Yesterday was a really good day!  We woke up to this sight on the front door. ( I had to minimize the pic cause the reflection in the glass of me in my robe isn't that great)  Anyway, it was really sweet.  The Young Women had written Kelley little notes of thanks for his work in the bishopric. Many ward members have been so kind to thank him for his service.  I know it means a lot to him.

Then I drove up to Riverdale to meet with my sisters. We met at Applebees for lunch and had the most interesting waiter.  He was so peculiar, but very attentive and efficient. He had us all laughing.

  We haven't gotten together for quite a while so it was great to see everyone!  We got caught up on their families and just enjoyed visiting.  I feel so lucky to have sisters to share my joys and sorrows with cause I know they will always understand and support me.   I wish so much we lived closer so we could do this more often.

After lunch we went out to the car to have a little birthday celebration for Leslie.

Brenda has been copying mum and daddy's diaries onto the computer and always has some good stories for us. (Teina is storing them at her house, so when we get together Teina will bring a new volume for Brenda to work on)  It's so interesting to learn about what went on and what mum and daddy's life was like when we were all young.  Daddy has such a way with words, I can just hear him talking as we read them.  It just makes me love them even more to hear of the struggles they had with Bruce but the love and hope they continued to have for him that he would straighten out his life.  At the end of each year, daddy would talk about what our family had accomplished and things he wished he'd done better.  He would always find the greatest joys in just watching us kids grow and learn and our achievements and funny things we did.  He talked about his gratitude for the simple things he enjoyed in his life...Good health, our family, enough money to keep food on the table.  He would never toot his own horn and say anything about all the service that he gave throughout the year, but that was what I saw.  He was always helping someone with a project or pouring cement, cleaning out a ditch, or cutting down a tree.  He would spend about every afternoon at the church when they were building the new ward house.(back in the day when they would let members contribute their service) 

You wouldn't catch him relaxing or watching tv very often. He would work from sun up till sundown and would get restless in the winter when the sun went down early and he couldn't do any work outside.  Then you'd find him doing some project in the house or sitting in his den, reading a book or writing in the diary.

 He watched after his siblings and especially his brother Clyde who had polio and did innumerable acts of service for him and Pat.  He would get the mail for his mom and Pat and Clyde every day and stop by their house on the way home from his milk route, doing any chores that needed to be done.

He was always working to make the yard even more beautiful.  Keeping mum happy with projects she wanted done, preparing the flower beds, planting the garden, and just the huge job of keeping all the lawns mowed and watered.  Irrigating the lawn and garden was a huge job!  (We found out after he passed away just what a big job it is)  We had nine shares of water, so that was nine hours of irrigating.  It would more often than not go through the night, so daddy would be out there with his lantern moving the pipe around and waiting.  He always said that made him more tired than anything...just waiting.  It's no wonder his heart wore out...he was about the hardest working guy I've ever known.  He was also the most humble man I've known too...I'm forever grateful for his influence in my life and that I got to have him for my dad.

  

We decided that we would try harder to get our families together more often so our kids and grand kids can have some of the great memories  with their cousins that we have with ours.

When I dropped Teina off, I went in her back yard to see her new patio.  It's really just beautiful! 

When I got home, Candice was here and said her and KC were thinking about going for a hike.  I have been wanting to go hiking and the weather is beautiful so I decided to join them.

While we were waiting for KC to get home from work, Candice had the great idea of trying to clean this poor chickens bum.  She had noticed it had this big dangly clump of pooh hanging there and wanted to help her out.(after giving it some thought, we decided there really is no way for a chicken to clean her own rear end) So we put on our rubber gloves, got some warm water and paper towels and went out to catch her.  This is harder than it may seem.  But after chasing her around for a while, then cornering her up in the coop, we got to work trying to get that big clump of pooh off.  Candice held her and I tried just pulling it off.  It was stuck on there good.  So I tried to soften it up with the warm water.  It was pretty disgusting.  Not as disgusting as the poor chicken whose whole butt was falling out, but a close second.  After soaking in the warm water for a minute, I was able to break it apart and get most of it off.  It still didn't look as good as we had hoped it would, but a great improvement.  I don't think the chicken even was mad at us for messing with her cause she sat real still while we were doing it.  

 Haha after we  put her back  though, we must have not have latched the gate cause next thing we knew they were all out in the garden! We were all chasing after them for a while to wrangle them back into the coop!

  Candice had planned on hiking to Secret Lake so we headed up Little Cottonwood Canyon.  When we got up to the trail head, there was a little snow in spots.  A cop pulled up behind us and told Candice that she had been speeding.  She really hadn't been going very fast, but I guess there was some flashing lights back by the resort that  she had driven too fast through.  Anyway, he asked us where we were going and we told him we were going to hike to Secret Lake.  He said it there was still a ton of snow up there but there was another trail that was just down the road that didn't have as much snow. So we hiked up that one.  It was really pretty up there.  Still quite a bit of snow, but the trail was mostly clear.

It started out pretty steep and we decided right away that we all needed to get in shape!

The view up there was really breathtaking and these kids are just a hoot to be with so even though it was shorter than we had planned, it was a good time!