Thursday, August 31, 2023

What happened in August

 We gathered with my SonSeeker friends.  Erin Blake is finally home from their family's year mission as mission leaders in the Denver North Mission... and Bob and Diane finished their Germany Alpine mission-- and with Doc Johnston dying... we thought we best get together one last time. 

Kim and I both showed up wearing boots.  She had just had surgery.  I broke my foot tap dancing in June.  I put a boot on myself and diagnosed myself.  Eric Belnap took my xray at his vet hospital.  It showed a stress fracture on my 3rd metatarsal.  Doc Johnson came for a bit to our gathering and I was the last patient he diagnosed.  He told me to take my boot off and that by 6 weeks out it would have healed.  H knew-- it was like Aug 18 on the dot- my foot stopped hurting and I could walk and hike for miles with no pain.  

We love this group of people so much.  We all started in the same ward together sharing callings and kids.  Si and Grand Foster, Kim and Eric Johnston, Lance and Heidi Bingham, Melinda and Wayne  Welch, Diane and Bob Lake, Erin and Bret Blake and Laura and Eric Belnap-- this picture is missing Kimi and Bob Farley who were at the hospital while their DIL Joy was giving birth.  

We called ourselves the Sunseekers for years because we were always trying to travel somewhere sunny!  So many of us have moved away from each other to Arizona, St. George, NSL, Layton and North Bountiful-- only 2 still live in the original Mueller Park 7th ward now.  We have since changed our name to the SonSeekers since we talk of Jesus and pray for each other often...and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a glue that binds us.

We officially moved to Layton.  We spent the first sleep in this house on Aug 8th.  we completely moved out of our Bountiful house Aug. 10th.   We have so many boxes to unpack.  We gave a ton away, but I got tired of making decisions around all of it, so now I'm in the new house I need to really decide what to give and what to keep.

What a relief.  We had a welcome to our home game night by that following weekend with most of Wayne's siblings.  

Add and Bre opened their show, "Something Rotten" at CPT.  It is glorious.  Such a fun show for both of them.  Addison played the lead role, Nick Bottom of the Bottom brothers who have Shakespeare as their nemesis.  Bre played the puritan Portia who gets together with Nick's brother Nigel.  IT really is a clever, funny show, that the audience ( and me) totally loved.  There was a "musical" song in the middle of it that was a show stopper--almost a standing ovation in the middle of the show for this 8-minute extravaganza.    They were in this show with one of their besties, Bailey Morris- who was the photographer for Laila's wedding.  She played Addison's wife.

Poppy and Alfie were so proud of their parents. 

Melinda, Holly, Addison, Wayne, Grandma Welch, Sophia, Landon, Andrew, Alex, Bre





The Belnaps threw their annual Utah Party-- food and gathering with so many Ute fans and non-Ute fans.  We take them all.  This was an Eric and Laura summer party thing originally...over the years, they put some money into it but their sons Ben and Og (Paul)  get the prizes, set it up, get a bounce house for the kids, cook and run it all.
Wayne, Laura, Melinda, Eric

McKay Wood one of the token Y fans

Melinda, Michelle Wood, Linda Wangsgaard

Monson, Lady, Poppy and Wayne




Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Cali trip with T and L

 We did our annual run away trip with Tim and Linda.  We love just doing fun, spontaneous trips and these two are always up for a good time.  This year we went to San Jose/Santa Cruz California and surrounding areas.  We rented a Tesla to drive around in, which was fun and a challenge trying to find charging stations and waiting for the charge....no bueno.

We had a fun time playing at the Santa Cruz beach and the boardwalk. We searched for sea glass everywhere we went.









Searching for Sea glass at Davenport beach and watching an amazing sunset. 








Checking out Capitola – my new favorite, quaint beach town. Good Mexican food, colorful buildings and Antiquing.










Plus Monterey for the hundreds of sea lions sunning themselves on the shore ... and more sea glass hunting. We also made our obligatory dance video-that we always do when we travel together, on the boardwalk.







...and going to a Redwood Forest with gigantic trees.  We actually went in a giant redwood and stood up inside. Redwoods grow for hundreds of years-- thousands. Their redwood is poison to insects so they don't get diseased too often. Their bark is so strong the tree can be burned on the outside and still grow for hundreds of years. Amazing.








Throw in good food and lots of laughs and we had a wonderful, quick 2 ½ days.