Weekend in Vegas

As soon as my grandpa's funeral was over, we raced home, quickly packed our bags and ran to the airport to catch a 4:50pm flight to Las Vegas. Jeff had a previously scheduled meeting there and I was planning on coming along. It just made things a bit tight with my grandpa's death. But we made it and had a great weekend. We stayed in the Paris. I have never stayed there yet and it was nice. This was the view from my room. I looked down at the Bellagio water fountains and could watch the water shows whenever I wanted, and I could see the Eiffel Tower.
Thursday night when we arrived, we went to see Lion King. It was a really great show! The music was powerful. Then we ate a restaurant called MIX. It was good and had a neat atmosphere but I don't know that I'll ever go back to it. The food was a little....out there. I'm not big on putting duck liver on my bread.
Friday night we ate at the Eiffel Tower. This place had a great atmoshpere and the food was delicious! I will defiantly go back to this place and I recommend it to anyone! We both had surf-n-turf fillet, with a great chocolate souffle for dessert.

We sat right against the window and had a nice view of the Bellagio water show, but really anywhere you sat in this restaurant, you would have a view. We asked our waiter if there were any celebrities there and he said, "Well no, but the guy who is coming to sit at the table right next to you in a few minutes just lost $18 million dollars in the last 2 days here! We are comping his meal." 18 MILLION!!! Do you know what I could do with 18 million! What a complete idiot! I didn't even feel bad for him. He was some Asian man and apparently he had money to BURN!

After dinner, we went to the top of the Eiffel Tower. (we went to las vegas with my bro glen, his wife kathy, jeff's assistant julie and her husband brandon) We stayed up there for a few minutes and got some neat pictures of the view.

We flew home Saturday night. It was a nice break considering the emotional week we had had.

Grandpa's Funeral

My Grandpa's funeral turned out really nice. I even made it through my talk and kept my composure pretty much the entire time. He was buried with full military rights and it was really a nice service too.
After they had folded his casket flag, they presented it to my mom because she is the oldest. It was a really touching speach from the veteran. This picutre of my mom is so sad. Her eyes make me want to cry.

Goodbye to Grandpa Hartvigsen

My grandpa passed away early Sunday morning in his sleep. He was 86 years old, or "half way to 172" as he would say. He was sooo ready to go and really, he quit living 7 years ago when my grandma died. Still doesn't change the fact that I will miss him. That I will still want to call his house and talk to him and when we finish speaking hear him say, "bye for now". I will still want to be able to touch his hands and feel how incredibly soft they are and I still want to hug him and smell him. He was a survivor of Pearl Harbor. He was on the USS Medusa when they were attacked. He was a diver and a gunner's mate. He dove several missions on the Oklahoma and 1 on the Arizona. He lived through many things that would have surely taken me. He owned a dairy farm for over 30 years and I LOVE my memories of the farm. But I know that he is so happy to be back with my grandma again.
I took these pictures last year

I took this picture last Sunday at My uncle's 50th birthday party. I went to see my grandpa on Friday and missed him and went back on Saturday and visited with him. He played solitaire while we visited and when I left he went for his usual ride out to the cemetery to "see grandma", came home, got into bed and started to work on his crossword puzzles and just... went. My uncle has been living with him to help care for him and found him on Sunday morning. I got to speak at my grandma's funeral and I get to speak at his funeral too and feel really honored to do so.

Four Wheeling

We went four wheeling up the canyon last Friday with my dad. The trees had started to change colors and look so pretty. The temperature was in the 80's and it was perfect!

We stayed on this path because the Rhino is a bit wider than our four wheeler and it was just safer with the kids in the back. It was a pretty little path. We took it clear to the top of the mountain.

When we reached the top there was this little pond. Molly found a little pool of muddy water in the "road", sat down and had a ball playing in the mud.

I had brought an extra pair of PJ's so that is what she ended up wearing home. My dad had heard that Ted Bundy had carved his name is some quakie trees somewhere up there. He had looked in a few different groves before but had been unable to find it. We looked in this pretty little grove of trees and look what we found......

Kind of made me feel a little creepy that I was standing in the same spot and touching the same tree that a serial killer had touched. Simply because it is in such a deserted place. Yuck. What a sick-o. I have to agree with the person who carved their thoughts about him above his name.

Miss Molly (and cade too)

My friend Alli Johnson took these pictures of Molly in July when she was here visiting. My friend Shasta made Molly this tutu for her 2nd birthday and I had been checking out these giant dandelions for quite some time and just had to have them all together in a picture. They turned out so darling!

I had taken Cade with me to take the pictures. He could not stand not having his pictures done, so we ended up taking his too. The dandelions that he was blowing looked really neat in the picture. Thanks Alli for always doing such a fabulous job!!!

Cade turns another year older

We had the cutest party for Cade's birthday this year. We had a fireman party. I told the kids how when the fireman go out on a call, they have to get their special clothes on really quickly so we played a relay game doing the same thing. The kids divided into two teams and had to put on pants, a shirt, a hat and shoes and then race around the "fire" as fast as they could.

Then we had a real fireman and a real firetruck come to our house. Lights and sirens and all. He showed the kids his special clothes and all about the firetruck.

He let each one honk the big loud horn and turn on the sirens.

He showed the kids how the hoses work.

He talked about how heavy their clothes were and he let each one try on the coat so that they could see just how heavy it was.

He got tons of awesome presents.

And the cutest cake too.

When it was time to leave he gave everyone their goodie bag. Each one had things like playdoh, a fire rescue car or a toy fireman, candy, and glitter balls. Really cute and the kids thought the fireman was way too cool.

No, it really didn't taste good

The other day I left my kids with my neighbor girl to babysit. I guess you could say that she is kindof a tomboy. My kids love her because of that. She'll take them fishing, play ball with them, ya know, that kind of thing. Well, this particular day she took them down to the river and they happened to catch a crawdad. I have always told my kids that if they kill something, they better be eating it! That pretty much solved the problem of Jens wanting to shoot tweety birds just for the heck of it. Well, if you look closely at the pictures you'll notice that it is missing one claw. I guess that my kids were the cause of that so they decided they better eat it. So Gus, my sitter took them inside, got a pot of water boiling and tossed the poor thing in! Then she cut it's head and body off and served up the tail portion to them all! Sick! Now I have eaten crawdads before -- but only when they were prepared by chefs! Not by 12 year old kids. Yuck, Yuck, Yuck.