We’re in the business meeting for this year. My cousin Merrill brought a CD
with a bunch of family pictures. That was a real treat. A group of about 25
are here. The food was good and I’ve enjoyed getting re-acquainted with
family members. The reunion for next year which will be in Hanna in the
second week in August.

The day is very lovely and the location, just below the Bountiful Temple,
is a good location. there is a nice bowery and plenty of tables for
everyone. It’s not too hot and there is a slight breeze.

So who’s here?
My mom and dad
My brother Perry and his wife Chris
Cousin Merrill and wife Jean
Cousin Perry and wife Linda
Cousin Kathy and husband Jeff
Aunt Bernita and Husband Bryce
Cousin John and wife Bobby
Cousin Judy and husband John
Several of John’s children and spouses

Two years from now its my mom’s family’s turn to host the Cousins Reunion.
The business meeting is over and we’ll be leaving soon to drive back north.
Nina will be driving and I think we’ll be stopping near Brigham City for
some fruit. ‘Tis the season!

The hot tub was delivered and installed on Monday and we’ve already made good use of the spa. It is bigger and quite a bit different than the tub we had in Colorado Springs. Although I’ve read the owners manual once, I think I need to read it again as there’s a lot of capability that I’ve still got to learn about. We’ve ordered the fence to be put around the back yard and need to get it approved by the Architectural Committee. Yup — covenants say that we have to get all of this stuff approved. We also have to plant at least 4 maple trees of a special variety, which will cost about $250 or $300 apiece. Lovely.

The yard is growing a reasonable crop of grass and a huge crop of morning glory. Nina has spent several hours out there pulling out the morning glory runners to give the grass a chance at seeing sunlight. I put down some fertilizer, but the couple of strips I missed are now quite visible. I need to fill in on a couple of strips of the back yard that are now looking quite anemic compared to the other parts of the yard. And then there’s the sprinkler system. Whoever put them in didn’t pay much attention to the contours of the yard. Every one of them around the outside of the yard are level — meaning that they spray right into the lawn where the yard slopes up from the sprinkler. I spent a couple of hours resetting sprinker heads tonight, raising and breaking a pretty big blister in the palm of my right hand. I should have been wearing gloves!! It’s now quite painful and will be worse tomorrow, I’m sure. What a pain in the hand!

The Relief Society Presidency paid Nina a visit this evening. As I’ve noted before, we are living in a very friendly ward and they’re doing a good job of pulling us into the ward. I’ve been asked to teach the lesson on Sunday in the High Priests Group. That should be a lot of fun. Saturday is the "Gillette Cousins Reunion" in Bountiful, Utah. Mom and dad will drive over here and ride down with us. We should be back about 5 p.m. that evening. My brother Perry and my sister Eileen will also be there for the event. This will be the first Gillette reunion I’ve attended in several years.

I had my three-month review this afternoon in my new job. The review went well and was very positive. I’m enjoying the work and it looks like the company is happy with me so far. It doesn’t seem possible that I’ve already been here for three months! As Kermit the Frog said, "Time’s fun when you’re having flies!"

I still have a couple of sprinkler heads to reset, but they’re on a different sized pipe, so I’ve got to make yet another trip to Home Depot for supplies. I’ll also get some lumber to put shelves in the closet in the office and in the closet in the back hallway near the utility room. Gloves will be part of this activity. I don’t need any more blisters!

We’re in Idaho Falls at a Pioneer League game: Idaho Falls vs Provo. It’s
the bottom of the 5th and IF has scored 4 runs in this inning to lead 9 to
3. In this league, a 6 run lead might not hold up! The company had a number
of tickets available so we bought a couple of them. It’s a lovely night to
be at a ball game.

I don’t have a connection here in IF. Hopefully, this will queue up and
send when we get back to Pocatello.

Today was spent installing wiring for the hot tub which will be delivered
on Monday. I rented a trencher to make the job easier. The machine turned
out to be a huge machine, one which I probably needed a license to operate!
While it dug a good trench, I had to dig up a large portion looking for a
sprinkler line. I found it, used the machine, and promptly cut two more
sprinkler lines. It took longer to maneuver the machine on to the trailer.
After that I had to make two trips to Home Depot to get parts to fix the
sprinkler and put the power cable in the ground. I would have been better
off digging the trench by hand, me thinks.

we had a Stake Temple assignment yesterday morning for the 5 a.m. Session.
We got up at 3:15 and left at 3:45. There were six sisters and about thirty
brothers on the session. We thought we’d get breakfast at the temple
cafeteria, but we learned it didn’t open until 9:30. Consequently,
McDonalds got our business. Ward Temple night is on the last Wednesday, but
I’ll be in Belgium that day.

Heather and kids are coming up tomorrow for a couple of days. Mom and dad
are also coming over tomorrow and spending the night. Dad will help me wire
in the hot tub. He has an appointment on Monday with the doctors in IF.

The summer is almost over and it seems we’ve had no time to do much that
would be considered summer fun. The house is consuming most our time. There
are still boxes everywhere but we can now move around in the house upstairs
with little problem. It’ll be a couple of months before enough stuff put
away that the whole house is useable.

The moving truck arrived on time last Monday morning and they took all day
unloading the truck. The overflow came on Tuesday to finish off the
delivery. Everything seems to have arrived, although a few things were
damaged. This is the first move that has had this much damage.

The cable guy has hooked us up and the web site is back on line. The Dish
Network is hooked up and we now have all the TV we ever wanted. The
electricians came back and moved the power to the other bedroom because the
office furniture wouldn’t fit in the room we had planned to use for the
office. We can now cook and eat in the house (or on the deck). Life is very
good.

Today is also my mother’s eightyth birthday. My sister Eileen and her
husband have driven up from Salt Lake and we’ll go over after church today.
We had a pleasant surprise yesterday when mother called and told us that
Delon, Nelma, and Kenny had just walked in. Delon is my dad’s younger
brother (and my Uncle), lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and is about my
age. We visited them in Las Cruces a couple of years ago and they’ve
visited with us in Colorado Springs. We’ve always enjoyed their company, so
we left off from mowing the grass and unloading boxes and drove over to
Soda Springs for the afternoon.

Delon had come up to Utah for some training and brought the family. They
spent the weekend in Cleveland, Idaho in their trailer and did some
visiting with family. It was a fun visit.

Speaking of the lawn, I mowed it for the first time yesterday. It is much
more morning glory than lawn. The company that hydroseeded the lawn says to
mow it on a high setting and everthing will be OK. All I know is that it is
a big yard and this one of the last times that I’ll mow this yard by hand
with that little lawnmower. We also need to do something about the morning
glory.

So today we’ll take the RV over to Soda Springs as I’ve several large
pieces of lumber that I bought at Home Depot for dad. We’re also taking
over most of the dinner. Eileen anl Phil brought the cake, so it’s time for
a birthday party! August 1st is a very good day — my mothers birthday.

I took several digital pictures this afternoon as mom was opening her birthday presents. I really liked this picture which was taken as she was opening up her new iron. Dad saw the iron and said, “Good! Now I can have her old one!” That evoked quite an expression of surprise, and a pretty nice picture. Happy birthday, mother!

We’re busy packing up the apartment. We’ll get most of our stuff out of here tomorrow and finalize it on Tuesday. It’s time to get into our own house with all of our own stuff! Dawnmarie and Kirk will spend the next couple of nights here (with now adequate sleeping accommodations) before they head eastward. It’s been fun having the grandkids here for a few days and we’ll miss them when they go.

I guess we’re officially here. We closed on the house late Wednesday afternoon and then met our realtor at the new house at 7 a.m. on Thursday to do a walkthrough and accept the house. Everything was in order and the house is now in our possession, although it’s owned by the bank! The Qwest phone guy was to show up between 8 and noon on Thursday to install the phone. Nina waited all morning and, of course being Qwest, no one showed up. The new refrigerator was scheduled to be delivered on Thursday afternoon between noon and 2 p.m., but they were early. Nina finally called Qwest and was told the installer would be there between 2 and 5 p.m. He showed up at 4:45. Nina spent the entire day at the empty house waiting for the stupid phone company. Over the years I have come to have a very low opinion of Qwest as a company that will never, ever have the customer’s needs and requirements as any part of their operating practices.

The electrician was at the house promptly at 7:05 a.m. on Friday and they were done by 10. They ran a new circuit into the office so we would have sufficient power for the computers, put a 30 amp circuit out on the RV pad for our motorhome, put 220 volt wiring out back for the new hot tub, and another 110 volt circuit out back for a pond or fountain whenever we put something like that out in the back yard. I spent the morning tracing down coax cable connections so that Dish Network can install next Wednesday. Dawnmarie’s car wouldn’t start, so we spent some time in the afternoon getting a new battery installed in her van.

Dad and mom came over Saturday morning and we spent much of the day building shelves downstairs in the utility room. He also helped me put a wiring circuit in for the cable modem that needs to be in the utility room. While we were doing that, Nina and Dawnmarie took the kids into town for the 24th of July Parade. The parade was excellent and we had a very good, productive day.

Last Sunday (the 19th) our membership records were read into the ward. On the Friday before, the Bishop asked Nina and me to talk in Sacrament Meeting this Sunday on patriotism. Amongst all the hubub of the week, we both prepared a lot of material. There were no youth speakers, no ward business, and we were the program along with the Ward Choir singing in between. It was good that we both had a lot of material prepared. I’m sure that the ward members got a reasonable look at us and we probably passed muster. The Juniper Hills Ward is a very friendly ward, perhaps one of the friendliest wards we’ve ever attended. We’ll enjoy being part of the ward. I received a calling today: teaching the 4th Sunday lessons in High Priest Group priesthood meeting. Only problem is, I’ll be out of town two out of the next three 4th Sundays! But, I enjoy teaching and this will be a good opportunity for me. I may switch Sundays with one of the other teachers….

Mom and dad drove over from Soda Springs to be in Sacrament meeting and hear us speak. They came up to the house afterwards and we had dinner on a very small table that I bought on Thursday so Nina would have a place to sit while waiting for the phone guy. Next Sunday is mother’s 80th birthday, so we also celebrated her birthday as Kirk and Dawnmarie will be leaving on Wednesday to drive back to Pennsylvania. She’ll get two birthday parties this year, since we’ll go over next Sunday for her real birthday.

The moving truck arrives tomorrow morning between 8 and 9 a.m. We’ll be sleeping in our new house amongst all the boxes tomorrow night. Pocatello, we’re here!

Every once in a while, a pleasant surprise comes along. Today brought one of them.

I’ve been having some troubles with the motorhome. Just before the Fourth of July I discovered that the generator would run, but electricity wasn’t getting into the vehicle. Everything I looked at seemed to be OK — but nothing I tried fixed the problem. Further, the rear left turn signal wasn’t working. The bulbs were fine, the front left turn signal flashed quite rapidly, which further meant something was wrong. It acted like there was some kind of a break in the circuit, like may a blown fuse? But where were the fuses? I discovered a couple of fuse boxes, but all seemed to be in order. Finally I resigned myself to take the vehicle in to a repair shop and have them fix the problem. I took it in about 9 this morning. At 10:30 they called to say everything was fixed and the bill would be about $30. The turn signal did indeed have a blown fuse (and they’ll show me where it is). The generator had not been plugged back into the motorhome wiring after the last generator oil change, which I had done just before we brought the vehicle to Pocatello when I took the new job. It looks like they just forgot to plug it back in! Anyhow, the problems are fixed and the price is right. It also means that I spent too much time trying to figure it out myself. I should have taken it to the experts earlier!

We’ll close on our house in about another hour — another big milestone in our move to Pocatello. I’ve just about got all the accounts in Colorado Springs closed and corresponding accounts opened here in Pocatello. The moving truck comes on Monday!

It has been incredbly hot here in Pocatello. In addition, the weather
pattern is bringing a lot of moisture up from Baja California. That has
spawned some very spectacular thunderstorms. In between, it has just plain
been HOT. The small window air conditioning unit in our apartment isn’t
capable of keeping up with the heat. The new house is air conditioned!
Hurrah!

We’ve got some company visiting. Dawnmarie and her five kids are staying
with us this week. Kirk has flown back to Pennsylvania to work for a week.
He’ll be back late Saturday the 24th. The small two-bedroom apartment gets
pretty tight occasionally. Meanwhile, this is an eventful week coming up.
We’ll close on Wednesday afternoon and take possession on Thursday morning
with a walkthrough at 7 a.m. Air conditioning, here we come!

Dad’s workshop is coming along. My brother Perry drove over from Green
River, Wyoming on Friday. I went over Saturday morning and we spent the day
putting up siding. We got the west side done and most of the south side
until we ran out of material. I made a quick trip to Home Depot last night
to pick up the J-strips needed to complete the siding work. We’re going
over this afternoon and will take the motorhome over this afternoon so
everyone can ride in the same vehicle. We’ll take the remaining siding
material with us so the rest of the siding can be put up. Life is good (and
HOT)!