G and K and What They Say

It sounds contrary to the wisdom of the world to suggest that one who is burdened with sorrow should give thanks to God. But those who set aside the bottle of bitterness and lift instead the goblet of gratitude can find a purifying drink of healing peace and understanding.
--Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Giving our all doesn't mean that we will be continually enveloped in blessings or always have success. It does mean that we will have joy. Joy is not fleeting pleasure.... Joy is enduring and is founded on our efforts being accepted by the Lord.
--Terence M. Vison

I testify that the Savior wants to bless us. He loves to heal us and to fix what is broken in our lives. He wants us to feel His love. I invite you to do what it takes to keep your "Savior's love receptors" functioning at peak efficiency.
--Dale G. Renlund

One day I heard a loud noise outside and it was coming our way. Of course the Gladys in me came out and I went to investigate what was going on. (Remember Gladys Kravitz in Bewitched who was always peering out her window spying on her neighbors??)

I didn't peer out my window, I sat in the garage and watched the action going on at the manhole right in front of our house. I wished all our grandsons were here to watch what I was watching because they love big trucks.

The workers unwound hundreds of feet of the blue hose down into the manhole and then the loudest roaring noise came from the truck.

The hose then got rewound onto the truck and off they went a little ways down the street to the next manhole and did the same thing. During that blowout, a worker walked up the street to our manhole, opened it up, listened to the loud noise and then a huge gust of dirt and air came up out of the manhole.

Right after that happened, Glen came charging out the door asking what was going on! He said the toilets had just gurgled up and wondered what caused it.

Let's just say that when I went to investigate the toilet situation, there was a very diminished amount of water in the toilet bowl and the rest of it had blown up and all over the toilet seat and toilet lid. It was disgusting. Thank goodness all the toilets had "clean" water in the bowls when they all erupted like a geyser.

Here's another disaster I experienced. I attempted to make an imitation of the mouth-watering Texas Roadhouse rolls that are so absolutely delicious. I followed one of the recipes I found on the internet. It was a bust!! The rolls were dry and tasted nothing like my favorite restaurant rolls!!

I did not want the rolls to get the best of me, so I tried a different recipe claiming it was the most accurate of the "trying-to-be-like-Roadhouse-rolls" recipes. Another bust!! Talk about disappointing!!

Let's face it--I was just trying to keep myself busy while Dallas and Rebecca's family was on vacation. I am so tired of staying home and had begged them and Glen to let us go with them, but Glen said one of those days he had several work appointments he could not cancel. So, the vacation was another bust for me!!

They went to see Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands and Bear Country. They sent a few photos to show us the fun we were missing out on.

We used to have a tradition (or it just happened that way and we now call it a tradition) of eating at Red Lobster before Fast Sunday. We hadn't been keeping up with tradition all through Covid isolation, until now! Red Lobster take-out date night it was for us Saturday night.

The first Sunday of the month means Fast Sunday. Look at my man wearing regular shoes on BOTH feet!! He has advanced in his healing enough to wear shoes in the house. When he goes somewhere, he puts on the boot.

I told him he looks like a real man once again!! The process of healing has been slow-going, but we are thankful he has gotten to this point. Hurrah!!

When we received an invitation to go to Winders' backyard for peach cobbler that evening, I jumped at the chance. I am getting so stir crazy and missing being with people that I insisted we join in with our friends.

It was a lovely time together sitting in their backyard, eating cobbler, chatting together and feeling the wonderful feeling of being around such kind and loving people.

We tried out a photo of just the girls to see if we would show up in the dark.

When we had the men join us, the back row looks a little ghostly. Love these people so much!! We knew Bruno Kossin had recently had shoulder surgery, but didn't know he has very recently had heart problems and has had 8 stents put in. That was scary to hear and we were glad to see he is all right.

Rick Winder also had shoulder surgery and is pretty much mostly recovered from that. Debi Winder has had an awful bout of vertigo and still feels like she's car sick all the time. Glen is in the process of his foot surgery healing. Jan Evans just had her second knee replaced. She is doing well, but it sure is a healing process with lots of bruising, swelling and pain.

The rest of us were feeling very thankful we are not dealing with any health issues at the moment!

Dallas was a champ and came over on his Labor Day holiday, the day after they got home from their vacation, and mowed our lawn.

The rest of the family could not come because Madison had been sick. When Rebecca called the doctor asking if she needed to be checked for Covid, the doctor told her yes.

So, to be safe, they all stayed home and it was lonely without them. Turns out the test was negative (just as we suspected), but these days I guess we all need to be extra careful to find out so we don't infect others.

Glen had planned a BYU football game dinner party that evening with his friends Kenny Jensen and Randy Bambrough who brought his wife Susan.

I was happy Susan brought a salad. She and I let the guys eat the hot wings as we enjoyed salad and fruit.

That evening began the warnings for the big windstorm that was brewing and about to unleash its fury upon us.

The winds picked up and I watched leaves and limbs and trash blowing down the street.

True to the newscasters' word, the temperatures did drop dramatically. We went from hot to cold!!

The wind howled all night long and in the morning it was interesting--and sad--to see the destruction to a lot of the trees in our neighborhood.

Two trees were down at our church, falling into Betenson's yard.

Just up the street and around the corner from our house, there were several trees that fell onto a home and caused damage to their roof. I didn't want to take a photo because the people were outside surveying the damage. My heart was just breaking for the loss of trees and especially for the damage to homes.

These trees a few houses down from us on the other side of the street fell. It doesn't look like it caused any damage to the Holleys' home or their mobile home parked next to the garage.

Further down our street a gigantic tree fell from one yard across the fence and landed on the neighbor's roof. It caused a lot of damage to their home.

It has been a HUGE, ongoing clean-up project because the tree was so large and had so many branches.

Over on Woodhill Lane in our ward there was a huge pine tree down between Kossins' and Todds' home.

A little way down their street the Brewsters' big pine was down.

Rebecca sent a photo of a tree down in their neighborhood in Foxboro. Thankfully the Golden family did not have any damage to trees or to their home.

After hearing and seeing all the damage, Ben asked if we could go check on his home to see if there was any damage. Thankfully we could happily report to him there is no damage. We did notice leaning trees on Redwood Road as we were driving to his house.

It was not happy news to get this update saying we were in for a second very windy night, which would surely cause even more damage.

The next morning it was pretty calm, and the wind had cleared out the smokey air from the fires, so I decided to go for a walk.

I drove up to Bountiful Boulevard and parked in a church parking lot where I noticed this tree down.

I spotted other trees as I walked towards North Canyon Park.

The next three photos show a home on a corner lot who had trees both in the front yard and all down the side yard fall.

Homeowners were piling the tree limbs out by the street for either neighbors to help pick up or North Salt Lake City would pick it up.

I noticed that most of the trees that were down were pine trees, quaking aspens or the red-leafed trees.

We have some big quaking aspens on the west side of our home. One had fallen during another horrific windstorm many years ago. I kept watching out the window to check on them and was so happy to see they were all still standing after two very windy nights.

This was an interesting sight. A cord had been secured from a tree to a power box. My thoughts were wondering just how wise was this maneuver? What would have happened if the tree fell and took the power box with it??

This was another interesting sight. There is a jeep sitting on the lawn with ropes secured from the jeep to the big tree in the middle of the yard and from the tree to the mailbox (which crossed the sidewalk and presented a big tripping hazard for pedestrians).

Notice their other trees are leaning, so I guess their maneuver worked its magic to save the one tree.

It was sad to walk by the Eaglewood Golf Course and see how many trees they lost.

This sight in a church parking lot made me laugh out loud. Two Scout trailers have been parked in the lot for years. For quite a while now, both trailers have had flat tires like the one on the right.

Perhaps putting new tires on the trailer on the left would have been a better idea AFTER the big windstorm. The wind blew it right off its wood resting spot. There is a big metal scratch mark on the asphalt showing where it was when it was stationary and where it came to a stop after the wind had its way with it.

Another thing that was interesting to see was the trampoline parked atop the fence by the shed. I'm sure that isn't where the owners usually keep their trampoline.

I gasped when I drove down Eaglewood Drive and saw Greg and Jamie Jensen's home had a gaping hole in the roof. It made me happy to see a worker up there fixing it.

Then right next door to Jamie's home I gasped again when I saw all the trees down in the Mokofisis' yard. What a mess!!

It was a sad sight to see the huge pine tree in front of the library had fallen. The interesting thing about it is it fell to the east. All the other trees I have seen down have fallen to the west. Weird!!

Rebecca's children had a fun time climbing on the fallen tree when they went to the library.

There is a large patch of grass across from the library where another huge pine tree had fallen. This one fell to the west. So strange that in such a short distance, one tree fell one way and the other tree fell the opposite way.

Another sad sight was the loss of trees at the cemetery. When we had the last hurricane-force windstorm many years ago, it was shocking to see how many huge pines bordering the cemetery had toppled.

Now a lot more have fallen over in this windstorm.

I saw a woman walking all around these two trees. When I got closer, she asked if I, too, had relatives buried under the fallen trees. I assured her I didn't and listened to her tell me about her relatives.