Some Birthdays, Stake Conference, Teeth, and family

It's Fall and that means time to watch the trees change into beautiful colors AND..

Get out the decorations and the "candy corn"!!!

Dad had a great birthday thanks to all your calls and cards (notice the Abbot and Costello "sound card" from the Halls. Bet you can guess what it says.) and gifts (so far, I know there is more to come at the end of this month) Thursday he went to work and someone had put up a "Happy Birthday" banner in his cubicle. He was surprised and figures it is his co-worker in his dept. Then the company has a banner on it's network inner office page telling everyone who's birthday it is so Dad got 19 emails wishing him a happy birthday. That was nice. That night, Chris and Emily came for dinner. Dad's birthday dinner choices were:
Meat Loaf, Cheesy potatoes, ceasar salad, Chocolate milk (Safeway good stuff) and then triple berry cobbler ("Clobber" as he calls it, and I made from scratch using the "Dunford" cook book, "thank you, Jean Dunford") with french vanilla ice cream.
After dinner and between his wonderful phone calls, we all watched "Iron Man" that Chris and Em brought over and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's much better than we thought it would be and we look forward to the sequel. A very enjoyable evening!!Saturday morning we went to Costco to purchase the food needed for the SA luncheon following Sunday session for Stk. Conf. Very busy on Saturday and why I normally don't go then but it was nice having Dad with me. We snacked off all the vendors giving samples...no need for lunch that day. Saturday night was the Adult session of conference which we all enjoy. The speakers were great including our own Single adult co-chair, Tim Dugan. He has a great sense of humor and a tender heart and gave a great talk about marriage and the church and the place of singles in it including how married families can make singles feel a part of everything. The whole topic of the evening was marriage. It was a delightful evening.

Sunday was Stake conference... sorry, no Prophet at our conference... however it was a great meeting. There was a young women's choir and many really good speakers. Following conference... as is the custom... we have a Single Adult potluck luncheon. The stake committee provided different kinds of soups and then the rest brought salads and desserts. There was plenty of soup and bread but the salads were in short supply. By the time Dad and I got to the food line, the salads were gone. However we had a really large group this time, about 40 people with only a couple of kids. They all seemed to have a good time.

Sunday evening we went to Jason Dearden's homecoming/open house. Hard to believe he has been gone 2 years and he's back. He had a great mission in the Dominican Republic. Some of his pictures looked like ones from John and Jeff's mission. When we got back home we had Chris and Jim Jones come over to give Dad a blessing for his dental surgery in the morning. Then I had one for my little health concern too. I love the Power of the Priesthood!

Dad's surgery lasted 3 hours as the tooth was old and brittle with the root being totally dead and decay under it. Dr. Wilson's intention was to take it out and do the first part of an implant. However the tooth was so brittle it kept breakiing apart so he had to go all the way down to get it all out and then do a bone graft so he could put in the pin for the implant. Now it has to heal before he can do that. Darn, it's tough when your teeth get old!! Dad thought he would have to take two days off work but even after the long surgery, he felt pretty good yesterday and went to work and stayed all day.

I had a Doctor's appt at Kaiser to check on some heart palpitations I'd been having recently. They did two EKG's and asked me all sorts of questions. Everything is normal. It's just something that hearts do and as long as there aren't any other symptoms happening that he asked me about it's nothing to worry about; just a bothersome event on occasion. When it happens I feel like those cartoon characters whose hearts beat so you can see them jump in their chests.

Last night we had Mark, Kathleen, Joshua, and Luccas over for dinner and the evening. What a wonderful visit it was. We enjoyed a good meal (even though Dad couldn't eat the stuff that needed more chewing) and fantastic company. Those little boys are adorable and so well behaved. We always enjoy their company. Hope you enjoy the pictures we took...

Before they went home, we took them upstairs and showed them all our families blogs. They loved seeing all of you and what has been going on in your lives. Kathleen said she needs to learn how to do this. I know we would all be happy to teach her. Maybe sometime soon I'll help her learn. Then they can join in with the rest of us.

To end this long blog we just want to say:
HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO RACHELLE MANN AND JENNA PHILPOTT!!!
We love you both and hope you each had a great birthday today.