Musical & Thanksgiving

Last week was the school musical. They did the play West Side Story. It was the first time that they ever did a serious play. It was okay, but I really like the comedies. McKenzie was a "Shark" because of her brown eyes and dark hair. Her dancing partner was Bronson Teichert. She did a great job. The whole cast did a good job. Laurel and her boys, Heather and Cassidy came up to watch the play. Here she is doing a dance to the song "America".

Here she is with her partner Bronson at the end of the song and dance "America".

We went down to Provo for Thanksgiving. We left Wednesday to go watch my nephew Brandon Davies play basketball for Provo High School. He has signed to play for BYU next year. He got into early foul trouble and didn't play a lot until the fourth quarter. It was like one of the officials was after him. He couldn't even breath without getting a foul called on him. I felt sorry for him. But he did a good job and it was fun to watch him play. By the way, he is 6' 9".  Here he is with Kennan.

We ate at Laurel's house. You might call it the place for the leftovers to have Thanksgiving dinner. Jayne and her family was their, Tiffany and her boyfriend, Kathy and her family, Grandpa Davies, and Aunt Veline and all of us were there. It was fun and the dinner was good and the pies were delicious. Here is Kandyce and I waiting for the meal to be done.

We went to the movies later that day. Some went to see Bolt and some others went to Madagascar 2. The next morning mom and I went and did the early shopping, if you can call 7:00 a.m. early. We really did see any reason to go early so we just went out and about. A lot of the things they had on sale could have been bought online. There were a few things that they lured you into their stores, but all in all it was just an ordinary day of shopping. Kandyce did help me to buy mom something for Christmas. She will be sooooo excited, I can't wait. Kandyce took time off from her boyfriend to be with us, but of course through the magic of technology, they weren't separated that much.

McKenzie has ball games on the road this coming weekend. Kandyce and her boyfriend are coming up to watch Kennan play on Saturday. At his last game he scored a couple of three pointers. His coach told me that Kennan got ruffled by the other teams defense. It was a good learning experience for him. Mom is getting excited for Christmas. According to family tradition we will be putting up the tree tomorrow night for FHE. It is that time of year. Brady had roast beef for Thanksgiving. He and the other elders cooked it, I wonder how it tasted. We'll find out Wednesday.

One last bit of news, grandma's house should be here tomorrow or Tuesday. Fun fun. Here's is one more just because.

Grandma's House

So we've been talking about grandma's house coming down and a new one being put into its place, now we figured we better post some pictures. So here goes. It will take a while to upload the pics to our blog. The first picture is of the house when grandma was living in it.

This next picture is after taking the windows out (they were new windows) and also taking the roof off. Also the front door (it was new, too). Notice some cabinets off to the side. Some people came in and took some cabinets to use in their garages or shops or what ever. I went upstairs to look around and behind the drawers I found a glass doorknob (worth about $500) and two fire extinguisher grenades. Here is the fire extinguisher.

These are glass bulbs that are thrown at the base of a fire and break to put the fire out. They are rare because they are made to be broken. One has the color really faded, but the other when cleaned up looks brand new. They officially stop making them in 1910, but some companies still made them up to 1945.

Ellen didn't make it when they started to knock the house down so we didn't get any pictures of them actually knocking the house down. This is just after the fact.

The next picture is the pile after hauling some of the stuff to the dump. It took just over 1 1/2 days to haul it off. I took a half a day off to help haul things. It really wasn't that bad. The weather has been very cooperative.

The next two pictures are after they hauled everything they could to the dump. All of this stuff fell into the basement. The walls of the basement were over a foot thick so we couldn't knock it down with the equipment we had. So they burned everything in the basement. The fire department came just to make sure that nothing got out of hand. I guess it was quite the little marshmallow roasting party.

This is just a pic from the street so you can see what it all looks like. Notice the two bushes that were in front so hopefully you can picture where the front door used to be.

So the company came in and dug out the dirt to start putting in the foundation. Grandma isn't having a basement in because she doesn't want to have stairs in the house. Maybe you can see how big the house is going to be. If you look to the bottom of the screen you can see the ties that form the north of her garden. The house is definitely longer.

You may wonder what ever happened to the basement. Well, Stan was talking with the framers and they asked him what he was going to do with the basement. He said he was going to have to haul in dirt to fill it up. They said that they would love to put the dirt that they dig up and use it to fill in the basement. So that is what they did. They had so much dirt that they have plenty left over. Now they are putting in the forms for the pouring of the cement.

This last one is after they poured the cement. They came today to finish pouring the cement to form the foundation. Hopefully we'll get some pictures of that.

Grandma is sooooooooooo excited for all of this to happen and so are we. She has been so patient in living where she has been. When we were hauling off the wood, we found some of the old logs (it used to be a log home) that at some time or another that had caught fire. Why the house didn't burn down, we don't know. Then in the northeast corner of the house, most of the logs were rotten. Once again how the house just didn't fall in we don't know. It is amazing how fast things have happened. The first of October is when mom decided to build a new house and now the company says that they will bring the house on December 2nd and she should be in the house before Christmas. What a Christmas present.

FYI the house was built in 1924. Uncle Ron was born in the house in 1926. My great grandmother raised her family there (11 kids) and also 6 grandkids. I found some homework in the attic from one of the grandkids. I think the stucco was put on the house around 1948 and it was remodeled in 1984 or about. My great uncles (Dave and Aaron) said they had lost a baseball mitt when they were kids in between the stucco and the logs, but we never found it. Grandma did find a 1941 nickel under the front porch.

Stay tune for more on the house. By the way, the school musical has been this week and we'll post some pictures of McKenzie and maybe a little video too. They did the musical West Side Story.

News from Wyoming

Boy, it has been a while since I last blogged. My bad. I shall attempt the repentance process as soon as possible so that my evil sins will be cast away and scattered among confines of wicked practices.

Let's see, first the most important thing of all, volleyball. Yes the team has come through and won another state championship. We won regionals and played Burlington for the regional championship. It went 5 games and it was a great game. We prevailed in the 5th by a score of 15-8. So now we go to State and open with Arvada-Clearmont. We shut them down by holding there best player to just a few kills here and there. We won in three. Next we played Farson. Yes that is Farson. They won their first ever game at state by beating Hulett, the returning state champion. It was also a good game. We didn't actually play well, but we won in 4 games. This put us into the championship again and it was against Burlington. We didn't start out too well, until McKenzie went back to serve. Kennan took these pictures. McKenzie serving in one of the games. 

We were down 6 to 2. By the time she was done serving, we were up 11 to 6 and never looked back and won 25-20. The second game we had a let down. We lost 24-26. We trailed most of the time, but manage to come back and tie it at 24. But the girls never lost focus and came out and drilled Burlington in the third 25-12. In the fourth game we were way out in front. I kept thinking if we could just side out we would win. Burlington made a great run, but we held on and won 25-23, thus winning state for the once since 2001. It was great. 

We stayed the night and the bus was met by the Cokeville fans with a police escort on into town. We had an assembly the following Wednesday where the three seniors spoke, two of the senior dads, coach Toomer and I also spoke. I then showed a highlight of the state game to end all things. What a great feeling it is to win. Next year should be just as good. We have the players to replace the seniors with out any problems at all. We will be shorter, but we'll have more experience. We played 8 underclassmen all season long. This picture is of McKenzie and her friend Lauren Fiscus just before their first game at state. Mom thought it was a cool picture so.......

The football team had to go to Southeast to play in the semi-finals for football. It was a good game, but Cokeville just couldn't put the ball across the goal line. They lost 7-2. It was too bad, I really thought that they would win and that Hulett would beat Burlington and Cokeville would have hosted the championship, but it didn't happen. They boys did have a good season and they will miss some pretty good seniors. These seniors were hard workers in the weight room. Sometimes, you have to lose to light a fire under some people to get them to work hard. I just feel for the coaching staff. Cokeville's football coaches are by far the best in the state of Wyoming. We really don't have any good athletes, and they do a very good job for what they get. They always compete to the very end. Their only losses were by 5 or fewer points.

Kennan has started junior high basketball. He played in his first game last Thursday. He scored 3 points in the 8th grade game and 1 point in the 7th grade game. He plays a lot on the 8th grade team. I'm not bragging or anything, but his fundamentals are very good, probably better than anybody else on the team. Both junior high coaches came and talked to me about him. They both want him to play on their teams. I ended up refereeing his game. In the 7th grade, he started to get a little cocky and started to do some NBA junk. Afterwards I asked him if his coaches taught him those things. He said no and I told him then don't do them, do what your coaches want. This week the sixth grade is going to Yellowstone for the week, so he'll miss a couple of away games. His coaches told him to take a basketball with him. I really think that he will try to.

McKenzie is excited about winning state and now has a couple of weeks off to prepare for basketball. This past week she has been coming home and doing homework. I think on Monday she will stay after and shoot some hoops and try to get ready. She has also been practicing for the musical. She is excited about that.

Kandyce called and informed us that she will be able to graduate next fall. She is really excited about that. She is really tired of school. Mom and I went to Logan to the temple and took Kandyce and Breanne out to dinner. It was fun to visit with them for a while. We took Breanne with us to show her grandma's new home that she just bought. Grandma Norene is tearing down her old home and putting a new home up. We will move all of her big stuff on Tuesday of this week and start tearing things down on Wednesday. The guy told us that if things work out just right, she'll be in her home before Christmas. What a Christmas present. She'll have enough room in her new home that nobody will feel crowded. We are excited for her.

Brady is doing well on his mission. He told us that he got to meet Stephen R. Covey. He said that he is a really smart man and that Brady couldn't understand some of the things he was saying. He got to listen to conference in Latvian. He is still in Jelgava. This makes 7 months that he has been there. I just wonder if they are keeping him there to finish up creating a branch. He and his companion have been successful and have had some baptisms, but they want to find a special family. They had a pumpkin carving activity at the church. The people have never heard of such a thing. They had a lot of fun doing it as you can see from the picture he sent us.

Mom has been taking pictures of families and trying to do things like Breanne and Ashley. She just loves to take pictures. I'd like to get her a new camera that she can work with, but she keeps saying that she'll just learn how to use her old one. She has yet to do that, so maybe I should wait.

Now that volleyball is over, I can focus on getting Channel 39 up and running better. We've been having a hard time converting our programs over because the converter program that I had been using just crashed and it won't run and I can't find another program that I can use. Also things at the school are crashing and we keep losing connections. We have to find out why the connection to the auditorium won't work. Oh well, such is life.

The Lord has truly blessed our family and I know it is because of Brady serving a mission. We still have family prayers, family scripture study, and family home evening. The Lord, through his prophets, has promised us blessings and that we won't fear if we do these things. Until next time.