August randomness

School started this past week so that meant seminary did, too.  The classroom turned out perfectly

....with one rather large hitch.  For some reason, the air conditioning doesn't work well in the new room.  They put duct work into the garage portion - they actually put in a larger air conditioner to handle the larger load but the room stays quite warm.  Brother Loveless, the teacher, has to crank the thermostat down to 67 degrees and open the privacy door that was installed between the classroom and our part of the house to make the room comfortable.  Only it makes US very uncomfortable.  Our part of the house is just freezing and with the door open, there is no privacy as we go about our morning routine.  The problem has been reported so they are "working on it".  A couple of other glitches popped up at the house this past week.  The garbage disposal has stopped working.   And, we came home Friday to water streaming out of the irrigation hoses in both the front and back yard.  Can you see the tiny black hose?  

The box that controls the irrigation cycles also looked like this

It didn't look like that Friday morning.  We have no idea what went on during that day but the end result was a box pulled off of the house and uncontrolled watering.  We left for Tucson Friday night and by the time we returned on Saturday, the water was off but the box was not fixed.

The Tucson trip was to visit with Neal and Clair Lambson again (we stayed at their apartment Friday night) and on Saturday, we attended the temple together along with Jim and Karen Ravert.  We knew Jim Ravert back in our BYU married student days.  He was married to Patty at the time.  Since then, he divorced her and he met Karen and they live in Tucson and they work as a Church service missionary in the Tucson Mission Office with Neal and Clair.  It was so great to see him again.  One of the main reasons to go to Tucson this time was to visit a miniature museum after lunch and the temple but we ended up going over to Jim and Karen's instead to learn about some pretty cool family history programs.  We'll hopefully get to the museum sometime before we leave next summer....

Neal, Clair, Karen, Jim, Steve, me at the Tucson temple

Speaking of missionaries, this is what Steve's part of the office looks like nowadays.  

Bikes everywhere.  New bikes waiting to be assembled for newly arrived missionaries, bikes packed up waiting to be shipped home to leaving missionaries.  Bikes waiting to be picked up for missionaries newly assigned to bike areas.  Bikes needing to be repaired.  They have even spilled over into our back patio!

Two of these are ours, but the rest belong to missionaries who have recently gone home and are supposed to be returning to visit the mission and pick up their bikes.  Our spare room has even more missionary stuff to be retrieved. 

This all belongs to Elder Hogenson.  Can you tell that there are TWO violins!  And he doesn't even really play violin!  A church member gave him one of the violins.  It was in an unplayable condition but he fixed it up.  And, he bought another inexpensive one off of Amazon.  He is teaching himself to play.  Those are all of his books that he couldn't fit into his suitcase. (shades of Steve at the end of his mission.  He had to ship home several boxes of books that he'd bought while on his mission)  He and his parents are coming the end of August to pick everything up (one of the bikes is his). 

Other mission office happenings:  Elder Wall turned 19 on Friday and we had a carry-in to celebrate.  Poulsons brought taco salad and I made a chocolate pie (gluten free crust, of course).  And, I helped Steve get this brand new Nissan Rogue. 


I had a doctor appointment on Thursday to follow-up on my blood work.  I am happy to report that my cholesterol level is below 200 for the first time in years.  And, my A1C was just one point higher than "normal".  Yay for me. 

I finally called "uncle" with my vegetable garden and pulled everything up.  This is what the cherry tomato plant looked like

And this was the harvest I got every other week or so...

It was pathetic.  Not worth my time or the water.  GONE!

The basil, on the other hand, was thriving but I just couldn't justify the water so I harvested all the leaves and it is gone, too.

Speaking of plants,  This is what a prickly pear fruit looks like.  

And I will close with some photos from the week:  a beautiful monsoon-created sunset, a hot air balloon over Anthem, and the sage in bloom in front of our house.