Repair Bill

The repair bill for the Taurus alone is over $7000. Can you believe that!!! This is for a minor rear end collision that wasn't even bad enough to deploy the airbags. How can that much damage happen from just a minor accident? All my friends are just as shocked as I am.

Car Wreck

I got in a car wreck yesterday evening. Fortunately no one was hurt. I rear-ended a little red KIA. One of the people in the KIA said their back was hurting them but no one went to the hospital and the air bags didn't deploy. My car got the worste damage, it only damaged the back bumper on their car. On our Tauras the hood is dented and won't close and the bumper is destroyed and the insides falling out and the little light below the headlight is knocked out. I was able to drive it home. On Monday the damage will get appraised and then it can be repaired. Hopefully it won't take to long to fix. And hopefully USAA won't raise our insurance rates too much.

Meanwhile Jacquelyn is gone to Arizona. She left on the 1st and will be returning on the 15th.

I hope she's enjoying the sunny weather down in the dessert because it sure is chilly and damp here at home.

She's down in Arizona to close out on the investiment house we are buying and to get it cleaned up and ready to rent. The house is in Laredo Ranch edition in San Tan Valley, Arizona. It's east and south of Mesa and Apache Junction.

Here's a picture of the front of the house. It did close and she got the keys yesterday.

She also gets the chance to visit with her sister Conni. This is Conni with her husband Layne and their foster child Quinton.

She also get to visit with her Mom and Dad who live real close in Apache Junction. Hope she's having fun because things aren't going real well back at home with the car wreck and all.

Thanksgiving

We had a fun Thanksgiving and we have so much to be grateful for. The most important is family. We are so thankful to each and every member of the family, young or old. We got to see a lot of people, we had 17 for Thanksgiving. Tianna and most of her family - Jim, Amery, Dallen, Evan, Ashton and James, travelled the furthest from Spokane and stayed a few nights. Doranda and her family - Bob, Tucker and Penelope came from Bremerton and also stayed a few nights. Malachi and Lane live only about 20 minutes away and were here and Talitha and John are only about 5 minutes away. It was great to visit and we got to talk to most everyone else on the phone except for Isaac in Japan.

Here's our turkey, which John deep fried in peanut oil.

We had to set up two tables for everyone.

There was lots of time for playing with grandchildren around the house and going on walks and riding scooters and for the adults card games and shopping on Black Friday.

The snow was all over, which we don't get a lot of and especially not this time of year, so it made this Thanksgiving unusual.

We had the living room set up with games and puzzles and riddles. Here was one of the hard ones. How many nails can you balance on a nail head?

We had ginger-bread house contest. It looked like a lot of fun. Caleb and Jacquelyn made this one.

Talitha brought over candy for the children to make the traditional count-down strings to Christmas.

The ward had Turkey Bowl football. Caleb played the whole time and caught several passes. I even played a little althought I didn't get the ball once. I was a good blocker though.

Here's the winning order of nails in the nail balancing contest. 10

Thank you everyone for making this a wonderful Thanksgiving.

It's Snowing Already

We got our first snow of the year and it's only Thanksgiving time. It's snowing right now as I'm posting this blog and it's already sticking to the cars and rooftops. Of course the grass is all still green and Caleb actually did some mowing just yesterday. It looks so funny outside to see green grass and snow together at the same time. This part of the country is weird.

I went on a business trip to Baltimore and then for the last day we had to go up to D.C. for a one hour meeting. After it was over I had some free time so I took the Metro into D.C. downtown and saw some of the National Monuments and went to a Smithsonean Museam.

Lincoln Memorial. It is awesome awesome awesome.

At the museum I saw some fameous paintings.

This is a Rembrant. I'll have to look up the name and add it later.

Don't know the name of this one either but I think it's fameous.

I liked this one two.

Eve giving the forbidden fruit to Adam.

This was my grand favorite of all time. I have always loved this statue of the Thinker ever since I was a little boy. I even had a small statue of the Thinker on my bookshelves when I was growing up.

Veterans Day

Today is Veterans Day and Jacquelyn and I are both veterans. We went out to Applebees and got free dinner they were giving to honor veterans and then to Krispy Kreme for free donuts. We were both in the Air Force, in fact, that's where we met each other. I was at the Air Force Academy for 4 years and then an officer at Space Division in Los Angeles for 5 years (minus some training at Williams AFB in Arizona). Jacquelyn went to OTS in Texas and then was an officer at Space Division in Los Angeles for 4 years and then at McConnell AFB in Wichita for 4 years.

This is a picture of me at the Academy my senior year in the Cadet Parade Uniform.

This is a picture of Jacquelyn in the Air Force.

Here she is hard at work. What a cute smile. She was a Cost Analysis.

A fun thing she got to do at McConnell AFB was to go on a helicopter flight, which she loved, especially the low level flying. At McConnell she was the base comptroller for a while.

We even had a military wedding and we used a saber to cut the cake. No one messed with us.

This is Jacquelyn getting a commendation. She has on her pregnancy uniform.

When we weren't busy with military matters we kept busy raising children.

Jacquelyn was in charge of organizing a big WinCon conference for the Military Industrial Complex. It was held at the Sheridan in Los Angeles and was full of big time Generals and Corporate CEO.

Halloween

We like to decorate some for Halloween to get into the fun. These are mostly toys from MacDonald's Happy Meals.

At church this year our ward did a Halloween Social instead of the usual Trunk Or Treat. It was nice to do something extra since Halloween is on a Sunday this year and most of the kids from church will not be going out around the neighborhoods as part of keeping the Sabbath Day holy.

At the Halloween party there was a Halloween type carnival in the building so all the kids got to dress up and play games and it had lots of contests, like a cake walk, or bingo, or go fish or a bean bag toss, etc. Then there was a costume parade and then the kids went Trick Or Treating to the rooms and we volunteered to decorate one of the rooms and hand out candy.

Ours was actually the scariest room and some of the kids were afraid to come inside. You have to picture it in the dark from the eyes of a little kid. The hall was lit but the room was dark so you couldn't see except for the light from the head of Pumpkin Man and little artificial candles. Plus we had really scary Halloween music playing. Some parents had to carry or drag their kids in. The candy was right next to Pumpkin Man in that bowl with the hand that would grab at you when you reached for some candy. Plus Caleb hid behind the Pumpkin Man. It was a lot of fun for the kids, and for us too.

Here are some fall pictures from the back yard. It's chilly and rainey outside but also very pretty if you look past the wetness.

Happy Halloweeen everyone.