what I did on my vacation

I can't believe March is over!  I guess I'd better post January before it gets too far in the past.

In January my parents were planning a trip to visit my youngest brother in North Dakota.  The plan was for them to take along four additional chairs that he purchased from a local store now that he has a kitchen/dining area big enough for the complete set.  Additionally, the plan was to conserve gas by driving the car, not the truck.  When my brother invited me to come too, I asked if there would be room, and the parents said, no, sorry.  So I told my brother that there wasn't room for both me and the chairs and so I wouldn't be coming.  Apparently he really wanted me to come, because not long afterwards, my parents said they had decided they could put two of the chairs on top and leave me a place to sit.  I assume that my brother talked them into it.

So in the middle of January I took two weeks off work to drive to North Dakota with my parents.

What is there to do in North Dakota in January, you ask?  Who cares?  I typically go on vacation to see people, not do things.  I spent quality time with my bro and sis-in-law, read books to the niece and nephews, helped design a project, went to the fabric store, sewed, read books to myself, sewed, played with the wooden train set (under duress), sewed, tweaked the project design, sewed, went to the fabric store again, sewed, went to the grocery store, sewed, babysat, sewed, went to the library, sewed, read more books to the niece and nephews, sewed, tweaked the project design again, and sewed.

Sewed - that word sure looks strange, doesn't it?

My brother and I really feed off of each other when it comes to creativity, and I was super excited about the finished project - this indoor playhouse in the form of a teepee:

family stuff and out of the blue update

Yesterday was so fun!  I woke up at 4:45, decided not to wait for the alarm to go off at 5:00, started preparing for the day, and got on the road at about 6:00.  What?  Getting up before dawn isn't your idea of fun on a Saturday?  Oh, but wait, that was just the preliminary stuff!  The day was full of joy and love and laughter and family and friends.  It really started when I arrived at my cousin's house in South Jordan.  Her son just turned eight, and was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints yesterday.  Also, my grandpa - my only grandparent still alive - just turned 94, and so a family party was in order for both occasions.

After the baptism activities at the church, we re-convened at my cousin's house again for brunch, and talked and laughed and laughed and talked some more.  We were telling stories about our ancestors and remembering stories about each other.  At one point we were discussing whether or not hearing loss was genetic on that side of the family.  Cousin Katie asked my dad if it was, and he leaned forward to ask her to repeat the question.  We all laughed.  When we realized he really hadn't heard the question we laughed even harder.  At another point, cousin Suki came into the room and said it looked like we were having a meeting, at which cousin Chelsea immediately folded her arms and bowed her head.  More laughter.  It was just plain fun.

Finally we had to break things up, but with plans to meet again later for dinner at a buffet place to celebrate Grandpa's birthday.  I kind of wish I could have been there for that, but not very much.  I had another appointment.  I took the opportunity to finally meet my new friend in person.  (Reference this post and this post.)

Before I ventured out for the second part of my fun day, my brother handed me one of his pocket knives - just in case.  (He always carries at least 3, in a leather belt case that he made for them.)  No worries, Russ, I didn't even have to reach for it.  I had arranged to meet my friend at a place in Ogden (yes, Ogden again, sigh), and arrived about 45 minutes early; so I sat in my car (about half a block away from the restaurant) and listened to a cd from the library until there were only 5 minutes left.  I got out of my car and locked it, then looked up and there was my friend walking past right in front of me.  (I recognized him from Facebook pics.) When we got to the restaurant there was about a 30 minute wait, so we walked around the little shopping area a bit, and then he showed me the coolest place!  I want to do this some time!  It's a little place called iFLY Utah.  We watched for a while, then went back to the restaurant and had dinner.  I didn't feel at all awkward the whole time.  I don't know if he did or not.  We discussed things that had been briefly touched on in our emails, among other stuff, and just had a fun conversation.  Then I drove home and went to bed.

Like I told my family when I explained why I wasn't going to meet them for Grandpa's birthday dinner, I'm going into this with NO expectations beyond friendship, and if something else develops, it will do so without gossip and speculation.  That being so, I had a good time.  Enough Said.

calendar preview 2011

Many years ago, my aunt Janean started printing a family birthday calendar for the extended Van and Lois Weaver family (my grandparents).  This tradition continued for several years.  Then she announced at a family reunion that she was wanting to pass the tradition on to somebody else, and asked if there were any volunteers.  At that point most of those present turned to look at me, so I found myself volunteered.  This will be the 10th calendar I have produced, and I have loved it every time.  I feel more connected to my myriads of cousins than I ever did while I was growing up, what with keeping track of address changes and weddings and collecting pictures each year.  Granted, most of them only hear from me once each year, but still, once is more often than never.

Each year I have two or three pages to create in addition to the 'family pages' for each aunt/uncle who participates.  Reunions, weddings, new babies, family parties, and unfortunately, funerals, all play a part in these extra pages.  This year I wanted to do something to highlight some of our ancestors, and so I was planning to delve into my mom's files and find some fun pictures and stories.  While I was thinking about it, she contacted me and asked me to indicate on the page with all our names and addresses that her website is not a blog - it is a site that she has created to present all of the histories and pictures and family history that she has collected and compiled.  This fit in with my plans exactly, so this year the extra pages are designed to draw your attention to that family history website.

Now, without further ado, here are the pictures for this year's calendar:

JANUARY

Family History page

I had fun with this one.  I read through many of the histories on mom's website and pulled out excerpts that I think are interesting or amusing.  Hopefully you will think so too.  I also tried to indicate how the people are related to each other and to us, their descendants.

FEBRUARY

John and Michelle Weaver family

Michelle and John celebrated their 25th anniversary this year - in Hawaii!  And Michelle is almost my last holdout for providing an actual physical page instead of digital pictures - still works though.

MARCH

David and Jeanette Weaver family.

Jeanette also sent actual printed pictures, and then Rob supplemented with digital copies from the same photo shoot.  Thanks both of you!

APRIL

Rick and Laura Weaver family

I unintentionally caused Devin lots of stress on this one.  Bryce has been creating their page for the past couple of years, but, obviously, is unavailable to do so for a while.  After struggling to remember what she had learned in her high school multimedia class she finally decided to send me the pictures and let me do the computer work.  Thanks Devin for being willing at least.  :-)

MAY

Family History page

This page is designed the way I had originally envisioned doing all three of the extra pages, but the design for the January page developed itself while I was browsing histories.  For this page, I started a story and left it as a cliffhanger.  You'll have to visit the website to learn what happened.  (If you can't find the rest of the story, let me know, and I'll provide a more specific link to this particular history.)

JUNE

Paul and Nancy Weaver family

This picture was taken at a huge community event held as a fundraiser for cousin Brent.  Please follow this link: Brent Event to learn more.

JULY

Babies born in 2010

This page speaks for itself.

AUGUST

Josh and Janette Weaver family

These 'whole page', 'whole family' pictures are the easiest to put in the calendar, but the hardest to comment about. :-)

SEPTEMBER

Family History page

I love this picture of Great Grandpa Brown, just because my oldest nephew looks so much like him.  As for the story I chose to include, little children aren't afraid to ask why someone looks different, but as they grow up they start to feel self conscious about asking rude or uncomfortable questions.  For those of you who knew Grandpa Brown and never asked, this story tells about the accident that made his right eye look strange.

OCTOBER

Edith and Gary Ogilvie family

I think I got everybody in there at least once, except Heather.  She didn't send a picture of herself, but didn't she do a creepy job on decorating her porch for Halloween?

NOVEMBER

Alma and Pam Weaver family

As usual, Aubrey did a fantastic job with this one.

DECEMBER

Janean and Reid Barney family

Most of these are pictures of some of Janean's great grandchildren, but some are her youngest son's family, since they had fun pictures floating in the ethernet for me to find.

What, it's already October?!!

Where does the time go?

Much to my shame, far too much of it went to playing the sudoku game I downloaded for my phone.  I finally deleted it (mid-game, are you proud of me?) since it was too easy to 'just finish the game I started yesterday' and then several hours later realize I'd better turn it off.  I did get the 'professional' level down to an average of 15 or 20 minutes per game, but it was too easy to keep pushing the button at the end of the game and end up playing another, and another, and another...

Enough with the excuses.

this and that...

Ever obedient to my youngest brother's commands, I am updating my blog.  So, let's see.  What have I been doing since the last time I updated?

In April

Here's a picture I planned to blog but didn't get around to doing.  This was taken at the end of April in my front yard.  I love the weather in Logan, don't you?

In May

I went with my parents to see said youngest brother graduate from Dental School in Wisconsin.  He went the Air Force route to help pay for school, and became a Captain on the same day he became a Doctor.  We were teasing my niece and telling her she had to call him "Doctor Captain Daddy Sir" from now on.  The graduation ceremonies were, well, boring for the most part, but there were some fun parts.  On the first evening the college of dentistry had a graduation/awards ceremony where the graduates all became officially dentists (but not doctors yet.)  The program listed all of the students by their first and last names.  (Bear with me, this has significance.)  The next morning was the university commencement ceremony where they were presented to the university president for receiving their doctorate degrees.  After that, the college of dentistry had a luncheon and presented the graduates with their diplomas.  The printed program for this looked nearly identical to the program from the first ceremony, with one important difference.  The list of names now included "Dr." in front of each one.  I thought that was cool.  My brother was the only student in his class who was in the Air Force, and the ceremony at he luncheon started out with him taking his oath of office in front of all his classmates and their families.  It was really neat.

My brother told us that the college of dentistry and the college of law had a traditional rivalry when it came to the commencement ceremony, and to expect quite a ruckus when they were presented to the university president.  Each college filed into the stadium and sat in groups, and then one by one their college department heads handed a scroll to the university president saying something to the effect that the students listed on the scroll had completed the requirements and should be considered for graduation, yada yada.  The president then waved the scroll at the students (almost with a Harry-Potterish 'swish and flick') and graduated them.  The law students were earlier in the program, and they had lots of cheering and silly string flying, and a beach ball being batted around.  I thought they did a decent job, until the dental students had their turn.  Ho-ly Cow!  Silly string and shouting, sure, and a large blow-up monkey instead of a small beach ball, but they also had some type of pressurized containers that shot strings of metallic streamers into the air with a loud bang, and from where I was sitting in the stands, it looked like fireworks going off above their section.  It went on and on, and then on and on even longer.  It lasted so long that the university president said, "Wow."  All throughout the rest of the commencement ceremony the occasional 'firework' would go off above the dental students as someone found an unexploded canister.

In June

Umm, not much, just work mostly.  I did take a few days off to go hiking/camping with some of my uncles and cousins.  We were going to hike Tablerock - in the Tetons - but there was too much snow.  So we did a smaller hike instead and then went to Moose Lake, a small lake in Yellowstone near where my grandfather grew up.  It was fun, but the mosquitoes were insane!  We think they've learned to follow vehicles.  When we first got there, they swarmed us as soon as we got out of the van.  They petered off a bit after a while, but not ever enough that we didn't notice them.  The next morning was pouring rain for a couple of hours in the morning, and after it let up, some of the group drove out to hike Union Falls.  The mosquitoes were not too bad most of that day, but they were bad enough that I spent the day in my tent.  As the hikers drove back into camp, the mosquito menace increased exponentially!

For July and August

My stake is going on 'Trek' this week for youth conference.  I'll write more about that after it happens.  In August, we'll have girl's camp.  Again, more after it happens.

2010 Calendar Preview

Ok, the 2010 calendar pages are done.  They're not printed yet, since I'm at my parents house and my color laser printer isn't, but they're ready to print as soon as I get home.  I hope all my relatives enjoy having the calendar as much as I enjoy making it.  I think the February page will be especially popular this year...

So without further ado, here they are:

JANUARY
I came across this picture while we were preparing the display for Grandpa's funeral.  It was too fun not to share it with everyone. My mom says they're at a motel of sorts in Jackson, for the inaugural showing of the Pink Garter Theater, a melodrama group that Grandpa and his brothers were involved in.  Grandpa's beard really tickles my funny bone!


FEBRUARY
Grandpa and Grandma in the middle, and all ten children circling around them. Aren't they cute?


MARCH
I'm so excited to be able to add pictures from Janean's posterity. I've really been out of touch with this branch of the family. I love blogs! Welcome to little Keegan and little Cameron.


APRIL
Six new babies this year!


MAY
John's big event this year was the addition of a son-in-law. Welcome to the Weaver Clan, Ross!


JUNE
Thank you Aubrey, for again creating a marvelous page for the Alma Weavers. And, welcome, little Mabel, (and soon we hope to welcome Courtney, but it's not official yet.)


JULY
And thank you Bryce, for again creating an awesome page for the Richard Weavers. And welcome to the Weaver clan, Julie! (Even though technically you became a member in 2008.)


AUGUST
And here is the slightly edited Ogilvie family portrait. Poor Kirk was sick and missed the photo-shoot, but the magic of photoshop allowed him to be present, even if not quite under the same lights.


SEPTEMBER
Thank you Kristy for collecting pictures for me, and thanks to all you blog-writers for providing the rest. Welcome, little Glory!


OCTOBER
The Josh Weavers also had a wedding this year, as well as another grandson. Welcome to the Weaver Clan, Toni, and also little Tag!


NOVEMBER
This page is a re-make of one we created for the display at Grandpa's funeral. The story behind it is that when we were all gathered at Grandpa's house, figuring things out, we saw this verse handwritten and displayed beneath a picture that Grandpa had drawn of Grandma. Nobody had seen it before, so we think he was re-arranging the pictures on his living room wall some time during the last week of his life. I did change the words a little bit - the original says "is nearly through".


DECEMBER
The Paul Weavers also had a wedding, and a new grandson. Welcome to the Weaver clan, Scott, and also little Jacob!

reunited

Goodbye Grandpa, we'll miss you.  At least you won't be missing Grandma anymore.

phone fun part 2

I have the pics that my dad took now...

... and another one from mine on a different day

Phone Fun - part 1

During my brother's last evening here we went up the canyon and had hotdogs and smores. My sister hit upon the idea of adding fresh raspberries to the smores, and they were really really good! (We also melted the chocolate and toasted the graham crackers while we were roasting the marshmallows.) From now on, that's how our family will be making smores.

I took a video of my niece's "I need to go pee" dance, which I will not post here as it may be a source of extreme embarrassment to her later on. The point of mentioning it is that my dad remembered that his phone (which is just like mine, remember) is also a fairly good camera and he should take advantage of it. So we were playing around with the camera features and found the "frames". Here are the pics from my camera. Part two of this post will be after my dad sends me the pics he took.

Me as a monkey - it doesn't take much imagination, does it?
My oldest niece - not very happy with her predicament.Our good friend about to be devoured by a dinosaur - blogger automatically rotated it when I uploaded it - very frustrating, but oh well.Here's my sister as a witch turning the prince into a frog....... but luckily my niece was willing to reverse the spell.And my sis-in-law as a (slightly mad?) rabbit.

Calendar

The family calendars are done!!!! .... well mostly. All the pages are printed and collated, but I still need to punch them, put the spiral thingamajigs in them, and deliver them. Here's a sneak peak of the pages for those faithful followers of my blog. :-)

Most of the pictures are courtesy of your blogs and Facebooks, so thanks to everyone who contributed!

JANUARY
(All about Joy!)

FEBRUARY
(Alma Weavers - thanks Aubrey!)

MARCH
(New babies this year)
You can play the "three of these things belong together" game several ways with this page. I dare you to think of some similarities/differences and comment about them.

APRIL
(Richard Weavers - thanks Bryce!)

MAY
(Paul Weavers - thanks to all you Facebook posters)

JUNE
(Seven Brides...)
This one was John's idea, and my mom conspired with me to collect the pictures I needed without letting anyone in on the secret. She really did need them, she just followed up on collecting them and made sure I had access to them, too.

JULY
(Weaver Family Reunion 2008)
The leafy letters are actual photos of the letters John planted in his front garden for the reunion.

AUGUST
(John Weavers - happy, silly, and sad-sort of)

SEPTEMBER
(Ogilvie Weavers - hee hee)
I hope none of my siblings read this blog before Heather has a chance to tell them she cut her hair... she'll get mad at me for spilling the beans. (And if you do, don't let on that you already knew!)

OCTOBER
(Same Names)
I've always enjoyed the fact that I have a cousin with my same name, and that both my mom and my dad have brothers named Paul and John. In the Weaver family, we've all joked, "Which Mark? (or Marc) Jeanette's Mark or Janette's Marc?" This being the case, I've been contemplating this page all year - starting from when both my brothers named their new babies William. Then Rob and Amy named their baby Russell, and I had to get in the two "Amy and Russell" combinations.

NOVEMBER
(Josh Weavers - isn't Sawyer cute?!)
I almost didn't get the main picture for this one - my computer tried to eat their camera's memory stick. Thanks Uncle John for helping me get it out!

DECEMBER
(David Weavers - thank you for putting up with my nagging you and for sending me your pictures!)