Good Beginning for August

Like Mr. Clark in "Shall We Dance", Neal came up the stairs holding this beautiful rose. Noticing the black ribbon holding the theater tickets to the stem I thought of the last scene in Phantom of the Opera.

For my birthday gift Neal bought us tickets to see a performance of Phantom in Portland. It is an early gift and very wonderful.

Naturally, we are both excited.

What a great way to begin a new month!

The next cool thing to happen was to have Courtney call and ask for a sleep over. I was thrilled and waited all day for her to show up.

Gaylynne dropped her off after they had had a very busy day of getting pictures taken and going shopping for school clothes.

I had forgotten that it was Branch Temple Night and that we were supposed to do sealings. But Neal made my apologies to everyone and went without me.


Courtney and I walked to Safeway because Neal had the car and the van is at the shop getting worked on since it didn't pass DEQ. Doh!

We picked up things for dinner and dessert. This photo is of Courtney showing off the wonderful potato salad that she made.

I asked Courtney if she would like to accompany me on Saturday for a walk around the neighborhood.

She was pretty excited when I told her that one of our neighbors puts out sunflower seeds and bird seed for the birds and squirrels each morning.

I explained to her that the birds and the squirrels eat their breakfasts together.


Courtney came upstairs fully dressed in the morning ready for our walk.

We had Pop Tarts for breakfast and watched some cartoons before leaving the house. Grandpa opted out of the walk letting the two of us share the time alone while he worked around the house.

The plan was to be gone for 1/2 hour which is my usual practice. I forgot my telephone so there was no way that Neal could contact us when we didn't return home more than two hours later.

She just walked and walked and I followed.

I got this cute picture of her catching up to me after she had stopped to pick out a beautiful leaf for her collection.

We had quite a nice stack of personally selected leaves that she wants to make into book marks by covering them in Elmer's Glue.



It would be difficult for you to make out what this is without an explanation.

It is a squirrel and a crow having breakfast together. There were several sparrows with them too but I got too close with the camera and they flew away.

Usually the crows at our home scare the little birds off so that they can have the bread that I put out for the finches and sparrows. I think the crows are just rude. They are real bullies!

But down the street all the different varieties seem to get along.

Not only are the seeds put out for them there are also dishes of water to bathe in and others for drinking.

You can get pretty close to the squirrels and the crows but the smaller birds don't take any chances.




Courtney followed one of the squirrels to this tree and that little guy was just chattering at her.

She giggled when I told her that he was probably "chewing her out" and telling her to get away from his food.

It was pretty early in the morning when we went on our walk and I was shocked to see how many rodents, um, I mean squirrels were in our neighborhood.

You know my theory... they are rodents if they are in my yard or in my house and if they are anywhere else they are cute little Squirrels.

Disney certainly changed the way we think about these animals!

We spent so much time with the squirrels I thought that maybe we might not get to walk at all.





Courtney loaded up her hand with seeds and put some in the trees and tried to entice the squirrels to come closer to her.

On the porch of the people who put out the seed we saw this little guy. He wasn't afraid of Courtney and she was able to get pretty close.

It kind of gave me the creeps seeing him there so close to the house but what are you going to do?

Courtney mimicked their chatter and later seemed to be carrying on a conversation with some crows who answered her every time she cawed at them.

Instead of our 15 minute walk we ended up at the Ladd's Circle Rose Garden where we walked on all of the paths.

Courtney posed in front of a trellis of beautiful roses and then continued to explore.

When I asked her to choose a favorite she pointed to this one. But really how can you choose a favorite?

Before we left the park Courtney bent over and picked up something from the grass. I figured that it was just another petal that had fallen. I had told her that it was against the law to pick the flowers but had given her permission to pick up any petals that had already fallen to the ground.

She found her favorite thing in the beautiful garden. Yeah, two $5.00 bills!

I called to the man who had entered the garden in front of us and asked if he had dropped any money. He answered, "I don't think so", then he thought and said, "Well, I might have dropped a couple of ones".

I called back to him, "These aren't yours then, they are fives!" I thought to myself, what a jerk!!!

I challenged Courtney to get us back to our home. She wanted to walk all the way to down town Portland but I knew that I would never be able to make that trek and since I didn't have a phone to call home for help...

Anyway, she did manage to find the way home even if it was the long way.

We had a really wonderful time. When we got home we learned that Neal had taken the car out and tried to find us because he wanted to prepare a big breakfast of sausages and pancakes for us.

By the time we got home we realized that Don would be picking her up in just two hours. So we each grabbed a piece of cold chicken from last night's dinner and headed to the car.

Courtney wanted to go to JoAnn Fabrics to get some material and things for some gifts she is going to make.

Then we went to the Dollar Tree where she bought gifts for her brother and sisters.

She had a great time.

We returned home and she put together the puzzle that she had bought for herself.

She then hurriedly packed her things and was just about finished when Daddy showed up. They had plans to go out to lunch together and Don was excited to take her to the Flugtag in Portland that I'm sure Gaylynne will write about in their blog.

Flugtag in German means "Flying Day". 80,000 people showed up to watch these human flying machines drop into the drink! I'm sure they had a wonderful time.

Dad and I talked about doing something special for Lori's and Matthew's baby.

The plan was made and we headed for the "wood" store. Before that we stopped off at Subway Sandwiches shop and shared a sandwich.

Mmmmm deeelicious!

Dad is very excited about the gift. He spent a lot of time picking out just the right kind of wood and color of stain that he plans to use.

We went to two different stores. The final decisions will be made this week and he will start the project as soon as he can.

That way Lori and Matthew will see some of the progress when they are here to visit in a few weeks.

I hope to get Grandma involved in the project as well. We'll be chatting with her on Thursday when she comes with us to see Nephi, the musical.

What a good start we have on August! Yay!!!