Charlie's Angels

2010-10-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

Below is the picture of our only Halloween decoration this year. It is a pair of witches boots. Everything else is buried in the storage areas right now until the house gets finished.

Perhaps, one of the most important changes is enlarging, painting and new carpet for the guest room as shown on the left. The extra 3 feet along the entire east wall of the room is an improvement. The room is just now waiting for Apple to release a new product so that Caleb and Johanna can come and stay. Who knows; maybe Kevin and Natascha will want to stay upstairs when they come for Thanksgiving.

Below is a picture of the kitchen cabinets and the new granite counter top. The counter top was installed on Friday along with the kitchen sink. The plumber came on Monday to hook up the sink so that now we have running water in the kitchen. We did not think we would miss the sink so much, but it was right at the top of the list of deprivations.

To the right is a picture of the new cook top which does not have the iron grates on yet or is not hooked up to the power and gas yet, but it will be sometime.

This is a picture of the southwest corner of the kitchen just to the left of the cook top.

From the kitchen, you come to the dining area portion of the great room. This last week we were able to bring up a small table to have dinner on until we can bring up our regular kitchen table. In the foreground, you can see the row of closets on the east wall of the great room that extends almost from the garage door to the sliding glass door next to Bill's yard.

Below is a picture of the fireplace in the northwest corner of the great room. The tile has since been finished and it is hooked up ready to go.

This is another picture of the great room. You will noticed that it is carpeted. Paul and Dad brought the couches up from the storage area on Saturday.

Here is another picture of the great room taken from the northeast corner of the room. We put the old fan light up over the southwest area. There is a new 60 inch fan light in the center of the great room.

Finally, here is a picture of the garage from the old garage door. New doors and openers have been put in and the walls have been textured and are ready for paint.

Since these pictures were taken on Sunday, the kitchen sink has been hooked up, our cable TV is working again, the new carpet is in the new front room and office, the backsplash has been tiled, a wash sink has been installed in the garage just outside the door, the furnace is getting closer to completion and the master bathroom floor has been tiled. We will include pictures of these changes next time.

ps. This is being published with Charlie's proofreading, so please excuse any typos.

2010-10-19T18:47:00.000-07:00

2010-10-03T08:02:00.000-07:00

It has been a couple of weeks since we last posted. It was fun to look back at the last posting and see how much has been done on our house since then. Below is a picture of the front of the house. The stucco has been finished for sometime now and the rock is now completed. The soffit under between the roof and the walls and under the porch is also in. The color of the stucco is cotton, which is a yellowish cream with a white on the trim. I am not sure if the colors are clear in this picture. The color is a little better in this picture of the garage. On the north driveway, there is a garbage dumster. Both gargage doors were installed last Thursday.

Mom, also wanted to have our address placed on the front of our house in the stone, like newer houses on the ridge above Alta Canyon Rec. Center. Below is her wish in place.

Another thing, Mom wanted was a new mail box. Originally, it was going to be stucco to match the house, but there was enough rock left over so they used this rock on the mailbox. They still need to place a top on it. It is a little bigger than I wanted, so I call it our grave stone marker.

Here is another picture of the mailbox with the house in the background. You can tell that she likes it enough to take two pictures of it.

Now for inside. This is a picture into the master bedroom from the hallway. You can see that the walls are painted a light green color.

Below is a picture of the side of the first closest inside the great room/kitchen area. We had a cabinet made that is on the side of this first closest by the back door that has small shelves in it for shoes or whatever.

Our kitchen cabinets were install last Monday. Below is a picture of the island. This picture shows the tile that is on the floor in the kitchen, hallways and part of the great room.

Below is a picture of the cabinets along the east wall where the sink will be. It will be in a similar position as our old sink just without a window.

The west wall of the kitchen is shown below. To the left is the space for the refridgerator. On the far right, is the opening where the double ovens will be place. Next to this, is the opening for the microwave that will be over the gas cook top.

This a picture of the new living room taken from the hallway by the front door. In the back, you can see part of the french doors leading out to the south side of the wrap around porch. Just as you enter the front room, there are half walls on each side of the entrance. This room has been painted with the new colors.
This is a close up of one of the half walls. There will be shelfs under the top counter.

To the right is a picture of the new linen closests where the coat closets used to be in the hallway.

Below to the right is a picture of the gas fireplace that is in the northwest corner of the great room. One of the french doors going out into the backyard can be seen in this picture.

The last pictures are of the interior of the garage. You can see the texture that we are having the garage walls finish with.

Below is a picture of the northwest part of the garage (the new section). The used this location to paint some of the new doors. As you can see, there are a lot of doors.

Finally, a picture of the basement room where we have been living in or confined to during the construction. We are looking forward to the day when we can move back upstairs.

2010-09-12T19:59:00.000-07:00

At the urging of Caleb, we went out and took some pictures today and are updating the blog although it was a busy evening with Ian's birthday party.

A lot has happened to our house remodel over the last couple of weeks. They have finished the new walls, the rough wiring and heating along with hanging the sheetrock. To the right, is a picture of the front of the house with the addition. The white is sytrafoam where they are getting ready to stucco the house this coming week. In the below close up of the front of the house, there will be rock were the external walls are black.

The old kitchen cabinets are being stored on the front porch as we plan to put them in the garage when it is finished.

The next picture is from a shot of the garage from the old garage back door into the kitchen. The left of the picture is the addition to the garage. The floor is a couple of feet lower than the old garage.

This is a view of the new front room on the south side of the house where we have new french doors that have blinds inside of the glass panels.

The next picture is a picture looking east from the old master bedroom showing the siting room that we are adding on to it. There is a door on the east side that connects to the wrap around front door.

You can see that they have hung the sheet rock and begun to tape the joints.

The old middle guest room has been expanded to include the old hallway, so that it will be bigger than before. We have also had ethernet and cable TV wired into this room.

The remainder of the old front room will be a den/office. The refridgerator is temporarily in the office while we endure the construction.

This is a picture from the kitchen looking at towards the north at the new great room. There will be a row of closets along the east wall and the old sliding glass door has been move to the new north wall of the house.

This is a picture looking at the west wall of the great room. There will be a gas fire place in the corner between the doors and the small window. Cable TV, the internet and wiring for surround sound have been put in. The TV will be along the north wall to the right of the small window.

This is a picture just inside the front door. The the right of this picture is the new front room. This picture shows a nitch that has been put in above the new stairs that go downstairs along the wall on the right side of the picture. Behind the nitch is a new coat closet that will have a switch inside to control the outlets outside in the eves that are for the Christmas lights.

Here is another picture looking at the new front room from just inside the front door. In front of the french doors are boxes of joint compound for the sheet rock seams.

Below is a picture of the new stairs from the basement looking up towards the front of the house.

This is a picture of the storage area underneath the new wrap around front porch. Notice it is full of our household belongings right now.

This is picture of the new basement room underneath the new front room looking into the storage area underneath the porch.

Finally, here is where the old basement stairs where. The cable TV and ethernet connect box is shown on the right. Both walls need to remain as they are bearing walls, so this will be a storage area and also contain the new second furnace/air conditioning unit.

This week ought to be interesting as they should start to stucco the outside of the house, hang the sheet rock in the garage and finish the inside sheet rock joints, so they can begin to paint and lay the floor tile next week.

2010-08-22T16:15:00.000-07:00

Well, we had another interesting and productive week with the house remodel. Jill and the crew came by to check things out on Monday. The highlight was when we went downstairs and looked at the new storage area under the porch. We had to have a flashlight to see anything, but with the flashlight out we made spooky sounds. Dallin and Daniel had fun scaring Kemry and Ian. They all voted that we leave the space empty so they could play in it. They finished puting the walls up on the addition to the garage.

They also stayed late and worked on the new roof. Below is a picture of the great room wall.

They also began taking off the shingles on the back side of the house.

Here is a picture of the back of the new great room.

This is a picture of the front of our house before they put the roof on the front addition.

Another picture of the front of the house. The first joist of the front roof was raised.

Here is picture of the beginging of the front roof.

This is a picture of the roof over the garage.

By mid week they finished the roof over the front addition.

By Wednesday evening, the roof framing over the garage was up.

Thursday while we served in the Temple, a record rain fall came down that lasted about an hour with 15 minutes being unusally hard. Blaine said that at work one of his roof gutters was out twenty or thirty feet. Even though our roof was not finished, nothing got wet inside our existing house even though the shingles were off. They builders had enough of the roof finish with tar paper over it and plastic covering the rest of the roof where it was not. The garage was soaked. All of the sheet rock was off of the roof of the garage and laying on the cement soaked. We felt really blessed to make it through this unusual storm.

The picture below was from Thursday evening. Blaine came over and used Mom's camera to take pictures of some tires that were given him. A couple of days later, they were sold via Craig's list.

Friday, the house looked like this.

On Friday, they had the shingles delivered and they will start shingling the roof on Monday.

The roof over the garage was finished on Friday.

On Saturday, the worked on putting the wood on the gables. They almost finished the garage area. We also had Kim, Jedd, Zach, Robyn, Haley, Emmy and Luke helping us move most of our stuff on the main floor to the basement. We now only have our bed and desk in our bedroom and the bed and computer desk in the guest room on the main floor.

2010-08-15T20:09:00.000-07:00

Work continued at a fast pace on our new additions to our house. Below is a picture of Mario, one of the hard workers. He is taking off the old trim in the front of the house so that they can begin framing the new front room area. Here is a picture looking out of our old front room windows which were removed after this. On Friday, the space where the windows were was covered with sheet rock.

Here is picture of the floor of the new great room addition as it looked at the beginning of the week.

The heating and air conditioning person came and marked the places where he wants to put new vents in the great room.

They then began to frame the walls of the new front room and cover them with wood.

You can see that they have the wall covered on the east side of the great room partially against the old garage. They then started to put up some of the roof joists for the great room.

Below, you can see that the new front room walls were framed and covered with wood.

They also began to frame the addition to the garage. In the back, you can see the part of the roof that was built last week over the great room.

Below is a picture of our existing stairs to the basement that will eventually be removed.

The above stairs will be replaced with these new stairs that will be just inside the new front door area.

Below is a picture looking down at what will become the new wrap around porch. They put metal down that will hold up the cement and become part of the porch when the concrete drys.

They also put the subroofing on part of the roof of the new great room and put in temporary braces to hold the walls up until all of the roof and walls are tied together.

By the end of the week, the new third car garage was framed and covered with wood siding. The great room addition was framed and also covered. Part of the new roof over the great room was also covered with subroofing.

The new front room was framed and covered. The new basement room was also framed and the stairs were roughed in. This next week ought to also show great progress. They plan to pour the cement for the new porch and take off a large part of the existing roof so that they can install the new roof joists and cover it with wood.

2010-08-08T07:22:00.000-07:00

This last week began with the new foundations and walls poured. This is a picture from our front door showing the new basement in front of the existing living room. You can also see the door that will go into the cold storage room under the new porch that will be pored.The next picture is from the sliding glass door off of our dining area. You can see the walls for the crawl space for the new great room on the left. To the right, you can see a little of the wall for the new garage that is being added to the existing garage

Robyn and Zach came by to see what was going on last Sunday evening and Haley and Emmy just could not resist climbing the dirt pile. By the end of this week, they had taken away 14 dump trucks full of dirt.

On monday, they came and sprayed the foundation with a water proofing coating. Marla said that it only took about 10 minutes to do. They also began to get to pour the cement floor for the basement and the new garage.

The excuvators also came and backfilled around the new foundation and walls plus removed a few more dump truck loads of dirt. Jill drove by to see the progress and much to Dallin and Daniel's dismay, the dirt pile was gone and they could no longer climb on it. What a disappointment!!!

The digger is backfilling around the crawl space for the new great room. In the front of the picture, you can see the walls for the new garage.

When they poured the basement floor, they used the doorway that they cut in our basement family room for access so they had some place to go when they finished.

Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, they began work on the great room floor.

This coming week they will finish the floors and start on the walls. It is moving along pretty good.

2010-08-02T15:17:00.000-07:00

After the digging, last week was spent poorer cement for the foundations and the new walls.

2010-07-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

After thinking about remodeling our house for a number of years, we recently decided to go ahead. The end of June and first part of July, we removed the patio and patio roof. We really appreciated the help of Jedd and the Jacobs. Haley and Emmy were great brick movers.

Then we had to move most of our stuff out of the garage, which was another hugh project. Thankfully, last Friday, Jill, Dallin, Dan, Kemry, Ian, Robyn, Haley, Emmy and Luke came to help us. We really appreciated all of there help.

Even with all of our prep work, it didn't seem like we had really started until last Wednesday when they removed the concrete on the north side of our house along with the back porch. On Thursday, after being gone all day, we returned home to see our house as shown below and we wondered what are we doing????

As you can see they began digging the basement and getting ready for the foundation in the front of the house. It might be a little difficult to see, but the roof over the sandbox is also gone.

This is picture from through the sliding glass door where you can see they are digging and getting ready to put the foundation in on the north side of the house.

Here is another picture of the north side.

Here is picture out the front room window. If you look carefully, you can see the front yard light in the middle of the dirt pile.

Well, I think we can say we are really doing it.

Monday in Ireland

2009-08-04T02:33:00.000-07:00

On Monday morning, we drove into Limerick City and met with the genealogist for Limerick Genealogy to see if there was something they could do to help us work on the White line and the Canter line. It seems they are set up to work more on a county basis and the White research will probably take a multi-county effort. She did say that she could help out on the Canter line and so I will probably write up a description and see what they can do on the Canter line.

In the afternoon, we when to the Bunratty Castle and folk park. It consists of a Castle built in the 1400s and a bunch of old historical shops, houses and farms similar to the Pioneer Heritage Park exhibits, except for Ireland.

Here is a picture of the restored Castle. It is not as glamorous as it originally was as the wall coverings, etc. no longer exist. Thus, you have to use your imagination of Disney pictures.

The Castle also served as a defensive fort. We climbed up one of the towers and took a look around.

Above is a view of the landscape from the tower. I think this is the Bunratty river emptying into the larger Shannon river. Below is a look down from the tower. Notice how small the people are. We could imagine Daniel, Dallin and perhaps Ian and Luke in their armour defending the Castle.

Above is a picture of the Castle's main hall. We could imagine seeing Haley, Emmy and Kemry at the Prince's ball. We couldn't use flash photography so the picture isn't the best.

The ceiling in one of the rooms was amazing and below are a couple of samples of the beautiful cravings in the Castle.

We only took a couple of pictures of the folk park. There was one very unique feature in the park; these old historical trailers. We were blown away to see that these were owned by the Parrys. Are Uncle Jeff's ancestors Irish?

Charlie was facinated with the thatched roofs and took this picture of a worker thatching this roof.

There were also some pretty gardens in the folk park. Here is a picture of some flowers that we liked.

Sunday, July 26

2009-08-01T09:06:00.000-07:00

How did we find it? The name of the road was spelled wrong. There were several roads with what must have been the right spelling in the middle of Limerick along way from home. Amazingly, we found the local branch for Sunday meetings while driving on the wrong side of the road.

On Sunday, we attended the small Limerick branch for Church. It was almost a miracle that we found it. The address was just Dooradoyle Road with no street address and there were several roads with that name --- one main road with several branches off of it, all with the same name. We put the road into Uncle Brent's GPS and took off only to end up at a bunch of soccor or rugby fields. I remembered that there was also a shopping center on Dooradoyle Road, so we told the GPS to go to the shopping center. We had to go all around the shopping center to exit and just as we were about to leave, we saw the church just across the street. We enjoyed services. There were almost as many visitors as members. There was a couple from Arizona, one from Iowa (the husband worked in Iraq and was just on holiday) and there were a few from Nigeria besides us. I asked someone about why it seemed like everyone was named Kelly and he told me that his mother had 15 children when she joined the church back in the mid-70s.

No, Dallin and Daniel. This is not a picture of the church building. It is a picture of an old castle/fortress. You would have enjoyed seeing this.

King John's castle was first a Viking stronghold in 922. A castle was built there under orders from King John about 1200. The Castle endured multiple sieges culminating in the siege of 1691 when the English Williamite forces lay siege on the Irish and French held up in the Castle. This led to the famous Treaty of Limerick.

In the 19th to the early 20th century, it was the home of British forces with Irish town across the river. Turrets were only placed on the Irishtown side.

To the right is a picture of Irishtown across the bridge from the castle.

The castle also provided a great view of the city and the surrounding landscape.

The last picture on the right shows the river towards the city. Notice that they have constructed a rapids where kayakers were out having fun in it.

You can read more about the castle's history at the following link if you are interested.

http://www.teachnet.ie/mmorrin/castle/history.htm

2009 Adventure --- Day 1

2009-08-01T01:39:00.000-07:00

At the risk of disappointing Natascha and ruining our standing as the most out of date blog on her list, we are going to blog about our trip to Ireland and Sweden to see Caleb and Johanna.

We arrived safely in Shannon, Ireland, on July 25, having survived a 6 1/2 hour layover at JFK. Our flight was delayed 1 1/2 because they said that they couldn't find a gate to load the plane. They said that they had the plane and crew there and there was just a traffic jam for gates. However, this didn't seem to add up as there was no plane at our gate. Nevertheless, we boarded the almost completely full Delta flight and tried to get some sleep, which was hard since there were game and movie consoles on the back of every seat. Grandma exercised her supper natural powers to withstand the urge to continue playing games and was soon sawing logs.

The above map shows our starting point, JFK airport and Shannon airport in Ireland. (The map also shows our later flight to Sweden with a connection in France. We arrived about 11:00 am in Ireland, picked up our baggage and rented a car.

For the next three days, we stayed at a bed and breakfast between the airport and Limerick City called Headley Court. We had stayed here once before and it is very nice with great breakfasts.

After a short nap, we drove into Limerick City, looked for a couple of shops that were mentioned in our guide book and had lunch.

2008-07-13T07:56:00.000-07:00

Counsins' Campout 2

And now for the concluding episode of our campout.

After another great breakfast by Charlie and Kent (bacon, pancakes and hashbrowns), we decided to hike the Alpine Lakes Trail, which is close to the top of Mount Wheeler. The trail is over 10,000 ft. and is 2.7 miles long, which is a pretty good hike for the littler ones.

This is the trailhead sign. There are multiple hikes from this trailhead, but we did the Alpine Lakes loop that goes to Lakes Stella and Teresa.

The hike only had a elevation gain of 600 ft over the 2.7 miles and wasn't too steep.

This is a picture of the beginning of the trail where they had put down some erosion control for the first hundred feet or so. It quickly became a dirt path.

This is a picture of our arrival at Lake Stella. Notice the snow fields on the opposite side of the lake. The older Parry and Jaffa cousins hiked to the snow fields and Blaine slid down one. Other hikers from the San Francisco bay area caught a picture of Blaine's slide and promised to email us a copy when they returned home.

Jill is closest to the camera in this picture. She was a real trooper without Paul and with her four children. In the background, you can see the snow field that Blaine slid down.

Charlie caught a picture of Ian when I was carrying him. She instructed me to get my head out of the way so that she could get a picture of Ian. On the last stretch, Ian fell asleep and leaned precariously almost horizontal making it challenging for Jill to hike while holding Kemry's insisting hand.

At Lake Stella, the grandkids tried unsuccessfully to build a raft without rope.

Nevertheless, Dallin decided to turn a log into a boat. He had a great time although he was soaked up to above his waist. To his credit, he didn't capsize.

Of course, they also had fun throwing rocks in the lake. Even Jedd and Blaine got into a contest to see who could get the other the wettest from rocks thrown into the lake by the other.

Here is Luke's technique.

At a rest stop along the hike. You can see (from left to right) JoLynn, a little bit of Natascha, Robyn, Kevin in red, Emmy and Julianne by Uncle Jeff who is sitting down and Zach.

Here is a picture of Lake Teresa. The kids played in the stream while we rested.

Charlie got this great picture of Blaine jumping successfully over the stream.

Dallin showed Haley how to take three sticks of candy and twist them into a new creation. I'm not sure how well this tasted as I later found a couple on the trail half eaten.

Later, we rested at camp. Zach and Robyn cooked a great dinner consisting of Dutch Oven chicken enchiladas.

The next day, we packed up and returned home. Yes, we had returned to the same place, located the location of Katelynn's fall into the cave and found out if her legend continued. (You'll have to ask one of the adventurers to find out if the legend continues.)

Haley asked Charlie if they could return next year and she replied that we only do this every 15 years. Haley then came to me and told me that I would be 73 years old when we returned again. Yea, right!

Cousins' Campout

2008-07-12T19:28:00.000-07:00

Cousins' Campout 1

At the beginning of this week, Charlie's family joined the Parry's for about the 20th Cousins' Campout. While not as many of Charlie's siblings' families attended this one as in the beginning, it still is a fairly good-sized group with grandchildren and lots of fun.

This year, it was decided to return to the Great Basin National Park where we went 15 years ago and left our mark on the legends of the Lehman Cave tours thanks to Katelynn.

Here is a map showing the location of the event on the border of Utah and Nevada. Our driving route is highlighted in red. It was about 230 miles from home and the drive took a little over four hours.

Here is an ariel view of the park. The highest part is Mt. Wheeler, which is
13,063 above sea level and our camp was at about 7750 ft.

You can read the park's website for more details about the park.

http://www.nps.gov/grba/

This blog is more of a report on the campout than a report on the park.

Our vehicle was packed to the brim. We carried most of Robyn's family's camping stuff along with all of Charlie's, Blaine's and Kevin and Natascha's stuff. Blaine, Kevin and Natascha also rode along with us, so we borrowed Uncle Brent's trailer to carry part of the camping equipment. It was a real life saver.

This is a picture of the trailer shown at our camping site.

We arrived at the camp to find Jill's boys swinging from the trees.

Not to be outdone by her older brothers, Kemry climbed the tree too, but needed some help jumping down.

We had plenty of help putting up our tent. Since we only had one hammer, rocks were used to start the tent stakes. Later, they each got a turn with the hammer. They all did a good job, especially Dallin with the hammer.

One of the natural wonders of the park were dirty faces. Luke really excelled in this at the beginning of the camp, but after having a dishpan bath he lost some of his zest.

Notice the dirt on Luke's leg. It deserves mentioning.

Here is a close up of Luke's face. He did pretty well drinking out of his water bottle, although it might have been good if he spilled some on his face.

Ian picked up the slack when Luke's face became cleaner after his dishpan face. While Ian didn't get as dirty, he seemed to have been the most consistent.

The first evening, we just had hot dogs; something easy since we arrived at the campsite about dinner time.

From this pictures, it is not clear whether or not Dallin enjoyed his hot dog. Actually, he did enjoy it. He just wants you to see the chewed hot dog. Unfortunately, he swallowed it how so that there wasn't much to be seen.

This is a picture from the second day. Our campsite was next to a stream, which provided endless adventures. It was entertaining to her parents' instructions to not get their shoes wet while playing around the stream.

After a quick baseball game, Charlie pulled out buckets of stickers to decorate visors with. When they ran out of places to put stickers on their visors, they used their imaginations and started making boats with the stickers to play with in the stream.

Below are some pictures of the end products.

Notice the creativity used to maximize the number of stickers that could be used. Here Dallin used triangles to be dinasour teeth around the edge of his visor. Haley was good at this too.

Besides dinasours and shapes, there were letter stickers to put each name on the visors. Daniel was particularly good at this. He stacked about five letters on top of each other for each letter of his name. Unfortunately, we didn't get a picture of this technique.

Notice Luke digging into a small package of M&Ms. Luke was particulary amazing whenever the candy was brought out. He developed an olympic like sprint to the candy.

After the morning's activities, we all headed to the visitor center to find out about cave tours. The Parrys along with Kevin, Natascha and Blaine went on the 90 minute tour, while the rest of us went on the 60 minute tour.
The kids seemed to enjoy climbing on the railings and jumping off of the walls more than the exhibits. By signing up for both tours, we wanted to see if cousin Katelynn's legend lived on and the Parrys' also had bets on which one of the grandkids with continue the legend by falling into the a cave pond.

On our first visit 15 years ago while taking a cave tour, Katelynn fell under the railing and into a cave pond during the tour. Some thought that she had fallen into a never ending cave shaft. For the following couple of years, we heard reports from others that the tour guides told the story of the little girl that fell into the pond, as a caution.
For the 60 minute tour, Sharon was our guide. She was very good.

Dallin volunteered to be the last person in our tour group and to carry the flashlight. Among his duties, he was to report to Sharon that all were accounted for when she turned off the lights in the cave during the tour.
Lehman cave is very dense with calcium formations.

There were many situations where the stalagmites and stalactites met to form columns.

The tour ended with a long man made tunnel to the outside. It was fun to make echos. Sharon had us all be quite while she banged on the outside door and we listened to the sound travel down the tunner.

The 60 minute tour ended without seeing any cave ponds or the place where Katelynn fell in, however those in the 90 minute tour located the location. They don't allow people into the area where Katelynn fell in anymore, but they could look and Jann spotted the location which is shown in the adjacent picture of the cave map.

The rest of the day was spent around camp, except that Paul took his children on the hike that we would go on the next day. That night, Jill and Paul served a great dinner of shreaded beef and dutch oven cheesy potatoes. After things settled down, we roasted marshmellows or set them on fire depending on which seemed the best use of the marshmellows. Then it was off to our tents. Paul had to work the next day, so he left about 10:30 to return home while the rest of us tried to get some sleep.

Stay tuned for Cousins Campout 2!!!!

One goal had been accomplished. We had returned to the site of Katelynn's dive. Only those present know, if the tour guides still tell Katelynn's adventure from 15 years earlier.

2008-06-12T18:29:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since we have posted on our blog, but here we go again as a result of Caleb's encouragement.

This first picture is of Kimberley's wedding. She married Chris on May 2.

Then on May 28, we had a family party. It was well attend, except that we missed Caleb and Johanna who were busy cooking in the heat of Falun with their unusually hot summer.

At the party, we got introduced to three new cousins and also wished Rachel well who is expecting her first child this fall.

On the left, is Zackery --- Chrishom and Chelsea's new adopted son. Zackery was born in Delaware.

The next picture is of Katelyn's new daughter. She is a real cutie. Her name is Isabel.

Notice that Katelyn's hair color has changed. Katelyn's husband had to stay back home in Arizona as he was in school.

The next new cousin to meet was Alexs, who is Amber's new son. Notice the way his poor mother plays with his hair.

As mentioned earlier, Rachel is expecting in September, however it looks like Chrishom might be too.

And now for some general pictures from the party. We met at Jill and Paul's house. Uncle John has been sick for several weeks now with severe pain. The doctors don't know what is causing it. At first, they thought it was something to do with his Colon and then his back.

Ian had fun!

and Helen couldn't get enough of her new grandchildren.

Part of the reason for the party was to have some baby showers for Zackery, Isabel and Rachel's little one. Amber had one just before Alex was born. We were lucky to have Rachel here from Seattle and Katelyn from Arizona, so we took advantage of the situation to celebrate.

Of course another highlight of the party was to get to meet Jerry's Jessie. She came late after her college class. She had already served camping with the Parry's as well as Ennice, so our pary seemed like normal.

I missed getting pictures of several that were there --- most of the Parry's, Kevin and Natascha, Blaine, Bob and Jamie, the Jacobs, etc. Charlie had a great time and stayed late, although I had to leave half way through with Blaine as I didn't feel very good due to my medicine that night.

2007-10-08T18:14:00.000-07:00

October 8, 2007 - The Great Dala Horse Cookie Caper!

Last week Charlie send invitations to her granddaughters inviting them to come to her house with their dala horse aprons, their dala horse cookie cutters, a smile, their little brothers and their mommies to help her make cookies. Kemry was so excited when she got her mail that she had to immediatly call Charlie and RSVP. She also called Emmy to see if she was invited. Emmy hadn't gotten her mail yet and when she finally did and tried to call Kemry back, Kemry was taking a nap and didn't want to talk.

The little girls were at Charlie's house right at 10:00 am, ok so Kemry was a little later, they have to come further. They were asked what is the first thing a cook does and Haley had the right answer, do you know it. Wash your hands!!!

The girls had lots of fun helping Charlie roll out the dough and then cutting as many cookies as they could before we gathered up the scraps and rolled it out again. All of the granddaughters had to help roll and then they cut, sometimes with the sharp side of the cutters against their hands instead of the cookie dough. Luckily no one cut their hand. They cut and rolled and cut and rolled and just generally made a mess of Charlie's kitchen table and floor.

They weren't all dala horses, we decided to make some Halloween cookies, so the dough was colored orange and brown so we could make pumpkins, cats, witches, bats, leaves, ghosts, monster heads, and tombstones. then on to the decorating. 5 different colors of frosting and lots of sprinkles, shh don't tell Dallin and Daniel about the sprinkles, we didn't send any of those home with their mom. I'll let the pictures tell the story of the frosting.

Didn't Emmy do a great job on her dala horses? She tried so hard to get the colors on their backs and around their necks just like the real thing

Ian played with Molly the dolly and Charlie's toy cars and let the girls cook in peace. Thank goodness for small favors.

All in all we had a great time and managed to get the table cleaned up, the floor swept and all the dishes in the dishwasher. We also sent some cookies home with Jill so Dallin and Daniel could help too. I don't think that we will do this every month, but we did have a good time today.

2007-10-08T17:52:00.000-07:00

September 17, 2007 - Back Home

We spent our last night in Sweden in Eskiltuna at Astrid's parents home. We really enjoyed visiting with them; especially Ingrid's great cooking. After dinner, they took us for a walk around town and Kalle acted as my personal tour guide.

On the 17th, everyone back home showed up to hear about the trip and get the souvenirs that we had bought for them in Gamla Stad. Paul and Zach got some cool Swedish T-shirts. Jill, Robyn and Natascha got some necklaces that Astrid helped Charlie find at the souvenir shops at the mine in Falun. Kevin and Blaine were happy with their sweatshirts.

Below, the grand daughters were thrilled with their aprons and the cookie cutters that Astrid and Dwight got them. They ran around all night playing like they were making cookies. We much preferred this to what the older boys did with their gifts.

As you can see below, Dallin and Daniel were thrilled with their viking hats, shields and weapons. The only problem is that they wanted to use their weapons on the girls or their grandpa.

Charile wonders in the background if we made a mistake getting the sword and axe.

Somehow we missed a picture of Ian with his new truck that we got him, but here is a picture of Luke with his toy partially hidden on the floor by the curtains.

Overall, everyone was ready to send us to Sweden again.

2007-10-08T16:56:00.001-07:00

September 14, 2007

After getting instructions on how to drive to Gamla Stad (Old Town) in Stockholm for shopping.

To the right is a picture of a narrow alley going to the street with all of the souvenir shops. While we shopped, Dwight and Astrid headed for the bakery.

Afterwards, we headed for the Vasa Museum. It contained a 17th century Swedish ship that had sunk in the bay right after it was launched. In the late 60's or so, they retreived it off of the ocean floor and restored it.

We found it to be pretty interesting. I will refer you to Dwight's blog for a more detail discussion on the museum.

http://idiochron.org/2007/9/21/visit-of-the-parents-finale

Another picture of the ship that is housed inside the museum building.

The ship was full of very ornate cravings, all with some particular meaning.

Originally, all of the cravings were painted. Here are some restored cravings from the ship.

This is a picture of the water just outside of the museum in downtown Stockholm. As you can see, Stockholm is a very beautiful city.

Here is a pretty building.

The best part of the day, however, for Astrid was IKEA. Here is Astrid with a real smile and Dwight with a fake smile.

2007-10-06T07:47:00.000-07:00

September 13, Back in Sweden

Dwight and Astrid picked up us up at the airport in the afternoon and we headed for a hostel outside of Stockholm to spend the night. The hostel is managed by their friends.

To the right is the sign at the hostel and below is a picture of it.

This hostel is more of a family camping hostel. We stayed in the building. Charlie and I were given the deluxe room. It had a queen size bed in it, while Astrid and Dwight took a regular room, which consisted of bunkbeds.

The showers and bathrooms were at the end of the hall. This was a good time to stay at the hostel as it was not crowded. In the summer they said it is full on the weekends.

To the right is a picture of Dwight and Astrid's friends giving directions to Johanna on how to get to some of the places we wanted to go to in downtown Stockholm. There friends are Ryan and Linda. Ryan is a returned Swedish missionary and Linda is Swedish. She speaks very good English with an American accent. They lived in Arizona when they were first married, but then moved back to Sweden.

Ryan and Linda have two children, both of them were really cute and full of energy. This is Ebba with a piece of red plastic in her mouth. She loved to have her picture taken.

Ebba's brother, Aidan, can be seen in this picture.

Finally, I took some pictures of a few trailers that I thought that the Parry's would enjoy. They all had small tents connected to the doors to give them some outside living space. After taking these pictures, we headed for downtown Stockholm with Dwight at the wheel and Johanna directing. Maybe the Parry's don't have to get rid of all of their tents, now that they have a trailer. We also thought that they would be delighted to know that there are trailer parks in Sweden, so that when they drive to Sweden they should take their trailer with them.

2007-10-05T14:51:00.000-07:00

Monday-Thursday, Sept 12-13

Well, I am finally back to telling about the rest of our trip. As our previous email stated, we stayed with Dan White Spunner near Nenagh, Tipperary.

Dan's wife, Joan, died last November, and Dan was nice enough to take us to the old cemetery where she was buried. The location is by a decommissioned church shown below. The church is now owned by a famous movie actor who plans on selling it. No one lives there now.

Below is a picture of Joan's headstone. Dan has taken it upon himself to take care of the graveyard. He hires someone to come in and mow the grass, etc. Without Dan's efforts, the cemetery would probably be very over grown.

The White Spunner's are descendants of Benjamin White and Elizabeth Spunner. We are descendants of their daughter, Elizabeth White. One of their sons was named Thomas Spunner White. Later in his life, he changed his name to Thomas Spunner White Spunner when he inherited the Spunner estate. All of the White Spunner's come through this line. There are descendants in Ireland, England and the United States.

The church where Benjamin White and Elizabeth Spunner were married was the Shinrone Parish Church of Ireland. Many of Elizabeth Spunner's ancesters were also christened or married in this church. This church is still functioning and Dan's sister-in-law, Janet White Spunner is one of the Reverends for this church. Below is a picture of the Church.

Also shown in this picture is Charlie's back, Janet White Spunner and Dan. Below are pictures inside the Shinrone Church.

The below picture shows the back of the church. Notice that on the right side of the door is a framed marble plaque next to the book case.

The plaque is a memorial of a sister of Elizabeth White and Thomas Spunner White Spunner. Her name was Benjamina Ann White, who died in 1816. We knew about her, but never knew what became of her. She died at age 18. At the bottom of the plaque, it states that two infants are interned here. We don't know if this includes Benjamina or if two other children of Benjamin White and Elizabeth Spunner died as infants.

We also visited Milltown House, which is the old Spunner/White Spunner estate. This house is really something. While it is somewhat worn out inside, it must have been magnificent in the 1700 and 1800s.

Behind the house, there is a courtyard. The courtyard is in the middle of a square of buildings, composed of the house, shops, servants quarters, carriage house, etc. Below are pictures of the courtyard.

Inside the house, there are a lot of antiques. Below is a sample of the beautiful craftsmanship around the top of each wall in one of the rooms. We have a lot of other pictures of antiques, etc. that we are not posting on the blog because this is getting pretty lengthy.

Dan's brother, Richard (Janet White Spunner's husband), has been in a rest home with alzheimer's disease for a few years now. He is the present owner of Milltown. When he dies, it will pass on to his nephew, Barney White Spunner, who is a general in the British Army.

One of Dan's daughters, Katie, lives near Dan. Below is a picture of Katie, her daughter, Clarissa, Charlie and Dan. They have a beautiful home on a hill over looking Lough Derg, one of three lakes that the River Shannon flows through.

The next two pictures were taken from Katie's front yard.

Thursday morning, we headed back to the Dublin airport to return to Stockholm, Dwight and Astrid.

2007-09-23T05:17:00.000-07:00

On Monday morning, Dwight and Astrid were so so good to get up very early and take us to the airport in Stockholm (3 hrs away) to catch our flight to Dublin, Ireland. They even showed us where to go in the airport so that we wouldn't get lost.

Below is a map of Ireland. We arrived at Dublin airport and rented a car. Luckily, the car had numerous scratches on the passenger side of the car. Some of their roads are very narrow and we a big truck comes by, you have to move almost off of the road to let them get by. Of course, many of these roads have hedges along the sides and thus it is easy to scrape the hedges since as your judgement isn't as good when you have to drive on the opposite side of the road that you are used to.

With Charlie's navigation, we drove from Dublin to Nenagh in County Tipperary to stay with Daniel White Spunner. He lives north of Nenagh near the Lake (Lough Dergh) on the River Shannon. This is the largest of three lakes that the river goes through.

On the way there, we took a detour to the town of Tullamore, County Offlay, to thank Helen White at the Midlands Ancestry who had done some great genealogy research for us a couple of years ago.

Abve is a pretty picture of a part of Tullamore looking out of the front door of Midlands Ancestry.

Well, you might be wondering who Daniel White Spunner is and why did we leave Sweden to have a short visit with him. If you guessed that he was Kent's 3rd cousion once removed, then you got it right. Below is a relationship chart which helps to explain what a 3rd cousin once removed is.
As you can see, my 3rd great grandparents were Elizabeth Spunner and Benjamin White. One of their children was Elizabeth White, who married Joseph Palmer Canter. Elizabeth White was born near Shinerone, County Offlay, in 1793. She is my 2 great grandmother, who also had a brother by the name of Thomas Spunner White. Later in his life, Thomas S White changed his name to Thomas Spunner White Spunner when he inherited the family land from his grandfather Thomas Spunner. As you can see, Daniel White Spunner is a 3rd cousin of my father making him once removed for me.

This was the origin of the White Spunners that today live in Ireland, England and the US (mostly in the Mobile, Alabama area).

Here is a picture of Daniel with his older sister, Oonah. Daniel was kind enough to invite us to stay with him. Since we don't drink tea, coffee or alcohol, Dan got the idea that we must be vegetarians. On Tuesday for lunch, we went to visit Eva and she fixed a nice vegetarian spaghetti. During lunch, she asked us if we ate fish. Then she asked if we ate chicken and beef. She asked how we could be vegetarians and we all had a good laugh.

Tuesday morning before meeting Eva, we visited the Heritage Family History research center in Nenagh. Below is a picture of the front door. See if you can figure out how to open the door.

As you will notice, there were two door knobs with a sign pointing to the knob in the middle of the door. The sign said turn handle to enter with an arrow pointing to the middle knob. As it turned out (no pun intended), you were supposed to turn the knob on the right hand side of the door in the direction of the arrow. It tooks us several trys to figure this out. I think it would have been easier without the sign.

Our visit was disappointing as they would not provide us with a list of all of the births, marriages and burials of Whites and Spunners in a number of parishes in Northern Tipperary. They said that the could only start with your ancestor and work backwards rather than help us to compile a more complete family tree. Further, the records in the parish of most interest to us began about 25 years after the birth of the person we were most interested in. So, we decided to not have them do any research for now.

On Wednesday, we visited Milltown, County Offlay. Milltown used to be a very small townland, but now is mostly just the name of the old Spunner estate. It is quite impressive. We had lunch their and Dan took us on a tour.

More on Ireland later.

2007-09-22T15:36:00.000-07:00

Well, we have been back from Sweden for about 1 week and it is about time that we finish reporting on Charlie's trip to Sweden. Below is a picture of a moped that looks like a car, but it isn't a real car according to Astrid. I think I remember that Dwight or Astrid said that its maximum speed is 45 mph. However, the small car below is a real car. Charlie was tempted to bring it home for Blaine's next car, but we talked her out of it.
Charlie also wanted you to know that there are lots of trees in Sweden.
The below picture is of the entrance to the famous Falun Cooper mine. They have a large wood goat to memoralize the goat that legend says first found the mine by returning to his owner with red on his horns.
We spent the rest of the week with Astrid and Dwight and then very early got up Monday morning to go to the airport and fly to Dublin.

2007-09-13T21:09:00.001-07:00

This is early Friday morning. A lot has happened since we last had internet service and could post an update on our blog. We have returned from Ireland and now are back with Caleb and Johanna in Sweden. So ---- We will bring you up to date in the next few postings.

Last Saturday night, something of concern to Dallin, Daniel, Kemry, Ian, Haley, Emme and Luke occurred. Take a look at this picture and see if you can guess what happened.

Yes, you got it. Johanna fixed us reindeer for Saturday evening dinner. We certainly hope that this wasn't one of Santa's reindeer and he will be able to visit you this year. You better make extra sure that you are on his good list.

Saturday morning, it rained in Falun, but it cleared up in the afternoon. We went downtown to do a little shopping and have Johannna pick out an english addition of the murder mystery series that she is reading. Then we visited the Falun museum. It was full of art work including some very modern stuff. In one exhibit, you could help make the art by getting you shoes in some graphite and walking on the picture. In another, they had two computer screens with random snow or TV noise on them.

Then we returned to Caleb and Johanna's for the reindeer dinner. PS. Mom, Caleb and Johanna ate their reindeer with some red stuff that they called Lingon berry jam, but I worry that it was part of Rudolph's nose.

Don't they look guilty of something?

On Sunday, we headed off to church. Below are a pictures of their small church.

Perhaps, Zach can tell if they actually took us to the right church or not? They had Books of Mormon so I think that we were in the right place.

Actually, the entire meetings were in Swedish and we didn't understand too much. In priesthood, the instructor wrote the word "Karlek" on the board and I thought that the lesson had something to do with quorum brotherhood. Later, he wrote a word like "Kyskhetlagen" on the board and thought that they were talking about priesthood leadership or the brotherhood in leadership quorums.

I was feeling pretty good about getting that much out of the 40 minute lesson when we met up with Johanna and Charlie. I smuggly asked Johanna what their lesson had been on when I learned that Karlek meant love and that Kyskhetlagen was the law of chastity. Well, so much for my impressions, but I did learn a couple of Swedish words. Nevertheless, the most important thing we got for the 3 hours of Swedish is that we were able to renew our sacrament covenants and the promise to have the spirit with us this week.

We really admire Caleb and Johanna. She helps translate for Caleb each week, but until Caleb learns more Swedish he doesn't get too much out of the Sunday meeting talks and lessons. He does get the renew promise to have the spirit with him which more than makes it all worthwhile.

Nevertheless, it would be easy to rationalize staying home on Sundays until Caleb learns more Swedish and then maybe rationalize doing something else when he does learn Swedish, but they are being true to their covenants and consequently will be blessed in many ways for doing so. Caleb will be able to more confidently pray for help learning Swedish as a result of their faithfulness among other things.

On Monday, we went to Ireland, but that will have to wait for the next posting.

reporting by Charlie's chief angel.

2007-09-08T01:20:00.000-07:00

As we said on our last posting, yesterday was full of interesting things to do.

First, we thought that you might like to see on a map what we have been doing.

On the first map, you can see Stockholm on the lower right of the map. Then northwest of Stockholm about a 3 hour drive is Falun where Caleb and Johanna live and where we have been staying.

Their ward meeting house is about 1/2 hour away in Borlange.

You can also see Lake Siljan that we visited yesterday.

The second map is a blow up of the area around Falun. I have marked similar items on this map including Mora, a town on Lake Siljan where we ate lunch and visited the Zorn museum.

You can also see on the map to the right of Falun the town of Sundborn. That is where the house of Carl and Karin Larsson is located that we previously reported on our visit to it.

The last map shows more detail around Lake Siljan. Our day started out with a trip to the dump which was on the way. Caleb and Johanna had an old TV to get rid of. The dump was interesting. It was kind of like a DI drop of with different with different containers for various categories of junk. The TV went into the electronics bin.

O course, Caleb needed to protect his back so I carried the heavy TV by myself. How long do you think this back stuff will go on? I applogize for no pictures of the dump, but since it wasn't on the top ten things to do in Sweden in our tour book we didn't wasted any mbytes on it.

After the quick stop at the dump, we traveled up to Lake Siljan to a small down where they make the famous Dala horses. On the left is Johanna riding on a large Dala horse.

The Ollsons started making these horses in the early 1920s and everyone feel in love with them because of their bright colors. Everyone wanted one and they eventually became a famous symbol of Sweden.

Not to be out done by Johanna, Charlie and Kent took their turn by the horse.

There were only a few corrals for the horses. Below is one in which Charlie and Johanna enjoyed shopping.

In this picture, you can see the main drag of Dala land. There is one corral on the left front and another in the rear right. Both provided Charlie and Johanna with fun, but I think the one on the right got most of their oats.

One final picture of Dala horse land. It seems one artist mistook this telephone both for a horse and painted it. Charlie wanted to buy this, but I talked her into just taking a picture of it instead.

After looking at the horses, we got back in Johanna's parents car and headed for Mora where the Zorn Museum is. We are really grateful to Johanna's parents for letting Johanna and Caleb borrow their larger car.

Above are pictures of the Zorn Museum and grounds. The museum contains a number of his portraits and landscaped paintings. He was a very famous portrait painter, painting portraits of Swedish Kings and even a few American Presidents. Charlie bought a couple of post cards of his paintings and Johanna bought a larger print of a very cool water landscape.

Across the street was the Mora town center and the main shopping pedestrian street is shown on the right. Best of all, Johanna found the latest book out by Liza Marklund. She writes muder mysteries and comes highly recommend by Johanna.

While in Mora, we grabbed a late lunch. Below is a picture of the calazone that Caleb and Johanna ate as well as the pizza that Charlie and Kent ate. The pizza crust was very very thin and we had to make sure that it just wasn't solidified tomato sauce.
Next, it was back south to Rattvik to view the lake. It was a very pretty sunset.

Johanna also found some stores for Charlie while getting directions for the view site (Did she really need directions or was this just a cover?) The stores had dirt roofs and this one had a pine tree growing on it. I guess this is what happens in Sweden when you don't clean out the rain gutters regularly.
Kent and Caleb really enjoyed the shops!

We had a little time before the evening concert started and we walked around the lake at Rattvik. Here is a picture of a Church boat, which each town had for their residents to go to church. After church, they raced home.

Charlie took this great picture of the sunset.

Unfortunately, it started to rain and we were lucky enough to buy some rain coats at the concert. During the first song, it started to rain very hard, but before a few more songs the rain quit and out came our goodies which we brought to eat at the concert.

The concert was great and the setting was very cool! It was in the bottom of an old lime quarry as shown below. The sound system was great and they finished off the last song with some great fireworks!

With Johanna's excellant driving, we arrived home about midnight just in time to hear the Friday night celebrations in the neighborhood.

2007-09-07T01:41:00.000-07:00

The last two days have been calm days. We went for walks in the morning. On Wednesday, we also drove to a small village and went to a nice restuarant with a great view for lunch. Today is scheduled to be a full day. We have planned to go visit the factory where they make Dala horses and then visit a famous artist's home by the name of Zorn who among other things painted a portraits of some American Presidents. The evening will be topped of with an outside concert in a lime quarry with fireworks.

2007-09-03T23:53:00.000-07:00

On Monday, Johanna spent the morning planning out the weeks activities and it is going to be an interesting week. Johanna, Mom and I went for a walk in the morning and I worked on the blog. In the afternoon, Caleb and Johanna went to see Caleb's hemmatologists while Mom and I read and took a nap.

We then took a short trip up to see the ski jumps and look over the city of Falun where they live. Falun is their national training center for ski jumping.

This is picture of the ski jump taken from their flat with the zoom on. It doesn't look as scary from a distance, but up close it would be quite a thrill to go off of this. We will leave it to the brave and younger to tackle.

On the right is a closer picture of the ski jump that was taken right next to it. Notice Mom, Johanna and Caleb at the bottom of the picture to get a better idea of how tall the start is.

Of course, this is a picture looking up the take off ramp of the ski jump. It is a good think that we don't have one of these close to us in Sandy or I think Dallin or Daniel might have gone off of it already.

Finally, here is a picture looking down from the bottom of the take off ramp. Notice the steep drop off and the viewer seats or stands on the bottom right of the picture. You can see Falun in the background.

Down below the stands is the Falun Sports Center. It is really large and besides including a swimming pool and exercise facilities, there is even a large horse riding arena that you can see directly below the ski jump viewer stands. It is the oval dirt colored object.

Now, for a look at Falun. The tall brown tower is the famous copper mine and to the right is part of where it caved in. We are going on a tour of the mine today.
For Jarrod, you can see an electrical substation if you closely at the back of the picture.

On the left, is a picture to the right of town with a big lake in it. There are lots of pretty lakes.

The picture on the right is looking the opposite direction from town at the top of the ski jump parking lot.

On the way back to their flat, I took a picture of the home Johanna grew up in through the back window of the car. She grew up in the yellow house which is just across the street from the hospital that her father worked in for +20 years.

And of course, Caleb was enjoying the ride back home so that he could play with his new PlayStation 3 that he had us bring over to him.

2007-09-03T00:15:00.000-07:00

Sunday: It was nice to have a good night's sleep and get a shower. We are staying with Caleb and Johanna in their apartment. They gave us their bedroom and they have put down some matrices in their office room for them.

Church started at 11 am and we left for church at 10:30 am because it was in an adjacent town, Borlange. We forgot to take our cameras, but the church is a small building, perhaps a phase 1. Most of the service was in Swedish so we just sat their and smiled. Johanna did some translating for Marla in Relief Society and for Caleb in Sunday School and Fast and Testimony meeting.

Afterwards, we took a short nap and had a great spagetti dinner that Johanna cooked.

We hope everything is going fine at home, although we have heard that Blaine is working a billion hours and that Robyn and Zach's swamp cooler quit. It is unreal that you are having such hot weather. The weather here is nice, but it is crisp with a high of about 68 deg F.

2007-09-02T01:17:00.000-07:00

Well, we left for our trip to Sweden on a 6:20 am flight. To get ready, we had to get up a 3:30 am so we would have time to call Dwight and see what he wanted us to bring. We had four suitcases. The two largest bags had Caleb's stuff in it. Nevertheless, we were pretty tried as shown by Charlie's picture on the flight from Denver to Philadelphia.

We arrived in Sweden about 7:30 am and even though we had to go through a very slow and long line at Pass Port control, we made it out and found our luggage before Caleb and Johanna came.

We went downtown Stockholm to look at the sights.

This is an old church according to Caleb.

Johanna, Caleb and Charlie heading into the Royal Palace.

Inside the courtyard of the Royal Palace. The changing of the guard at the Royal Palace.

The old Stockholm is full of narrow streets and interesting touristy stores.

The Stockholm temple.

We then went to Johanna's brother's flat and took a nap. Later, we had dinner with her brother, his wife and Johanna's parents. It was a really great dinner and we really enjoyed talking with them. After dinner, it was off to Falun which took about 3 hours or so to get there and then we crashed for the night.