School Melo-drama ~ Deadwood Dan

It has been performance time for the past two week-ends for Spencer's play: Deadwood Dan. Spencer is the hero and title character.



He works out his troubles with his sidekick, Bill, and in the end, he gets the beautiful, if not melodious, girl.



At intermission, Spence had an air piano performance that was pretty funny, too. I'll see if I can get that video to load tonight....

General Conference, Again!

What can I say? We love to go to Conference. Yes, it is a long way, but we love to be with our kids, we love singing on a street corner for tickets, and we really love how tickets just pour out upon us. In fact, a young woman came up to us this time to see if we had more than enough tickets yet. She said that she was told we always get more than we need!

Of course, going to conference usually involves getting at least one hotel room, which never has enough seating...

And of course, October conference is a tremendous time to celebrate Dana's birthday!

And going out to dinner before (or as in this case, after) the priesthood session of conference.

This time it was Applebee's, and it was great!

But not as great as the Sunday morning session. The best we could do with our tickets was to try to all be together on the terrace level, but as we walked to our seats, an usher invited us to just keep on walking all the way down to the main floor. We ended up off to the side, 15 rows back. I'll tell you one thing for sure: the singing sounds a whole lot different down on the main floor than it does in the back of the balcony.

The best feeling in the world is having your family around you, excited for the beginning of a session of conference. We missed our loved ones who were in Texas (Jon and Meli) or under the weather (Brian and Dana felt poorly). And we even missed our adopted daughter, Melanie Merrill, especially when singing for tickets!

Mission Reunion... 30 Year Later

So this is my first mission reunion. Don't know why I didn't try to go earlier, but I can tell you briefly (honest) why I went this time. Elder Boyd Peterson had found everybody from our LTM group, except me. But on a recent trip to Seattle, he stopped in, with his recently returned missionary daughter, to visit her former mission president. Turns out that was my brother-in-law Dean and his wife Patrice. They put two and two together and came up with... me!

The super-sleuth Petersons, with one of their other daughters.

Elder Baxter and I served together in Rhodesia, before it became Zimbabwe. I reminded them that at a very difficult time in our lives, they committed an act of caring and kindness that made a huge difference to us. Wonderful, wonderful to catch up with good people!

I was Elder Steglich's last companion. He reminded me that I owe him Salt Lake City's largest pizza because the woman you see him happily with is not the one I predicted he would marry. After spending a lovely evening with them both, I would say that it will be a pizza well owed!

This was my wife's first opportunity to meet a General Authority, Elder Golden. She had previously asked her sister Patrice, she of the recently completed mission presidency, if it wasn't intimidating meeting General Authorities? Patrice's advice: take every opportunity you can to associate with them. They are not intimidating; quite the opposite. They radiate the pure love of Him whom they serve. We had to agree after our experience with Elder and Sister Golden.

I Thought Watchdogs Were Overkill!

Never had one of these try to scare me away at the gate. What part of "civilization" don't my precious children understand?!?!?!?

Celebrating a Friend's Birthday... in Black!

So it was Jim Field's birthday last month. His 50th. Which meant his wife got to plan this really cute party where all of his friends come tease him for being over the hill. Which we did!

Here's the offending spouse, cutting the evidence. I was spared a similar fate only because my 50th birthday immediately preceeded our string of 3 weddings one after the other. Julie just didn't have it in her to plan one more party.

Here's the joyful celebrant. Jim has filled his 50 years with tons of scouting, faithfulness and good works. Not bad for a man in black.

Seattle, "Wicked", and fun family! Need I say more?

I may not need to say more, but when has that ever stopped me? We figured out last May that tickets for "Wicked" would be going on sale in Seattle. We took a quick poll of close family and the road trip was in the works.

Roadies consisted of Mike, Julie and Spencer, Julie's sister Patrice and Dean, and our nephew Dean and Sarah.

After a beautiful trip through a fall mountain pass, we ended up on the waterfront looking for seafood for lunch.

Julie, is that a shark or a salad?!?!?

And Spencer chose seafood-on-the hoof burger. There's a surprise .

Seattle is such a delight with mt Rainier, the waterfront and all things unique to Seattle. We were even entertained by a sea lion. He was bashful enough to remain camera shy.

And then it was time for the main event!

The show was FABULOUS! The music was great, but we knew that. For those of you who know how tight-fisted I am, all I can say is that it was worth every penny and more.

Senior Yearbook Pic Time

So it's time to submit a picture for the senior yearbook. What do you think?

Kid is some poser, hey?

He really, really liked posing with the baby grand. We have a young couple in our ward with this Steinway...

So, what do you think? Which one is the REAL Spencer?

Jumping Into Something New

One of our favorite family traditions started with a trip to the Oregon coast. There was a huge sand hill just outside our door, and it was screaming out, "Jump off me!" So the kids grabbed hands and took the first leap of faith.

Since then, there have been many opportunities to jump, individually or collectively, into the unknown.

There was this one REALLY big hill, REALLY steep. To them it just looked like...

One REALLY big adventure! So, grab hands, here we go!

Lesson learned? Surround yourself with people who love you, and don't be afraid to jump in with both feet!

So it seemed appropriate to jump into the next big adventure ~ together!

The Sabeys liked it so much, they thought they'd jump too! I am really looking forward to our next family trip to the beach, with 7 kids, jumping into the future.

Sneakin' in the whitewater between receptions

So, after Mandee & Jordan's wedding, almost everybody came up to Washington for the open house. My work partner, Travis (center back with sunglasses) called me up and said, "Mike, you and the kids ready to take on the Icicle river?" Just the week before, it had been running at about 6,000 cubic feet ~ today it was almost 12.

"Travis," says I, "if I ask my wife if I can take everybody and skip most of the day Friday, the day before the open house, she just might kill me!" "Mike," says he, "the answer is ALWAYS no to the question you don't have the nerve to ask."

Made sense, so I asked, and here we are.

Spencer and I went with Travis the week before, and at 6,000 feet, it seemed fairly tame. I'm here to tell you, at 11,000 feet, we had ourselves a ride.



The only problem was that, as crew photographer, I could get shots of what we were heading into, but well before we got into it, I was obligated to paddle for my life. The other problem was that, from my position on the boat, I shot a lot of really good backs-of-heads.




At one point, Travis invited Spencer to go sit up front on the bow, holding the guy rope between his legs and ride the run like a bucking bronco. He started off bravely enough, but ended up like a wet poodle in the bottom of the boat.


Still, the best part of the day was a stretch called Drunkard's Drop. That's where Dana became the poster child for "Proper Safety when Washed Out of the Boat."

Now, look at the picture up top again. Jordan took that from the front left corner. On the left side, from front to back, we had Jordan, Mandee, Dana & Spencer. On the right, front to back we had Jon, Amelia, Mike and Travis. (Dana's husband Brian was unable to make the trip due to work ~ bummer!)


As we headed into Drunkard's Drop, the boat was angled slightly from right front to left rear. We came up over a tremendous swell and nosed down into a trough. The same trough a week ago had been about 4 feet deep. Today it was at least 6 and it seemed like 12. At the bottom, we were looking up at raging wall of whitewater that was at least 4 feet over our heads. For the first time in my life, I wondered if I had gotten myself into something that I couldn't get out of.


The water broke over the front right of the boat and washed across diagonally. I was swept off the side of the boat into the middle and bumped into Dana's leg. Quickly I grabbed for her, but she was already gone. I had pushed my baby princess overboard!


As we came out of the torrent, I spotted her behind and to the right, feet together in front of her as she "sat" in the river like an easy chair, both hands clutching her paddle, just the way Travis had told her to. I was so proud of my little castaway!


We had also lost Jordan from the left side of the boat. Spencer was still huddled in the bottom front of the boat. Somehow, Mandee was still steadfast in her position, the only one remaining on the left side. We asked her how she managed to stay aboard and she said, "As I saw this wall of water coming up at us, I realized that Jon would never let Amelia get washed overboard, so when the wave broke over us, I just held on to Amelia for dear life!"

Our Trip to Canada - the Cabin

Our second day in Canada, we toured downtown Magrath, went to the temple then went on to the cabin. The cabin is a paradise about 2/3 of the way between the rolling farmlands and pastures below, and the forested foothills of the Rockies.

The cabin itself is everything a cabin should be ~ rough wood, loft bedrooms, even a bear skin.

The wood stove and two-story rock chimney provide warmth and charm, or at least charm as today was a warm summer day. The cabin itself remained comfortably cool all day.










The first order of business was dinner, Jordan's world-famous
teriyaki burgers...









...which became Jordan's world-famous teriyaki sloppy joes. Dinner was delightful, if not the chef's first plan.




























The next order of business was to prepare the hot tub...





by heating water, carried by bucket from the creek, in a 55 gallon drum over a roaring fire.













Resulting in a relaxing mountain hot tub for two!