A few months ago when the cold weather hit hard, I decided SOMETHING NEEDED TO BE DONE to deal with the cold temperatures in my dining room. Ever since we added on back in 2008, the room was just not warm enough. So I decided this was the year to get a gas fireplace insert to replace our wood-burning stove which we almost never used. Here's the old fireplace with the hole next to it for firewood or something...we put our newspaper basket in it. The way it works in home renovation is that once you decide to do one thing, it inevitably leads to more things and this project was no different. As long as we were putting in the new gas insert, we might as well make our fireplace look a lot better. It was a long process but eventually we decided on a product called stone ledgers which we got at Floor and Decor. The third party installation company they recommended got HORRIBLE reviews--as in "Never use this company!" kind of reviews. So in the end, Scott did the work himself an...

 Happy New Year's! We enjoyed our Christmas and New Year's celebrations and everything in between. Here are some pictures: Christmas cookies Visiting Scott's mother's grave--Scott and I went up to do this and then picked up our grandchildren to spend the night.  Christmas Eve:  sledding and candlelight dinner followed by the nativity and singing and talents Merry Christmas!

 Recently Scott and I had a lunch date and we decided to visit the BYU Harris Fine Arts Center before it gets torn down.  This is the building otherwise known as the HFAC. Scott and I were both music majors at BYU and we spent many hours there studying music, making friends, and falling in love. (Aaaahhhh.) These days the building is starting to look pretty empty with the semester over and the dismantling beginning. In the olden days, we rehearsed together in E-250 with the BYU Philharmonic. OK, not so much together but in the same room with about 100 other people. Scott was on one side of the room with the trombones and I was on the other with the violins. Clyn Barrus was our conductor and he had a lot of passion for the music. We also attended our third semester of music theory with Dr. Michael Hicks in a classroom on the third floor. That was a smaller class of about 20 people. One Monday morning at the end of November in 1987, I walked into class with a huge cast on my arm...

This week our son Jan is celebrating his big 30! Here's a look back at his toddler and preschool years. He was pretty cute! Jan's first Halloween costume. Scott was recovering from his ruptured appendix at that time so I was a single mom for a while. This was our Christmas letter from 1993. Jan was "Loveable and Large, which describe Jan, age 1, as he locomotes around our living quarters looking for amusement." A rare shot of Scott wearing glasses while acting out the nativity with David and Jan At the Arboretum in Madison: Here are David and Jan by our old bullet van, getting ready to drive back home after visiting my family in Utah. Getting ready to go to church: Jan loved all things summer:  popsicles, ice cream, and swimming. At about this time, I wrote about Jan, "Jan loves to read books and if I am sitting down he will bring me a book to read to him. Some of his favorites are Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever and Cars and Trucks and Things That Go....