Sunday, September 25, 2016

Our Gendreau Family

Seattle never ceases to provide rainy skies.  But the positive part of that are the growing things that fill every empty spot.  Green things grow everywhere.  Instead of working to get things to grow, like we do in Idaho, the yard job is to control the growth.  So things there are lovely.  Here's a picture of our drive just outside Seattle.  Rain and beautiful scenery.

We drove to Normandy Park, near Seattle, on Tuesday to visit our Gendreau kids and help Chris, our son-in-law, take care of the kids while Jessica went on a short trip with some girl friends.  It was sweet to spend time there with the family.  Layne did the usual pick up and delivery while I took care of the home stuff.  In anyone's home there is always lots to do, I have noticed.  We tried to leave things a little better than we found them.  I love Jessica's decorating style.  Her home is filled with art of all sorts, especially the kids' art.  I'm not quite sure how she creates the decorative touch I so like but it is "artsy" somehow.  I like the colors she uses also.  I guess she and I share a lot of the same tastes, but she uses them more effectively in her home.

Gemma has become quite a good artist. She is taking some classes at school and experimenting with different combinations of mediums.  Here is a sample of her work.  She's quite fond of dragons.  I like them too!


My Gendreau grandchildren are pure-hearted, intelligent and love learning and school.  I like spending time with them and so admire their motivation.  They are actively engaged in school and sports.  I think they are so pure-hearted because they don't spend much time with media.  They read, play family games and study.  There is very little TV going on in their home.  All they need is a bit more spirituality.  I love that family!

Here's Gemma, then Miles, last is Peyton.








Sunday, September 18, 2016

The Conlons

My mother had a knack for making friends.  As she grew older many friends her age began to die.  So Mother chose new, younger ones.  One of those was a redhead named Elaine Conlon, and her husband Cliff.  We got acquainted with Elaine and Cliff through Mother and have stayed friends.  Cliff's daughter, Lori, lives right here in the Boise area so I've been bugging them to visit us when they come to visit Lori.  This past week, they did.

Here's Cliff with his daughter, Lori.

Cliff and Elaine, "the little Redhead".


After last weeks grand adventures with friend Bill and Trudy Ostler, I was happy that this week's visit was a bit more relaxed.  We mostly hung out at home, just visiting.  It was a lovely time.  Lori spent one day with us and we treated her and the Conlon's to our favorite Huckleberry ice cream.  Lori and I bonded over a discussion of the arts.  i shared my theory about the 5 categories of the arts and the value of being creative with them.  It resonated with her and we had a lovely discussion.  It is so pleasant to ride down a similar mental road with someone.

Cliff and Elaine came on Wednesday and left on Saturday morning.  I have decided that I love having company.  It is a good thing since we have had a lot of it this summer.  Even though I enjoy spending time alone more than any other time in my life, having people in my space continues to bring me great pleasure.


Sunday, September 11, 2016

Home Adventures

I never imagined living in Idaho could bring so much activity.  This summer has brought us almost unending company and with it, more adventures.  Audrey, Cliff, Rayne and Allegra came last weekend to attend great-grandson Hunter's blessing.  Allegra is just now home from her mission in Minnesota.  She had a wonderful time and has returned to us as pure-hearted as she left and full of sweet experiences and a confirmed testimony of the gospel.  Here is Rayne, Cliff, Chase and Allegra, hanging out at Morgan's parents, where Chase and Morgan are living for now.


Chase gave his little son a simple and lovely blessing and a name:  Hunter Cliff Adams-Hart.  We all gathered at Morgan's folk's home afterward for a nice luncheon and visiting.  Hunter, of course, was the star of that show.  Here he is.


This picture was taken a different day but he looks too cute not to put it here.


Here he is with his mom and dad on his blessing day.


The drive to Blackfoot, for the blessing, was a long 4 hours.  It was just as long on the way back.  But being here was worth it.  Plus we got to visit with our AH family.  That is always a treat.  They left very early on Monday morning.  After they left I prepared for our good friends, Bill and Trudy Ostler, to arrive in the afternoon.

You may remember that we visit the Ostlers in St. George once a year and they visit us once a year.  The Ostler visit was this past week.  We always try and come up with some sort of adventure each time they come.  This time we decided to take them to a local "ghost town" called Silver City.  It is a two hour drive from our place and promised a "vintage western" experience.  We picked up the Ostlers from the airport at 3:00 and headed there.  The drive into the city turned out to be a bit "vintage" as well.  It was a windy, dirt road that was slow going.  We passed lots of cars coming out of Silver City.  Since it was Labor Day, they were all returning from their weekend adventure there.  

We arrived in Silver City just in time for dinner at the hotel.  It is advertised to be in a state of restoration but, after seeing it, I would say that is quite a stretch.  The hotel stands as the only commercial building still in operation in the town, except for the gift shop across the street.  The hotel itself looks as if it could easily collapse with the slightest provocation.  But we entered and found out way to the bar and dining room.  It looked like a scene from a western movie, with very little changed since its heyday.  The dinner menu offered hamburgers or hot dogs with bagged chips.  $5 homemade pie was offered for dessert, but only one piece remained.  The price was definitely not vintage!  

Our bedrooms were upstairs.  The electricity was limited to what solar panels could offer.  That turned out to be a few lights in the hall and one in each of our rooms.  Toilets were down the hall, as were shower rooms and basins.  All were in separate spaces.  We decided we could forgo showers and settled in for the night, after doing a bit of exploring.  The dim lighting of the hallways gave the place an eery feel, right out of a good ghost story.  Our room had just enough room for a queen bed, small dresser and chair.  All were old.  The bed offered a somewhat uncomfortable sleep.  The doors did not lock so our stuff was stored in the car until we settled for the night.  




Morning was sunny and lovely.  We tumbled out of bed poorly rested but ready for a horseback riding trip and a little exploring of the town.  Most of the buildings here are empty and boarded up.  There are homes here and most are lived in during the summer.  Everyone leaves for the winter except for one caretaker and his wife.  They stay through the winter.  We walked the crooked roads, looked at the empty buildings and explored the nearby cemetery.  Then a rancher named Paul, brandishing a curled mustache, met us for our horseback riding experience.  We signed up for two hours.  Paul led us back through the town and down a path on the outskirts of town, filling us with history.  Of course you had to be right behind him to hear all that he was saying.  So we missed a lot of his conversation.  At the end of the first hour, I was done.  My bottom hurt.  My knees hurt.  Our last hour was a lesson in endurance.  It is definitely not a good idea to ride a horse for two hours if your bottom isn't properly broken in.  By the time we finally returned to the ranch we could hardly get off the horses and stand, we were all so stiff and sore.  But it was an experience!

Here we are at the beginning of the ride.  Bill and I are on top and Layne in the bottom picture.




We headed for home, after changing a flat tire, and arrived exhausted.  Against our usual tradition of late night domino marathons, we all fell into bed early.  Wednesday we floated down the Payette River. Got soaked.  Very fun.  Saw a movie on Thursday, "Light Between Oceans".  It was a bit sad but also had some positive messages.  

Here we are at the wettest spot on the Payette River.



Ostlers left on Friday.  Chase and Morgan spent that night with us.  Wow.  Non-stop company.  It has been wild, demanding, and fun.


Saturday, September 3, 2016

Cruising

There are so many parts of the world that I know absolutely nothing about.  Eastern Europe would be one of those.  But that's changed now.  We just returned from a 3 week River Cruise down the Danube.  I've never been on a cruise before.  That would still be true if not for our friend Larry Wintersteen.  For the third summer he has invited us to go with him and his wife Carol on some sort of trip. This one is the biggest, longest and most expensive.  My "been there-done that" husband wasn't particularly keen, but Larry talked us into it.  I'm so glad he did!

Several other people joined us on the cruise, making a total of 8 of us that hung together throughout the adventure.  Here you can see all of us at the first hotel we went to, the "Seven Day Hotel", in Prague.  Left to right, here is Stan and Nancy Beck, Layne, me, Clell Bennett, Roger Armstrong (Carol's brother), Larry and Carol Wiintersteen.

Our first destination was Prague, Czech Republic.  It was perhaps the loveliest of all the cities we visited.  Here's a map of our journey.  The red line marks the Danube and the green line marks our route.

The City of Prague


Prague was stuffed with tourists, but we enjoyed it anyhow.  We went on a day's tour with a guide named Deanna.  In the center of the picture above you can see the castle which, along with other buildings, is surrounded by a wall.  It is the "inner city".  The outside is called the "outer city".

From Prague we flew to Romania, where we enjoyed another longer tour through Transylvania.  So, what do you think of when you hear Transylvania?  Dracula, right?  Apparently the author of the book on Dracula patterned him after a real Romanian tyrant, Vlad the Impaler.  We visited the famous Bran castle attributed to Dracula, in the town of Bran, Transylvania.  So here is the biggest surprise of our trip:  Neither Dracula nor Vlad was ever in this castle!  Vlad was hardly ever even in Transylvania!  So the whole castle/Transylvania thing is a made-up fraud.  It was so disillusioning!  In spite of this revealing information, the surrounding souvenir shops had lots of Dracula stuff.

Here are Nancy and me, standing inside Bran Castle.



Romani is a lovely country.  When our land tour was finished, we drove to Bucharest, where we boarded our cruise ship, the River Aria, a Grand Circle cruise ship.  We were so pleasantly surprised, once on board, to see how very nice our accommodations were.  Our ship suite was very comfortable and efficient.  The crew was friendly and helpful.  We were assigned a program director, a very cute girl named Radi, from Bulgaria.  She was responsible for us during the whole cruise.  She led us on tours and filled us with history.  Altogether we visited Romania, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia, and Bulgaria.

Here's Radi and me in front of one of the forts we visited.


These countries are all close together and share a very similar history.  In a nutshell, here is my take on their shared experiences from the beginning.  Most of the countries were eventually settled by migrating tribes that stopped moving and established communities.  They were almost continually invaded by surrounding powers, the Greeks, Romans, Ottoman Turks, Austrian-Hungarian Empire, German Nazis, Russia and Soviet Communism.  It was only in 1989, give or take a year, that they all achieved a parliamentary form of democracy.  Often these new democracies were run by communists.  You may imagine how that worked out.  These people have never been free. For generations they have been ruled by various external powers and, occasionally, by their own monarchs.  Freedom, then, is difficult to know how to deal with.  So, once freedoms were established, recessions set in while the people learned how to be responsible for themselves, to think for themselves, and to establish a means of support.  Freedom is difficult when you have been trained to simply obey.  It appears that things are greatly improved now.  But economies here are still sluggish, and many of the young people go away to school and move to western Europe, where there are more jobs and a higher level of prosperity.

The areas we visited each had their own personalities but also much in common in the way of architecture and organization.  Each town has a Church in the center, sometimes used to defend the town.  Often there were walls erected around the towns for protection.  If there were hills or mountains nearby, there would be a fort at the top, built for defense and to warn the villages of invasions.  The rooftops are almost alway of red tile, making the view of the villages from a distance quite lovely.

Most all of the streets and many of the sidewalks were of cobblestones.


Every town has a Church, usually Catholic or Orthodox,  They are often big and ornate.  The sad thing is that most people never enter them.  They stand as monuments to the past, except for a few parishioners.  Layne got pretty tired of touring "yet another Church."


 The rooftops are almost always made of red tile.


 Fortresses often stand on the high ground near the towns.  They often had storage rooms so that the townspeople could store emergency supplies.


 Here I am inside one of the fortresses, where a soldier's form stood for just such a picture as this.

Our ship had a well organized crew and infrastructure.  We ate delicious meals, made up of favorite foods of the countries we passed through and visited.  The food presentations were works of art.  I told myself before each meal that I wasn't going to eat so much.  But I did.  I gained a few pounds for sure.  But I'd do it all again.

Views from the outdoor level of the ship were lovely.  The river is big and moves gently along, creating a welcomed breeze.  A damp breeze.  My hair went frizzy every time I was up there.  But I went anyhow.

 Here's Layne and Larry, enjoying the view and the breeze from the top.


 A view of the Danube River, from land.


 A Danube River sunset, taken from our cabin window.

Our ship, the River Aria.

There was an amazing amount of graffiti in every country.  When I asked why, Radi said that some see it as just an art expression and even if they are upset by it, no one does anything about it.  So it becomes ever more common, compromising the beauty of many of the buildings.  Radi explained that once infrastructure, like roads, bridges, and such, to up, there is no maintenance.  So many things are deteriorating.  


There are signs of former communism everyplace as well.  The grey, depressing buildings stand in stark contrast to the lovely, ornate buildings of former times.  Here Layne stands by one of the Communist statues still standing that illustrate the working masses.


 Everything here is old.  The buildings are lovely however.  Here you can see the style of city buildings that are common everywhere we visited.

There is so much more to say, but I'm done for now.  We spent 24 hours traveling home, arriving on Wednesday night, so very tired.  Our ride home was an hour late and once we got home we discovered that we were locked out of the house!  We staggered around until Layne found a window he could pry open.  I climbed through the kitchen window to finally get us inside.  We fell into bed.  But we both woke up at 4 AM.  It's been that way for the past several days.  But this will pass and if I were to choose to make this trip again...I would!