Blake Purcell Family

Family Pictures

Since my family is not all together very often, I really like to take a family picture when are together. Of course, Jared wasn't here, but we made sure he was not left out. We took his picture off the wall and Syd held it.

This is what we ended up with.

Thanks guys for being such good sports during the picture taking! Love you all!

Chambers Reunion 2012

The reunion was at The Hermitage, in Paris....Idaho. My sister Lynne did a wonderful job planning and preparing for this event!

We even got to see the Eiffel Tower!

Some of us went to the Theatre...well, the Pickleville Playhouse in Garden City.

We ate lots of good food.

The kids had a sponge water fight. Maden would only hit Syd with his wet sponges.

We celebrated Chelsey, Suzanne and Cindy's birthdays.

We went to Bear Lake.

Some of us went to Bloomington Lake, and some of them went to the Minidonka Caves.

We played with cousins and played lots of games.

We had Family Home Evening.

Maden even found some time to relax.

It was a great reunion! We missed those that couldn't make it. Thank you Lynne for such a wonderful time!

What did June bring?

June 2012 brought.....

...change. We had the garden paved, so now it's a parking lot.

...a new color and year for the Fusion.

...men's doubles league tennis for Randy and Blake.

...more work.

...four wheeling.

...fishing at Terry's pond.

...The Mantei's! Cindy, Ken and Sydney got here on June 26th. The next day we went to Ross Park in Pocatello. It wasn't a very warm day, but they seemed to have fun. I didn't get in the water, but had fun watching them.

...and finally June brought Maden and Brian and Celia! They were supposed to get here on the 27th, but after spending the night in the Denver airport they finally made it on the 28th! The picture on the left is how happy Maden woke up on the cot in the airport.

The Fence

Blake takes care of his mother's yard, and right in the middle of her back yard is a chain link fence. This fence has no reason to be there and Blake has tried to talk his mom into removing it for years, but she has not been ready. She had both sides of the entire fence lined with flowers and they were too much for her to take care of, so Blake finally succeeded in convincing her to let him take the fence out. They spent a lot of time in May and early June transplanting some of the flowers and plants. Finally on June 16th, the day arrived that the fence could be removed!

First, the chain had to be removed. Thank goodness Randy came to help. I'm sure Jared is sad to have missed out on this project, he has been teasing and trying to convince Grandma to let him take this fence out forever.

Next, they had to take the border out.

Then they borrowed a tractor and used it to pull out the posts.

They loaded up the posts into Blue.

Then they used the tractor to load up the remaining plants and flowers. Even Courtney got to drive the tractor.

Now it's time to rototill the ground. The tiller was exactly the right size and worked perfectly.

The last steps were to level the edges a little, then plant the grass.

As I was standing there with Grandma Purcell, she even admitted how good it looked and how much she liked it. I asked her if I could record her saying that because she had not wanted to have the fence taken out. It does look really good, now that the grass is coming up, you can hardly tell that there used to be a fence there.

34 Years!

June 9th was our 34th Anniversary! We decided at the last minute to go somewhere different, so we booked a package deal through Allegiant Airlines to San Fransisco. We flew out of Idaho Falls on Friday, June 8th. It was an interesting trip, we saw things we had definitely not seen before. When we landed in Oakland, we got our rental car and decided we would go see the Oakland Temple first.

We walked all the way around the beautiful grounds.

After we left the Temple grounds, we drove to our hotel, and this is where things got really interesting. Remember this was a package deal, I did not really pick this hotel. Let's just say that the Abigail Hotel left a lot to be desired. Here's a list of a few things that could have been better!

*They could have found our reservation.

*The elevator could have worked, so we didn't have to climb 6 long, narrow, steep stories to our room.

*There could have been a shower head on the pipe.

*The windows could have fit in the frames without leaving air and street noise coming in.

*There could have been phones in the rooms.

*They could have put our suitcases somewhere safe instead of just in front of the desk for the day while we were waiting to be moved to the 2nd floor.

*They could have booked our 2nd floor room in the morning instead of when we returned that evening (we were lucky there was a 2nd floor room still available).

*They could have had our 2nd floor room cleaned before 6:30pm.

*They could have brought towels to us before 8:30pm.

*The heating system would be better if it wasn't just space heaters.

*It shouldn't have taken 45 minutes to return our car from valet parking.

Here's a list of things we liked about the hotel:

*It was close to the busses.

*There were beds in the rooms.

That's about all the good we can say about the Abigail Hotel. I did not get any pictures! Needless to say, we didn't spend very much time there.

We were very lucky to have nice weather the whole time we were there. Everyone kept commenting on how unusual 75 degrees and no fog is for the bay area.

Of course, one of the highlights of the trip was the Golden Gate Bridge. We took a bay cruise and went under the bridge. We also did a city tour and went across the bridge. It was very awesome.

We spent a lot of time on Fisherman's Wharf. We had some good food, saw some old ships and some sea lions. We liked the Wharf a lot.

Probably the thing we liked the most was our trip to Alcatraz. It was very interesting, we did an audio walking tour and learned a lot about the island.

Owls

In February, I started hearing Owls hoot in the trees in our yard. Blake went out one day and took some pictures of them.

They were perched on the light pole and in a tree, talking back and forth to each other. They made completely different sounds.

Randy was here a few weeks later and saw them in the big tree.

Then they kind of disappeared for awhile, until one day in June, when one scared me to death. I was home alone and walked into the kitchen and as I looked out the window an owl was sitting on the grill. I thought someone was standing on the patio looking at me through the window!

Then a few days later, this guy scared me again. I was sitting at the table and he just walked onto the patio!

Then a few days later, he was back on the patio. He just sat there for a bit, then went out into the sprinklers and just sat in them for about an hour.