Everything Old Is New

This is my Grandpa Holley's old ranch house and garage. It used to be white frame. When I went to be with Mom Holley a month ago. We went on a ride up Springville Canyon to Hobble Creek and this is what we found! Someone has bought his ranch and completely refurbished it. They seemed to have kept the old footprint, but reroofed and resided it and then put on new doors. All the outbuildings are refitted and the fence has been redone. Even the burm on the side of the road is improved with rock and landscaping.
This is the front of the old ranch house. I think it looks so cute.

This little old red building was a small storage place that had lots of cool old things in it as I remember.

You can see the pond in the back here where we used to fish and use an old row boat.

Another look at the pond from the back side road that leads to several houses that have been built on his property.

I spent so many fun summer visits to Grandpa Holley's. He would always let me ride one of his horses. The property was so big at that time that I could ride a horse behind my dad who was on another horse and we would even gallop down through the river and into the grazing areas where the sheep and a few cattle were.

My mom and I were amazed and so happy to see this nice improvement and remember the old days.

Thankful

I couldn't think what to blog about that didn't need a picture. Yes I know you have all helped me at one time or another to get pictures into my blog, but I can't ever do it on my own. So I am thankful to have you here sometimes to help me. I am so thankful for my family. You are all so sweet and caring toward me and dad. I feel so badly for people who I see that don't have children. If I see them at my office, I want to shake them and say, "what are you thinking? That's what life is all about."

We loved being with Adam and Summer for a couple of days at Thanksgiving. Their family is so adorable and so good. Each one of the kids did kind things for us. They drew us pictures, made us cool lego things to look at, ran upstairs to get things for us, sang us songs, and danced many weird dances for us. They even took Cookie for walks to the park a time or two. Summer made wonderful french toast for us and Adam let us borrow his car one whole day when I went to Grandma Holley's to spend time and dad went to see Aunt Rosemarie and Uncle Ham. They are so generous. We spent Thanksgiving with Summer's sister Shaleen and her husband, Adam Ford. Heather and her husband, Adam West, spent the holiday too. What lovely people they are! Good families! We are so blessed!

I am so amazed at Grandma Holley. She is doing very well for 91 years old. She wanted to go to the mall on Black Friday so that says what kind of stamina she has. We couldn't find what she had in mind, but we had fun--and we were both exhausted. She is so loving and wants us to stay longer always. She had quite an attraction to Cookie. She couldn't remember that she had been there before and danced for her, but she insisted that we go down to the lobby and have Cookie dance while she held up the little piece of bread that is Cookie's motivation. She would say to a group of people who we didn't know and she didn't either: "This is my little dog, would you like to see her dance?" Of course they complied and Cookie gave a good show. Grandma said after, "I'll be the most popular person here now." Well, that's good enough for me.

We also stopped by at Mark and Anissa Holley's new home where they were having Thanksgiving dinner. I got to hold that little baby that was in the hospital just lately. He looks just perfect and is a doll. Aunt Debbie and Mindy too, are doing just fine. (Don't ask me why the font just changed.) I am surely thankful for that.

AHH AUGUST...

August was certainly a bustling month filled with just about everything. The first big event happened when Jake, Jaz and little Jethro flew in from Dresden, Germany. What a joy it was to get to know our newest (at the time) grandchild--and certainly the one we had been waiting anxiously to hold and kiss!


We had a lot of fun in the swimming pool.

Next I flew up to Eagle Mountain, Utah, to help Summer with her baby--who decided to come into the world a little after expected. What a joy when little Susannah did come!!!! Here is a four generation picture that happened just luckily with not much effort.

We were so glad to pick up Laura and her two daughters: Faith and Paulie, at the airport and take them with us. What fun!!!

Then the trek up to Bear Lake and Dennis and Karen's cabin for our reunion. What a blast! Here's a few pictures of it when I remembered to take them.

Then we all came home to Vegas and a couple of days later I flew back up to Utah to be with mom Holley for a few days while Mindy and Debbie were recuperating from their kidney transplant experience. I am so in awe of my two sisters for going through this dramatic situation together. We all are praying that it will be the means for Debbie to live a long and full life! While I was with mom, we went up to Tremonton one day and saw her last surviving brother, Owen and his wife Jill. They look pretty darn good for their ages! Then we went to visit my cousin, Mike Bowcutt and his wife, Katie and then went to lunch with my cousin, Johnny Krey.

Last of all in August, Adam and family came down to visit us in Vegas for a few days. The boys wanted to swim in grandma and grandpa's pool. It's good to be thought of as a grand resort spot.

PS - here's a cute picture of Gracie on her birthday. And one of my visit to Jim and Marlene's with mom.

When I finally got home, I got a really bad cold along with several other family members--one being Gracie who is coughing beside me as she is putting this together for me. Thanks Gracie, you are a doll! Whew!!!!

Oh My Man I Love Him So

Who wouldn't love this adorable mug? This is little Paul Roger Michaelson at about six months old. I think I loved him right from here. I was looking down from heaven and thought, "There's the man I want to marry."Fast forward to April, 1970 and here we are. We were pretty good looking there. Paul was an studentbody officer at USU and I was the head songleader. We were a good match, I think.

Paul was a history major at USU before he went to Law School in Washington state. Here he is last fall at Gettysburg or maybe it's Valley Forge, I can't tell. He was in history hog heaven here. Thanks Laura and John for taking us everywhere.

This last picture of the two of us was taken a few years ago at a Michaelson gathering before Jake and Jaz went to Germany. Thanks Dave and Amy for allowing the crowd to gather and take pictures there at your beautiful back yard. Paul is never more happy than when "ma family" is all together.

Now that I'm a popular blogger . . .

Wow! This blogging is fun! Of course the most exciting part is reading the comments, half of which are from myself--ha! I didn't realize how easy blogging is. It only took one daughter to fix me up ("shake me up, Judy!"), and one granddaughter to make it prettier ("There's a pretty-ish little wallpaper there."). Thanks Missy and Grace! Now I just need one more person to help me with pictures. Who will that be?
I hope everyone enjoyed their fourth of July holiday. I am appreciating our independence more every year. Who knows how long it will last? Our leaders have warned us that if we are not righteous, we will lose our wonderful "land of promise" and our freedoms. As we have been reading Preach My Gospel, it is more evident to me that we must make the gospel our way of life. It has never been a Sunday only gospel, but I realize that I must make it more pervasive.
One of the memories that I have of the fourth of July is the year that Amy's robe caught on fire from the sparklers. That really scared me. I'm so thankful that she was not hurt badly. As I recall, she was singed a little but mostly on the robe. Do you remember anymore Amy?

My First Post (How special)

Today is July 2, 2009. It is also John and Gina's 15th wedding anniversary. Time seems to be flying by. It seems like yesterday that they were married. John forgot the wedding license and Hoss had to race back to their apartment to get it. All their grandparents were there (they are all passed away now) and I even seem to remember that Grandma Pearl was there too. Paul and I hosted a wedding breakfast in Logan at the Bluebird restaurant. It was lovely in the upper room with the tall pretty windows. Paul told several stories to embarrass John Paul and we all laughed. I think Gina's parents were worried about what kind of a family she was getting into. John and Gina had a lovely reception at the Institute building on campus. It was beautiful and loads of people from USU and Loganite relatives were there. They had "just" two other receptions: one in Las Vegas and one in Royal City, WA, where Gina's family was living at the time. The groom being the responsible party to get the flowers for all the celebrations, I (being mother of the groom) decided that a few of my artistic friends and I would make the bouquets and corsages out of silk flowers so that they would be available for all three receptions to be held over the next two weeks. I have since spent many sleepless nights worrying about poor Gina not having real fresh flowers for her wedding. I wish I could go back and do that again. I entitled my blog as "muddled memories" because there may be some mistakes here. Can you find any?