Tiptoe through the Tulips

Hello everyone. And HAPPY BIRTHDAY (21) to Brien! The tulips came late to Thanksgiving Point this year. Now that the Festival ended last Saturday this week is the best time to see them. I think they will be at their peak this weekend assuming the snow and cold don't kill them tonight or tomorrow. I took someone through today who was absolutely beside himself at every turn. I felt the same way and this is my 5th year of seeing them. Penelope, you should come back and see them; it would be worth the trip. Mom and Dad, it's not too late.

Two weeks ago Lyn and Hugh Mortenson came over from Grand Junction for the Tulip Festival and Lyn did storytelling with silly hats in the Secret Garden and then autographed and sold her children's books in the Visitors Center. It was really fun to see them. Debra and I had dinner with them at Harvest and had a wonderful visit catching up on families, etc. Then Peggy and Shelby went back with us on Saturday and attended her storytelling and visited some more.

Debra and I get to go on a whirlwind tour of children's museums next week. We leave Monday morning and fly to Boston, then Pittsburgh, Indianapolis and St. Louis to see some of the best children's museums in the country. It's our last look at what others are doing before we finalize our plans for Thanksgiving Point's new Museum of Natural Curiosity.

Debra and I went to Wilmington, North Carolina three weeks ago with our friends, Leonard and Cheri Reynolds. We had a great time relaxing and eating lots of sea food. We ate buckets (literally) of oysters, shrimp, crab cakes, clams, scallops - mostly accompanied by hush puppies or conch fritters. Very, very tasty. We spent a lot of time going to various video stores to find and rent the original "Cape Fear" with Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Polly Bergen. We were at Cape Fear so it seemed like the right thing to do. Some of us enjoyed it and some of us enjoyed making fun of the melodramatic acting... and some plain old bad acting. We also went to the Airlie Gardens and saw the Bottle Chapel - very cool; something I thought Dad should add to his collection of yard art. (I tried to post a picture but it didn't seem to work - I guess you'll have to google it on your own.) There was supposed to be an Azalea Festival, but they had had an early spring so there were very few azalea's to be seen. It's challenging to time things when weather and climate are involved.

This weekend Brien heads to Jacob Lake Inn, near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, to work for a couple of months. He's going with a couple of his returned missionary high school buddies. We hope he has a great experience. It will be good for him to be away from home and gain some independence.

We love you all and look forward to regular updates from each one of you. Love,

Mike

Penelope's Contribution

Who knows if this will even work...but here goes. Not really much going on here. However, we (Duane and I) do only have 3 more Mondays in this school year. That's 3 too many for me, but I guess I will survive. We have lots of veggies going crazy in dad's greenhouse but it's still freezing here so we can't put them out yet. We have lots of flowers there and at home that I"m really wanting to plant. So we're hoping for warmer weather. It's nice (but windy) during the day but below freezing at least once a week.
Allison, we called them potato bugs and also roly poly bugs. It is kind of gross that they are lice (if they really are). And it doesn't come as news flash to me that Hannah Montana is so famous, Maggie and I discussed that very topic at great length while we were getting her birthday pedicure.
We were sad (well at least I was) that we couldn't go to the Tulip Festival, but we had to come home for school.
I'm excited for the reunion this summer and really excited for summer.
Much love to everyone and I hope this really works!!! Pen

Missionary Farewell and Tulip Festival

Yesterday was a great day for many of us. Julie's nephew, John Anderson has his mission call to Hamburg, Germany and his farewell was yesterday. It was a really good Sacrament meeting and John did a great job. We had a huge turn out at Dave and Anita's for dinner after. Julie and I made a couple of salads that disappeared in a hurry. One was a sweet potato and black bean salad and the other was a soy bean and black bean salad. They both had corn in them and very light vinagrette dressings. They had lots of troops there and plenty of food. After we got done, Mike had called and left a mesage about the Thanksgiving Point Tulip Festival, so Julie called her sisters to see who wanted to go to see the tulips and we ended up with a big bunch at TGP to see the tulips. Several people there said they would get on the blog and get something in for this month.

Alison had said something about each person having an individual login and Jabe sent me the following instructions which I followed and it was really easy to do so each person who wants can have their own login.

"If you go into the Settings for the blog and then Permissions, you can add yourself as a contributor. Actually, I think you can have up 100 contributors for each blog, so everyone could get their own Blogger ID and then they'd be identified automatically when they logged in. I did it right after Allison put up that post (though I must admit I didn't know anything about it before then). I think you have to basically login as wasjb@wfrmls (or whatever) and then send a permission email or something to the new user account you want to add (so you could add Shash if you wanted). If I remember correctly, what it does then is it emails a link to you, which you then have to click on to make yourself a user. If you go to the Wanderer blog you will notice that it shows both me and Allison, as well as the Family one you set up, on the left side under contributors."

You will each have to use the login I emailed you to get in, then you can follow the instructions above and set up your own login and password.

Fun & Interesting? Doubtful, but Maybe...

So what's new with us? Not much. We got a fish tank (from Kristin's brother) and we bought 14 fish to put in it. It's not a very interesting story, but for those of you who are reading this online, rather than a hard copy, you can read all about it in our blog. There's plenty there that is interesting to me, but I make no promises that it will be interesting to you.

AJ is good. He's 6 1/2 months old and he's a happy kid. We went to Southern California a couple of weeks ago. This picture of AJ was taken at Dodger Stadium. He's sitting on Kristin's lap, but you can't really see her. He was very pleasant for most of the drive down to L.A. and back, and he was very well-behaved at the Dodger game and both days at Disneyland. He had his rotten moments, but I think we got off pretty easy.

At his 6 month check-up he got his 3rd round of immunizations, which he did not enjoy, but he recovered much more quickly than at the 2 and 4 month rounds. The first two times he cried a lot more and then was kind of ill-tempered for a few days after. This time he only cried until it was over and showed no ill effects at all. To be honest, I've wondered a little whether they actually gave him anything this time.


Alexa's good, too. She's 8 1/2 and cute as can be. She's cruising along through second grade and she still doesn't have enough to do when she's at our house. I wish she had some friends around here, but she doesn't go to school here (she goes to Driggs on 27th East and 45th South by her mom's house), and our primary doesn't really have much to offer, since most of the families in the ward are old with adult children who've long-since moved away. The bishop told me recently that more than a third of the families in our ward are the original owners of the homes. Since most of the houses were built between 1955 and 1964, well, do the math. But Alexa does pretty well in most any situation. She can play with kids that are 5 or more years older than she is, or kids that are 3 or 4 years younger, too. If we could find any kids that met that pretty simple requirement, we'd be set. There are a couple of semi-obnoxious (but pretty harmless) teenage boys next door, but that doesn't help us. She's been playing the violin for almost a year now and is doing very well. I think her teacher is kind of an idiot, but Alexa really likes her. I'm clear on the fact that Liz (the teacher) can play the violin very well. I'm not, however, sold on her ability to teach it to others.

Kristin just chopped (actually Peggy did the chopping) of about 11 inches of her hair, which is funny because she originally wanted to donate her hair to Locks of Love, but since they require 10 inches of hair, Kristin was afraid she'd have to cut off more than she was willing to part with. Then she saw Hilary Swank on the Rachael Ray show talking about a similar organization called Beautiful Lengths, but instead of making wigs for kids with cancer (which is what Locks of Love does), they make wigs for women with cancer. Kristin's sister-in-law, Amanda, has cancer, so I guess that hit close to home (and it helped that they only require 8 inches of hair for donation. The reason that whole thing is funny to me is that after Peg cut off the "8 inches" (I put this in quotes because it was actually more like 10 1/2 inches), she ended up cutting off even more than that to make Kristin's hair into the style that Kristin thought she'd like. I guess she wants to color it, too, but we didn't tell Peggy she wanted to do that today, so we had to plan that one for another day. I like the way her hair turned out. She seems to like it also, but she commented that it wasn't as shocking as she had thought it would be. I have a vague recollection of having seen pictures of Kristin with her hair cut in a similar manner a long time ago (when she was in college, she thinks), but while she was pregnant with AJ and again just before she got it cut today, it was longer than it's ever been in her life. So now it's short. I like it, she likes it. It's all good.

An Open Invitation

Maggie turns 8 on Thursday and she will be getting baptized next Saturday May 3rd. We think somewhere around 4:00. More info to follow but all are invited.

Po-tay-to Po-tah-to (annoying how there's not really a good way to write that.)

It’s spring(ish) when a young man’s fancy to thoughts of bugs. Yes, it’s a magical time, a time when Maggie and Aidan delight in playing in the yard, in riding their bikes up and down the street, and in pulling up my paving stones and the rock edges of my flower beds, leaving them strewn haphazardly about the yard, and finding potato bugs.

When I was a kid we called them roly-polies. I’m not sure if the difference is a location thing or a timing issue (probably location, I also drink soda, not pop. Well, I don't drink either but that's not the point) But I looked them up (what would I do without google and wikipedia?) and found out that they’re actually woodlice.

Let me tell you how stoked I am to have my children bringing lice of any kind into my home.

Not very.

Actually I’m not sure if they’re technically woodlice or pill millipedes, having not checked whether they have two sets of legs per body segment (millipede) or just one (woodlouse). Now that I think about it, given the sheer volume of discovered, and captured, insect life, we probably have both.

We also have worms.

Now, I’m not particularly squeamish, although now that I’ve put the woodlice name on the potato bugs I find that I like them a lot less, (a woodlouse by any other name...) but I did finally have to banish the bugs, the “new pets,” outside (as I would any real pet) when I caught the kids taking them out of the jar and letting them crawl up their arms.



And dropping them.

I don’t really need them crawling around my living room.

On a completely unrelated note, today Maggie informed Aidan that Hannah Montana was the “most famous pop-star.” Oy vey.

Talking out of turn

I hope I'm not talking put of turn or being too presumptuous by posting as me and not as "family" but I made myself an approved contributor rather than using the generic family account. Blogger just already knows who I am and it's easier for me this way. If anyone else wants to do the same I'd be happy to help you out (or you can probably figure it out on your own, if I can you can) as long as JB doesn't object.
Anyway, Alison Wonderland is the current nom de guerre for Allison Flannery and I imagine that most stuff for the Flannerys (er, young Flannerys? Shaun Flannerys? Salt Lake Flannerys?) will be posted under that name. (See? At the bottom.)

As far as interesting things to tell you, I got nothing, we're just all dying of the plague at my house.

Poore-Gavin's hope for the future

Yesterday I was talking with Gavin. He looked at me and said, "Mom, when I grow up will I have kids?" "Sure," I replied, "when you grow up, you can get married and have kids if you want." "Good," he said, "then I can tell them what to do!" He is soooo funny!
-Molly

J.B. starting early in the month.

My Aunt Virginia called me today to tell me about the death of my cousin John Hawkins' son Spencer. I guess he was in his teens but had had health problems since birth. I went to the viewing - saw John and his ex-wife and their 2 girls - also another one of my cousins - John's brother who lives in Modesto, California and just happened to be up here for conference. It is only April 4th - so I plan to edit this post and keep adding to it thru-out the month and hope that others do also!!

4/8 - Hooray for Molly - she becomes the 1st other than Jabe and myself to post to the Washburn Wanderer. Hopefully many others will follow suit - soon AND often!! As you can see, it is easy to post early in the month and then add to your original post by logging in and editing rather than starting a new entry!!

4/11 - We were trying to go to Blanding this weekend but I have 2 offers on a house I have been trying to sell for awhile, so we are staying closer so I can hopefully get it sold. We may go down by Green River with our Lone Peak 4 Wheelers Jeep Club if all goes smoothly. More later.

4/25 - We did go to Temple Mountain on that Saturday and did Little Wild Horse Canyon and Muddy Creek. One of our guys buried his Cherokee to the axles crossing Muddy Creek and we had quite the adventure getting him unstuck. It took us over an hour but he finally did winch himself out - We took his 125 foot winch cable plus a 20 foot strap which let us reach over a sand ridge - then I dug a hole aiming under the ridge and back toward his Jeep and we buried his Handyman Jack in the hole with the strap wrapped around the bottom - as he winched it just buried the jack deeper and deeper!! After we got him out he had to come around and winch the other way to pull the jack out of the ground. I went a lot faster than he did and got across with no problem.

As we continued south toward Hanksville, we found a space capsule called the Mars Desert Experiment. We arrived at the only time we could have and get to talk to them - otherwise they would have been inside and could only come out in space suits, but they were changing teams the next day so they were out and about - if you want to read some interesting stuff, just Google them and you can read all about it. This is an excerpt from what I found on Google.

March 11, 2005
The Mars Society of Canada is now accepting applications for Expedition Beta ÿ a two-week training and research mission to the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Utah. The purpose of Expedition Beta is to certify new recruits for participation in future large-scale research expeditions, to expose researchers to the facilities and environment typically available in a Mars analog setting, and to cross-train participants in several areas including geology, biology, technology and operations as they pertain to human Mars exploration. The two-week expedition will take place in December 2005 or early 2006.
Expedition Beta will be the Mars Society of Canadaÿs second training mission, building on the success of last yearÿs Expedition Alpha to MDRS that featured studies involving the local geology, crewmember physiology, field-testing of new fieldwork protocols, EVA traverse planning, and work-study task and procedure analysis. With both Expedition One to MDRS and Expedition Two to Arkaroola, Australia having been successfully completed, successful participants of Expedition Beta will have the chance to contribute to future large-scale expeditions being planned for the Canadian Arctic, Iceland and the Atacama Desert in Chile, among other locations. Individuals who have not participated in either a Training or prior Research Expedition will not b e eligible to take part in future full-scale expeditions led by the Mars Society of Canada.

Sample Newsletter Post - Jabe

So I guess we're going to start using this blog to post our newsletter stuff each month. If you're not familiar with this site, it's really pretty easy to use. All you have to do is click the Sign In link in the top right hand corner. Then you sign in, using the user name and password that has been emailed to you. Once you are signed in, you just click on New Post and you'll get a template for typing anything you want to enter. Along the top of the template there are icons that let you do various things. If you hover the mouse pointer over an icon, a text box will show you what the icon does. At the right end of these icons are an icon that lets you insert pictures and another that lets you insert video. It's pretty user-friendly, but it is fairly limited in what it can do. These pictures are "small" of the choices in the picture applet. So, there you have it...

New Beginnings - J.B.

Today is April 1st and the April edition of the Washburn Wanderer is in the mail. We had a great list of contributors this month and ended up with 6 double-sided pages!! So now the new experiment starts. Hopefully we will get great response this way - I know we have some bloggers out there that we can hear from on a regular basis. The theory is that all family members that have internet access will be able to login and post to the blog with pictures and whatever else they want to add. Not sure how that will all work, but since it is an experiment we will all find out together.