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Enoch was Frankenstein's Monster for Halloween. We chose that because of his very monster-like walk.



He had his first birthday on Tuesday the 6th but we're not having his party until the 10th. We had him open one of his presents anyway.

?Brian?

Has anyone heard from Brian? Does he know about the blog? Is he still part of our family? Is he married yet? Does he still live in Logan?

An Autumn Update

Hello Family! Carl and I have been neglectful of our duty to keep everyone informed of our lives. It's so fun to see that little Joseph and Enoch! Here are some pictures of things we've been up to in the past couple months (all crazily out of order as I am still a blogging nitwit). . .

Carl was Ichabod Crane in the American Fork Arts Council's production of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. He is SO GOOD at that role, and the director told me she would die if he doesn't do it again next year. So, these are just some stage photos of Carl doing what he does best :)

Ichabod with his pathetic horse, Gunpowder.

This is quite possibly my favorite thing Carl does.

Carl and I hosted our second annual Fall Harvest Feast at the cabin on October 19th. This is a picture of most of the people who came. Look behind Kelli's head and you can see the bigger of her twins, Allison (hanging upside down). This was a GREAT party and everyone loved it and we ate food that was partially from our garden and we played that old cousin Dan favorite, "Monkey's back, baby's cradle, bird on a perch"
In the end of September, Carl and I took a backpacking trip in Big Cottonwood Canyon. We hiked six miles from the Butler Fork trailhead to Lake Desolation. Three miles in, it started raining on us. . . then hailing on us. It let up in the evening and made for some BEAUTIFUL lighting!

I like the picture above because of the shadows cast on those mountains by the clouds. The light was SO COOL!

Here is the benefit of the rain. . . the sunset over Lake Desolation.

It hailed again during the night, and I stuck my camera outside to take a picture of the hailstones.

Here we are waking up in our awesome tent and sleeping bags.

The next morning was beautiful. Look at those aspen trees!

We've been climbing at a bouldering gym for about 2 months now. I'm pretty embarrassed to show you these pictures because they were taken when we were very new to climbing. We climb harder things now, but this gives you an idea of what it's like.

Carl now climbs advanced bouldering problems. . . the equivalent of a 5-12 or 13 in harness climbing.

Some happy cherry tomatoes from our garden!
By the way, we had a huge watermelon (probably 15 pounds) that we were waiting to harvest at just the right moment. We came one morning to get it, and someone had stolen it along with ALL of our white bell peppers and zuccini!! I think we're done with community gardens.

Another picture from our backpacking trip.

Also from our backpacking trip. Maybe you can see the rain pouring down (upper right corner)?

So that is our lives lately. I decided to work at the VA hospital on their post-surgical floor rather than at the University Hospital because the manager at the VA is giving me every Sunday day shift off so I can do my RS calling. He is cool. Anyway, the VA has WAY better benefits.

Carl and I are planning a trip to Costa Rica in February. We're going to hit the National Parks there (including one that is a coral reef system all in the ocean!) and take a zip-line canopy tour through the rainforest! I have to pay off my student debt first, and then save up a little more.

Carl will pass out if he finds out I wrote this on our blog, but we're trying to become "with child". My reproductive system is really wierd, so just pray for us that it will all work out.

Oh yeah! We are planning on going down to St. George to visit Grandpa and Aunt Una Loy on the 15th or 16th through the 18th of November. Grandpa told us about this really cool slot canyon in Kanarraville we're going to go try out. If anyone wants to come, we have two spots in our car.

Love you!

Before the move, we did have a chance to celebrate Halloween a little. Joseph experimented with being Elmo and a mardi gras participant, but ultimately settled on a giraffe (picture not on computer yet).

Well, we're in Hillsboro. In two weeks, I found out I had a job in Portland, quit my old job, moved my family to Robin's house in Hillsboro, and had an overnight work trip my first day. It was harrowing, exciting, and exhausting.

I love the new job. It is exactly what I was looking for (a chance to use my training to help regular people). As a pulic servant, I have taken the necessary vow of poverty. We are exploring housing options. We'd like to buy, but we'll have to see what's possible based on my salary.

In the mean time, we are having a fun time with Robin and Briton. Joseph and Talmage really get along well together and do a lot to entertain each other. There are some challenges associated with getting Joseph and Talmage accustomed to sleeping in the same room and synchronizing bed-time. To further complicate things, Joseph climbed out of his crib for the first time today when he was done with his nap. Because he was so quiet, I didn't know until I noticed the time and went in to check. He had emptied all of the wipes containers onto the floor and carefully distributed all the diapers in the room in a random pattern on the floor. We're not sure what this development means yet as far as shared sleeping quarters.

We hope all is well with the rest of you.

He Walks!

And here's a little su'em-su'em for good humor. He gets it from his dad.

We went apple picking after a big storm so we could just get the dropped apples. It was a beautiful autumn day. Turns out Enoch REALLY likes apples. He took several bights out of a couple he found while crawling through the orchard.

We went hiking up "Camel's Hump." It is the closest "mountain" to us that is of decent size. However, we still didn't make it to the top because we are late for everything including our own agenda and didn't start till it was pretty late. The good news is that Enoch really likes hiking and "talks" constantly in the backpack.

I call this one, "Autumn Seduction." It looks like Enoch was hiding behind the leaf but in actuality he was in the process of eating it. Mmmm
We went to the Champlain Fair in August where Enoch met his first sheep. He was very cautious to pet it, but once he saw it was okay he GRABBED the wool. Fortunately these animals live rather mundane lives have become numb to any feeling.

That's our update. Chase finished a bear-of-a-test yesterday and now we're throwing a birthday party for one of the girls in his class who's never had a birthday party thrown for her. We're also going to make another attempt up the "Camel's Hump," and the plan is that we'll start early...we'll see. Enoch keeps tottling around, not in a full walk but sure determined to get there. We also have a new phone number...well I have a new phone number Chase's is still the (801) 971-8737 but my phone has expired and now we have a house phone: (802) 681-4327.

Oh! and in case you didn't already have it, our new address is:

Petersens

4 Peterson Terrace

South Burlington, VT 05403

Hope all is well. We love you!

-Missy :)

Here is my attempt to uploading a video. It works here on my "compose" page so I hope it'll work on the display page. The week before Enoch and I flew out to Burlington we stayed with Mom and Dad. This is Mom playing a fancy version of ChopStix and Enoch being the cute little boy he is. I couldn't tell which video this was on my browser so that's why it is entitled "Unknown."

Call for October Entries

Okay everyone . . . it's now time for your monthly blogger updates for October. Don't hold back, tell it all. After all, we're family, if you can't trust us . . . well, maybe you're smart not to trust us.

For Ellen's birthday yesterday we went down to Grandma K's house for our Family Quarterly Dinner. This is something Grandma set up to make sure that we all get together at least four times a year. Only the first generation of lineal descendants and their spouces (aka, the "lower case") are invited.

Grandma was doing great. I talked privately with her for quite awhile, and she advised me that she has recently increased her social activities. She is now a member of a club (which includes some of her close relatives and older friends) who attend a weekly social at which a continental breakfast is served and they watch an old time movie and then discuss it (and complain about how modern movies don't even begin to compare.) She was thrilled with this past week's offering: "RoseMarie" with Jeannette McDonald and Nelson Eddy which features the memorable duet of "Indian Love Call."

Grandma has also started Tai Chi lessons weekly. She enjoys this, too, and demonstrated some of the "healthful moves" and poses they use. They have a paid instructor but their best lessons are taught by an actual Chinese lady who pinch hits when the instructor is not there. Grandma actually seemed quite pleased with how well she is progressing in this new interest.

Others attending the quarterly gala included Richard, Kathy, Shirley (Kathy's mother), MaryAnne and Jan, Steve and Linda, Rosena and Alan, and MaryAnne (Ken's wife). Ken is still in Peru until November. (Ken, you will remember, retired early and joined the Peace Corps only to realize later that he was years away from qualifying for Medicare (a really big deal for people in our age group--yes, even bigger than having a great profile on Facebook), so he had to re-up with the Peace Corps every other six month period in order to keep their nice health insurance.

The dinner was delicious. Things went well until Steve and Linda started to preach the liberal heresy of global warming and praising Al Gore for winning the Nobel Peace Prize for inventing it. Rosena gave a speech on how the education voucher system was going to wreck Utah public education. Another spontaneous "paper" was presented on how wonderful totally free universal health care was going to be and how it wouldn't cost anyone anything ever. At this point, I had to leave the table and hurl chunks in the toilet.

Things calmed down later. (Richard and Kathy were the strongest defenders of the conservative (aka, true) religion and were quite eloquent, though not as strident as the liberals) Things turned to less charged subjects for dessert (one of Grandma's famous apple pies--no one comes close to equaling her pie crust), and everyone joined in singing a"happy Birthday" to Mom--now 59 years old. We left soon after.

I suggested that the quarterly family dinner by-laws should be amended to provide that two sessions of the dinner be held to which only Grandma would be invited to both. The rest would have to declare their political leanings (as if we don't already know what they are) and attend either the Conservative or Liberal session.

Well, that's it for this entry. Thanks for reading. Remember to send in your monthly entries--and lots of photos!

Update on our family

I haven't put any pictures of us up here for a long time. A couple of weeks ago, Jo took Joseph down to the river front in downtown Corvallis. There is a fountain there that kids love to play in. Joseph had a blast! He loves water!

Joseph has also been working on his social skills...

He's also been doing some some good work around the house that requires the use of some personal protective equipment...

And some decontamination afterward...

Hey, guys, I tried to post some video, but it took a long-long time, and I was impatient. Does anyone know the deal with publishing video?

Happiness is Family

This is me teaching Missy how to post. Yes, Rand, even the younger generation needs a little technological guidence now and then.

Hi everyone! I was looking at our family blogspot, and it didn't have enough pictures, so I decided to show you some pictures from our Oregon trip! The people in the above picture look somewhat. . . troubled.

He he. Bet those guys never thought they'd end up in THIS situation!

A seafood feast

Be still my racing heart!

This is the skunk cabbage plant I made Missy get in. Doesn't she look like a cabbage patch kid?

Brian, Hilary, Dad

Woops! Of course I forgot to flip this picture. Here we are clamming.

The disappointment on our faces tells the story that this clam was much too small :(

I had a hard time finding pictures of Joseph on this trip, but you can kind of see him in this one. Also, I had a great picture of everyone fleeing the ocean in front of the Tsunami evacuation route sign, and now I can't find it. It might be on Brian's computer with my Joseph pictures!

This was before the crabs started pinching each other's legs off

Here is a picture of Joseph climbing the fence

A messy little Enoch

I call this one "Unattractive Farrer Children"

Fish anyone?

So, there you go. I hope someone can find the Tsunami Evacuation Route picture. It is REALLY funny! I am still waiting around for authorization to take my nursing boards. That's why I have all this time to blog. Thanks for the latest posts. It's so fun to hear about what everyone's doing!

Oh, maybe I'll add this. . . Labor Day weekend my band played in the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival which was very fun. We have many new songs and also we've been writing many originals. We are playing in the Vernal Storytelling Festival September 22nd. Dad is coming with me since Carl will be in play rehearsal.

Carl has been cast as Ichabod Crane in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow again this year (a role he practically invented he's so good at it). You can go to the website at sleepyhollowshow.com. I think there are pictures of Carl on there.

Here's some more news. . . I've been hired on the Bone Marrow Transplant unit at the University Hospital as a full-time RN. I have also been hired as an on-call nurse at the Birth and Family Place, a birth center that does only natural births! I am excited about these opportunities because the BMT unit is a 10-bed step-down ICU, so it's very acute and I really like oncology. Plus I have my foot in the door for when the birth center needs full-time nurses which is really what I want to do. That was confusing to read. . . sorry. Carl is still working in the Progressive Care Unit (also a step-down ICU) at St. Mark's Hospital. He just started a 6-week Advanced Cardiac Life Support Class. He is SO GOOD at reading EKG's! He rattles off all kinds of abnormal rhythms like it's nothing. I kind of know what normal sinus rhythm looks like. Anyway, hopefully I will be authorized, scheduled, and done with my N-CLEX by the end of September so I can start working. Have a lovely day everyone!

At Last!

Well, I finally figured out how to post a blog! When each of you turn 60 I want you to recall that Dad was able to learn something new and actually do it at this age. From that perspective I will become a giant in your eyes!

My next project is to figure out how to set up pictures on the blog.

I'm loving this blog--I want more pictures from all of you!

Also, Brian, what has happened to you? We haven't heard a peep from you in ages.

I talked to Grandpa yesterday--they are doing okay. They love your phone calls--it's all they talk about!

Lots of love to you--Next time I'll be back with photos!

Impatient

Hey everyone! I thought I would post here instead of do my work. We had an awesome Saturday at Honeyman State Park near Florence, OR. I remember Dad saying that they took me there a lot when I was little and we lived in Eugene. It was very pretty. I don't have any pictures ready to go, but there is basically a lot of huge sand dunes that terminate in a freshwater lake about mile inland from the sea. We were there with Uncle Richard's family minus Paul and Kelly and Kerianne. They rented sand boards to ride down the dunes. It was pretty fun! Joseph swam in the Lake. I thought he would have a seizure he was so excited! He was shivering from cold and excitement, but I couldn't keep him out of the water.

Before the visit, Mark had told me that they were all really interested in crabbing, so I found a place to rent rings and buy bait near their campsite. Once we got out to the bait shop, it came out that no one in their family likes crab, and none of them wanted to spend the $9.00 on an out-of-state shellfish licesnce. So, I rented one ring, and went out to the end of the pier with about 20 Idaho Kartchners following me and asking questions. Let me tell you that 15 minutes is a LOOOONG time to wait in between pulls for 5-8 year old kids. I was asked "Can we pull it up now?" at least once during each of those 15 minutes. There were some more experienced crabbers on lawn chairs out there with about 6 rings down and a few cages. They had to keep moving the 20 Kartchners around the pier so that they could have room to pull up and check their stuff. They were also peppered with questions like, "What are you doing?" "Why are you doing that?" "Can you keep any of those crabs?" "Why not?" "Are you afraid you'll get pinched?" "What's your name?" All in all, I think it was a little bit less peaceful than crabbing usually is, but it was fun.

I didn't get any keepers, but I was impressed that Winchester Bay had 0 redrock crabs. Every pull brought in 5 or 6 Dungeness that were the wrong gender or too small. The pier was crowded too, and it wasn't only because of Labor Day Weekend. Every year, a bunch of the local bait shops get together and put tags on about 100 crabs and release them into the bay. If you catch one of the tagged crabs, you can turn the tag in to one of the stores, and they give you $1000.00. It's sort of like a lottery for the crabbers, and for the bait shops it's a way to get a bunch of people buying and renting rings, traps, and boats. That's why Rob, the guy the Kartchners were pestering, was out there. He'd been out for 5 hours and only had 2 keepers, neither of which had a tag. He seemed to be answering some of the Kartchners' questions about how many he'd caught and how long he'd been out through gritted teeth.

After crabbing, we watched the sun sink into the Pacific from the top of a cool dune. Joseph had a great time, and Jo and I were exhausted. So we have more cool places we can take family when they come visit. Another fun place to swim that the Kartchners discovered for us is at Triangle Lake. It is only 37 miles from Corvallis and has a natural rock waterslide in one of the inlets to the lake. The report was that it was a blast.

Monday, I tried my hand at pressure canning some beans from our garden. I got one out of 7 jars to seal. I was very frustrated. On the other had, we also bought a 7 cubic foot chest freezer for the garage on Monday too, so I guess I can just freeze the beans that didn't seal now. I was amazed at how much stuff had been in our little freezer. It will be nice to have the extra space. There's actually room for our ice maker to work again!

I still have an interview scheduled for a job in Eugene and am waiting to hear back from an application I put in for a job in Portland. Right now I would prefer the Portland job because it is close to the temple and Robin and Briton. There's also a bigger support network for the churches adoption agency there than in Eugene. Also, it's close to the airport, and flights in and out of PDX tend to be cheaper than into Eugene or Salem.

That's the news from Corvallis.

Misc

Hey everybody,
I just thought I'd give an update on what's going on in Burlington. I am well into my second course, Cell and Molecular Biology, which is luckily a lot of review with a few different spins and details for me. It has still taken a great deal of reviewing however, which ended up consuming a good portion of our labor day weekend. We did however, visit the Champlain Valley Fair which was great. Enoch loved all of the animals and especially the sounds we would make when we introduced him to them. He is getting his 5th tooth, so the teething trials have resumed. He is also becoming more adventurous and has even started taking a few steps on his own before he pulls a Peter and looses faith. Missy has won my vote for homemaker of the year with all the gourmet dinners she has ever ready when I come home, not to mention the doting lunches that have my classmates all jealous. Also, today we went with the inspector and looked through our soon-to-be house from top to bottom. I learned a ton from him; very practical advice. We also met the children of the previous owner who grew up in that house (now in their 50's) and now live down the street. We are so excited. There is a lot of potential in that house.
Hope all's well with everybody.

Love the Petersens,

P.S. great pics Hilary.
P.P.S. Ellen, we are planning impaired and can't foresee what we will be doing next summer yet. We'll have to get back with you on the Shakespeare Festival.

Woops!

Okay. Here are some pictures from the Tetons. Maybe this will look better.

A Small Update On Our Lives

I am learning some things about the order in which you're supposed to upload images. Anyway, I found these old pictures from our Teton Trip in the summer of 2006. I hope you enjoy them!



Here are some vegetables we grew in our garden. How lovely!

One of Carl's mission companions comes from Oaxaca, Mexico where dried grasshoppers are a delicacy. He sent us a jar of them, and we have been enjoying the taste of dried grasshoppers ever since. They kind of just taste like grass.
Here is a typical scene in front of our apartment. This one happened because some guy broke into another guy's apartment next door, demanded his wallet, and slashed his forearm open with a knife. Our building is more secure than the one next door, and also we don't have sketchy people living here.
Here is Carl's birthday cake. Missy did most of it, and I think it turned out pretty dern awesome!


Hello Family! I thought you might enjoy some kind of recent pictures from our lives. Let's see what I've got here. . .

In early August, Carl and I went to Yosemite National Park with the Barlow clan. This is a picture of Carl and I at the top of Half-Dome. It was a big hike. Claire, Ethan, Carl, me, and Carl's brother Tom went on the hike. These cables at the end were a lot scarier than I was anticipating, but the intensity made it fun.