Great Day

Today has been a great day. We got up early for a Saturday so we could get the house cleaned up before Amelia and Karen Weight came to visit us. Amelia is a young woman that Ammon asked to his homecoming dance this coming Saturday. We had never met the girl and felt we needed to meet her and get a feel for this whole, surprising situation.  Jim helped me clean the house, we met Amelia and her mother and then decided to go for a ride. It has been a wonderfully productive and restful day.

First I need to say that Ammon has fantastic taste!! This young woman sits by him in his photography class and helps him when he needs help. She plays on the high school softball team, won first in the state "Make it with Wool " contest last year and is entering again this year. She has two jobs and keeps very busy. She is very pretty and very, very nice.  One of her best friends plans to ask one of Ammon's friends that has autism and they will go together. I'll serve them some homemade pizza here first and then Jim will play chauffeur. Amelia seemed perfectly fine with anything and everything.  I'm excited for Ammon.  It has taken about a week for the shock to leave my soul, though.

I saw this pumpkin in a field in Salem the other day so we stopped by to get a picture of it. It's twice the size of Jim and probably weighs twice his weight.  Fantastic pumpkin!

 Jim went to Spring City on Friday which is about 60 miles southeast of here. He went to visit with Lawrence and Lana Gardner and took his last 3 pigeons with him to let them loose. He has now given all his pigeons away so he is no longer in the pigeon business, much to his sadness.  However, he kept three birds because they didn't win any race last year and it always took them an extra day to get home. He didn't think they would be good enough to give anyone. He keeps taking them west, east and south - any direction they haven't been to get rid of them.  They keep coming back from every direction.  He doesn't know what to do with them now.  It's like "The cat came back, the very next day....."
While he was driving home from Spring City, he saw this lone red tree near Thistle, Utah. He wanted to show it to me so we went up Spanish Fork Canyon to view the leaves.  The sky is so smokey that we knew we wouldn't get very good pictures. The sky is just washed out and horrible. But you take whatever opportunity you can get to see fall leaves. They have been very muted on Loafer this year. I was surprised and delighted to see all the gorgeous color over on the other side of the mountain.

 We loved this little cluster of trees with the multiple colors.

 This is an old log sitting in a swamp as a remnant of the flood in Thistle a long time ago.

 Looking towards Utah County and Spanish Fork.

 An old shed we found near the single red tree.

 A fire had just started at the top of Covered Bridge area. It was man-made. Bow hunting is now going on so some hunter must not have taken proper care of his fire.  As we got there and stopped, a helicopter landed right across the road from us and fire crews were gathering.  You can see how hazy the sky was - and has been for over a week.

 Covered Bridge.

What a great and beautiful day despite the haze!