Thanksgiving 2008

Clifford and I went to spend a few day with Gerald and Bonnie Good at QUARTZSITE, AZ. It is amazing the change that happens here during the winter when all the "Snowbird" older people come. The above picture is what it looks like in the summer and most of the time and the trailer town below is what happens in the winter. Our visit in November, the population is just starting to come by January it is huge.

Quartzsite is west of Phoenix at the junction of Interstate 10 and US 95, near the Colorado River. The community has a Sonoran Desert setting. The nearby Kofa, New Water and Plomosa Mountains provide topographic relief while the Colorado River lies only 17 miles to the west. Quartzsite was established in 1867 on the site of old Fort Tyson, a privately built structure constructed in 1856 by Charles Tyson for protection against Indian raids. Named Quartzsite because quartz was occasionally found in the area, the name evolved to Quartzsite through an error in spelling. The Town is currently is 130 sq. miles.

A rock hunter's paradise surrounds Quartzsite with agates, limonite cubes, gold and quartz being just a few. In town, the Hi Jolly Monument honors the Greek & Syrian camel driver Hadji Ali, who took part in an unsuccessful 1850's U.S. War Department attempt to use camels as beasts of burden in the desert. To the south rise the Kofa Mountains.

Tourism is the major contributor to Quartzsite's economy. The retail trade and services sectors benefit from the visitors who reside at the numerous mobile home parks in the vicinity between October and March. Nine major gem, mineral, and 15 general swap-meeting shows are popular tourist attractions, attracting approximately 1.5 million people annually.

There are definitely a lot of cactus around and some quit amazing. Also, beautiful sunsets.

On Thanksgiving Day we went to Phenix, Arizona to Tracy Frakes' home and met Carolyn and Charles Frakes. It was nice to see them again. We have not seen them for many years. Hope the rest of the family had a great Thanksgiving. It is definitely for family and friends sharing love, faith, and great food.

Intersession Week

My children know that Intersession Week out of school always means getting more things done around the house. This was true for this one also. Since I could not travel to see my wonderful grandchildren I had time to complete projects or do basic up keep.

Monday, Clifford and I scrubbed down the kitchen, ceiling, walls, floors, waxed wood cabinets.
It is amazing how dirty the area gets even when you think you are doing basic cleaning weekly. Tuesday I had a final in my California History class and studied but had time to cut out and make a baby blanket for Cindy Valenzuela who is expecting her first baby. She lives with her husband in Tulare. Her mother had a baby shower on Saturday evening and served us all a wonderful Mexican dinner home made tamales of course, beans, rice, salad, and cake.

Wednesday, I had a math final and really stressed out about this one. The instructor had given us a 3 page study sheet and I spent many hours doing each problem step by step and writing it out. I have a hard time with math so wanted to get some of this information to stay in the brain. When I went to class that evening the teacher gave us a test word for word, problem for problem from the study sheet. However, there are only 10 problems. I was able to go through all of them and do the test. One of the problems had huge numbers and my calculator could not do the work so I wrote him a note what the answer was and that I had done it on the worksheet using my computer to do the addition. Hope I will get partial credit for not showing all the work.

Thursday, Elder Shiveley and Elder Walker, did some service, with Cliff and I and went to Grandma Howell's and picked two ice chests full of pomegranates. Then we came home and took out all the seed. My children will remember this process. However, Clifford had researched on YouTube and found that if you cut the pomegranate into sections like an orange and then hit it with a wooden spoon all the seed just fall out. Really they FALL out in one handful. Really fast and easy. We than juiced them in our juicer and got 5 gallons of juice. That is a LOT. I than started making jelly. After using up all my pectin I canned 6 quarts of juice to make up into jelly next year when this jam is gone or give it to the kids and they can make their own jelly.

The Bunny Hop!

On Wednesday October 1st, we went to the vineyard north of Fresno to pick up raisans. The crop was huge this year. The largest ever. I drove the tracker and other high priests and Sister Hightower did the picking up. We were there about three hours and picked up eight bins of raisans. Each bin is 4' x 4' x 2' and each weighs about 500 lbs heaping full. There are 300 rows in the vineyard. We picked up four rows. Let's see two bins per row equals a 1,000 lbs per row times 300 rows. That's 300,000 lbs of raisans.

On the way home Brother Hightower said to come out to his place and get rid of all the rabbits. They have eaten their lawn down to nothing and converted it all to fertilizer. So, Mike Rogers and I went out Thursday evening and saw four rabbits and got one. Also, Mike shot a quail at 100 yds and I said let's go get it. We started out and a red tailed hawk swooped down a grabbed the quail before we went 10 feet. We went back out at dawn the following morning and got six rabbits and the hawk was waiting for us but he went without this time. So now I have six rabbits in the freezer and one in the bread basket. The missionaries ate rabbit for the first time Friday night.

We are starting to pick lettuce from our fall garden. It rained for the first time in six months last week. This week we got a good snow in the mountains. We hope it will be a wet year. Things are quite dry around here.

Turkey tycoons

A week ago we looked at a pound of sliced turkey meat at $4.99 a lb. Then we went a little further and saw a whole turkey for $18.00 with a $10.00 discount. It was an 18 pound turkey for $8.00. Well, that is about $.45 a lb. As James would do we did the weighing in the air and got the whole turkey. Well, yesterday 9/5/08 Diane cooked the turkey and boned it. Then she said, "I need help to grind this turkey. I'm tired." Well, I was tired also, but always willing to please I set about dismantling the grinder. Yes, dismantling. Then I found a 2 1/2 in. carriage bolt and screwed it into the hole where the handle attached. I cut off the bolt top and wrapped a rubber glove around it for traction. After that I got the drill.



The result is what you see here in ten minutes. While I cleaned the grinder and washed the dishes, Diane made about 14 pounds of sandwich spread. We froze all but two pounds and we both sat down and laughed with the missionaries as they came in while we were still grinding. Diane was laughing like she was drinking more grape juice and we got the following pictures for your viewing pleasure.


What you see is a left over chicken breast from dinner. It was so tough that the drill began to smoke. It is a variable speed drill and it needed all the juice it could muster to grind the chicken breast. We had to cover the front of the grinder and the bowl with aluminum foil so the meat didn't fly all over the kitchen. Also, I got to pull the trigger which exercised my trigger finger to keep it in shape.

Entertainment at the Good Table

Many of our children will remember the humming bird feeder right outside our window by the dinning room table. We have had many years of entertainment watching them. This year we have a community of humming birds that visit all day long. Clifford took a video Saturday and it is fun to see them. At one time there are 6 little birds there. One of the missionaries is always talking about catching one of them because they are so small. I don't think that is possible as they move so fast. We are going to have to add at least forty cans of sugar to our food storage just to keep the birds fed this year. We figured they use 4 cups of sugar a week or 208 cups a year. They go through this quart container of sugar water about every three days. (Mom and Dad this is a huge video 31 M so it would take you all night to get it.) Sorry, Cliff got a little carried away.

End of Summer Vacation

Clifford and I did another house project this week that we need to finish on Monday. I decided it was time for Clifford to get good shelves on his side of the garage so we used the others as models and scrounged around the house and grounds and found enough wood to make the frame. We just need to by some plywood for the shelves themselves. I hope this will clean up the garage again and put everything in a proper place. I have had nice shelves for many years and put food storage and household things in them.

I have really enjoyed reading the blogs and e-mails. James and Mandy your new home looks wonderful. I love the hardwood floors, the yard, The white farmer's porch and all the pictures. I am glad you have a fire place too in case of emergencies. I bet you are really excited to have a home of your own. It is really really nice. We are so excited for you. I loved Lily's idea of "putting a person's letter on paper and that means you love them." Sweet words of love from the children, no wonder the Savior knew how important they are.

This is the last week of summer school and I start back to work at the library on Monday for a few hours each day.

Our missionaries will transfer this week and Elder Shivley(left side) will stay and Elder McCord (right side) who has been here since March right out of the MTC is going to Porterville. Elder Shivley will be training a new missionary. It is so fun to see them grow in experience and love of the gospel. It is fun to talk with them about the gospel and missionary work. Elder Shivley is the district leader and will be a trainner for this next transfer. We also have a new mission president this Month so a lot of changes.

Adam Hightower got married this weekend and we went to his reception last night. All these kids have grown up in the ward and are doing so well. Our kids remember him as a little boy.

Life has been good this week. Our garden is growning and almost done. We have had cucumbers, yellow summer squash, tomatoes, carrots, green beans. It is nice to have a chance to try to raise things and to have learned these skills from parents at home. Thanks to Mom and Dad Clatworthy who were hard workers and good examples to us.

Trying New Experiences

So many of our family have started their own blogs we decided to try out this new media. It is amazing how fast things change in this computer world and there is no way to keep up the the "younger generation". It is fun to go on and see their pictures and families.

Since it is Sunday and we do our family news letter I guess we will get started. Clifford hooked up the old video cam again because Daniel, Brittany and Eve wanted to see and talk with us. That was fun and Eve is talking so much. However, Daniel could not get our sound to come through. We could hear and see them just fine. So we called Jonathan and he did not have the camera hooked up but we did a voice conversation and our mike worked just fine. So Daniel I guess it was on your end of the connection.

I have been so amazed at the good things our children have been doing to keep in shape so I decided to ride my bike home from Visalia which is 12 miles on Wednesday. It was only 98 degrees outside but I did not have on a hat and by the time I got home I was exhausted and a little red. But I made it and will try again this week. It is a good thing I did all those tests in Boston to see what kind of shape I am in. Now I know there is no excuse for not doing more exercise except lazyness.

Clifford and I have been doing some projects around the house to take care of the weeds. We and the missionaries poured a patio on the North side of the house. You can see the corner of the dutch oven table, then on the left side is a huge rose that blooms all the time if we keep the dead heads off and then the bar-be-que grill and of course the carbage cans. However, no weeds. The humming bird feed is busier than ever this year with at least 4 birds all the time. They drink that container full each week. I will need a can of sugar in the food storage just for them.

As you can tell we have not done the side walk at the end of the patio yet.

Also to make our home more organized and give us more room for things we built a metal shed and cleaned out the garage. Our next project is to build shelves in the garage to organize the stuff that we have in there.

You see our truck tire garden with squash and cucumbers. Clifford brought in 6 yellow squash to day and 4 cucumbers. The tomatoes have slowed down in the heat but will come back with lots as soon as the weather starts to cool off.

Dad will notice that Clifford is learning from him and has gone sky high. I do not know how we will pick the cherry tomatoes if they go to the top of the pole. I did not know how to rotate the picture so I guess you will have to turn your head.

I have been going to summer school and Clifford has been working so not much time for fun and vacations. However, I spent two weeks in Boston with James, Mandy, Lily and Kate and it was wonderful.

Well, I guess I will see if this new experience is going to work and if you can read my creation.