Labor Day Weekend

Early this week I finished a quilt for Avie.  Apparently all the girls liked it :)

Effie, Avie and Ori enjoying the new quilt

  

We celebrated Gunnar's birthday one evening (since we are always camping on his actual birthday).  We had take-out Chinese food delivered and Roy spent some individual time with Gunnar building a steam engine and having him shoot flies and wasps with our new salt shooter gun.  I think he liked doing that.  The boys played and hopefully it was a small break for their parents.

I had many pickling cucumbers from our garden, so I made a batch of mustard pickles (I've never been successful canning regular dill pickles).  I've also made a couple of batches of spaghetti sauce for the winter.

I got abut 20 pints of mustard pickle out of the batch

Max  had an awesome opportunity this week.  He was King of the Day in kindergarten!
And his sister Beverly is almost walking. Also, lucky Elise-- Maverick is being potty trained.

Max as King

Maverick!

In keeping with our traditions, Roy and I headed up to Flaming Gorge for boating.  It's  often our last boating week of the summer, but not this time... We brought our boat back and will head to Bear Lake to boat with Crista and Matt next Saturday. Caitlyn, and Dan and Jieun and family came with us and we had a fantastic time.  Jennie was going to come but she had better offers.  As usual, we got lots of pictures.

For some reason Hyeji looks a little guilty in
this picture.

We did some tubing.  

Hyeji, Yuna and Doyeon

Hyeji, Dan and Doeyon

The water was "refreshing"! but everyone still got in.

Dojin

 Dojin got to drive the boat and get his picture taken in this coveted spot.  Every time Roy touched the wheel to get us back on track, Dojin would hit his hand off.  He was driving--that's all there was to it.

Roy and Dojin

Doyeon and Hyeji

Caitlyn, Dan and Dojin

Dan on two skis.

Dan, falling

Dan thought it would be fun to try two skis.  He did great and said it was fun to goof off with them.  Caitlyn slalomed.  She got up for a few seconds, then fell down. She blamed it on peer pressure, cold water and her bad mood because Roy woke her up to ski (the water was perfect for a few seconds).  By the time she got in, however, the wind had picked up and it wasn't good slalom conditions.  She fell after a few seconds and the ski flew up and hit her in the head.  She had a little headache for the rest of the trip.  She's a trooper, though.  She'll probably try again sometime.

Boating can be exhausting

We went to church in Dutch John and had a relaxing Sabbath the rest of the day.  We took our infamous walk down to the Gorge and got--you guessed it--more pictures.  We took turns with Dan and Jieun.  It's a one hour hike, round trip, no big deal, but sometimes the younger of Dan's girls complain, so we left them home.

We thought about boating on Monday, but it was a little chilly and most of us were ready to get home, so we packed up and left.  Later that evening we met Dan and Jieun at Ejos Restaurant that just reopened that very day.  We wanted to support Jieun's "aunt."  All in all it was another fun summer week.
More pictures:

While fishing for crawdads at the pond,
Dan and the girls were treated to
another form of wildlife.

Hyeji

Doyeon and Yuna

Dojin, like all the other grand children,
loves to climb up
and down the trailer steps.

Slower week for me, but not for everyone

For me, this week was a slower week than we've had all summer, but there was lots going on in the family.  The first event that was busy for my 5 oldest children and their families was Back to School!!!  I remember how much I liked getting the kids back in school at the end of each summer.  I didn't love "Back to School Night," paperwork, paying fees, and so on, but in general it was always a happily anticipated event.
Hyeji started 3rd grade, Gunnar 2nd, Doyeon 1st, Max, Kindergarten, and Ollie, Ori, Ruby and Yuna will be going to pre-school.  I got a few pictures from Jieun (Max started school last week so his picture is in the last newsletter)

Hyeji

Doyeon

And Doyeon lost her first tooth!

Andy finishes his rotation in Fort Hood at the end of next week.  Elise drove up to visit him this weekend with the kids.  I'm sure Elise will be thrilled to have him back after his 6 weeks away.

Both these pictures are of Beverly (The army clothes do say "daddy's little girl."

Beverly

Jennie gave Dojin a haircut. Here are before and after pics.  There's a huge difference.

Before the haircut

Jennie cutting Dojin's hair

After the haircut

Roy, Crista and Matt went on another long bike ride--Cache Valley Century.  Nick was going to go with them, but he is sleep deprived from helping with a new baby, so he opted out.  Crista and Roy did the shorter ride--37 miles.  Roy said it was still a good work out.  

Roy, Crista and Matt; Cache Valley Century Ride

Caitlyn had her first class at Utah State.  It was a connections class that started before all the other classes.  She stayed with Crista for the week and thus was available to babysit the girls on Saturday so Crista could go on the bike ride.  She was able to move into her apartment to some extent on Friday afternoon.

Greta

Ruby

Crista in biking attire

Ruby in dancing attire

Sunday was Amelia Christensen's farewell.  On the way in the door Roy asked the greeter if she knew Vernon Cook.  She said, "I sure did. He was a great man. Every time my children would give talks in church, they would get a letter from him within two days, telling them what a good job they did."  This was a little tidbit of information that I didn't know about my dad.

 Amelia gave a great talk.  And it was especially fun because Bruce, Glenn and Rosilene were there.  We had 6 out of 7 siblings there.  Also, Norm and Carol Wright were in town from California (Carol Cook Wright is a cousin of mine), so we were able to visit with them.  Kim Saling and Bruce O. took pictures, but I didn't even take my phone in.

Christine had made some delicious quiche.  There was also salad, fruit and some treats.  After a fun visit, I had to hurry to get to my ward in time to teach the Relief Society lesson.  It went well, even though there were lots of announcements and I had to finish early in order to allow the chorister time to practice a song that the RS is going to be singing in Sacrament meeting in a couple of weeks.  At least no one really had time to get bored.

Amelia and Caitlyn.  She'll make a great missionary!

On the 4th of July we were supposed to celebrate Grandpa Rasband's 89th birthday, but because of the fires threatening Tara and Luke Osborn's cows, the party was cancelled.  So, this evening we went down to Payson to wish Verl (Grandpa, dad) happy birthday and to socialize with Roy's family.  We had a great time, but Verl didn't look like he felt very well. He's had a lot of back and joint pain among other things.  Hopefully, we won't have worn him out too much.  

Bruce Oblad took pictures at Amelia's farewell.  We missed Dave.  He had to attend his stake conference since he is a stake leader.  Phil, Christine, Catharine, Bruce, Glenn and Nan

Charlotte and Christine

Catharine and Brayden Saling

Bruce and Caitlyn

Rosilene, Glenn and Ila

Christine and Bruce

Violet and Nan

Caitlyn and Catharine

Caitlyn, Catharine, Chris Saling, friend of Eliza's, Eliza and Peter Christensen, and Laura Beale

Shakespeare Festival

Roy took Elise and the boys to the airport

It looks like they went back to sleep pretty quickly

 Elise left early Monday morning.  We missed the boys and Beverly right away.  It’s hard to have them live so far away.  I spent Monday catching up on housework--and in the early afternoon skated--first by myself and then with Ollie, Finn and Gunnar.  We took Nan and Bruce to Pirates of Penzance Monday night at the Centerpoint Legacy Theater.  I’ve seen the play before, but I enjoyed it a lot more this time.  It’s an unusual operetta, so it helped to know what I was getting into.  Bruce and Nan almost cancelled because Bruce got a cold in his eye.  He looked pretty terrible, but we went anyway and Roy and I stayed healthy!  Tuesday after teaching water aerobics, I kind of crashed, so it became a recovery day and by Wednesday I was able to spend some time sewing and get a quilt started for Avie Rain.  Thursday morning Roy and I left for Cedar City for a few days of plays.

If you count the play on Monday night, we really maxed out on plays this week.  We saw four Shakespeare plays: Henry VI part 1, Merchant of Venice, Othello, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.  We also saw The Foreigner, which we have seen many times, but I don't think we ever enjoyed it more.  The actors were fabulous and the main actor was so physically talented (he was even doing back bends on stage as he tried to slink out of sight of other actors) that we were highly entertained.
I learned a lot about the Shakespeare plays this time, and was left with a lot of food for thought.  It's amazing that someone who wrote plays 100's of years ago was so talented that he left the legacy that he did.  The play, Merchant of Venice, was written because Queen Elizabeth's lover had killed a jew. He wanted to feel okay about it, so he asked Marlo and Shakespeare to write anti-semantic plays.  Apparently, Marlo did just that.  He wrote an ugly, vile play.  Shakespeare, however, wrote a play that was seemingly anti-semantic, but has underlying tones that make you feel sympathy for the Jew.  The Jew was played by a woman, who did such a good job that I didn't even know she was a woman until someone told me the next morning at breakfast.  She has a Jewish background and her grandfather (or great grandfather) took his own life after spending time in a Jewish concentration camp during WWII.  She also runs a women only Shakespeare company where all the parts are acted by women.  The play was staged so that it was obvious that the "Christians" in the story, ruined the life of the Jewish man and even his daughter's life.  The monologues of the Jew in the play showed that Shakespeare understood people of many backgrounds a lot better than most of those who lived in his day.
Othello was a dark tragedy.  I'd heard of the story, but I'm not sure I've ever read it.  It was superbly acted.  Shakespeare would take a character flaw and show how that flaw could escalate until it destroyed--in this case several lives.
As usual, there was one play we didn't see and as usual, we regretted not getting tickets to it.  We had seen Big River and decided that we didn't need to see it again, but we heard such great things about it we were disappointed we couldn't find a way to fit it in.
While we were in Cedar City, we spent one morning in the Cedar City Temple.

Cedar City Temple

It is a very small temple, but beautiful.  Most of the colors throughout were soft pastels, but there were stained glass windows with big red flowers to accent the celestial room as well as some of the hallways and stairwells.  The Bountiful temple is closed for three weeks, so we were glad we got an opportunity to attend while we were there.
While we were in Cedar City, Jennie babysat Dan and Jieun's kids overnight for them so they could celebrate their 10th anniversary, and Caitlyn participated in a skating competition and took a couple of skating tests.  See videos below.

Mav had a little mom time without his brother

Caitlyn skated in a competition and got 1st place.
The category was artistic/dramatic.  She choreographed
her whole program.  Annika was the only one who went
to watch her perform.

Max started school practically as soon as he arrived
back in Texas.  Here he is on his 1st day!

Maverick

Caitlyn went shopping and found a cute
new dress while we were gone.

Below are 2 skating videos (if you didn't see them on Facebook.

The 1st is the competition where Caitlyn took 1st place, 

the 2nd is a Skating test.  She falls on the last jump, which was her

easiest one, but she was able to reskate just the jump and

passed the test.

Effie having a "late" Sunday afternoon
nap.  Of course she falls asleep at 5:00.