyle take a picture of me pointing to them.

Pee Ewe! Kyle is pointing to a potty chair that was in a bedroom that the pioneers used during the night.

Kyle thought this contraption that shut the gate slowly was quite clever. It's a metal ball on a chain hooked to the gate and a post.

In the Family Living Center is where you can learn about rope making, candle making, bread making, spinning wool, and many more pioneer era crafts.

Kyle and myself with the Nauvoo Temple in the background.

Judy & Debbie

I thought this contraption of storing a quilt at the end of the bed and then rolling it back up when you don't need it was clever.

I've seen a picture of this rocking horse in the Ensign before. It belonged to John Taylor's children. John risked his life in going back and getting it for his children one time when there were mobs around.

Old Nauvoo

The Print Shop, John Taylor's home, and the Post Office.

The Nauvoo House

This is where Joseph and Hyrum's bodies were taken after they had been killed in Carthage.

Mansion Home

Kyle really wanted to go in the Mansion Home, but we didn't for a couple of reasons. This and a few other places are owned by the Community of Christ Church and you "have to" go on their whole tour (for a small fee) in order to go in this home. At this point we were short on time and didn't have enough time to go on the whole tour, so consequently we weren't able to go in the Mansion Home. Sorry Kyle, maybe next time.

Smith Family Cemetery

Joseph, Emma, and Hyrum are buried here.

Many others are buried in the Smith Family Cemetery.

Joseph Smith Sr. and Luck Mack Smith are also buried here.

Nauvoo Temple

Zac and Kyle, as we head back to the temple to perform sealings.

Kyle & myself

A photo of some of the emblems on the Nauvoo Temple.

A statue of Joseph and Hyrum on their "last ride" heading to Carthage Jail. This is just outside of the temple.

The Prophet's Last Ride

Zac, Judy, & Kyle

This is a great night time photo of the Nauvoo Temple, other then I'm in it.

President Hinckley

2002

Today facing west on the high bluff overlooking the city of Nauvoo, thence across the Mississippi and over the plains of Iowa, there stands Joseph's temple, a magnificent house of God. Here in the Salt Lake Valley facing east to the beautiful temple of Nauvoo stands Brigham's temple, the Salt Lake Temple. They face towards one another as bookends between which there are volumes that speak of the suffering, the sorrow, the sacrifice, even the death of those who made the long journey from the Mississippi River to the valley of the Great Salt Lake.

After the temple we went back to the brick wall with the painting of a bull on it and took a closer picture of just the red brick. We had learned earlier this day that this brick is some of the original brick from the Red Brick Store. Kyle was earlier drawn to this wall for a reason, we now know why.