Labor Day Weekend!

Our plan for Labor Day Weekend was to go down to Safford for a Maloy Family Reunion.  We hadn't been there for a long, long time.  We wanted to see family there, and take Susan to the Gila Valley Temple.  Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans...

Debbie Leggett, a dear friend of ours from the Ft. Wingate Branch passed away in late August.  Her family asked me if I would read the eulogy at her funeral, and say a few words.  I love Debbie, so of course, I said that I would.  Sadly, though, her funeral was on the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend, so I stayed here at home, and the dad and Susan went down to the reunion in Safford.

This is Debbie Leggett--truly a loving soul!

It was the anniversary of Groundspeak's becoming an actual business that weekend.  I wanted us  to earn that souvenier, so the Dad and Susan did a few geocaches on their trip.  They also did a few geocaches, because it is just plain fun!  Here is one they found by the temple in Snowflake on the way to Safford.

Another Snowflake cache!

Lots of fun tradables inside!

At the Snowflake Temple!

The flowers were gorgeous that day!

They picked up a couple of caches in Thatcher, as well!

Again, fun goodies inside!

Can you see the cache container behind the animal's leg on the sign?

Rhonda's new house has a pomegranate tree!

Maybe it's more like a bush.

This is Grandma and Grandad Maloy's house on 124 Fourth Street in Safford.

The Orville Decker Family Siblings Reunion, this year, was breakfast before the Maloy Reunion that afternoon.  Keith Richards, Rhonda's husband, had this outdoor kitchen set up on their carport.

Breakfast in Rhonda's new home.

A selfie with Papa!

For the Maloy Family Reunion, there were endowment and sealing sessions at the Gila Valley Temple.  There was a baptistry session for the youth that same day.  Here is Darien, Lance's son, with Carlene and Susan at the temple.

Another cache in Thatcher.

This is Dan Bigler's son, Richard's smoker get-up.  He cooked the meat for the Maloy Family Cookout!  He was about 12 the last time we saw him.

Uncle Larry Busby

Aunt Marie is the one in the black skirt.

On Monday, we went on an urban hike.  We walked downtown looking for spots to hide our first cache.  Susan picked up a couple that we had found earlier.  Here we are walking up Susan's trail by Gallup Mid.

We really do have some nice urban trails!

After our urban hike, it was time to make the rellenos.  That has been a Labor Day tradition for several years, now.

We made about eight dozen burritos after we ate our fill of tasty, delicous chile rellenos.  I hope that they taste as good as this relleno does!

Hiking Pyramid Peak, and a Few Other Things!

One thing that Susan wanted to do while she was home for her break was hike Pyramid Peak.  At first, it was too hot, but the weather broke, and we had a great day for it right before she had to leave to go back to school.

Dang, I'm good lookin'!

We've climbed it three times this year, and I will have to say, that it is getting quite a bit easier.

Groundspeak has sponsired a "Secret Mission," where there were three different puzzles to solve, and thre different sourveniers we could earn for solving them and finding that type of cache.  Chelsea solved the first two puzzles for us, and we got those caches.  I was able to solve this puzzle--to find a mystery cache, but there weren't any mystery caches in Gallup, except for the movie one that the Decker Women had already solved during Girls' Week in July.

Well, Chelsea saved the day.  She found one we could look for at the Arizona/NM state line!  So on the appointed day, we drove out to the state line.  Here Susan spots the other cache that was out there!

This one was at a rest stop not far from all the souvenier shops on the state line.  (Afterwards, we went in to all those sourvenier shops!)

Here's that mystery cache!  We not only earned a souvenier for this one...

...but we earned an extra souvenier for getting all three of the Secret Mission caches!

I searched and searched one day for our copy of "Sing With Me," which is the Primary Songbook we used before the one we have now.  The dad got in the search, as well, because he wanted to use one of the songs in it for his Temple Prep class.  We searched, and searched.  We decided to order not just one, but two used copies of it from amazon.com.  We realized that the second they arrived, we would probably find our original copy.  Well, in this case, we were not disappointed.  No sooner had dad opened the box with the replacement book...

...he had an epiphany.  He looked back on the shelf in the Green Room where we thought it should have been in the first place.  He found it squeezed in between two bigger paperback music books that hid the spine from our view.

There it was, right where it should have been in the first place!

Now we have three of them.

This is a cobble Susan made with peaches from our own tree!

One day, we decided to make stuffed sopapillas just because we could.

So we did.

They were good.

When Leah was in town, she and her husband had their baby blessed at the McMullins house.  Then they had a big feed afterwards.  Here are Lalli Ramadoss and me with Leah's kiddos!

Baby Allison!

Our Baby is Twenty-One!

Oh, man!  Our baby is now legally an adult!  This is how we celebrate the big twenty-one around here!  Wild and crazy!

Susan opened her presents!  She got a Nuvii and a bike rack for her car!

We went into Albuquerque that evening.  The next day was the dad's and my first shift as Temple Workers!

For Susan's wild and crazy birthday dinner, we had frozen pizzas microwaved in our hotel room!  (It's one of the dad's and my new taste sensations for when we are on the road for Friday Pizza night!)

She needed a special birthday drink!  It's Metamucil!

For her birthday cake, we got 50 cent Frosties and put  candle on hers.  We couldn't use a real candle because you can't light candles in hotel rooms.

Make a wish!

On Saturday morning, we went to the temple for our first shift.  Susan did initiatories, an endowment session, and then the three of us finished up the morning doing sealings.

Afterwards we went to Old Town.  Of course, we did a cache or two!

A picturesque spot in Old Town!

Another geocache!

This is how you party it up when you're "Born to Be Mild!"

My Grandsons!

These are just a few of the pictures of my grandsons that have come my way in the past couple of weeks.  I wonder when I will stop getting excited with every picture that comes my way.  Maybe when they're fifteen...?  Here they are in no particular order: