Catching Up

I haven't mentioned how much fun it was to have my BFF in town for a few days. Joyismygoal and her sweetheart daughter stayed with me after dropping off Big Z at the MTC. Joy's DH had a work meeting in WA so took off to Seattle while we played, ate and shopped. Oh, gosh! I miss having her around! We are so similar, we even buy the same drinking glasses at Ross. How random, I know!

We spent a day at BYU, which was fun, except all we did was go to the bookstore for HOURS. We bought every "BYU BAG" they had (if you've been to the Y in the last year or so, you know what I mean), to the point I was embarrassed to be holding them in my hands. We checked out the art in the basement and sampled fudge. We ran into old TX friends and sent a greenie package to Big Z. Then we shopped our way home. I love shopping with Joy. She's got an eye for style that I just don't have, and a nose for bargains (she makes me look like an amateur). Even with her eye and nose, she doesn't look at all unusual.

We spent a long morning at Tai Pan, another fun time of shopping bliss (and no, I'm not being sarcastic). Then we went and had an electrolysis session (why does it sound like tortue to spend time with me?) and we went on a hike to Ford Falls in Centerville. By that time, it was time to pick up her DH from the airport and he whisked her away early the next morning. I think he was afraid if he stayed around any longer, we'd go shopping again. Oh, if he only knew!

Here's some pictures from Ford Falls...






and a filmstrip...

Frank's Letter October 8 2008

Frank's latest letter can be read here...

Frank Zigmunt and his Mission President

We got this in the mail last week (yeah, I'm finally catching up on all my blogs)

FHE in Weber Canyon

Photography

I have been playing with my camera, trying to convince Dilbert I need more than a point-and-shoot. But the convincing has been fun. I also really enjoy the post-photography editing. Here's some of my latest efforts:

This is pre-edit, a picture of an Elephant Ear, growing wild on the Tibble Creek bank. It was beautiful.

With this one I tried reducing the color saturation and liked the effect.

Next is a picture of some trees:

And then post-edit, it looks kind of spooky

This picture was actually of a leaf covered with dirt kicked up by ATV's. The colors just didn't pop like they did in real life.

So I came home and kicked up the color and got this much more interesting dirty leaf:

Which one of these is better?

Panning for COLD

Friday was Dilbert's day off so he took me on a big adventure. He took me panning for GOLD!

We didn't find a lot of GOLD, but we found a lot of golden leaves. American Fork Canyon was beautiful. No, that doesn't cover it. It was breathtaking. Here's some of my pictures

Here's Dilbert panning for gold. He found a few very small flakes but mostly, he just found the water was extremely cold.


And we spent some time trying out his metal detector (but there was too much junk up there to find anything of value.

A shout out to my Mom and Dad... Here's your car amid the glory :)

DNA Test

Jerry Springer DNA test