Father Day Smiles for 2013

Those of you who have been reading my blog through the years know that I do not have many happy memories with my father. There are a few… but since he ran off with a teenager and left our family when I was 7 there are not very many.  Then, shortly after I reconnected with him as an adult, he died. Thankfully I always felt my Heavenly Father’s love even though I didn’t feel love from my dad. However, Father’s day was never really a happy time for my mom and me when I was growing up. 

However, that has all changed since I have a family of my own.

Now I love celebrating this holiday as a time to honor the good men in my family. I am thankful for my hubby. He is a good husband and father. He is a righteous man who loves the Lord and his family. 

As the patriarch of our family, he sets a good example for all the young men and their dads to follow. I could not be more blessed with loving men in our family. I could not be with our son or two of my  sons-in-law  but I was thinking of them today with thanksgiving in my heart.

We did spend a lovely day with Mindy and her family. We went to church with them. Claire sang a beautiful solo and the talks were inspirational.  We feel blessed that we live close to this sweet family  and  get to share special times with them.

After church we had fun being together with their family.

Mindy made her traditional Japanese Father’s Day Dinner.

If she ever decides to stop being a speech therapist, she could get a job as a sushi chef.  She does a great job making the two “dads” in her life their favorite dinner.

Sushi, miso soup, salad, rice, teriyaki salmon…. it was a dinner fit for an emperor.  Thank you once again Mindy for all of your hard work.

Erin asked me to get her dad his favorite rhubarb pie for dessert. He enjoyed every bite. I got Ernie a piecake from Marie Callendar’s. I’ve never heard of such a thing before. It was a cake on top of a pie covered with whipping cream… and it was yummy.

After dessert, cards and presents were opened.

I think these two dads felt loved and appreciated….. at least I hope they did.

I am thankful for my husband, our son and each of our daughter’s husbands. They are all good men, good husbands and good fathers. Each one of them makes my heart smile.

I am happy to say that Father’s Day is no longer a sad day in my life…. it is a joyous occasion.   I hope your Father’s Day was lovely too.

On my next post I’ll send you 4th of July smiles and then I plan to take you all with me to Denali, Alaska.  I hope you will join me there. 

Hugs, Grammy Lura

Excuses…Excuses…Excuses and smiles

Some of my friends have been giving me a hard time because I have been so slow in posting as of late…. I have our Alaskan land/sea trip and Father’s day…. and the list goes on and on.   I really do want to document these things but…… I just haven’t gotten around to it because….

These are my excuses….

#1 We celebrated John’s Birthday

John had his actual birthday on our trip but…. we celebrated it after we got back with Mindy and family.

They took us out to a lovely dinner at….

McCormick and Schmicks and then we went to the…

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to see Claire in her last night of ..

the opera Tosca.

It was a lovely night. We were excited and proud to see our 11 year old in the LA Opera for the second time. She has been invited to be in …

Carmen next. …. I guess we are going to become patrons of the opera. We have never been “Opera going people” but with our Claire singing in them, I guess our tastes will have to change.

#2… I’ve been playing with my Grands

 

Claire and Austin spent 2 nights and 2 days with us last week….. we played in the pool each day…(for hours)…

We ate most of our meals in the patio and played Uno and Pit. Now how could I take out time to be on the computer when I had kiddos to play with?

#3 We harvested Grampy’s liquid  Gold

Grampy and Claire did all of the work. I just got the jars ready.  My honey’s

 

bees make the best honey ever!!

#4… I made Plum Jam

It was a big job and took me all day….. I was plum worn out…. but it felt good to use the plums from our orchard.. and it tastes good too.

#5 I’ve been knitting

They taught us how to knit these cute scarves at Relief Society. I decided I would make some for my grandgirls. They are cute but I am slow at it. …. and I can’t use the computer when my hands are busy knitting can I?

#5 I’ve been playing on my iPad more than I should.

I got my all time high score for one round of playing Gems with Friends. This is a fast addition game that I just love. I’ve also been playing Words with Friends. I’ve also read a couple of books on my iPad and been spending time reading Facebook.  I hate to admit it but the iPad is really a lot of fun and can be time consuming. However, it is also a good thing. I use it every day to read my scriptures and church magazines.

#6 I’ve been working on making my Alaska trip scrapbook.

I don’t make the big fancy scrapbooks like I used to do, but even making this simple album is taking me lots of time. It is about 1/2 done.

All of these things are fun and make me smile…. but they are time consuming too. I seem to move slower than I used to…. and get much less done in a day than I think I will. Our Alaskan trip was great but I’m still tired from it. Several times I wanted to blog but ended up resting instead.

 These are my excuses why I haven’t  been on the computer blogging.   Am I excused?????     I will try to post about Father’s Day and the rest of our cruise sometime soon….(I hope). At least I will get busy and read your blogs. I do want to catch up with the things you have been doing.

I’m sending hugs to all and best wishes for a good week. I hope this finds you doing well and happy.

 

Anchorage and Mt. McKinley Smiles

Dear Blog Friends,

As most of you know John and I took classes and became  travel agents after we retired from teaching school. It is more work than it appears but it is a nice way for us to travel at a reduced rate and see beautiful parts of this wonderful world God made for us.  We just got back from taking a group to Alaska for a land tour and a sea cruise.

We flew with our group on Alaska airlines from LA to Anchorage by way of Portland.

It was a long day of travel so we were excited when we saw Alaska below us…

…And got our first glimpse of Anchorage.

We were picked up at the airport by our Princess transfer van and driven

….to the Cook Hotel where we spent the night. The picture on the left was taken around midnight and the picture of our hotel on the right was taken mid day. There is about 20 hours of daylight there this time of year.

Most of our group ate breakfast in the hotel the next morning but locals recommended that we try reindeer hot dogs from one of the vender carts for lunch. We did and they were delicious….. just don’t tell my grandkids we ate a reindeer…. I’m sure that it wasn’t one of Santa’s.

I wish that we could have had more time in Anchorage so I could have seen more of that city and gotten more picture to show you. We only had a short time there before we boarded our Princess bus and headed inland to Mt. McKinley. Our bus driver was a cute Mormon boy from BYU who drives bus in Alaska for a summer job. It was fun getting to know him.

After about a 4 hour drive we arrived at Mt. McKinley Princess Lodge.  There had been a blizzard the week before but the weather was beautiful the whole time we were on our land tour.

Our room and the lodge were comfortable and beautiful.

The food was very good at each of the restaurants but of course the best part of our stay was…

…The breath taking view of Mt. McKinley.

Mt. McKinley is the highest peak in North America. It is 30,230 ft. high.

It was named Denali by the Indians which means “The great one.” The Alaskans still call the mountain Denali. (I bet you can guess who that is in the hat viewing the mountain.)

 

It is a shy mountain and likes to hide in the clouds most of the time. They say that she is only visible about 30% of the time. She was in clear view for us both days we were at Mt. McKinley….. we were really lucky blessed.

It was with some regret that we packed up our bags and boarded the bus that would take us to Talkeetna…. but we were also excited to continue our Alaskan adventure.

I’ll look forward to showing you more of Alaska in my next post.

I’m glad to be back where I can visit your blogs again. I look forward to getting caught up with what you have been doing the last 2 weeks.

Hugs, Lura