Doug & Ashley Guptill - They got married!

Doug & Ashley were married in the Columbia, South Carolina Temple on August 29th.

What a beautiful temple! The ceremony was so special. Douglas, like his brother David who was married 3 weeks earlier, had a hard time keeping his emotions in check. While the temple sealer was sealing them Doug's chin was trembling and he was fighting back his tears of joy. Ashley was smiling just as big and had tears running down her cheeks. Even the temple sealer was choked up. I know I was shedding happy tears!

I was so touched that both our sons were so emotionally touched and how much they love their wives. :o)

Ashley has a wonderful family and we enjoyed being with them so much. They were awesome! Everyone treated sweet little Kirsten like royalty. Ashley's Grandpa Glen Buckner bonded with Kirsten from the start. It was a very special experience for both of them. The first picture above is Ashley's family. She has young parents and they have six beautiful children! They are such a neat family! You just love them! Ashley was their first child to get married and Doug was our last. My to be so young again! :o)

Georgia and South Carolina are so beautiful! It was like we never left Oregon or Washington. The people down there are so friendly and genuine. We very much enjoyed our visit down there. I hope we can go back again sometime.

We have an OpenHouse we are hosting for Doug and Ashley this Saturday evening, so I'm pretty busy getting ready for that! The honeymoon couple get in this Friday evening. They went on a Carnival Cruise and hopefully won't be bothered with hurricane Hannah. They went from Miami through the Florida Keys and down to Cozumel, Mexico, a little island off the tip of Yucan, close to Cancun. We're excited to hear about there trip!

Happy Times! Happy Times!

Douglas and Ashley are getting married this Friday, Aug. 29th in the Columbia, South carolina Temple. What a happy time! The picture of the ring is real! That's what her ring looks like! Nice bling!

Douglas leaves for Georgia tomorrow, Tuesday. Ahsley lives in Monroe, GA. They have not seen each other for two whole weeks. Well I don't know how things are at Ashley's house, but I can tell you, I'll be glad to see Doug up and away tomorrow! He's been one unhappy camper without his sweetie pie! They both can hardly wait to see each other! We leave the following day, Wednesday. I'm sure I'll see a 'much happier Douglas' when we arrive!

Life has been exciting around our house...two sons getting married 3 weeks apart! It's been a special time and we have shared special memories of the special people that have shared our home over this time.

So my next post will be after we get back and I hope to have a picture or two of the happy married couple! Until then...think happy thoughts for them!

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #30

Story #30 - White Sands – Rolling down the dunes – the sand tastes yuck!

Imagine what it would be like to play in a huge sand pile that was as tall as your house and even higher!

About 45 minutes from where we lived was a national park. The name of the park was called White Sands National Monument. The sand dunes are natural gypsum. The sand dunes glisten in the sunlight. My parents would pack a picnic lunch and then we would drive out to the national park. They had picnic tables that were bolted to concrete platforms. They had metal tops over them to help keep off the hot sun. The sand was hot on your bare feet, so you didn’t want to stand still very long. Our family loved to go to the dunes! When you dug down two feet the sand was cool and it felt good on your feet and between your toes! We would go at least 4 times during the summer. We could hardly wait to jump out of the car and run up to the top of the sand dune! Then we would run off the top and jump down. We would also roll down the dune. We would dig holes and bury each other up to our necks! It was the best fun! The only time it was not fun was when the wind blew! The wind would start and you had to run and get inside your car. It was a sandstorm. The sand would get into your eyes and they would burn. It would get in your mouth and it tasted awful! You couldn’t see anything. You had to wait until the wind stopped blowing. It usually lasted about half an hour. You could not drive in it because you could not see! Usually if we were on the top of the dunes and we saw in the distance the sand blowing we got out of there as fast as we could! When we went home there was the ‘sand mess’ to clean up! We had to vacuum out the car and shake out all our clothes outside. Sand got into everything! But oh what fun we had!

When we would drive from Tularosa to Alamogordo you could look to the west and see the sand dunes in the far distance. The dunes against the sky made it look like a long ocean wave. When the wind was blowing you could look off into the west where the sand dunes were and you could see the white wisps in the air. We would say, “Boy we’re sure glad we are not out there today!”

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #29

Story #29 - Adobes – stomping the mud and straw – ouch!

Do you know what adobes are or what they are made of? They are mud bricks baked dry in the sun.

The house I grew up in originally had two rooms. New Mexico used to belong to Mexico and then on January 6, 1912 New Mexico gained its statehood and became part of the United States. My parents bought this little house with 4 acres of land. The house was adobe and stucco. You have to cover the adobe or the rain will wash them away. There was a front door on the one side and the other room had the door in the back. There were two separate families that used to live in that little house. The second room that had the door in the back of the house had a root cellar about five feet deep and five feet square beneath the wooden floor. When the Indians would come down and make raids on the town, the two families would go to the 2nd room and hide in the root cellar until the Indians were gone. Well, the Indians were put on a reservation and were not allowed to attack anymore.

When my parents bought the house and property my dad filled in the root cellar and he also made a doorway into the second room so that there were now two rooms. He built 7 more rooms onto the two-room house. Most of the rooms he added were made with homemade adobes. Guess who made those adobes? My dad and his kids, us! He made a trough with a wood frame and covered it with sheet metal. He nailed the sheet metal to the frame. I guess you could say it looked like a wide boat or raft with sides. He would throw dirt and water and some small size gravel in and make mud. Our dirt had clay in it so it made good adobe bricks. Then my brothers and I got in that trough of mud and my dad added the straw and we stomped it into the mud. Sometimes the straw would be poking up straight and when we stomped on it, it would stab into our feet and that would hurt! Dried out straw in short lengths could poke pretty good! After we were done stomping the straw into the mud we would get out and hose off our feet and legs to get clean. Our feet would get dried out and sometime crack and that would hurt and sometimes bleed. This usually happened only when we did a lot of mud stomping.

My dad made a brick form out of two by four lumber. The form looked like a double window frame. The adobes are about 10x14x4-inches in size. He would shovel the mud into the frames and pack them down with a shovel. He had several frames. He would let them sit for about half an hour and then take the frames off and let the bricks dry in the sun. If he got busy and left them in the frame until the next day they were harder to get out and then the adobes would sometimes break. You have to get them out of the frame while they’re damp.

How to Make Adobe Bricks (I got this off the internet-it explains the steps pretty easy.)
1-Shovel your soil into the mixing place you prepared. Add sand or clay if necessary.
2-Add water to the soil. Basically you are making mud. You want it to be firm and to hold its shape and not be too watery.
3-Mix the adobe thoroughly. Use a shovel or hoe or take your shoes off and stomp on it.
4-Take adobe with your shovel or hand and put it in the brick forms. Fill in the corners and press it down so it’s all filled. Smooth it off with the shovel, by hand or with a piece of wood.
5-Let the bricks dry in the forms for at least 20 minutes.
6-Remove the forms and let the bricks sit flat as they are for about three days.
7-Place the bricks on their edges.
8-Allow the bricks to dry thoroughly. This can take a week or more depending on the weather and soil.
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It was important to be sure to allow the adobes to dry. My dad would lean them two together like a tent. This way the air circulated between the bricks. It didn’t take more than a week to have them thoroughly dry. We lived in southern New Mexico and it was hot and dry. When it came time to use the adobe bricks he would use mud to lay the adobes. When he finished a wall he would cover the wall with chicken wire and nail it into the adobes. Then he would mix concrete and then apply it over the wire and make a nice stucco finish. The wire helped to keep the stucco on the adobe. Then he would paint over the stucco. Adobe was a good insulator. It helped to keep the house cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. But if it got real hot outside, the house would get warm.

That was our childhood adventure with mud, adobe and building with the adobe bricks. It made it much more affordable to build a home out of adobe.

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #28

Story #28 - White mice in the ivy – eek!

Do you have something that you are afraid of? For my mother it was mice! She hated mice!

This is another story about the patio. I had previously written how my mom planted ivy outside the living room wall just inside the patio. The ivy kept the wall cool. It was really pretty. It took awhile for it to grow and in a few years it covered the entire wall up to the roof and it was thick and green! My mom liked to go outside in the summer and hose down the concrete slabs in the patio to cool them off and then she would spray the hose up into the ivy. It was nice and cool. Well one day she went out there and just as she was coming back into the living room a baby white mouse ran out from the ivy and ‘into the house!’ She opened up her throat and let out a whooping loud ‘scream!’ We were in the house and ran out to the patio to see what was wrong! She was in the living room standing up on a chair hollering that there were mice outside in the ivy and one got in the house! I was about 12 years old. I thought it was kind of funny see my mom standing up on a chair having a tizzy over a little old mouse. I didn’t dare say anything though. I knew better! (I have to say right hear though, I was afraid of spiders when I was little. So with my mom being afraid of mice I should have been more sympathetic!) I think one of my brothers found the little baby white mouse that got in the house and took care of it. She still wouldn’t get down off that chair because there were more out in the ivy. Field mice are gray or brown. We figured someone had got the white one from a pet store and it got loose. It found its way into our patio and into the ivy. There were baby mice and were pretty little. I grabbed the garden shovel that was near the stairs that led up to the roof. I can remember I was wearing thongs. Some people call them slippers. I saw the baby mice and they started to run and I took the shovel and chopped off all their heads! I got the mother mouse and chopped off her head too. I took seconds and I had them taken care of. Then I told my mom it was safe and that I had killed all the mice and they were gone. I threw them in the garbage can. She got down off the chair. For a long time afterwards when she went out to the patio, she always inspected the door before she opened and closed the living room door!

Now that I look back on this story. It was kind of sad that I killed all those mice. But they do multiply very fast. So we had to get rid of them. Fast forward, it’s now June 11, 2008, years later since that happened. Well, last night I was looking out my kitchen window at the pond and the rock wall above it and I noticed that something moved. I looked really quick and I saw a long tail disappear into the rocks at the top! I looked again and sure enough there was a small rat! Yuck! I hate rats and mice! I am not afraid of them I just don’t like them! David was over and he and dad both looked out the window and there it was looking out and then it turned around and went back into the little cave the rocks made. Today dad, your grandpa, brought home a rattrap. I don’t know if that rat is still out there. Its color was dark gray. It looked cute looking out of the rocks yesterday, but I still don’t like rats! We have our home up for sale and I don’t want rats here! I guess in the morning we’ll see if it went for the bait. I just hope it went over the fence somewhere else!

Well now that I'm posting this story it is August 18th and I can report that we never saw the rat again and the trap was empty for over a week. Thank goodness! It found greener pastures I guess. I really didn't want to kill the rat. I just didn't want it in our yard!

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #27

Story #27 - Our adventures climbing the patio walls, hand over hand – yikes!

In the previous story about sleeping on the roof I mentioned we had a patio wall. My mom planted grass inside the patio. My dad built a small pond with a waterfall next to it. We tried to keep goldfish in it, but the neighborhood cats kept getting over the wall and into the pond and eating the fish. We stopped buying the fish. My mom also planted some flowers. It was my mom’s little Garden of Eden; her place of retreat and peace. On one end of the patio my dad poured a concrete slab.

He built of pole roof over the top and it was nice and shady. When you came out from the living room into the patio, just outside the door my dad poured another concrete slab. There was a fireplace in the living room on that wall. My mom grew ivy on the outside wall. It kept that wall cool. Our house was mostly made out of adobe brick and had concrete stucco on the outside. My mom would barbecue in the patio. It was a nice area to be in. The patio walls were made of adobe too and had concrete stucco. The top of the walls had a capstone of concrete as well.

Now comes the fun part of this story---Climbing little monkeys!
My brothers and I would climb the stairs up to the rooftop. Then we would ‘hop down’ off the top of the wall down onto the arch way over the patio door and then we would kneel down on the top of the patio wall and then slide down so that only our hands ‘were holding onto the top of the wall!’ Yes! We did that!
My mom didn’t know we did it either or we would have been in ‘BIG TROUBLE!’ Then while we were hanging by our hands, we would put hand over hand and go all the way around the patio wall to the other side. Then we would drop down to the ground! We just thought that was the coolest and most fun thing!

My dad built three houses behind our house. Trusses are the beams the support the roof. I would go back and see my dad build and I was about 7 years old. I would climb the ladder to the roof the then walk across the lower trusses near the end of the house. My mom came out to see my dad and I forget what she wanted but when she saw me on the roof she almost fainted! She scolded dad and told him to be more careful and keep a better eye on the kids while he was working and we WERE NOT allowed to climb the ladder and be on the roof! We still did it when her back was turned! My dad told us to be careful and we were! We never fell off. Now that I am a parent and have children and grandchildren, if my kids did that or my grand kids, ‘I would probably faint from fright for their safety!’ When you grandchildren are all grown up you will compare stories with your siblings on growing up. When I was a mom I told my mother about the patio wall and she about had a cow! That’s why you don’t tell your parents about those kind of stories until ‘years later!’ All I can think of now is---our guardian angels worked over time keeping an eye out for us!

FAMILY TIME - YIPPEE !!!

Family Togetherness - What a blast!

Well I don't have any pictures, drats! I'm so lax when it comes to taking pictures. I have a thousand of them taken mentally! We had a total of '21 people' in our home last week and it was sooo enjoyable! They were here for our son David's wedding. He and Angela were married last Friday 08-08-08! Cool date!

We had Chris and Michell's family, Bob and Julie's family and Jordan and Lisa's families all here. We also had Doug, who is home until his wedding in two weeks. We had his fiancee Ashley here too. She has since left to get ready for her wedding!

It was sooo wonderful having a houseful of family! I think they all had a good time. It was busy from the get go! We had to go to a wedding rehearsal and then we hosted a barbecue dinner at a very cute place we booked that you can have weddings, etc. there. Then the next day was the outdoor wedding and it was so lovely. When I saw my son David walking up to the arch with the minister, the happy tears started flowing. Then his gorgeous wife came up and she was gorgeous! Afterwards was the reception inside and all the hoopla!

Then on Saturday dad made arrangements for everyone to go to a classic car museum for a private tour. Dad is a member of the LeMay Car Museum. Believe me there was plenty of 'eye candy' for the adults with all those wonderful cars to look at! Of course they got to see dad's red 55 Chevrolet in our garage. That was a taste of what was to come at the museum!

Sunday was a sad day as everyone left! But something happened to take my mind off of being melancholy! Can you believe that we got a phone call to see our house the same day! Talk about putting it in overdrive! Dad and I had the place spotless in 3 hours, showcase special! The saddest part of cleaning for me was washing off the sweet little fingerprints and kissy mouth on the windows. Sniff, sob! :o( I called it my 'ox in the mire' sabbath. I hope the Lord will forgive us for working on Sunday! How did the viewing go? Well the couple had a 3 year old and the backyard is not ideal for little ones. It is terraced and I guess the mom was worried about safety. We do have a lovely home and yard. Oh well.

Now we are busily getting ready for Doug's wedding in Georgia! How exciting! I'll write about that after we get back! It's been so fun getting ready for these two weddings!