It Won't Be Long Now

When I married Jeanne I had a pretty good mustache. When I met her I actually had quite a handlebar mustache. As I look back at it now, I don't know how I got her to go out with me a second time, but she did. A few months after we had met I took a photo to give to her and even though I had been looking in the mirror with that mustache for some time, when I saw it in the photo it looked ridiculous to me so I cut off the handlebars and just kept it as a normal mustache. I didn't shave that off until Kathryn was about 18 months old, and when I went to get her out of her crib she wouldn't come to me at first. That was early 1980. I never grew facial hair again until around 2004, when I experimented with a goatee for about 4 weeks and then shaved it off. While Jeanne was away for a few days at BYU Education Week, I decided to try it again, and this one I've had for just over two months, though it seems longer. If you looked closely on any posts that included a photo with me in it over the past couple months you could see it but I thought I should get one good close up. I'm pulling a trick on a friend so it will be gone in a couple days, but I thought I should record it for posterity. As if posterity really cared.

Happy Thanksgiving

I thought I'd just take a moment to tell you about our Thanksgiving day festivities. Yes, we are still working on the kitchen. We have put a couple layers of mud on the walls since the dry walling. As you can see, the really fun part is the sanding. You can definitely see where my goggles and dust mask were. The whole kitchen had a layer of dust about the same as my head did after we were done. Fortunately, this was done a few days ago, not today. Two or three more like this and we might have it ready for texturing the inside of the sky light and the ceiling and then the primer paint. I can hardly wait.

Today being Thanksgiving day we decided not to have it at our house. This is what our kitchen looks like today, complete with plastic hanging to keep the dust in the kitchen as much as possible.


Melissa was kind enough to invite us over to her and Jeff’s place, along with Wade’s family. Eric was having his Thanksgiving with Jannica’s family this year. As you would expect, Melissa had everything just perfect, and even got creative and put a little reminder around each glass of someone who we wish was there, but could not be. Only 10 of us from a family of 27. We sure missed a lot of people. Maybe next year Jeanne and I will do Thanksgiving in some other state???



Makenna and Wade had to leave early to head down to Las Vegas for a Soccer tournament that she is playing in. She wanted to share a little love with the camera.

I love Thanksgiving. It is a day when I get to spend most of it with the people I love the most, and which are the things I am most thankful for in this world. That is why we missed those who weren't there so much. Hope all of you, even the ones who weren't at Melissa and Jeff's house, had a wonderful thanksgiving and that you were reminded of the many many things which God has blessed us with that we are thankful for.

Just in case anyone is not aware of it, if you want a better look at any photo you can just put your mouse pointer on the photo and click on it and you will get a full size image.

I Got the Cutest Video

This cute video showed up in my inbox and I thought you would like to see it to. He is such a smart boy!!!
To view this just click on the play button in the lower left corner.
Enjoy!

The Mind Reader

I know what you are thinking. . . . Yes I do. . . . Yes I do. But besides that I'll bet you noticed when you first looked at this post, that it was just a little different. Maybe you noticed that it popped up just a little faster, or maybe the type is just a little clearer. Whatever it was that you noticed there is a good reason for it. You probably guessed that I added this post with my brand new laptop computer. Well, okay, it's not brand new. Eric had it for a little while, but really never used it, so it was taking up space. We took it to the computer place and had Windows Vista taken off and installed XP. I did that because I don't think Vista is compatable with a lot of my programs. Oh, and I also had them add another gig of memory. Mostly I got this for using for email and the blogs and the family web site. It has the Centrino duo chip and, now, 2 Gb of memory so it should be very fast. I also got a wireless network router that works with my VOIP system (Vonage phone). Hopefully I'll be able to sit in the family room or, in the summer, out on the back porch and do my blogging, email and family web site stuff. Also, when we travel I will have my computer. That's all for now, but next time you see me ask to see my new laptop, then I will feel like you really care.

Love to all,
Dad

Kind of a Milestone Reached

You bet, there is still plenty to do, but there is something about getting the sheet rock all back in place and closed in that makes it "kind of a milestone". In goes the last piece!! Yahoo!!

I had two days off in a row, yesterday and today, and I decided I really wanted to get the sheet rock finished so I started out with framing in the skylight. - It was sure nice to have Eric's nail gun set these last couple weeks. That helped a lot with putting in extra boards and getting any last touch framing done. - Once it was framed in I went ahead and sheet rocked it. I knew that the side walls would be a challenge because I wanted to do them in one piece and they were a pretty weird shape. Thanks to Jeanne's help in measuring and cutting it went in perfectly the first time. You don't have to look very close to see that there was a time span between the photo with just the framing and the photo with the sheet rock in.



In the first photo below you can clearly see the new sheet rock because of the different color. We certainly did not have to use green board, but that was what we had left over and it definitely does not hurt to use it. In the second picture you see the rest of the kitchen done in the green board. We only used green board because we are going to be putting wet stuff on it to put the back splash of stone on it.

Note: Just because we are in the middle of a remodel doesn't mean we can't find a place for the beautiful art our grandchildren send us! :-)

And the Winner Is. . . . .

Congratulations to Eric!

He was the first person to correctly identify the Stove, Microwave, Refrigerator and Dishwasher, so he wins a prize worth $$$. It's a sad thing when I have to bribe people to at least go and look at my blog. I don't know what I'll give him yet, all I know is that it has to be worth at least $2.00 to qualify to be worth "dollars". Don't forget to check in often for more exciting happenings on the Empty Nesters' Blog and The Worlds Best Blog.

Scary Scary Night

What the heck do old people do on night made for kids? Our ward had a Trunk or Treat, but we decided not to do that, partly because I had to work and didn't get home until just about the time it started. It was mighty quiet at work and they kept bugging me to make a pumpkin for the pumpkin contest. They wanted every department represented. Since I was the only one in our department at the time I finally agreed and created the following masterpiece.

WANT TO WIN A PRIZE WORTH UP TO $$$?

The first person to post a comment correctly identifying all of the carvings on this pumpkin will win a prize worth up to $$$.

I guess just before I got home Lori brought Cody and Colt over to see Grandma. Fortunately, Jeanne took a picture so I could see how cute or in this case scary they looked. Later on, Eric and Jannica brought the kids over. Such a beautiful family. We wish we could have seen the rest, but it was sure nice to see the Grubbs on their blog.




We hope everybody had a happy Halloween.

Update on Kitchen

Sadly, not much has been happening this week. We started out with a bang. I had Tuesday off so Monday evening and Tuesday I got busy on the wiring and then hanging and wiring the canned lights. We had quite a time figuring exactly where we wanted them. Before we put up the ceiling dry wall we wanted to be sure they worked and so we tested them and they worked perfect the first time.


Tuesday Evening Melissa and Jeff came over again and we put up the ceiling. We could not have done it without help and we sure appreciate them being there every time. As you look at the picture below, you see what looks like a ragged edge or fringe along the edge where the new sheetrock meets the old. Since I was joining new with old I decided to use a trick that Dustin taught me years ago and instead of cutting the edge I peeled the extra sheetrock off to leave that edge which will be laid out over the old stuff to try to create an invisible seam. Before we put up the new sheetrock we tried to peel off some of the old paint and texturing along the edge of the old work. I'll let you know how it works. Tuesday was the only day we worked on it this week because of my work schedule and I had a lesson to give on Sunday and a client's wedding to prepare for coming up in a couple weeks.

I have all morning both tomorrow and Tuesday so I'm looking forward to getting quite a bit more done, inclucing getting the last electrical box in - I've been waiting trying to figure out exactly where it needs to be - and getting the sky light tunnel built in. For some reason I've had a real mental battle with the best way to do that.

Watch for more updates.

I Promised Pictures

This post won’t make much sense unless you read the previous post. Hopefully this will help you understand what’s been happening around our house the last couple days. As you can see by the first picture, we actually started some work before it was taken since the original wood frame and light fixture in the center of kitchen have been down for months because the florescent fixtures were going out and we knew we would be doing this so we couldn’t bring ourselves to replace the bad ones. In addition the light over the sink has been disassembled for some time.


(Click on any photo to see it full size)

On Wednesday morning we started by taking out the upper cupboards and storing them downstairs. In the second photo you can see the fridge is also gone and all the stuff from inside is on the counter.



As my previous post indicated, one of the biggest time users was getting the attic insulation removed. After hours of blowing it around and then sucking it up with the shop vac and moving it to different parts of the attic, we then started removing some of the drywall off the ceiling and blowing it away and then sucking it up and bagging it to be put back in later. Melissa thought that we had had so much fun she wanted to try it too.



Finally you can see the kitchen with almost all of the dropped ceiling removed. I say almost because if you look closely you will see that some of the 2X6s remain with wires running into them. Before I could remove the boards I had to take the wires out so I could put them down through the tops of the walls. The final picture shows with the drywall removed and the electrical boxes etc. exposed.



Again, I can't thank Melissa and Jeff enough. They truly saved us on this one.

It Has Begun

Almost a year ago Jeanne and I decided to do some kitchen remodeling, including a sky light and tearing out the dropped ceiling. "After all, tearing out a dropped ceiling can't be too bad, it's just a bunch of 2X4s with drywall stuck to them bringing the ceiling down about 12 inches" He said, stupidly, in his mind. A couple weeks ago you saw the post about the best lit attic in Utah. That was the beginning, yesterday we started taking out the dropped ceiling. First we had to take all the cupboards down - just the upper ones, and then the fun began. I did not count on the fact that we had a home built by Craythorne Construction. We bought the house partially because it is a Craythorne built home, and we knew his reputation for quality. This dropped ceiling is done almost entirely in 2X6s not 2X4s and it was solid as a rock. I had heard from at least three sources that one of the biggest challenges is the blown in insulation. Guess what, one of the biggest challenges is the blown in insulation. Today is the end of the second day of working extremely hard to get that out and get ready to start putting it back together. As I look back on the last two days I can't believe how much we got done so far.

However!!! We would not be anywhere near as far as we are without the WONDERFUL help of Melissa and Jeff!!!

Not only did they come and help for several hours both yesterday and today, tonight, Jeff brought Delicious Leger's sandwiches, soup and drinks which gave us supper tonight and will give Jeanne and I lunch tomorrow. I cannot tell you how much we appreciate them.

Yes, we took pictures and some day soon, when I'm better rested, I'll post some. Check back often.

Memoirs of Kentucky '07

Yes, it's been a month since we returned from our visit to Kentucky. It was such a wonderful visit that I wanted to make sure I tried to do it justice in my blog post. After all, if it hadn't been for this visit we probably wouldn't even have this blog because that is one of the things we did while we were there.

Thanks to Trevor for making the flight arrangements, we flew from Salt Lake City to Chicago and then on to Louisville where both our daughters and Kathryn's family met us at the airport. We were so excited to see them, and they seemed to be excited to see us. It took a while, but we even got a happy smile from Campbell.

I think Hallie was most excited because she knew I was bringing the Tickle Monster with me. She couldn't wait, and neither could I.

We had a great time seeing their new home in real life. I must not have watched the video they brought home very close, because the house we walked into bore very little resemblance to what I remember seeing then. It is a lovely home with lots of room. (And now I understand it even has a working oven. ;-) ) All of the rooms are very roomy and comfortable. With the three of us (including Melissa) barging in we were not at all crowded.



We had some great times both at their home and away. You can't be with Kathryn and Melissa without playing some games, so we did that and enjoyed some time on the back porch playing with the kids' bubble machine and of course just watching and being with them. I was also honored to get to go to Hallie's school and eat lunch with her and her friends. I think the only place I've ever been that was louder than that lunch room was the Indianapolis 500. What a delightful cacophony of happy children.



We had such a great time visiting some of the places. We enjoyed a Sunday evening of riparian entertainment on the banks of the Ohio River near downtown Louisville. Besides watching the kids play we got a free watercraft show as a local boy enjoyed his stand up jet ski. I think he enjoyed us watching him as much as we did. It was fun when the river boat tour went by. He enjoyed showing off for them and then gave them a really good fire hose style spray from his water jet.



The Louisville Zoo and the Kentucky Horse Park were certainly highlights also. It's hard to say that because the whole visit was such a highlight. I could not believe the size and beauty of the Rhinos there. As you can see Jeanne and I bagged one of our own, but they wouldn't let us take it home. I think it would look great in the front yard. We all loved the bird cage. Believe it or not, Megan had no clue that there was a bird sitting on her head. Of course Hallie was very aware of it, but she didn't even flinch. I don't know why, but it didn't take long and the birds were all over me. In the middle of the zoo is a really fun water park with lots of cooling squirts and showers, and no additional charge - what a great idea! At the Kentucky Horse Park we got to see some of the most beautiful horses you've ever seen and some genuine race champions close up and personal.

All we wanted was a silly ball
There always has to be something that, though it may not be a highlight, is certainly memorable. Such was the situation with our trip to the famous Valhalla Golf Club. Notice the word "club" not course. There is a difference. It all started very innocently as we were headed out to the zoo. Melissa remarked that Jeff had mentioned to her that if she got near a golf course that she couldn't remember the name but she thought it started with a V, it had something to do with the Ryder Cup and he would like a souvenir ball from there. We searched our GPS and found a place called Valhalla. As it turned out it was only a few miles south of Kathryn and Trevor's place and not really far out of the way on the drive home from the zoo. Trevor and I decided we would stop there and pick one up for him on the way home. Our GPS led us straight to it, and as we got there we could see we were in a different league. First of all the iron gates at the entrance. Fortunately, some idiot had left the entrance gate open and so we just drove in like we knew what we were doing. As we drove past the manicured course we knew we were on golf's hallowed ground. It truly was a beautiful sight. Soon we pulled up the club house and, as you might imagine, it was different from the local public courses that we are used to. As I got out of the car and walked toward the entry I noticed the young men in their red knit shirts and khaki shorts cleaning the carts and lining them up. I greeted them with a friendly smile and nod. I walked into the pro shop and started glancing around at the nice displays and products. I was quickly approached by a young lady who inquired if I was a member or a guest. I told her I was neither, that I just wanted to know if she had any golf balls with Valhalla and the Ryder Cup logo on them. She informed me that Jeans were not allowed but she supposed if we hurried she could get me the balls and I could be on my way. I got a sleeve, of which one went to Jeff and one went to Eric and I kept the third, and we made our escape before we embarrassed Valhalla Golf Club any further.Frankly I don't think even if I had mentioned I was with "Dr. Grubbs", it would have mattered. He was wearing jeans also.


While we're on the topic of Golf, I don't think any vacation is complete without some golf - Unfortunately I've had some "incomplete" vacations by that definition. Kathryn mentioned Trevor and I going golfing a few times and Trevor was kind enough to humor me, even though it is not his favorite game. We searched and searched on the Internet and finally found what looked like a suitable course (meaning cheap and close) just a few miles away. Trevor called and asked if they rented clubs, and after the voice on the other end of the line went and checked in the shed we found that they did. We arranged a Tee time and headed out. Upon arrival I noticed it had a nice club house and we headed in. The gentleman told us he had set the clubs outside, and as I looked it was obvious that this was a collection of clubs that had been lost and forgotten by many different golfers over the years, that and he only had one set. I figured there were two of us and we were only playing nine holes so I would buy 6 balls and just keep what was left over at the end. Out we went with our shared bag of clubs and six balls to try out an unknown course. They had recently reset the holes and so he pointed us toward Tee #1 and off we went. To this day I'm not sure if we got the right holes in the right order, but we ended up after nine holes on a green that was fairly close to the club house so we must have done okay. Nine holes usually takes about 2 hours but with only two players on a cart it's not uncommon to see it done in much less. I think we took about two and a half to three and much of that time was spent out in the briers and bushes looking for errant balls. In one case I saw my ball land close to the edge of the fairway and we never did find it. However, you'll be interested to know that we came back with two balls. Oh, by the way, we found seven that weren't ours. Let's see 6 + 7 - . . . oh well, you get the idea. The Score? Who knows I quit counting after the second hole.

It's trite, but it's true: All good things must come to an end - and I'm not talking about this post. The time came when we had to come back home. We had arranged to fly out of Indianapolis instead of Louisville. It saved us some $ but I thought Indianapolis was only about 60 miles away. . . It turned out to be a little over 100. But also, Jeanne had not been back to Indianapolis since we moved away in 1984, and even though I was back to Indianapolis once I had not been to see our old home since we'd moved either. We wanted to get a photo of our old house where we lived when Kathryn was about the age Megan is now. One goal I had while we were back there that I had not accomplished yet was to take the family to eat at White Castle. An epicurean experience not to be missed. Well we kept missing it and finally had to drive about 9 miles off our route to get to one, only to drive right by one about half an hour later in Indianapolis on the way to the house. Even as hard as we tried, we couldn't eat a whole case so Trevor had about a dozen or so to take home with him for supper that evening. Strangely, we never heard what happened to those. ?? When we finally saw the house we were somewhat saddened to see how the yard had been let go, even though the outside of the house itself looked much the same as when we left it over 23 years ago.

Our homeward trip took us from Indianapolis to Las Vegas and then to Salt Lake City. We found all well when we got home, but look forward to getting to Kentucky again before Trevor's residency is completed.

Utah's Best Lit Attic by Scott

Some time back we decided we were going to remodel our kitchen and take out the dropped ceiling. While we were at it there were a couple other changes we needed to make, a big one was to add a sky light to the dining area. We've complained about the low light level in the kitchen/dining since we moved in. This past April we went and bought almost all of the stuff we needed to do the kitchen and the sky light Earlier this week I decided that we may not have too many days left where the weather would allow us to get up and cut a hole in the roof for the new sky light. I read the instructions a couple times and decided I'd do it Thursday afternoon. After all it should only take a couple or three hours to just cut the hole and install it. I wasn't going to put in the whole thing, though I'm sure that would only take a couple or three more hours, but we didn't have the drywall yet. Somewhere around 11:00 yesterday morning I got out the ladder and went up into the attic to take a look around. Too make a very long story a little shorter when it got dark last night all we had was a big hole in the roof with the wood to put the sky light on, with quite a bit of bare roof around it, and it was threatening to rain. All I could do was rest the sky light on the wood to cover the hole and pray that the rain missed us at least until today when I could get back up there. After all there was only 30 minutes to an hour's work left to do. The Lord did bless us and the rain went around us. I was on the roof about 9 o'clock this morning and done about 1:30, with no break for lunch or anything. I was up and down that ladder so many times, on my knees removing and replacing shingles and a dozen other things. Even with knee pads my knees are red and raw. It would be hard to find a muscle that doesn't hurt. I could go on and on, but I won't. I'll just tell you that putting in your very first sky light and trying not to leave any place to leak in the roof is a lot less fun than I thought.

Scott's First Input

Those of you who know me, know that I'm a perfectionist, so, my biggest problem is going to be just getting started where I am. I spend much time figuring out how to make this blog a perfect work, one which all others will envy. The problem is by the time I get that figured out it will be too late. I'll be long dead and gone. So I'm going to try really hard to just let this flow. I may have another blog or two for my individual stuff or maybe more commercial stuff. We shall see.

Scott