In Memory of Duke

I’m not caught up on all that I want to blog about...but I had to take a moment to remember our sweet dog Duke.  He died last night after getting hit by a car.  We are so sad and so sorry that Duke’s life ended so short.  He was a great dog.  So loving and so full of energy.  He loved chasing after small animals, especially squirrels.  So he died doing what he loved...he had a squirrel in his mouth when we found him.  The road we live on is so busy, and Duke loves to find any way he can to get out and chase those squirrels around.  We hope that Duke’s big sister Lola will be okay without having him around.  We love you so much, Duke!  We will miss you.

Duke and Lola

We will miss you little buddy.

Clinic Open House

We had an open house/ribbon cutting ceremony for the new addition clinic where Brent works.  His dad is the official owner of the practice, and started it when he was about Brent’s age.  Now there are two buildings...a general private practice, and a pediatric clinic that serves mostly medicaid patients.  It was the pediatric clinic called “Community Dental” that was just recently added to.  The new addition is 8,000 sq/ft and was an enormous undertaking to build.  Natalie and I were asked to decorate this huge clinic.  And it took us a long time...but we completed most of the decor before the open house.  You can also take a tour of the office by clicking here

The clinic in the building stage.  Looking good.

Some of the staff standing on the newly framed addition.

The 2008 staff at the open house.  Yes, I designed the t-shirts.  

The beginning of the tour

End of the tour.  We had people fill out new patient forms so we could start seeing more patients.

Braces. Ha...maybe a foreshadow of things to come?  Yes, Community Dental will probably be offering braces in the near future

Is this legal?  Mooooooove on over.

The crowd.  Lots of people showed up!

Our two doctors—Brent and Kent—enjoying a friendly game of "knock out" as their patients cheer them on.  I'm rooting for my hubby of course!

The Phantom of the Opera

This image is taken from a theater I performed in on tour.  I shot it really quick because you're not supposed to take photos of the sets.  You can see the stage techs setting up for the show and the orchestra warming up.  I love the sights and sounds of live theater.  It's nostalgic.

 A couple of weekends ago, we went to Spokane with the Copelands and Andersons to see Phantom of the Opera.  My friend, Dallyn, from BYU was just recently cast as a Raoul understudy.  He was the one who let me know that Phantom was in our neck of the woods.  As a matter of fact, it was the same company that I performed with in 2001-2003.  Some of the same people I knew were still there and it was so nice to see them again.  Of course I cried when the big opening music started.  It brings back such great memories.  I really miss it!  But it was wonderful!  Dallyn took us all on a backstage tour.  That was the real highlight of the night.  Everyone just loved it.  

The kids were back at the hotel being babysat by Patty...bless her heart.

This is too cool.  Sitting on the same stage his mommy once danced on.  There's the chandelier in the background.  I so wish Tanner and Brent could have seen me in the show.  How neat would that have been.  ((sigh))

Some of my costumes back in the day.  Or rather...30 pounds ago.

When you let your husband babysit

I'm whipped.

So we were over at the Copeland’s house for Sunday dinner.  And as Natalie and I were making the dessert, we asked our husbands to watch the kids.  But I guess our husbands were too busy playing the Wii because the next thing we heard was a little coo from Tanner.  As we all looked down on the floor where he was, we saw Ella hovering over him with a pen in her hand.  She apparently wanted to decorate his face and got away with it in front of us all.  It’s some impressive art work too.  Tanner didn’t even mind until we had to scrub it off his face.

Harvest time!

So this is my first time experiencing harvest season.  It’s quite the ordeal out here in farm country!  It’s very efficient and organized.  And really quite fun to watch.  Although, after they harvested the corn (which surrounded 2 sides of our house) they then dumped manure all over the field.  Yowsers! Manure is not my favorite smell in the world, that’s for sure! 

Now you see it

Now you don't

One cornstalk stands alone, forgotten.

But then there's the grape harvest.  It’s the only time here in Sunnyside where the air doesn’t smell like cow manure.  It smells like grape!  It’s wonderful--heavenly is more like it.  And it’s really fun to watch the harvesting.  The juicer trucks go back and forth hauling picked grapes while these really super big machines pick the fruit.  Then all the grapes are loaded up in big boxes and sent to juicing companies.  Gary (my father-in-law) who owns Martin vineyards only grows juicing grapes.  I guess he could try his luck at a winery and do VERY well...but, drinking alcohol in the Mormon culture is a little against our beliefs.  So...Welch’s grape is one of the juicing companies that typically buys the grapes from Gary.  I like the grapes too, because they’re so sweet and tasty fresh from the vine!

You see that tiny machine on the horizon?  That's a grape harvester, doing its job.

pickin'

Then haulin'

loadin'

Smilin'
(Papa Gary in the Old Navy jacket on his lunch break from the dental office. )

When you live on a farm, you harvest lots of stuff at harvest-time.  So, the day after Halloween, we went over to Nana Katie and Papa Gary’s house to make homemade apple juice.  Yum!   It was quite fun.  The Copelands joined us and it seemed their kids enjoyed the whole process too.  Yey!

Where's my vampire lover?

Look at them apples

Soak 'em

Grab one

and squeeze the crap out of 'em. 

Pumpkin Patch

Loaded up in the back of the truck, ready to head over to the nearby patch.  Don’t worry, the pumpkin patch is just down the dirt road from the house...no need for car seats here.  We’re going redneck all the way, we even have our lawn chairs seated perfectly in the back! Yee Haw!

After a lazy afternoon session of General Conference, the Martin family (sans Nana Katie--she was in Utah) headed over to the Pumpkin patch to pick out some good pumpkins for the fall season.  Byron and Nancy, and their kids came up from Tri Cities for the fun!  Papa Gary said that this year the pumpkins were planted too late, and a lot didn’t grow in the patch because of that.  I’ve never been to a pumpkin patch before, so I wouldn’t know any different.  So I had fun either way!

Picking the perfect pumpkins

Tanner and his cousins

Papa and the grandkids

Posing for the camera. Ain't I handsome!

Sausage! Sausage! Sausage!

German Sausage Anyone?

So for Oktoberfest our friends, the Andersons, invited us to the city of Leavenworth for a little get-away.  Brent and I wanted to take our new car on a trip somewhere anyway, so we decided to go up Saturday and come back Sunday.  It was a nice trip.  Leavenworth is a German town about an hour and forty-five minutes from Sunnyside.  It’s very cute!   And the german culture is everywhere.  We even had our first and only fill of real honest-to-goodness german food.  Blahk!  Won’t be trying that again!  But it was fun for Tanner to hang out with their son Ian who is just four months younger than Tanner.  They’re little trouble-maker buddies in the making!  

Buddies forever

Leavenworth...worth visiting.