I LoVE! Old Stuff

August 16, 2014
Airplane

Seriously, we spent the entire day on an airplane getting to Puerto Rico.  Not because it actually takes that long, but because there is no direct route on Southwest from ABQ to Puerto Rico.  Or even a semi-direct route.  In fact, we stopped in Dallas, and New Orleans, and Orlando before getting to San Juan.  It was a long day--9 or 10 hours in the plane, I think.  But I tell you what--sitting on a plane for that long with your husband is SOOOO much less stressful than a 2 hour flight with 6 kids in tow.  Neither of us had a single meltdown about being hungry or tired or needing to go to the bathroom.  Not once!  And that was kinda nice.  :)

August 17, 2014
Old San Juan
El Morro & San Cristobal Forts
Puerto Rico

Our first day in Puerto Rico was Sunday.  We went to the English Branch in San Juan in the morning and then after checking out of our hotel, we went to check out historic Old San Juan.

It was charming!  

That part of the city is surrounded by a huge OLD wall that made me feel like I was in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean

This picture is how I left our hotel--hair down and necklace on.  Well it wasn't long before the hair went up and the necklace came off because it was SOOOO hot!  I was wishing I could just be walking around town in my swim suit.  (Which a lot of people were, actually.)  

And you may notice that in most of the pictures, I have my hand on my hips, and that is because I was trying to air out my sweaty armpits.  

(since everyone probably wanted to know that.)

I loved the colors of the apartments and their cute balconies and the indigo blue bricks that paved the roads. (It's kinda hard to tell they're blue in this picture, but they are!)  

 Here is the beautiful San Juan Cemetery.  (And as I walked through without my canon rebel, I was imaging all the cool pictures I could have taken in there, and breathing in and out slowly to try to let it go and just be fine with my phone camera.)

Above, (not my picture) is an amazing aerial shot of Castillo de San Felipe del Morro.

Better known simply as El Morro, (which means "promontory.") 

This fort is AMaZing!  I love history and old stuff and imagining what it would be like to walk in that same spot hundreds of years ago.  Standing in one of the sentry boxes and spotting an enemy ship maybe, rolling the heavy cannons up and down ramps to protect the port . . . It's kind of thrilling to me!

This part of the fort was the first part to be built and it was over 500 years old!!  And it SMELLED 500 years old.  Very dank and musty.  There were pieces of cannon balls stuck in the walls from enemy fire long, long ago.  

a cool triangle staircase

A Sentry Box

I recognized the American Flag and the Puerto Rican flag, but was curious about the third flag with a red X on it.  Well, here is what I found out:

Don't you love that the King of Castile, was named Philip the Handsome?  It made me think I should start introducing myself to people as Sharee the Lovely.  

Port San Juan Lighthouse on top of El Morro.  

Originally built in 1846, but destroyed and rebuilt a time or two after that.

Castillo de San Cristobal

While El Morro was built to protect the San Juan Port from sea invasions, San Cristobal was built to protect the land.  San Cristobal is the biggest military structure built by the Spanish in the New World, and it is HUGE!!  27 acres huge. We didn't even walk through a fourth of it.  There are tunnels and dungeons in this fort that we looked at.  One of the dungeons had some very old drawings of ships sketched onto the dungeon wall by some ancient prisoner.  :)  oooohhhh, I love it!

Lucky for you, I forgot my camera

Arthur and I recently took a very amazing and much-needed trip, with just the two of us.  And on the way to the airport, Dallin texted me and said, "Mom, did you leave your camera here on purpose?"

dis-a-POINTED!!!  Actually, devastation might be a better word.  I was sick that I didn't have my beautiful new camera with me to take the perfect pictures of all of our adventures, especially since I'd bought a new purse to carry it in and had imagined getting such great scenic shots with my precious canon rebel.

The upside is there are far less pictures for you to scroll through in the coming several posts.  And far less pictures for me to try to narrow down.  And after I got over the initial devastation of forgetting my camera, I just calmed down and took more memory pictures, which are the kind of pictures that sometimes you miss out on if you are constantly looking through the view finder.

So the week after school started my mom came out to stay with our children while we were gone for 8 days.  My kids were over the moon that they were getting Nona all to themselves, and couldn't wait for Arthur and I to leave.  Off we flew to Puerto Rico, because we had Southwest miles and Puerto Rico is one of the furthest away of their destinations.  Neither of us had been there, so we didn't really know what to expect, and it turned out to be SUCH a great trip!  I definitely recommend it and plan on including links to the places we stayed and adventures we had just case anyone else has Southwest Miles to burn, and an angel mother who is willing to come stay with your kids.

Those posts will be forthcoming, but in the meantime, I just want to say, that even if we had just gone to Santa Fe and left our children with my mother, it would have been worth it just for my kids to have some one on one time with their Nona.  She made them delicious breakfasts and fudge to eat when they came home from school, and restocked our freezer with a batch of strawberry jam, that Dallin made sure to point out to me when I got home.  (He really appreciates that strawberry jam, Mom.)  And she had family scripture reading with them every morning and encouraged them in their personal scripture reading and they had meaningful gospel discussions that wouldn't have taken place had Arthur and I been in the way.

I'm so thankful for my Mom's influence on my children and for the time they got to spend with her that week.  Also, I've gotta send out a big thank-you to my Dad and brothers, Nathan and Reed for toughing it out at home without her for 8 days.  Families tend to work a little better with a mom around, so I appreciate you guys for sharing her for awhile.

Back to School 2014

This time of year always comes way to fast.  Back to school time.  :(  I always find myself wishing for more time with my kids when school arrives to snatch them back.  But then, it's also kind of nice how quiet the house is while they are at school.  And it sure helps us keep a better routine with practicing instruments and scripture reading and bedtimes.  So it's not all bad, I guess.

Here are the kids on Meet Your Teacher Day.  They all got GREAT teachers, and are having a wonderful start to the year.

Daphne, 5th Grade

Sean, 3rd Grade

Hayden, 1st Grade

When the younger kids head out to school, we pile our hands and say "Gariety's make good choices!"  Even Bennett likes to join in.

walking to the bus stop

First day of school 2014/15

Dallin, 7th grade (and the rest you already know)

Oh what do you do in the Summertime?

Just some of the stuff that happened this summer that didn't get onto the blog yet.

Girls Camp
Arthur & John Naegle went up to Girl's Camp to represent the bishopric on the last night of Girl's Camp.  As per tradition, they cooked the girls dinner, and they did NOT mess around.  John brought his BBQ up so they could grill steak and chicken for those lucky girls.  And we were lucky enough to find someone to stay overnight with the kids, so I got to come too and help serve dinner, enjoy the fireside, and freeze my buns off.  (didn't come prepared for the weather--its colder in the mountains than it is down in ABQ.)  However, I was lucky that lots of good people who WERE prepared shared hats and scarves and jackets and hand warmers with me, so I slept nice and toasty.  It was nice to be up there with the girls, and help bring them home.  We stopped at Wendy's on the way home, because evidently that is also tradition.

Twinners!

Daphne and I got to fly to San Diego to help my sister Natalie with her new babies!  We were in heaven holding those tiny little ones and Daphne made out pretty well too, scoring lots of play time with her cousin Kyrie, including a day at Legoland, and a day at the beach!  Natalie and I just stayed home with the babies and fed and changed and held and bathed them.  We also did some freezer meals and some grocery shopping.  The last night, our old friend Windy came to visit and meet the babies.  We've been friends since 7th grade, and it's awesome when you can get together with a friend like her who you haven't seen in years, and pick up like it was just yesterday.  Arthur is a good man, to take care of the rest of the Garietys at home for about 4 days, especially without Daphne who is a very good helper.

Water
When I think of summer time, these are the types of images that come to mind.

Gotta love that huge soggy diaper!

Peaches
Peaches.  We canned them.  32 jars of them.

If I can get it to work, here is a link to a video Dallin made documenting the process.  

He's been making lots of movies lately, and they are pretty fun.  This one was meant to be a commercial for our peaches, I think.

MILLIONS OF PEACHES COMMERCIAL

Death of a fridge

When we got home from the family reunion, we noticed that a breaker had tripped.  It was the breaker that our outside fridge is hooked up to.  And when we opened the door, it smelled like something had died inside.  Gross.  This is how we cleaned it out.  You can't be too careful.  Unfortunately, our face masks did little to lessen the stench.  Since that fridge has a habit of tripping whatever breaker it is hooked up to, we decided it's time had come.  And we are currently in the market for a new garage fridge. 

APS Clothing Bank
Dallin needed some service hours for a scouting merit badge, so we got some friends together and worked for 3 hours at the APS clothing bank sorting school supplies and filling backpacks.  Everything is more fun with friends, right?  And afterwards, I took them to lunch at Dion's.  It was a fun morning!

I was in a MOVIE!

Well, I was an extra on set for a big movie being filmed here in ABQ.  I guess I won't know if I'm in the movie or not until I see it.  (IF I see it.  There is a bad word in the scene we shot that may result in an R rating. . . )  The scene was a funeral so we had to come all dressed up in black, at 6:30 AM for costume checks and paper work.   I spent the day going back and forth from the church (where we filmed the scene a bajillion times from all different angles) and the holding room where we could eat snacks and just hang out waiting for them to call us back to the set again.  13.5 hours later, I got to go home.  

It was a long day.  I met a lot of interesting people, saw some pretty famous people, and was fascinated by the equipment and the process in general for the first 8 hours, and then I was pretty much over it.  I just kept thinking there were SO many other things I needed to be doing with my time.  So until I have more free time than I currently have in my life, I think I'll have to pass on the NM film industry.  I'm glad I did it--I just won't be rushing to work background again any time soon.  

And on a side note, I got my paycheck today.  So now, I guess that means I'm a professional actress.  I got paid for something.  That makes me professional, right?  I won't tell you how little much it was. I don't want anyone to be jealous.