Pal and Hatty in Paradise

Friday, February 24, 2012

Happy Memories from the past


I have been immersed in putting together my personal history for the past two weeks (a word to the young - don't wait until your sixties to begin this tale - you will have lots and lots of years to cover!). Anyway - I have gone through countless scrapbooks, pictures, my journals and letters gathering information and scanning pictures to include. These fun pictures came to light and brought back mostly happy memories. We all gathered at mom and dad's in St. George for an early celebration of their February birthdays and anniversary and primarily for a chance to be all together during the break between Christmas 1992 and New Years 1993. I say the memories were "mostly" happy because our travels both coming and going included a bit (wait - let's be honest A LOT) of scary adventures. December/January travel through Idaho and Utah can always include slick roads and snowstorms and this trip presented both. The travel however, was well worth it when we all arrived and surprised mom and dad. The look on mom's face gave reason enough for our travels. I will never forget how thrilled they were to see us all together. We enjoyed some delicious meals (we even made a quick trip to Mesquite for the famous, large portion "hubcap ham" and eggs), gave them a gift of a video that included pictures of them and of all of our families, but the very best part was that we made some precious memories that make me happy nineteen years later.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Special Dinner & Winter Wonderland

Weekend before last we invited the couples we had served with in the MTC Russian Branch over for dinner and to see our new home. I prepared savory filled blinis for the main course and that made a fun menu. We love our new branch assignment, but we had missed being with these couples from our old branch. We enjoyed an evening together and a chance to renew our friendhip.






Winter Wonderland - we awoke on Sunday to snow falling and it fell for most of the day - resulting in 6 to 8 inches. We have had a very dry winter and the moisture was welcome but not the driving on slick roads to the MTC. The snowfall made everything beautiful and I had to snap some pictures of the scene.




The view from the Great Room



The view from our Master Bedroom

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Our New Home

I have been out of the blogging world for over 2 months! We survived the move and holidays and are now pretty much unpacked and moved in! We love our new home and we really enjoy the views! All the space is great yet we realize it is really big for just the two of us but is wonderful when the family comes! The grand kids enjoy the playroom and it is so nice to have a "designated space" for them to play. We love to have visitors so come and see us!


If you look closely, you can see Gigi peeking out the side window by the door - she was very curious when Jessica was taking our picture!


Living Room - we call this our "Russian Room" because we have all of our treasures from Russian here.



Kitchen - I love all the counter space and the granite is great!



Buffet serving area and plate wall - Jessica had the idea for this and put it together and it turned out great!



Dining Room - it is so nice to have a table big enough to seat everyone!



Great Room - with touches of blue and white - of course!



Great Room fireplace



Hal's Study



Master Bedroom - more blue and white!



View from Master Bedroom


Playroom - I bought the cute fabric in Krasnoyarsk, Russia and used a Russian theme for this room!