Humongous is more like it...

It's a beautiful day outside and I'm burning daylight as I type this, but wanted to do a post before getting immersed in other activities. I'm going to be picking someone up at school in a few hours to take her home (her mother is on my visiting teaching route), will run a couple of errands and hope to get outside upon return to attack the lavender bushes with the hedge clipper. The roses are due for pruning also. Yesterday and today were forecast to be in the fifties and I never got out yesterday to capitalize on the lovely weather. Rain coming in this weekend. :-/

The title of this has to do with a lesson manual Ron recently ordered from the church's Distribution Center. He's been exercising on the treadmill the past month and thought it would be nice to read while doing his walking. They offered the lesson manual in large print and spiral binding and it looked like the perfect solution. Well... a box showed up Wednesday in the mail and it was his book. Imagine our faces when he pulled it out! It still makes me laugh. It looks more like cue cards! By the time someone gets that sight challenged... would they be able to LIFT it?

I don't think these pictures do it justice... you really have to experience it at arm's length to fully appreciate its magnitude.

I was asked to teach a gardening class for Enrichment Night on Wednesday and I couldn't resist taking the book along for show and tell. One of the young women in the class thanked me after ... ("It was TOTALLY worth bringing that!") What a hoot! I'm not sure how useful this book will be, unless people forget their manuals and it could be situated on a music stand in front of the class. ;-) "Class... read along with me on page..."

On other fronts... the kids are doing okay, other than Kristine battling morning sickness. I hope she'll see improvement in another month. She's only a couple of months along and the first trimester is usually the worst. Diane, Karen and Niklas drove to Provo over the three day weekend and visited Kristine and Alex. I think they had a good time, despite her cloud of nausea hanging over her. It's nice the kids live close enough they can periodically get together.

I held my breath yesterday and wrote a big deposit check for the possible Scotland-England trip this fall. The gal at the travel agency said they would hang onto that and not cash it until they have enough deposits together from the whole group. Once it's turned in, there's no ever getting it back. They hope to have 24 all total, including the couple who are working as guides. This weekend is the big Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle and Marianne Binetti will be speaking. While there, she will promote this trip to the public and they hope to fill out one group, and sometimes they'll have enough interest for two. In those cases, there would be the original trip from Edinburgh to London and another group would join the Binetti's in London. They would retrace their steps back to Edinburgh for the second leg. Apparently they have a son who lives in Italy, so if they stay longer in Europe, that's a plus for them to see him in between trips (another is scheduled for Italy or Greece in October). Just thinking about so much traveling makes me tired but they must love it! It would be a memorable experience though and worth pushing to do.

I'd better get cleaned up so I'll be ready to hit the road on time. I also need to make more soap later. It was time to crank out about a dozen batches and I'm halfway there. I'd talked about getting our bathroom painted in February, but that's not happening. Maybe March?

Oh... change of subject, but since I spent some time recording and making a DVD for a family in our ward, I've gotten pulled into this season's American Idol program. A girl who used to live in our ward tried out this year and made it to Hollywood. There is a kid who's in the running on the program and I'm really rooting for him. He'll have some competition from a few others that will do quite well, I'm thinking. Of course, the show has played up on his tragic backstory, but beyond the tragedy of his suddenly losing his wife shortly before the tryouts... this fellow is such an impressive and talented individual.

Go Danny Gokey! :-)