Windy

 Oh hi Benjamin,

I’m sitting out on our back porch. The sound of football and mom and Joey making cookies is wafting through the open door. Mom randomly screaming because she stepped on a grape or thought she saw San Francisco on tv. There’s a slight aroma of smoke in the air. The air has the slightest tinge of autumn in it, with the promise of the best part to come.

This week was northern Utah’s turn for mother nature’s scorn, though I don’t believe she’s nearly as angry at us as she is at you West coasters. Temps dropped way down, and there were super high winds. Especially up in the Bountiful area. Aunt Patti lost a big aspen tree and two sections of fence. Uncle Aaron lost some trees, as did aunt Stella and my buddy Doug. Your cousin max split his foot open during clean up, i guess he and another young man were hauling a large log and the other kid dropped his end...it was apparently super painful and he had to go to the er.

Thursday we went to celebrate jacob and grandpa’s birthday at hires. It was really good. Uncle Tim got another dinner out of it for he and Jordan, but he’s always entertaining. We got jacob a video game and some LEGO cars for his birthday. They got grandpa some disgusting treats for his. Better than a shirt or pair of pants if you ask me.

Yesterday we went over to aunt Patti’s to help clean up a little. The tree was already cleaned up, just the root ball was up ended, sticking out of the ground. I cut all of the exposed roots off hoping I could get it to settle back into place...no joy. Then we tried chipping off as much of the dirt as we could. Artie, Jacob, Joe and me the tried to push it down, not a budge. We’ll try again next time. We also cleaned up the downed sections of fence. My hope was to bring some new fence posts to get them up. Apparently there is a nation wide lumber shortage, there are none to be found in the valley. I’ll keep looking, and hopefully we’ll be building fences before the snow flies.

Aunt Patti made us calabasitas for lunch. That’s a really simple dish I last had from grandma Irene. It’s super simple: browned ground beef, a chopped onion, green chilies, tomatoes, potatoes, corn and zucchini. Eaten with tortillas. It took me back to being a kid, food can evoke so much in the way of memories and emotion.

My ambition for building things seems greater than my capacity. I’m making another workbench. This time out of a leftover counter from my office, some steel legs found cheap on eBay, some metal studs, and some pop rivets. It’s kinda pathetic how much excitement a project like that brings. I hope it turns out.

Speaking of projects, my Jeep has sprung a leak. It’s a direct result of the bath I gave it last spring, or at least the repair. As such, I’m trying to get the insurance to cover it so I don’t have to pull the axles myself. Grrrr!

Another project I want to start this week is to get your grandmas deck stained again before winter. Mom has meetings with fancy ladies at the house on Wednesday, so I thought we’d go pressure wash it that night, sand Thursday and Friday nights, stain on Saturday. I think with the absence of church meetings and temple worship I’m finding service to be extremely satisfying. I look forward to your help next year.

Here’s something for you: righteous Ethan got his mission call! He’s going to Fiji, French speaking. He starts at home MTC in November. I found myself quite excited for him. So we’ll have three missionaries going out from our ward to replace you, Ethan, the older Blattman kid, and the older Snarr girl. It’s pretty exciting.

Well, that’s about all I have today. Well, I thought I would let you know how great you last video was. I know that any acknowledgements I give you make you uncomfortable. That story means a lot to me too. I’m not sure if it made any kind of impression on your brothers, but it did to me and I thought it paired well with your scripture.

Okay, enough of that. I sure love you kid.

Pops