Dad’s Weekly Report

Dear Family,

We are having a hot weekend.  Although hot in Flagstaff is not bad.  Yesterday I got to about 90º.  We don’t have air conditioning in our house and it was a while before the house cooled down at night but still it was cool enough to sleep.  The breeze comes up in the evening that cooled things off pretty well.  I spent most of the day yesterday working on a cupboard in the garage.  I am building an insulated cupboard to hold our food storage, mostly canning jars empty and full.  It has to be insulated and heated because there is not heat in the garage and I have to protect it from freezing in the winter.  It is fun to be able to work on projects again.

Last weekend was Memorial Day.  We traveled to Utah to see Wesley graduate from college.  He received a bachelor’s degree in computer science.  It was a long time coming and we are proud of him.  Brent came down for the festivities and it great to see him also.  Here is a picture of Wes in his cap and gown.

Wes in his graduation outfit with little brother Brent.

We had great fun during the time there.  Wes and April took us to see where they work.  April had us put on scrubs and showed us the robot that she works with.  It does arthroscopic operations and she let all of us work the controls.

On Sunday we went up to the mountains and some of us rode on rides down the mountain.  Here is a picture of Brent riding down the zip line.

Brent coming down the zip line at Park City.

On Monday we drove to Richfield to attend the Christiansen gathering there.  We met at the Richfield cemetery to see the graves there then went over to Aunt Gerri’s house for a pot luck dinner.  It was great to see all the aunts, uncles and cousins.  Here is a picture of  Aunts Pat and Marjorie, Uncles Bill and Richard.

Aunts & Uncles at the Richfield Cemetary

After our get together we drove south to Saint George and spent the night at a motel.  On the way we visited Cove Fort.  It was fun to see their blacksmith shop.  A missionary there gave us a great tour.  After a nice dinner we walked around the Saint George old section.  We saw the old tabernacle and Brigham Young’s winter home.  Here is a picture of Brigham’s home.

Brigham Young's winter home in Saint George

The next morning we got up early and went to the temple.  As we were driving the car we heard a bad noise coming from the front left tire.  So after the temple we took the car into a shop to have it checked.  While they worked on it we went to another session at the temple.  What a nice temple.  The shop found that one of our tires was beginning to separate and would have probably blown apart if we had tried to drive it home.  So we got home a bit late on Tuesday.

At work this past week I had a couple of good meetings with engineers.  They want me to help out with a new part that is being designed and that has some difficult inspection requirements.  Hopefully I will be able to help them come up with simpler solutions and then this will lead to other similar work.  I have found that my new job is very political.  It is nice political but still not something that I am used to or very good at.  Still when I had my birthday this past week I was happy to go to work.  I didn’t get to do that last year.

Hope that all is well with you.

Love,

John