Grant Is Back!

The big news this week is that my brother Grant is back from his mission to Arizona! Grant flew from Phoenix to Modesto where some of our Atwater and Modesto family was there to pick him up with a sign and lots of hugs. He spent the night in Atwater and then rode a train all the way from Merced to Provo. How did the newly released Grant spend his first Halloween as a civilian? Reading The Princess Bride. Dad, Garit and I were there at 4:30am to pick him up in Provo.

We went back to my place, chatted a bit, and then made breakfast.

Grant didn't really sleep that night so I went to work and he caught up on some much needed rest.

It's been great chatting with Grant since he's been back. We've been trying to stay busy. We've read the scriptures together, he's helped me around the house, practiced driving, visited the temple and set goals; I've taken him out shopping for some new clothes and he, Garit and I went and saw the newest Batman movie at the cheap theater in south Orem.

Yesterday the three Boothe boys set out to hike to the peak of Y Mountain.

After ascending to the Y, Garit decided that, since he had enjoyed hiking to the peak so much the first time, hiking all the way to the peak a second time would just be too much fun for a person to have. Grant, my two little chihuahua mutts, and I soldiered on without him. We did appreciate the sandwiches he made for us. 

This was my fifth time hiking to the peak. Every time is a little different.Though it is still a beautiful hike, autumn is slowly giving way to winter and it shows.

Grover has bad legs and I was wondering how he would do on the hike. He went up just fine but started having trouble about half way back down and I ended up carrying him after a while.

Grant has remarked that, though it's much colder here than in Phoenix, he is adapting to Utah very nicely. It has not been nearly as difficult as he thought it would be.

Making the final ascent, Grant told me that thinking of a Christian rock song he'd listened to on You-Tube gave him the motivation to make it to the top.

Grant has come home to a new state, house and life. Considering the huge changes he's just had, I'd say he's doing fantastically!

Grant noticed something that had never dawned on me before. My little chihuahua mutts are chick magnets. Maybe asking him to take the dogs on walks won't be much of a chore.

I've been proud of how studious he's been since he's been back. He's eager to learn and succeed.

I think the active life at the Tobey household has been good for Becca. She doesn't get to see her family enough and I'm always glad when she gets the chance to reconnect with them. I'm looking forward to going out there myself next month. We've facetimed over our phones so I've been able to see her, and everyone else, and talk to them. It will be good to have her home next week.

Salt Lake and Ohio

We are happy about a new sushi restaurant we found recently: Wild Ginger. Is it authentic sushi? Not a chance! I noticed the sushi chef and waiters speaking Chinese to each other and English to the kitchen staff, who are all Latinos. We don't much care because the service is good and so is the food.

I went to go help Becca and our friends at the farm at Thanksgiving Point. We took the dogs and I was shocked to see how all the animals were very curious about our two little chihuahua mutts.
 

I forget if our friends owned this pig or the other in this pen. They're fattening it up for the Holidays.

Becca will be in Ohio for a couple of weeks helping her sister with the baby. Her flight left Salt Lake at 6:00am last Saturday morning. She had two very out of the way layovers before she got to Detroit in the early evening. Her parents picked her up there and then they all drove another three hours to Ohio.

She was no doubt exhausted after getting up at 3:30am and traveling all day but that didn't keep her from playing with the nephews before bed. She sent me the video below that evening.

Since I had a German group dinner in Salt Lake later that evening I spent the day there after I dropped Becca off at the airport. I spent the early morning in the Salt Lake Temple and am really happy I did. It's amazing how refreshed and centered I feel after going to the temple. It really motivates me to be a better person. I always see someone I know at almost every temple I go to and this time I met up with a young man from Modesto who is on a mission at the Family History Center in Salt Lake.

I also went and saw the new Joseph Smith movie. I was, of course, moved by the bravery the Prophet Joseph and the early members of the Church but I also found myself nit picking. Why highlight THAT part of Joseph's life? Was that experience REALLY worth putting in the movie at the exclusion of others? I then remembered that the movie was not a documentary or your typical Hollywood movie. The Church isn't going to make a movie just to entertain. The movie, at its heart, is a vehicle to teach true principles in order to point people to Christ and Salvation, not to break box office records.

I also had a great time getting coached from a sister missionary at Family History Library and rested for a little while in the Tabernacle, where I took the above video. The organist (who can hardly be seen) has mad skills. I also visited the Lion House where I had previously visited Grandma and Grandpa Boothe several times during their mission. I also had some very nice chats with a few of the sister missionaries on Temple Square.

I enjoyed hanging out and speaking German with my friends from "Stammtisch" (Reserved Table). I'm getting better but I need to spend more time actually talking in German to make the switch into fluency. We are quite a varied group, which makes for good dinner conversation.

The frost is coming to Utah and we will soon have no more apples nor any more tasty apple pies. Grant is arriving too late! My brother will be home from his mission TOMORROW! He'll report to the Stake High Council in Modesto and then travel out here to Utah. We're grateful to the Atwater Boothes for picking him up. We're also really excited to have him out hear in Utah!

Lucy and I got snowed on last week while I was out hiking. Iphone cameras are good at taking close up pictures but not great at panoramic shots. It was actually snowing quite a bit more than the picture shows. I wished I had put Lucy's sweater on her before we left since she has a paper thin fur coat. She was a hearty little thing; we soldiered on through the snow and had a great hike anyway.

A Car Accident, a Little Niece and an Apple

Our tree has some huge apples! Becca sliced this one up and it was quite tasty. She has suspected for some time now that a different variety of apples was grafted into our tree but I was skeptical. I feel pretty convinced now. These enormous apples are sweeter, and redder than the other big ones we got months ago. Their branches also bloomed later.

On Friday she made two pies containing four of those apples each. Most pies take 6-8 apples that you get at the store so Becca was really happy to not have to peel more apples. We either ate the pies or gave some away by Saturday afternoon. Becca was also kind to not only come to my first choir rehearsal but also to make chocolate-peanutbutter cookies.We'll see if her cooking won't boost our numbers a bit!

Poor Becca was in a car accident this week. It was one of those unfortunate coincidences where the other driver was in her blind spot so Becca cut her off while on her way to the turning lane. The other driver panicked, didn't realize which way Becca was going and swerved left to avoid hitting our car. It's a pity she didn't just keep going or swerve right. Fortunately no one was seriously injured. Becca went to see a certain chiropractor that evening and felt fine the next day.

We went horseback riding with some friends on Thursday. This was my fourth time ever mounting a horse and ended up being better than the previous three. The horses were calm and responsive and, since it was getting dark, we just trotted around the corral while we all chatted.

Congratulations to my brother and sister-in-law! They welcomed their fifth child and first daughter, Ezri Ana, into the world this past Friday. Becca will be flying out in a couple of weeks to help out after both of the grandmas have taken a turn.

One Conference and then Another

I just spent the better part of this week in conferences. The first one was the BYU Management Society's annual global leadership conference. Leaders flew in from all over the world to network, exchange ideas, motivate and to be motivated. They brought in world class speakers for us like Paul Gustavson and Stephen M.R. Covey. I got the former's book and I got the latter to sign my copy of his first book.

The lady above is the chapter president in Panama City. I decided to roll the dice and see if she knew my mission president, who also lives in Panama City. Not only does she know him, she's best friends with one of his daughters! I was also able to find out that Pres. Garcia is now the stake patriarch.

I really enjoyed getting to know people. In my efforts to market myself better and not be so shy, I got out and met at least half of the people at the conference. I was surprised to find out that there are healthy, vibrant chapters in Finland and Mongolia. It was fun to talk to the presidents of those chapters. It was also really enjoyable to get to know the leaders from Latin America. In the above picture you've got the leaders from all over Central and South America, plus two Gringos they invited to also be in the picture.

Here is a picture with just the Brazilian leadership, plus me. When someone asked if I was going to be in the picture I pointed out that I wasn't Brazilian. The chapter president from São Paulo smiled and said "We'll adopt you!" The chapter president from Fortaleza and I are making plans to do a sort of exchange between his chapter in North Eastern Brazil and mine in Utah Valley. I hope we can make it happen!

I really enjoyed rubbing shoulders for two days with competent business practitioners who are very interested in promoting principle centered leadership in business, all over the world. The desire to have a global impact for good was contagious. This included increasing participation among young people in general, women in particular, and also non-Mormons.

The LDS General Conference was really great. My uncle Greg was in town and Dad got us all together for the priesthood session. It was nice to have Uncle Greg around, particularly because he has stories about their growing up years that Dad has forgotten about. There should be at least four Boothe men in this picture next year as well.

Our friend and neighbor Juliana had never been to a live session of Conference before so we took her up to Salt Lake for the Sunday morning session. The sister missionary who taught her in Brazil also came and sat with us, in addition to getting us all tickets! The world is teeny-tiny small. The sister missionary who prepared Juliana for baptism has two siblings in our ward at church! What are the odds that Juliana would move into the same neighborhood as them and that should would have two neighbors on her street who could speak to her in her own language?

We were up in the very back row but it didn't matter to me this time. I just loved being at conference. Every session had powerful messages that I will be thinking about for a long time to come.

We tried to get tickets to the afternoon session by getting in the very long standby line. The ladies left me holding a place for them while they went and got the food we left in a cooler in the car. I said hi to a couple passers by that I knew (including one of the Brazilians from the leadership conference) and had a very nice conversation with a Guatemalan lady standing in front of me.

We didn't end up getting into the general meeting hall. This was a problem because Juliana's English is not yet good enough to understand the Conference without listening to the Portuguese interpreters with headphones. The only place you could get headphones was the Conference Center. We missed some of the beginning of the afternoon session looking for another place on Temple Square where we could get headphones with no luck. Finally, Becca thought to ask the volunteers back at the Conference Center if there was anything they could do for us. They gave Juliana headphones and then let us into the adjoining Conference Center Theater where there was a big screen set up for people to watch a live transmission of the conference next door.

Before we dropped Juliana off at her in-laws house in Sandy I helped her understand the difference between "on" and "in" in English (two concepts usually expressed with only one word in Portuguese). I then dropped Becca off at the farm in Thanksgiving Point and went home to relax. The past four days have been absolutely fabulous.

Trantulas and Tid-Bits

 I hope this week's post doesn't bore you too much!

Becca has been coming hiking with me more. Though I don't think they are indigenous to this area and I've never seen one on a hike before, we spotted this big hairy fellow this past Monday. Becca was already able to hike for longer on Friday than she was on Monday. 

Fall is my favorite season here in Utah Valley.

We took our new friends/neighbors, the Somsons, out on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, where we often hike. Shortly after this picture was taken, the factory below that makes clay pigeons let out a shot. This spooked the Somsons' dog, the black lab above, who ran like a bullet back the way we came. We figured that he'd come looking for us after a few minutes but he didn't. We then spent the next two hours looking for him all over the mountain and in the neighborhood below. Someone found him and, the next day, called the number of the veterinarian who had given him his last round of shots. 

Our lives are full of other little tid-bits: I finished Hugh Nibely's second book "Enoch the Prophet" today; Becca got to milk a cow for the first time; I was called as a choir director at church and will be having a lot of fun with that; Becca tried to color her hair orange/red with carrots and cranberries; I've been more active in the BYU Management Society and got to hear a speech from the guy who first helped promote Stephen R. Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People;" Becca has been looking all over for the right fabric to make Mariah's baptismal dress. Such is our life.

Weight-Loss, Autumn Leaves and Concord Grape Juice

This is Becca's second Sunday helping a friend at a farm. She's holding a four-day-old calf in this picture. Becca really loves interacting with the animals. She also gets to bring home milk fresh from the cow.

She's also really enjoyed responding to adds on the internet from people trying to give away excess produce. This is an enormous banana squash that she came home with the other day. So far she's used an eighth of it to make six loaves of banana squash bread. We've already given a couple of loaves away.

Becca has also picked lots of pears and grapes. She borrowed a big juicer from a friend at church and has made many jars of apple and grape juice. She also made pear sauce, which is a lot like apple sauce. I'm not sure why the apple juice came out in different colors.

I hiked to the peak of Provo Mountain again. It was my third time since we moved here in late March. As you can see, I brought Lucy along. I was a little concerned about taking a chihuahua/pug mutt on such a long hike but she did great.

We took four short breaks and did the whole hike in about three hours. I remember the first time taking about four hours and the second taking longer. I looked up the length of the hike on Google: 3.2 miles one way. That's much shorter than what I had originally calculated but it's still a good hike and I'm glad I was able to do it in a shorter time.

One of the things I like about living in Utah Valley is the four distinct seasons. These pictures are all from my hike on Saturday.

In addition to a hundred lizards and grasshoppers I saw two deer on this hike. They took off before I could get a picture.

When Garit and I did the hike in May this mountain you see here was covered in snow.

I've been stuck in my weight-loss. I'm still about ten pounds away from my goal. Becca was going through some old pictures and found two that she put side by side in a single image for me. One is from a month or two ago and the other was taken at Garit and Lorena's wedding, about a year ago. I don't know if I will put this picture on Facebook but I am proud of the progress I have made. Now I need to hunker down and lose those last ten pounds to hit my goal!