September 19, 2011

Dear Children,

We just returned from California where we stayed at Shawn and Aubrey’s home while they ran a Ragnar relay race from San Francisco to Napa. They left early Friday morning, ran through the night and returned home Saturday just before dinner. They had a lot of fun with their team of twelve runners, mostly from their ward. They added costumes and decorated their two support vans with a Hillbilly theme so Shawn and Aubrey had fun with that! They met a couple from Seattle in their group and now want to run a Ragnar run up there next. That might mean we will see them on the way and have Greg and Bryson stay with us!!!

Meanwhile, we just played and played. Gregory and Bryson are bundles of energy and it was beautiful weather so we spent a lot of our time outdoors. They have a wonderful park not far from their home so we spent hours there both days. I love the smell of eucalyptus around the park and in town as it reminds me of growing up in the Bay Area. Between Dad’s gift to talk to strangers and Gregory’s love of talking to anyone, we met everyone at the park. We left the park each day with everyone calling Greg by his name! It is a good thing he is so personable as he is also very opinionated if someone shows up wearing a team T-shirt. Two twin boys showed up sporting Cal Bears shirts and the first thing he said to them was, “We are not a fan of Cal Bears. We like the Oregon Ducks!” I tried to explain to Greg that, although we have teams we love (and I myself am NOT a Duck fan; I think it rather embarrassing to come from a state where they are so caught up being a Duck or Beaver!), we don’t say anything to people who love another team. I don’t think that made a bit of sense to Greg.

Bryson and Greg were like the Energizer Bunny; they could have stayed at the park longer each day but on Friday, everyone of us finally agreed that it was time to leave for dinner. Earlier in the day we had all walked to the grocery store to buy ingredients for what they asked to have served for dinner, quesadillas; easy enough! It is so great that they live within walking distance of a Safeway. The boys were sufficiently exhausted so it was dinner, bath, special requested Bob the Builder and then bed. Dad and I were sufficiently exhausted also so we also picked out a movie from their shelves and watched one movie and followed them to bed!

On Saturday, from the moment we entered the park, Greg was on a mission to find a lizard and capture it. That he did, after much concentration, and he took it around introducing everyone at he park to “Endo”. After a while we convinced Greg to leave Endo’s seemingly lifeless body on the warm concrete to warm up and he finally perked up and started moving again only to be captured again and fall to his fate from the top of the slide.

It wasn’t long before Greg found and caught “Jeppi” who was without a tail and he sat by Greg (lifeless again) while we convinced him to eat his lunch. After a couple of drops, it was time to go home. Shawn and Aubrey had reported that they were back in town so we agreed to bring Jeppi home with us since we thought it would be nice for the parents to handle the release of Jeppi!

It was fun to spend the evening with Shawn and Aubrey and hear their stories of the race. It sounded like they were with a great and lively group of friends. The only thing that put a damper on the evening was sitting down to watch BYU get beat so badly by Utah. Grrrr! I was just very thankful that we did not fly to see that game. Katie, Morty and Nate all did and spent a lot of money for their tickets also. Morty told me all about their Utah trip. It sounds like they were able to do a lot and see lots of relatives. They stayed at Grandma Bitter’s home, ate at Bill and Heidi’s for Sunday dinner, met up with Adrianne and Blake on Saturday at Grandma’s and went to church at Dave and Karla’s ward since it was a later ward. Heather Pierson Bryce is also in that ward. They stood up Adrianne and Blake up for Sunday breakfast as they all slept in. I bet they missed something yummy knowing Blake and Adrianne.

We came home to a little mishap with our refrigerator somehow getting turned off. We must have twisted the dial to off inadvertently. There were several things we had to throw out but most things stayed cool enough. We did some quick clean up and headed to church after getting home from the airport.

I haven’t even been out to the garden to see what is going on there. Things are getting pretty busy with SendOutCards when I am in town and I don’t have much energy to keep up with the garden on those precious home days! I made a batch of pickle relish with all of our cucumbers last week. Thursday night, I am scheduled to fly to Utah to help Blake and Adrianne do some painting of their new place. They were so happy to finally sign papers on Tuesday and get the keys on Thursday; just in time to save another month of storage fees. Dad was going to come that night but, while we were in California, he learned that the job he needed to pour today, needed some changes. I wish he still had a crew that could have done the work on Friday without him there so he could have moved ahead as planned. He will instead come to Utah on Friday night now so we will have to work hard in a smaller amount of time.

I am sorry to tell you that Ammon Gustafson passed away on Saturday. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer two years ago and lived far longer than the doctors said he would. Their family moved in after many of you had already left home but I know that he was a favorite leader of Nate’s and as I look back in pictures, I see that he came back to the ward for Aaron’s homecoming after his mission.

Our fence no longer looks like a war zone. Dad was able to salvage enough boards scattered amongst the mess to put up a temporary fence that will look good for the next month or so until Dad has time to cut away the concrete wall in the areas where the metal clips were sheared or twisted off. We don’t want him working on that until the concrete bids and work for now are finished so it will probably be in November.

I am going to try and stay ahead of myself this time and kept the news short. Have a wonderful week ahead. It is beautiful here. I love you, Mom