Thanksgiving

This year was supposed to be the year that our kids come home but nobody does that anymore. Sarah and Sam hung on the longest and for several years were the only ones who came home but now with his job as a Highway Patrol officer it is difficult for him to schedule holidays off. Lately however Alycia and Trevor have been coming home and they were planning on coming this weekend. Unfortunately with Covid some of the places they wanted to go to while they were out here are closed.

The one place they really wanted to see was Legoland and when they learned that it was closed they decided that it would be easier for them to just stay home and fly us out there. They suggested that we get together with Brandon and Serene and that would allow us to see ten of our seventeen grandkids. We figured it was a pretty good deal.

We arrived at Brandon’s place late on Tuesday night, visited with Brandon and Serene for a bit and then hit the hay. The next morning I was lying in bed when all of the sudden a bunch of kids piled on top of me.

I had my head under the covers and apparently they thought that was kind of funny. I then suddenly jumped up and grabbed which ever kid was closest and gave them a big hug. I think I scared them to death. It’s been a while since I’ve seen these guys so it was great to see them again.

Before the day got too busy Brandon and I went to his gym to work out. He about killed me and I’m still feeling my arms and shoulders this morning. I think I like running a whole lot better than I like working out in a gym.

 

My first order of the day was to make a couple of apple pies. I’ve always had a kid or two willing to help me out but it’s been a long time since any of them were home. Now I’m able to talk my grandchildren into helping me out and it is great. Haley made one pie almost entirely by herself and Sydney made a good portion of the other pie. They tasted delicious. Later in the day Alycia and her family arrived and we were able to all visit with each other. It was my first chance to see June since she was born and boy is she a well fed child. She is also a very content child and usually quite happy. Friday we visited the Stock Yards in Fort Worth. We’ve been there before but it was a lot more fun now that the kids are getting bigger. That was probably the best part of the whole trip.

Sydney and Hayley are truly young women now and it is so fun to have a grown up discussion with them. At the stock yards we watched the cattle drive and after that we saw a gun fight. We then went to the Fort Worth water gardens which were pretty cool.
I wasn’t to hip on that but they were taking Sydney and Hayley. I love being with all the grandkids but I really enjoyed being with the older kids so along I went.

Thursday we had thanksgiving dinner and the Quinn’s. They had a good crowd over there and it was good to see them all. It was fairly late in the day when we all headed back to Brandon’s but we left Brandon behind.

He had made earlier arrangements to go on a trip with Paul Quinn and they left right after we did. They went lawn Bowling in Arkansas.

Saturday Lisa really wanted to go and see the Magnolia place in Waco.

The stores at Magnolia are not child friendly so I played outside with the little kids while Lisa and Serene checked out the shops with Sydney, Hayley and Rosalie.

It was not my choice of things to do but it was still fun. After Waco we headed straight to the DFW airport and following a tearful goodbye Lisa and I were on the plane. It was a bit of a whirlwind trip but it was wonderful. Thank you Serene for hosting us and thankyou Alycia and Trevor for getting us there.  

 

 

Admiral William Bleigh

I learned something very interesting today. We had the Elders over to visit tonight and Lisa was sharing with them the Family History 21 day Challenge that she is doing. That conversation eventually led to us seeing if we were related to them. My genealogy is so extensive that I am related to pretty much everybody but this time it was a bit of a surprise because one of our Elders is Tongan. Well actually is mother is from New Zealand and he was raised in New Zealand but his father was Tongan.

I was very interested to see how our genealogy would connect. Our common ancestor is thirteen generations back but in the late 1700’s one of his lines jumps back to England through Admiral William Bligh. You may have heard of Bligh since he was the Captain of the Bounty in “Mutiny on the Bounty”.

So the story, as Elder Langi tells it, is that cousin William was set adrift by the mutineers along with his loyal followers. Miraculously they eventually made 3,600 miles to Australia, in this small 20 foot launch loaded with 18 men. Only one of the 18 men died at the hands of a some native on one of the islands they stopped at. 

At some point in his career Bligh ended up in Tonga with a woman named Lesieli Taufa Tofua and they had two kids, a boy and a girl. Both of these kids were born while Cousin William was married to Betsey back in England. Elder Langi, my thirteenth cousin, descends from one of Lesieli’s kids. For some reason I found this story fascinating.

My Smart Home

I may have mentioned before that I love to use “to-do” lists to keep me focused  on the important jobs that need to be done. They allow me to prioritize what  I do and help prevent me from getting side tracked. Today was a pretty productive day but at some point in the mid-afternoon I got to a job where I was to install a smart dimmer switch in our family room. There were actually three similar jobs, the smart switch, a Ring doorbell and replace a light fixture in my closet. These jobs have been on my list for months because I keep bumping them thinking that I can do these kinds of things in the evening after dark. I try and do physical work in the morning so I’m not too tired later in the day. These other jobs I could do when I’m tired.

 

So I got around to my smart switch around the mid-afternoon and had the switch wired up in about 15 minutes. I went to fire it up and it didn’t work. I got checking things out and realized that my dining room light and my kitchen light (both smart switches) didn’t work either. Well if working on one switch messed up other switches then it must have been that power to those lights came through the switch I just worked on. I double checked and I had it wired correctly so then I checked to see if I had power. Since the neutral wires had a wire nut on them I just checked the hot wire and sure enough, there was power.

I then tore apart the dining room and kitchen switches. That was a nightmare because they were two fat switches packed into a double box with a mess of wires going through it. It is a very tight fit. So I pulled those switches out and they also had power. Very confusing. I then disconnected the switches and remove them so all I have is bare wires. No fancy electronics with WiFi radios in them, just bare wires. The hot wire had power but when I touched them to the switch wire nothing happened. It didn’t seem possible.

It was then that I noticed that the lights in the computer room weren’t working either. It was on a dimmer switch so I started getting worried. The four switches that didn’t work were all switches with fancy electronics. Was it possible that I had created voltage spike and had fried all the electronics. That thought was compounded when I realized that a lamp in the front room (on a smart plug) didn’t work either.

As I thought it all out I realized that couldn’t be the problem because I had removed the kitchen and dining room switches altogether. No electronics.

After scratching my head for a while I decided to go back to the source of the problem, my new dimmer switch. I remove it entirely and looked at the wires I had left. I had a hot wire coming in and a hot wire going out. The two neutral wires for those hot wires and then I had a wire going to the light. I checked power in all the wires and confirmed that the hot wire was hot and I connected it to the wire leaving the plug for the kitchen etc. It had to take the power to the kitchen but nothing. I then connected the light to the hot wire and it worked so that was progress.

It was so confusing that I was considering calling an electrician but this wasn’t rocket science and I knew an electrician would do the same thing I was doing.

Finally, after playing with these wires for at least three hours I was pulling on one of the neutral wires and it wiggled. That was weird, these are 14 gauge solid copper wires, they are rigid and they don’t wiggle. Upon closer examination I realized that about three inches down the copper wire was broken. I have no idea how that could happen but an intermittent open circuit like that can make trouble shooting very difficult.

It took another 20 minutes to wire everything back up and get them stuffed into their boxes and Alexa was back in business. As of now every single light in my downstairs is controlled by Alexa except the computer room (its next), the laundry room, the bathroom and my office. My thermostat and television are also controlled by Alexa. Lisa listens to her radio station on Alexa and I have various playlists programmed into her. I have Christmas music, Sunday music and a “Freds Favorites” playlist. Alexa even tells us when we have an Amazon delivery. I think the next thing after the computer room will be the kitchen faucet. They have a faucet that will dispense exactly the amount of water you need. No more measuring cups. Do you like the sign Lisa got for our laundry room?

Memorial Day

Today was Memorial Day. I guess Ancestry is letting everyone use their military data bases for free this weekend. Lisa has been busy all weekend looking up the recruiting documents for all of our ancestors. She has found all of our ancestors who were in world war 1 but she hasn’t had much luck with those Canadians in the second world war. It looks like only the American soldiers are available. It may have to do with the fact that many of the WWII vets are still alive. Well maybe not many of them but still some of them are

.  

This morning I was planning on working for most of the morning and then Lisa and I were going to go do something fun in the afternoon. I did get some work done but eventually I gave up and went for a run. I ran through the tunnels and some of the Del Mar Mesa trails. I love those even if they do have a ton of hills.

This afternoon Lisa and I went for a walk along part of Lake Hodges. It was a beautiful trail and there were quite a few people out. We did our best to keep our distance.

----------trivia----------

France was still executing people with a guillotine when the first Star Wars film came out.

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Mach 5 Fusion

My razor is a Gillette Mach Fusion 5. It has 5 blades and uses a battery to vibrate when you shave. In theory, the blades move back and forth allowing the 5 blades to cut several times and you drag is smoothly across your face. There is a small Teflon pad that reduces the friction so much that the razor literally glides on my skin resulting a shave as smooth as a baby’s bottom.

The other night at about 4:00 am I awoke to a loud bang followed by a loud reverberating rumbling sound. It was quite alarming. I jumped out of bed trying to imagine what could make such a racket. I was convinced that something horrible was going on somewhere inside my house.

I ran to the bedroom door but when I got to the door I could tell it was coming from the direction of the bathroom. Of course there was nothing in the bathroom that could make a racket like that so I figured I had a window open and something outside was terribly wrong. I went to the bathroom at which point it was obvious that the noisy wasn’t from outside but from inside the bathroom.

It sounded like it was from inside the shower so I opened up the shower door and there in the middle of the tub was my razor. It was vibrating around the tub and the noise coming from this tiny razor was unbelievable. The vibration from the razor was obviously causing he metal tub to act like a sounding board greatly amplifying the sound.

I turned the razor off and left it on the bathroom counter trying to figure out how it had fallen from the window sill in the shower where I normally keep it into the tub. All I could figure is that I had inadvertently left it on and the vibration had eventually caused it to vibrate off the window sill. That just didn’t make sense through because a) how could the battery last all day and most of the night and b) I’m sure I would have heard the vibration.

I went back to bed only to wake up again around 7:00 from a loud vibration coming from my bathroom counter. Not nearly as alarming as the bang followed by the reverberating tub but still it woke me up. Somehow, my Mach 5 Fusion was randomly turning itself on. Weird.

The Plague

The weekend before the surprise party I flew out to Ben and Sharley’s to help them get a working bathroom. He had been renovating their master bathroom so it was in pieces and not really functional. In the midst of that, he was in his bathroom one time and thought he heard water running in his wall. He opened the wall and found a leaking pipe along with a whole lot of mold. In one weekend Ben and I were able to tear out the old tub, install a new one and tile the new tub. It was a tough weekend with a dozen trips to Home Depot but we got it far enough along that he can finish it up without too much trouble.

Do you like how my name will now be under his tile for the next several decades?

Sunday I hitched a ride with Alycia and her kids back to San Diego. It was great to have five and a half hours just to sit and visit. We used to do that all the time when she was a teenager and I miss it.

Monday was a normal workday but when I woke up on Tuesday my stomach felt a bit queasy. I didn’t think much of it and figured I would just be careful what I ate and I would be back to my normal healthy self.

Around 9:30 I had to go to the bathroom. After just a few minutes sitting there on the porcelain throne I could tell I was in trouble. I was barely able to finish the job before I found myself kneeling before the porcelain throne. After several violent dry heaves, (remember, I don’t eat breakfasts any more) it was all over. I was no longer nauseous and I no longer had the runs and I felt normal again, but now I was suddenly very tired. I came downstairs and told Lisa that I was going to lay down for an hour before going back to work.

I vaguely remember Lisa trying to wake me up, but that just wasn’t going to happen. Four hours later I managed to drag myself off the couch and got a few hours of work done that had to be done that day, but my mind was quite foggy and I’m sure it was not my best work. Finally I laid back down and Lisa woke me up at midnight to go to bed. I then slept until 8:00 the next morning and it was all over.

As far as I know, when you get stomach issues and it is all over within 24 hours it is almost always food poisoning and I was quite sure it was the leftover steak I ate Monday for lunch. Trevor had barbecued me a delicious rib eye steak and I took the left overs home with me. They sat in Alycia’s hot car for 5 or 6 hours but there was no way I was going to throw it out. It was delicious and I was willing to risk food poisoning.

I then learned that Ben and Sharley were also both throwing up the same day I was. Their symptoms were almost identical to mine. They certainly didn’t eat any of my delicious ribeye steak and I couldn’t think of any other place where we could have all three picked up the same food poisoning but who knows? That kind of stuff can be weird.

If I had doubts about food poisoning before, I was pretty sure it wasn’t food poisoning when Lisa started throwing up on Wednesday. From there it went downhill fast. Alycia started throwing up on Friday and then Sunday was the big day. Sarah, Alex, Lisa (Alex’s girlfriend) and Kira all threw up on Sunday. They all went through the same process as I did, runs, barf, tired. Some had headaches and not everyone recovered as quickly as I did, but otherwise it was pretty much the same. In every case, once your stomach felt queasy you were barfing within the hour.

The sad part was that Alex, Lisa and Sarah all threw up on the airplane. That would make for a miserable trip.

Out of the twelve adults who were here, only Justin, Trevor and Sam escaped the plague.

Sam was really scared. He just got hired on by the Wyoming Highway Patrol and he started training on Monday. He had to take a physical test on Thursday and if he failed it he would have been sent home. No excuses. I’m really glad he escaped, but he was also very diligent about not getting kissy and cuddly with the kids.

The kids pretty much followed the same schedule as the parents with only Freddie, Ella and Piper escaping the plague. I think Kira had the best experience when Evan and Cameron both started puking simultaneously on the plane. It is tough when one kid is puking but with two going at the same time? Poor Kira.

--------------------trivia--------------------

Not once in the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme does it mention that he’s an egg

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Happy Birthday to Me

My actual birthday was last Sunday, August 12, the day after the surprise party and it turned out much like I was expecting the weekend would be. It was just my kids and grandkids plus the Sanchez’s and Vicky and Thomas McCormack who had both traveled quite a ways to be here.

Greg and his son Robert and his girlfriend left on Saturday night so they weren’t there for the Sunday dinner.

Landons birthday was Aug 4 but he sort of got lost in the flurry of activity up there in Canada so we celebrated our birthdays together. Lisa had ordered me another Star Trek cake. This one was quite creative.  And Landon had his own ice cream cake.

--------------------trivia-------------------
Anne Frank, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barbara Walters were born in the same year, 1929.
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Surprise

Last Sunday at roughly 3:00AM I turned 60 years old. It seems weird to me that I have been alive for six decades. My children are now about the age I feel myself to be in my head.

I had imagined my birthday was going to be a special meal enjoyed by Lisa and myself and then perhaps she would let me pick out a movie to watch. We watch a whole lot of Hallmark movies around here.

As it turned out, Lisa had other plans in the works. I guess somewhere back around November my lovely wife created a chat room for her and the kids titled something like “Dad turns 60” and they’ve been planning a special birthday for me for the last 8 months. I had no clue.

I was quite excited when “coincidentally” three of my kids were going to be in town on my birthday. There really was no reason to be suspicious though since they all had good reasons to be here.

It all started when Kira and Justin and their friends decided to have a “friends” vacation in San Diego. They were here with their friends and stayed with their friends in a hotel. Their kids were quite confused as to why they were in San Diego but weren’t staying at Grandma’s house. The friends left on Friday though and Kira and her family were planning on staying here for the weekend to celebrate my birthday. Cool, I was excited.

Next was Alycia, she had planned to spend a week in San Diego this summer with her kids. The date wasn’t nailed down but when she learned that Kira was going to be here she decided to be here the same week and they could also spend my birthday weekend with me. Now I was getting even more excited.

Ben and Sharley are only a five hour drive away so when they learned that Kira and Alycia were going to be here they figured they should come and join them.

Now I was truly excited. Three of my six kids were going to be here on my birthday.

And that is how it was… until Thursday.

So Thursday is my day at the temple, but when I walked in the door after my shift there was Sarah sitting in the living room. I was in shock, it hadn’t even entered my mind that they would be coming. They have a big move coming up that they needed to be getting ready for. But Sarah is the one who hates to miss out on the fun so I just said, “hello Miss FOMO” and gave her a big hug.

Friday was kind of a “do your own thing” day. I got half a day of work in, Lisa went shopping for our “family” dinner on Sunday, Ben & Sharley and Kira & Justin went to some museum and Alycia & Trevor went out for their anniversary dinner while Lisa and I and Sarah and Sam babysat and watched a movie.

Later on Justin, Trevor, Ben and myself got a game of Star Trek Catan going and played games until all hours of the night.

At somewhere around 2:00AM in walks Alex and his girlfriend Lisa. I was speechless. I should have expected Alex would come once Sarah was here, but it never dawned on me that he would. That meant that Brandon was the only kid not in town for my birthday. My 60^th birthday was shaping up to be the best one ever.

When I started looking around for Brandon to show up they assured me he wasn’t able to come. Serene is expecting a baby (#14) any day now so I guess he has a valid excuse.

So that was it. Saturday morning started out as a rather lazy day with plans to head out to the beach in the afternoon. Around 11:00 Lisa told me that there was a new “accessible” park that Kira wanted to check out for Evan, so we loaded up the kids and headed to Torrey Meadows Park over by Westview High School.

I pulled into the park and it looked like a cool park but I didn’t see our family anywhere. I was with Kira, Lisa, Piper and Evan. They all started walking to the other end of the park so I naturally followed along.

There was a large gazebo filled with people. I couldn’t see where our family was, but then all of the sudden about 50 people in the Gazebo turned around yelled “surprise” and started singing Happy Birthday to me.

I was in total shock. While I figured a family party was obvious for Sunday, (my actual birthday), the thought that fifty non-family people would come to a party for me was the furthest thing from my mind. I didn’t know what to say and I was sure hoping no one was expecting a speech. It was tremendous fun though and there were a few surprises for me as well.

The first person I saw was Tad Hove. I haven’t seen him in ten years. He is doing well and it was good to see him.

The next surprise was Greg, my oldest brother. He lives in Vernal, Utah and he came all the way to San Diego for my birthday. It was so good to see him. The other surprise was Dan Allen, a fellow I used to work with at Hi-Z about fifteen years ago. Dan and I still go sailing a few times a year so I do see him, but it was certainly a surprise to see him there.

Lisa had managed to get some pictures of me growing up and made a small display about me. She did a great job. She also bought me a cool Star Trek cake. You may have heard that I’m a bit fond of that show.

I hesitate to name everyone who was there because I’m bound to forget someone, but here goes in alphabetical order.

Dan Allen

Reaghan & Joanne Beecroft

Trevor & Alycia Crowley & family

Rick Daynes
Ben & Desiree Heaton & family

Dave & Diane Evans

Larry & Carrie Farnes
Greg & Pam Gosch
Mike Gray & Family

Brad & Pattie Hatch

Tad Hove
Lisa Jones
Rebecca Knaphus & Family
Alex Leavitt & Lisa Buasum
Ben & Sharley Leavitt & family
Greg Leavitt
Robert & Michelle Leavitt
Kathy Marx
Thomas & Vicky McCormack
Craig & Marilyn McPhie
Rick & April Muir
Peter & Mandy Oldenwalder & family
Kira & Justin Palmer & family
Anne Pascal
Linda Petersen
Roger & Wendy Platt
Mahonry & Molly Sanchez & family
David & Sarah Walton

If I forgot anyone please let me know. What a fun and very unusual experience. The only other time I have been the center of attention like that was at our wedding, and let’s face it, everyone was there for the bride, not me.

So I tried to say “hi” to everyone there but I’m sure I missed someone. I’m sorry if I did. We did eventually make it to the beach Saturday afternoon and that was also a fun time. The water this summer is apparently warmer than it has been since 1902. I don’t know if it was this warm in 1902 or if that was when they started keeping records.

Saturday night was also an interesting experience. I’ve always wondered what Dungeons and Dragons is all about, well, now I know. For some reason Alex really wanted to get a game of D&D going, so Frank Criger came down to be our dungeon master and we played well into the night.