Happy NEW YEAR!

Here's another one of those "had to be there to believe it" moments of my life... experiencing the Rose Parade live and in person with Aunt Kathy.

Mom always got up early to watch it as a child, and I remember joining her... mostly begrudgingly early in life, but later I learned to love the tradition. Being there and seeing it first hand is something I'll never forget!

We left her house AFTER it had begun (I was horrified we'd missed it!) and she drove us the 45 minutes from Yorba Linda to Pasadena, and found ROCK STAR parking within a few hundred yards of the parade route (which she seemed completely unamazed by regardless of the hundreds of thousands spectators who mostly arrived hours and HOURS earlier). We then walked just a few blocks to "her" spot along the parade route... unsurprisingly the homeowners not only knew her but were also glad to see her and offered us a premium curbside viewing location. To this day I don't know which was more amazing... the parade, or the fact that she had found the perfect parking spot and viewing location.

I'd seen the parade (as mentioned before) for years, but until you see it first hand... you'll never believe how amazingly beautiful it all is. The thing that amazed me the most was the horses, something I've always poo-pa'd at local parades. The flower's adorning the horses necks and saddles put every wedding bouquet I'd ever seen to shame. AMAZING!

I'll never forget the time I saw it live.

Tonight I'm going to bed early tonight so I can watch it live albeit from 1,000 miles away, and I'm probably not alone...

Happy New Year Everybody!

XO,
Charlie

On-Air Broadcast Schedule

Thursday, January 1, 2009 - All Times Pacific

4:00 a.m.	119th Tournament of Roses Parade (encore of last year's parade)
6:00 a.m.	Backstage at the Tournament of Roses Parade
7:00 a.m.	Tournament of Roses Parade Countdown
8:00 a.m.	120th Tournament of Roses Parade
10:00 a.m.	120th Tournament of Roses Parade (encore broadcast)
12:30 p.m.	120th Tournament of Roses Parade (encore broadcast)
3:00 p.m.	120th Tournament of Roses Parade (encore broadcast)
5:30 p.m.	120th Tournament of Roses Parade (encore broadcast)
7:30 p.m.	120th Tournament of Roses Parade (encore broadcast)

Things I remeber - Marjorie Harris Ward

My memories of wiring the Portage home with electricity by Marjorie Harris Ward as related to Doug Ward


In the mid twenties Portage began to catch up with the rest of the world as it received electricity. Today we jump in a car and drive miles without thinking about it; in my youth we didn’t leave Portage often, as a trip to Malad was considered a big trip. We knew bigger towns like Tremonton had electricity but I don’t remember seeing it before it came to Portage. Our home to that point was lighted with kerosene lamps, ours were better than lots of other homes. Kerosene Lamps gave good light but they could cause fires as one of ours did during my youth. I was awakened during the night and I remember calling to my brother Virgil (also known as Virgie but mostly Virg) that the house was on fire and then running around yelling “the house is on fire”. Virg said “Stop bawling and screaming Marjorie and get some more water” which I did. We saved the house but the fire burned the ceiling of the new house as well as a beautiful piece of furniture that contained lots of family records and a couch. My mother and father were out of town when this happened and they were appreciative that we saved the house. For years afterward mother would say “Marjorie saved our house from the fire”. I do know this that we had waited so long for that new house that if we had lost it in the fire it would have been devastating. We lived in a Log house before building our nice new house and we loved the new house so much. My mother wrote in her history about the new house: “it seemed like a Palace to me”. My mother always made do with what she had but I kept after dad until he built the new house. After all, Dad’s brother, Uncle Bob Harris, had built a beautiful new house; one of the nicest in Portage so I worked on my dad to build us a nice one too. I guess he finally tired of listening to me because he found a contractor to start ours.

When electricity came to town we were one of the first to install it in our house. We were so excited anticipating electrical power coming to our house. We knew when we got power that that would be the end of having to fill the lamps and cleaning their glass chimneys.

When the time came to wire our house Dad bought me a new pair of bib-overalls (these were the first pair of pants I had ever had … girls wore dresses and bloomers, never long pants) He had asked me to help our cousin and his nephew, Loyal “Loy” Harris, who was a self-made electrician, to pull the wires through the attic in the top of the house. I think I was about 10 or 11 years old. Loy had me pull wire into each room to where a hole had been cut in the top of the ceiling to receive the wire and then he would drop a braided speckled wire into the room where he attached a socket to hold one light bulb at the end of each wire. Every light was switched on and off; right at the light … there were no wall switches. We didn’t have any electrical outlets because we didn’t have any electrical appliances to plug them into. For instance, we continued to heat our “sad irons” (the forerunner of electric irons) on the wood stove long after we had electricity. Later on we bought an electric washing machine. The only part of that machine that was electrified was the agitator, everything else was hand powered. But having the agitator electrified was so much better than the hand agitator we had previously.

Because electricity was new and pretty expensive dad was always after all of us to turn off the lights when we left a room. Because of that I’m still pretty good about turning lights off today. After all, things you learn as a child stay with you the rest of your life.

This is the first of what I hope to be many of Grandma's memories about her life. As we get them all together we will publish her life's story.
Dad

Logan on the little screen

Logan made his second appearance on the news (the first was 19.5 years ago to the day), I thought you all might like to see his performance.
http://www.abc4.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoid=89972@video.ktvx.com&navCatId=462

He has been an extra many times, so I am not sure how many times he has been on the little or big screen, but I think this is the second time on the news.

I wanted to share Dave's personal moment reflecting on his father's passing.

It was in a town named Lucca where Dave and the kids all lit candles in Brent's memory. 

Dropping Key Stock

Key stock is the opposite of the energiser bunny... it keeps dropping and dropping and dropping.
____________________________________________________________________________
KEY KeyCorp

The price of this stock moved down -11.636% from $7.7000 to $6.8040.
For details, go to
KEY

The White House Christmas Ornament 2008

Every year Grandma sends us a very nice gift from the The White House Historical Association. The gift is the Christmas Ornament. I love to get these precious ornaments and I love to read about what the Ornament honors. This year it honors the administration of President Benjamin Harrison the 23rd President of the United States. It was inspired by the Harrison's family Victorian Christmas tree. I love it! Isn't it pretty! Thank you Grandma for the thoughtful gift every year for Christmas, I love to see these ornaments hanging on our tree.

Grandma's new friend

Grandma came down to witness David's baptism over the weekend and after words she came over and sat and visited with us. Sarah got her bird out and he was very happy to sit on grandmas hand and check her out. We had a good visit and talked about great grandma Ward's (not the lady pictured to the left here, but her mother in law) parakeet and how much she loved it. I had forgotten about her birds, but she did love them. We did have a great visit afterwards, thanks to Grandma for coming, Charlie for binging her Thanks to Dad, Mom and MaKayla for making the trip as well.

One year since Brent Passed

Jenny sent this to me yesterday... thought I'd post it so we all could rememember.

"tomorrow [Nov 14th] will be a year since Uncle Brent died, you probably already know that but just letting you know. I can't believe it's been a year, that was a time I will never forget. I miss him, he always had some funny little comment.
Love ya
Jenny"

Here's some links to remember him by...

Uncle Brent's Obituary

Memories of Brent
Memorial Bike Ride
Brent Boating

Free Hugs

Kristi has inspired me with her 365 Photo project... Here's my photo of the day...

Caught these guys walking down South Temple. I asked to take their photo for this project... got the photo plus three free hugs. Nice!

Cousins Dinner

Last week the girls and I went to CA for their fall break from school. Danny was in town for work so we met up at the cheesecake factory for dinner with my Mom. It was alot of fun and then we went back to my Mom's to celebrate my birthday with a Yummy chocolate cake my Mom made. Thanks Mom.

Wheelwright Wedding

Avery Kids

Ashland Avery ..... so fun!

Jackson had a great time climing the apple tree, and picking apples.

Brady's soccer game.

The Mountain

We went up to Mt. Rainier over last weekend. I am being slow posting this as it is now the next weekend. We had a great time up there although I think the kids would have been happy just to stay home. They are sick and tired of the car!!

Here in the Seattle area they simply call Mt. Rainier 'the mountain'. After a few weeks here it obvious why. It towers over everything. We sit a couple hundred feet above sea level at our house and the mountain goes over 14,000. We are only 50 miles from the mountain. To put that in perspective the Grand Teton rises 6000 feet off the valley floor. Rainier goes up 13,000 feet!!

This is one of my favorite pictures of the day. When we moved here some co-workers told me 'there are no bugs in western washington'. I asked the kids to pose in front of what we could see of the mountain. However this was the first time we had experienced mosquitoes. The kids were caught between a smile and running away from the pesky bugs. Needless to say I didn't get a second chance for the shot.

The kids looking up at one of 26 (I think) glaciers on Mt. Ranier. This is what makes it so tough to climb!

Marjorie Harris Ward "92" years young.

Celebrating MOM's birthday in Wyoming is fun to do. We had a great time. Food was so good, LaRee has great recipes. We had fun cooking in the kitchen. Of course, we had fun watching GOLF, and picking our player to win. Driving in and out of Pacific Creek was really fun this year, BEAR watch, and picture taking was our goal.

Kathy

Grandma 92 years young

Take a look at some pictures from Grandmas 92nd birthday on the pigs blog.





Some people are having issues posting to Marleys so this was posted on the pigs site. If any one else is having issues, please let me know and I will work on the issue.

We are BEAR Aware

Take a look at the Pigs site to see the bears around the cabin.

Thanks Grandma Great Marjorie

Thanks Grandma for my card and ten dollars! Your the best Great Grandma ever! I love you

Kendall

Cheerleading

Audrey & Lauren are cheerleaders for a mighty might football team. They had their first game on Saturday in "Casa Grande, AZ". They are the cutest little cheerleaders. Our team won by two touch downs, "Yeah".

Mommies

Lauren & Kendall taking care of their "babies"! Aren't they the cutest little "Mommies". Kendall will be three on Sunday, Aug 31st, I can't believe my baby will be 3!! Charlie don't give up on us three cousins, were just slow on this blog stuff, but it dosen't mean we don't love to hear about all of you! Love to all

Jenny

P.S. Love the picture of all of us at the cabin

W.O.W. to WOWY

Wednesdays have become my favorite day-of-the-week.

W.O.W. stands for "Work Out Wednesdays" a standing appointment in my weekly calendar.

Every Wednesday I wake up at 5:30 AM and go to a gym in Salt Lake City with my friend Scott. We run and/or walk (depending on the week) on the treadmill, then do a leg and abdominal workout, followed by a healthy breakfast at our favorite cafe.

Scott and I have been friends for years (15 and counting) and have had this routine on and off (mostly on) for several years. Scott is a lot of fun, always makes me laugh with silly little (and predictable) comments. For example, we pass by new bus benches installed recently by the city that look like old sofa couches someone threw out... he'll say dryly, "Look! Someone threw out their couch" at each of the three or four we pass. We also drive past Breck's work on the way, and he'll say, "look at that orange sign" in reference to a new business sign Breck had installed while his business partner was on vacation. The sign is orange, the old sign and Breck's partner's favorite color was/is purple. Breck was a little concerned that she would hate the sign but she doesn't. The new sign/color makes the business much more visible from the street. Scott commenting on the sign is more of a teasing-little-poke at how worried Breck was about it then the sign itself. I could go on and on (oh wait, I just did!)

It's good times.

Here's Scott and I enroute.


And the gym.

At Finn's Cafe...


And our breakfast? We don't even have to order... our friends at Finn's know we're having the same thing every week. The Scandinavian Breakfast. We've tried other things, but have come to the conclusion that this is the best thing on the menu. (Scott always says, "this is SOOOOO good!") The Scandinavian Breakfast is two eggs (over medium), poached trout with Finnish tarter sauce, hashbrowns, and English Muffins. He has coffee with creme, I have diet coke. It's SOOOO good!


Today I got a call from Cousin Monica ("we have the same last name") Ward. She offered to send me a copy of "Power90", a DVD work out video. I have been recently talking online with Monica about loosing 5 more pounds and she suggested adding this aerobic-at-home-workout to my routine. Monica is a coach for "Team Beach Body" who have a program called "WOWY"which stands for "Work Out With You," which evolved after they saw people making appointments on message boards to work out together.



Monica says, "It turns out that there's something very motivating about knowing that your cousin in Phoenix is about to hit her workout while you're in Salt Lake City thinking about hitting the "snooze" button. Obviously, I'll be much more likely to get out of bed knowing she is EXPECTING me at the online gym". I'm really looking forward to this addition to my week.

It's wonderful having healthy friends and family to encourage you along in life. There have been many people in my life who have given me the complete opposite influence.

I'm reminded of a letter my Grandpa (Charlie) wrote to me when I graduated from high school. He told me in the letter that my life would be much better if I would only choose my friends and influences wisely. In my fortieth year I'm finally understanding his guidance. I posted his letter on the Chas E. Ward Blog. Linked here

By the way... I posted another blog today on the Screaming Pigs Blog . I never know which family blog to post to, so I go back and forth. If my cousins (I'm about to give up on you three!) don't start posting more often here (or at least commenting) I'll just start posting to that page.

String Lake

No trip to the cabin would be complete without a trip to String Lake. We had a great time lots of swimming Lana and I paddled all the way to the base of Mt Moran. A great trip takes about 2 hours to make.


The big race! I am not sure we told mom and Dad we where racing.



Lana and Liberty looking down String Creek.



We had a guest for lunch. He did not have any of our food he went and found his own.

He was very hungry