Our Apartment

Here is where we will be living for the next 23 months. The is the Canyon Road Towers. We will be in the second row of balconies from the corner on the right side of the flag pole on the 11th floor - 3rd balcony from the top.
The side street on the left of the above picture goes along City Creek and leads up to the State Capitol Building. There is a beautiful park and walking trail along the creek.From our balcony looking east you see the expanse of the Wasatch Range of the Rocky Mountains.

To the west you see the Church Office Building and much of downtown. Looking straight out from the balcony (not shown) you see all the way to the Point (south of town.)

This is the living room looking towards the picture window and balcony. The apartment is furnished with beautiful furniture.

This is looking back the other way towards the door - to the far left and showing the dining room.

This is the dining room looking into the kitchen.

This is the remodeled kitchen - new appliances and room for anything we would need.
This condo (for it is a condo) is 1200 sq. feet and had two bedrooms and two baths. The building has underground parking, an inside pool and spa, and gym.

Burrel School Revisited

In 1969 I began my teaching in a small school district 30 some odd miles southwest of Fresno. My first room was in a 1912 vintage building. I taught there two years and then had to leave in a staff reduction move. I was gone one year to Tranquility Elementary and was invited back as the Principal and teacher of grades 6, 7 AND 8. (Yes 3 grades.) While there we tore down the old buildings and built a state-of-the-art school in 1975. The school district is 100 years old this year and holding a centennial celebration May 11, 2012. The building directly behind me is the building I helped build.

This was a all contained building. It had the office, my office, staff room, cafeteria, and 3 classrooms. My office was behind the window at the far left of the picture and the yellow door went into my room. They have since built a sister building (behind this first building.)
It is kind of fun to have your name on a plaque - this is the dedicatory plaque for the building at Burrel.
I was thrilled to be there the day I was as my first and only secretary, Teresa Rodriguez, was working her last day before retirement the day I was there. It was inspiration I guess to go that day.
I am here with a former student, Sal Cisneros, who was in one of those early classes that I taught at Burrel. He and his wife now work at the school and he is the current PTC President and is in charge of the centennial celebration. That was a fun trip down memory lane.

Pretty Things

Spring is always my favorite time of the year. I like to think our house is the most colorful in the neighborhood.

I just love my flowers in the spring.

Granddaughter and Diva - Maycee is pretty too.

Mormon Battalion Historical Site (San Diego, CA)

On Memorial Day we visited the Mormon Battalion Historical Site. The Mormon Battalion was formed by Mormon men who were crossing the plains heading for Utah. The US Army enlisted them to create a wagon trail from the old Santa Fe trail out to San Diego, California in 1846. They were to fight any Spanish troops they were to encounter. They fought no battles but did walk some 2000 miles. The money they earned was desperately needed to help pay their way to the Rocky Mountains. My 2nd great granduncle, Richard H Carter, was one of the 500 recruits. He took sick in New Mexico and died on the way back to the main Mormon encampment on the trail to Utah. He was 26 and left a wife (who died of smallpox a few weeks later) and three small children.
The current building was remodeled in the past year or so and has a much improved experience for tourists who visit it. It is located in Old Town San Diego - right downtown.
Here are Hannah and Topher directing the firing of the cannon. The Battalion was a true military group and pulled cannon with them all the way to California.Here are Barbara and I standing with a Battalion soldier in front of the visitor center.The visitors go through 5 rooms learning about the Battalion experience. It is very high tech. You start in an assembly room where you sit in front of some pictures of real people (well almost) from the Battalion. The pictures actually come to life and begin to tell you their story. They guide you to the next room (not pictured) where the story of the recruitment of the troops is told by movies shown on the sides of pretend camp tents with the characters from the pictures playing key roles.
You eventually get to this room where the troops are outfitted. Hannah and Topher became honorary Battalion members and got to wear some of the garb the troops wore. In this room the characters would come to the window and talk to us.This room represented a camp along the way. The sky became the screen and we learned about being "attacked" by a herd of long-horn cattle, the sickness and trials of the troops, and their final arrival in San Diego.
After the presentations we were taken into a room (not pictured) where you could get your picture taken and you could explore people who served in the Battalion. Then you could go into the patio and mine for gold and do other hands on things.
Why pan for gold? After the Battalion was mustered out some of them traveled home through the San Joaquin Valley and then worked briefly for a Mr. Sutter at his saw mill and became the people who actually discovered the first gold of the gold rush.
All in all this was a very well planned and organized visitor center.

Palomar Observatory (Southern California)

Mom, Maree, Hannah, Topher, and I took a tour of the Palomar Observatory and Hale Telescope this past Saturday. The observatory is at 5500 feet on a mountain north and east of San Diego. It is operational some 300 days of the year (with a few down days for maintenance and bad weather closures. Planning started in 1938 and the telescope was finally assembled in November, 1947 (the month I was born!)

This is a model of the telescope. The part that is going vertical (up and down) is the actual telescope. The part going more vertical is the mechanism needed to turn in within the observatory. The whole apparatus weighs some 55 tons and was put together on site though parts were shipped from all over the US to here. This is a reflective telescope meaning light is let into it and reflects off a concave mirror that focuses it on a focus point and that is where you "see" the image. At one point it was the biggest telescope in the world. It still gives more detailed views of the stars than the Hubble Telescope out in space. In the diagram the mirror is at the bottom of the vertical apparatus and the focus point is at the top.

The mirror is in the round holder in the picture below. It is 200 inches in diameter and was constructed of the state of the art "glass" in 1938 - Pyrex. Pyrex was a recent invention of the Corning company and was better than regular glass as it didn't change shape much with temperature change, thus allowing for very well focused images. It was cast in NY and shipped by train to California going only 25 miles per hour tops to keep the mirror from cracking. The final polishing of the mirror wasn't done until it was installed here in California. It is coated every 18 to 24 months with a fine layer of aluminum, which is then polished to a perfect reflection.
This is where the focal point is located and where the camera are found. Up in this housing a astronomer sits through the night (sometimes in a flight suit for warmth) adjusting the focus and pointing the telescope where they want it to view the sky. He is up to 135 feet up in the air.
This is a picture of one of our astronomer guides with Topher and Hannah. All in all this was a fun little day trip.

jfla

Life is Better

Since November (week before Thanksgiving) we have had the heater go out, roof leaks in both the back bedroom and the garage, termites everywhere, and the master bath remodeled. As of a week ago today - heater works, roof doesn't leak, the termites are very unhappy with us, the back bedroom looks great, and our master bath is beautiful. Pictures to come.

House Demolition One Piece at a Time????

Once upon a dark and gloomy night.....began our adventures into Home Repair and Remodel 1. We had a small leak into the garage at the left of the entry way. Something was going to need be done but it wasn't a high priority at the time, until Christmas night. We weren't even supposed to be home - should have been in Marysville by that evening but had decided to wait until the next afternoon. We went out to dinner at my sister-in-law's home on Christmas evening and when we go home we were greated by a flood in the back bedroom (our computer/genealogy/storage room). We actually didn't realize it until about 11:00 PM. This leak was on the opposite side of the gargage. The water went down the wall between the garage and the bedroom and came out the floorboard of the bedroom.

This the outside of our house with its newly decorated roof. We are awaiting the insurance company's findings on what will be fixed.

The bedroom itself was gutted. The only thing we left in it were the built in cabinets, behind which the water flowed to the floor, and our computer desk - workbench, which was too heavy and big to get out of the room. Again we are awaiting the estimator who will price out the repairs. Since they were able to dry this room out all that should be needed is painting and re-carpeting.

But we weren't satisfied with that level of mess - we had also scheduled our master bath to be remodeled at this very time and the contractor arrived on Monday to begin work. We are gutting the entire bathroom (escept for the vanity itself) and installing a air-jet tub, new shower, granite counter top, all new fixtures, tile floor, new mirror, and of course, paint. Above is where the shower will be with a nice seat inside.

The tub will go here now that the framing is in. As I write this they are cutting the holes in the granite for the sinks - so things are moving along. The tile is here, the tub and shower pan come next week and this project will be moving right along.

Halloween Anyone?

OK, it is a little late for Halloween but I did want to blog our grandkids at Halloween. We weren't able to get the whole crew but this is what we have:

This is Benjamin (Bennie Man) dressed as Super Mario for Halloween.

Emma decided to be the game Twister.

And Maddy decided to be a spider - I hope not a black widow.

The Keith clan only had 3 participants this year as our eldest grandson, Jonathan, decided that he was too old for this. Joshua, on the left, was a Ninja (3rd straight year), Jillian was her usual diva self and was Belle from The Beauty and the Beast. Finally Jimmy (on the right) was Jack Sparrow.

Finally we have Rustin - who was Peter Pan and had a better time doing the Trick or Treat stuff this year.