September 2020

Craig and I had a very busy month.  We harvested peaches and Italian prunes and canned and dried fruit.  We also harvested many vegetables.  It has been a slow year for tomatoes, but a bounteous crop of cucumbers just kept coming all month.  We took two trips this month, one to Debbie and Jim's cabin in Montana and one to Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef.  The weather was beautiful in Montana.  We enjoyed visiting Yellowstone park and West Yellowstone.  We had a delicious dinner at the Firehole Barbecue.  I did a little painting, as well as some reading and family history.  Bryce Canyon was very enjoyable.  We took some good hikes on the rim of the canyon.  We had a swim at the hotel.  It was nice to have to the pool to ourselves.  We had some good food at the Canyon Diner and the Pines Restaurant.  We had some especially good raspberry pecan ice cream as well.  It was good enough to compete with my all time favorite, Roasted Almond Fudge from BYU.  The weather was perfect.  We drove to Capitol Reef the next day.  It was too hot to hike there and we realized the rocky steep hikes were a little more than I felt comfortable with.  We had a great dinner at the Capitol Reef Cafe.  It is an old cafe that doesn't look great from the outside, but the food was great.  We also enjoy a swim at the hotel pool.  Octavia turned one year old at the end of the month.  We were especially grateful that Melany was able to get by without the chemotherapy she was supposed to have.  It was truly a miracle.

 August 2020

I had a really nice birthday at the beginning of the month. Kevin and Danica's family made dinner for me, including a delicious Texas sheet cake.  I received beautiful flowers from Craig and Ed and Donna.  We got new shutters for the front room.  Craig has been making changes in our desks.  He refinished our desk that belonged to my father.  It looks so much better.  He used a desk top Jim and Debbie gave us to make a desk for the office.  We have been having a bounteous harvest of cucumbers and blackberries.  I have also done a little watercolor painting.

July 24, 2020

We celebrated Pioneer day with a barbecue at Kevin's  ward pavilion in back of his church.  It was a very hot day.  Craig barbecued some really good hamburgers.  The kids played games afterward, even though it was really hot.  We celebrated Danica's birthday.  I was recovering from foot surgery so I mostly sat around.

 

Trip to Montana

July 7-11

We drove up to see Debbie and Jim again at their cabin.  We had a good trip.  We were blessed to discover that our tire was going flat before we were really stranded.  We discovered the problem near a Costco and we got it fixed quickly.  It was such a relief from the heat to be at the cabin.  We had lots of good food.  Craig worked on the property,  transplanting a few trees and clearing dead wood.  I worked on family history and read and visited.  We went to Yellowstone park one day and loved seeing artists point in Yellowstone.  We enjoyed a delicous meal at the Firehole Barbecue.  Missy and Mike came the last night we were there and we had a nice visit around the campfire while we made s'mores.  It is so kind of Jim and Debbie to share their home with us.  It is in such a beautiful place.

Debbie took us on a pleasant hike to Cliff Lake

Artist Point at Yellowstone

July 4, 2020

The Fourth of July was a quiet celebration for us.  We had Dan and Danica over for dinner.  Later Craig and I watched fireworks at the Orem Community hospital parking lot.  They were great fireworks.  Provo made it possible for more people to enjoy the fireworks by doing them at three locations.

Kevin and Melany spent the fourth visiting Brent and Loni in California.  I am glad they could get together.  Emily shared some beautiful family pictures they did on the fourth of July.