Irene Baptized on her Special Day

 Meet Irene who joined our Church and later married her returned missionary -  What a wonderful Miracle she has been in our lives.  Love you Irene

Visiting my old girlfriend from Samohi in Sun Valley August 09

My Hiking Passion & Friends

Every Saturday I have the wonderful opportunity of hiking with my girlfriends that i met through Sally. We do different trails around the Ogden Area. I never knew there were so many trails. Many of them start at the base of 29th Street above Harrison Blvd. This year June has been a very wet one. The creeks are filled to capacity making for wonderful sounds from the streams as you walk beside them. The reward is always the beautiful view of the valleys are you reach the top. We are planning a 3 day hiking venture to the S. Utah Bryan Head area this coming August. We are getting ready and every Saturday is devoted to another great hike here in our area.

Our grandson Nathan, Merideth's 5 year old breaks his leg while playing in the basement. What a terrible break. he is in a body cast to his hips

Our grandson (denver) Merideth writes on her Blog: Tuesday morning I was checking my voice mail and I received a message from my neighbor who asked if we could swap carpool. She proceded to tell me that her daughter broke her leg and was in bed until her casting later in the week. After receiving the call I reflected, as I often do when I hear about other's hurt kids, on how grateful I am that we have not had any major injuries. No broken bones, no stitches. I have been so fortunate. I also equate it to my fantastic, perhaps, flawless, mothering skills:) Not buying it? Okay...so fast forward. Tuesday afternoon around 4:30pm. Nathan and Jake are in the basement playing, as they often do. I am upstairs, Rowan is sleeping, Lauren is at art and Rodman is in Arizona. Jake comes upstairs to tell me something. Shortly after, we hear Nathan crying. I tell Jake to go check on him...I know, great mothering. But then I realize, Nathan is not crying in his normal way. His cry has more agony too it. His cry seems strained. He is calling for me. Asking me the help him. I quickly run downstairs. I pick him up and notice that his left leg is floppy. I attempt to set him down see if he can put pressure on his left leg. He can't. His leg is totally limp. Instantly, I know something is very wrong and I tell Jake to get in the car. We are going to the hospital. I carry Nathan upstairs and set him down on the couch. I get Jake and Rowan, who fortunately is sleeping in his car seat, in the car. Then I get Nathan. I can tell he is in major pain. Every time I move him he cries out. I text Rod...on our way to hospital. We head to our friend's urgent care. Nathan whimpers and cries all the way there. I get the boys all out of the car and we wait in the waiting room. Nathan is screaming out in pain. Everyone feels sorry for him. A few minutes later, although it seemed like forever, Dr. Hughes, (our friend, Jon) comes to help us. While Nathan sits on my lap, Jon feels his leg. Instantly, he diagnoses a broken femur bone. I cry, of course. I feel so bad. They quickly take an x-ray. Nathan is in so much pain. Every time we move him he cries and whimpers. The x-ray shows a spiral fracture to the femur in his left leg. I call Rodman and tell him he needs come home. He informs me that he's already on his way to the airport. Jon figures out my options. I decide to go to St Luke's downtown to check Nathan in for the night. After deciding to go to St. Luke's, Jon informs me that Erik Heinzen will meet me there and get me checked in. I instantly recognize the name. Erik is the PA who used to cast Nathan when he was a baby. I feel totally secure. I drive Rowan and Nathan to the hospital, Jake went home with a friend. Erik meets us in front of the ER. He remembers me and Nathan! Within and hour, Rodman is at the hospital and Nathan gets an IV to receive pain medicine. I leave at 1:10am to go home. I need to get a few things for Nathan, leave Rowan home with Rodman's parents and, oh yeah, a tiny bit of sleep. Nathan is scheduled for surgery at 8:30am. The surgery entails Nathan going under anesthesia so the orthepedic surgeon can put a cast on most of his body - from his upper chest to his ankle on his left leg and to the knee on his right. In the morning, Nathan seems comfortable. We tell him about the cast. He doesn't seem to mind. He chooses green. By 8:00am we head downstairs for surgery. Everyone comes to talk to us...the nurses, the PA, the surgeon and the anesthesiologist . Rodman puts on a cool white suit, hat and booties. Nathan gets a good laugh. Rodman goes with Nathan into surgery and stays with him a few final minutes before they put him to sleep. After surgery, which takes about an hour and a half, the surgeon comes out and shows us more x-rays of Nathan's leg. In one x-ray we can see how Nathan's femur bone is completly split in half at an angle. I want to throw up...I make the connection of floppy leg - broken bone. Yuck! After about an hour we go to the room where Nathan is waking up from his anesthesia . It takes a while for him to totally wake up. When he is fully awake, he checks out his cast. He smiles. He likes that it's green. He pounds on his chest, which is casted, and smiles again. So now we're home with Nathan and he figured out pretty quick that we will do ANYTHING for him. I've spent a lot of time these past few days serving him constantly. I tried to do the good mom thing and give him educational things to do like puzzles, rhyming games, cards, books, etc. He wanted something different every 2 minutes (not exaggerating). Just as I was feeling impressed by how well he was doing with the cast, last night he said when do I get this off in sort of a we should get this off right NOW kind of way. Oh no, we have 6 more weeks of this cast. Tonight, Nathan called for us to take him downstairs. Every couple of hours he wants to change locations so we have to carry him from place to place. Rodman told him he should just walk downstairs. Nathan responded, I can't! Rodman said, why not? Nathan responded, I don't have legs. This should be interesting. Sidenote: we are unsure how Nathan broke his femur. He says he was playing on the gymnastic rings in our basement and fell. The fall was probably not more that 2 to 3 feet. I imagine he didn't fall far, just very wrong with a twist, hence the spiral fracture.

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This is the first time I've ever seen deer come and lay down in our rocks in our backyard. Kristin and her kids were here for Christmas Vacation and they came to the window to see the beautiful setting. They were just laying down in the snow with the rocks behind them and it was such a perfect Christmas setting. I took a picture so I could remember it. A nice gift to my family over the holidays. 12/08

Our grandson Tyler Hacking

Here is our grandson Tyler who has decided he doesn't like skiing anymore. He has been thru so much already in this life. 3 years ago they discovered Tyler had a brain tumor. We were in Oregon on our mission for LDS Church. The news came as we were winding down our mission but we felt good about being where we were to ask the Lord for his blessings on Tyler. It has been 3 years and Tyler is cancer free but has had to go thru a lot of radiation. In fact, they really sizzled his little brain. Erik, our son tells us that Tyler has for the first 5 years a 30% chance and then after 5 years of no cancer returning - the odds go up to 50% and if he goes 10 years - he has a 100% chance. So your prayers are always needed. I try to go to the Temple every week and put his name on the prayer rolls. What a beautiful and handsome boy and he has had to have special tutoring from his Aunt Judy and it certainly zapped his strength but he is cancer free now for 3 years. That is a Huge Success. We love you Tyler.

Friday, April 9rh we drove to Salt Lake to pick up Jessica and Matthew for a day of skiing at Solitude. Jessica was skiing like a pro and hit some heavy powder which flipped her out of her skis and down she came on her wrist. It really hurt! Dad took her to hospital and sure enough it was a fractured wrist. Cast comes off in 3 weeks. Matthew enjoyed his hamburger despite Jessicas mishap. Matt is on the ski team and can he ski down the pipe. Okay, lets do it again next year. Grandma is coming back for a another run.