We have had a crazy, hetic December preparing for the holiday season. We have also taken time to enjoy some of the programs offered around the valley. We attended the Forgotten Carols, Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Program, Varian's Santa Party with the grandkids and Varian's Manager Christmas party. We hope this holiday season brings much happiness to you and your families. We have been blessed this year and are thrilled with Kandice and Tim and our sweet granndsons returning to Utah from Maryland. Hopefully, we'll find more time in the New Year to keep this blog thing updated.

Fallows Family Reunion
Aug. 8 & 9 Downey, ID

Tents, trailers were set up to make our temporary homes for a few days.

Old, young and younger were in attendance. These babies are the newest great-grandchildren born in June and July and joined by Tyler in May and the arrival of another in October.

Ida, Larry and Hollie--Ray's sisters and brother.

Kelliann represented our family in the grandchildren catagory.


Sat. afternoon activities consisted of arts and crafts for the great-grandchildren, . . .

relaxing at the gun range, . . .

to shooting at clay pigeons (ocasionally hitting one every now and again), . . .

to trying out Lary's arterial weapon, . . .

to 4-wheeling, . . .

and giving Jeff his first ride on a wheeler. HE LOVED IT !!!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

4th of July in Maryland

What a BLAST !!! It's always fun to be with family for the holidays. Tim did a great job with the BBQ and Kandice with all the yummy trimmings. Tim enjoyed the dinner with a box of crabs that he shared with his brother, Matt and Laura (Matt's friend). The rest of us like the taste of crab meat, but are not interested in working that hard to get passed the "insides" for a little taste of meat! Must be an East Coast thing! Jackson enjoyed the pool, running around and yet not too sure of the fireworks that Tim demonstrated for him. Tyler mostly slept and didn't seem to concerned about the days' events. We watched it rain, the music program from The Mall and the BIG Fireworks display from the TV screen. Beats the crowds, metro ride. . . always better to have a comfy seat at home. We finish out this week in South Carolina and then we are headed home!

Baseball and Fireworks

Tuesday evening we went to the River Dogs baseball game. The team is Class A affiliated with the New York Yankees and they played at the stadium called "The Joe".


This was Ray's action shot. He loved the play and the runner was safe.

We imposed on a nearby fan to take our picture. We had great seats--just to the right of home plate on row 7. You could see every pitch, no sun in our eyes and the fireworks were right in front of us. Not too bad for getting online on Monday to buy tickets.

The weather was so great that it was hard to imagine they could really have conditions like this. Since we arrived in SC, it has been in the low 90's, humidity the same and rain. Tues. was 90, breeze blowing, humidity down in the 60's, and beautiful sunset.


The fireworks were set to great American music and as always lots of fun to watch.

We are headed to Kandice's Thurs. morning for the July 4th weekend. We hope you all have a great holiday and I'm sure we'll be sharing grandkids' pictures of the weekend.

Piecin' My Time

I took several projects with me to South Carolina and everyday I accomplish something other than cooking, washing and ironing. Ray comes back to the hotel for lunch so we get to see each during the day and visit for a while. Some of those precious moments we don't get enough of! I decided to make our grandson, Jackson, a quilt for his bed. Several weeks ago I bought this cute fabric, got Ann to help me with an idea, packed it up in my suitcase and went to work in South Carolina. I bought myself a computer sewing machine and have managed to keep my self entertained. Now it goes back in the suitcase and I will machine quilt it when I get home! I hope Jackson loves it as much as I loved making it for him. What grandparents don't do for their grandchildren.

Boone Hall Plantation Tour

This is the drive towards the home. These are the hardy live oak trees. This plantation was used in the movies North and South, Queens and The Notebook. It is the oldest living working plantation. Growing and producing crops for over 320 years.

This is the plantation home. The main floor is the museum and upper floors are used as the private residence. The original home looked like an old white country farm home.

One of 11 homes on the grounds that the slaves used. The plantation had a brick making business so the slaves reaped the benefits of having nicer homes. The plantation is known for growing indigo, cotton and pecans. The price they got for the pecans harvest every other year would equal about 3million dollars in our money today. They still harvest peaches, strawberries, tomatoes and pumpkins.

One of the items that is famous in this area is baskets that are woven with sweetwater grass and very long pine needles.

This is a sample of the baskets they make and they are very expensive, usually $100 and up.

A sample of some of the flowers in the gardens.

This gentleman told us about the Gullah people. Basically, they were the original people from West Africa. Their dialect is english spoken VERY fast and the letter "h" is left out of most words, ie. "tank you". We've decided that Kandice is good at Gullah and she is teaching little Jackson to follow in her footsteps! (he! he!)

This is the cotton gin that is under restoration. Lots of history to be learned when you travel. June 28 is called South Carolina Day, celebrating the first victory that brought an end to the Revolutionary War. They like this day more than July 4 because it's "their day"!

Carriage Ride Through Charleston

Sat. 6/28/08, we went on a carriage ride through a downtown section of Charleston to learn some history of the city. Our horse's name was Dick and the driver said he had two speeds--slow and asleep. He works 2 to 3 days per week for about 4 weeks and then takes vacation for about 65 days before he returns to work again. What a life! Laurie would love that kind of job!

This is a flowering myrtle bush, but everyone calls them trees because that's what they look like. They flower from June until Sept. or Oct. depending on when the weather turns cold. They line a lot of the streets where the homes are.

The streets are narrow making it difficult for the cars to pass the carriages. Some of the streets downtown are still made of bricks and if they need replacing they are replaced with bricks. The law states that anything 75 years or older must be replaced to it's original state. So if your home burns and all you have left is a window, door and brick chimney, you must rebuild the home exactly as it was using the 3 remaining items. The inside can be any way you like, but the outside must be as the law states--original look.

This home is east of Broadway Street and worth about 3 million dollars.

These homes are west of Broadway Street and run around 5 to 9 hundred thousand. They are only one room wide so they can open their windows and have the ocean breeze cool their houses, much more effective if they only have to cool one room.

There is at least one church and sometimes more on each street.

This is the old city jail and housed about 145 inmates. It didn't matter how long they were sentenced for because conditions were so bad that they were usually dead within 4 to 6 months. The jail had no electricity, plumbing or heating. Apparently the stench on the outside kept any would-be intruders far away.

Charleston Ghost Walking Tour

Make a Smilebox photobook

Spiritline Dinner Cruise

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Weekend Fun in South Carolina

Saturday we decided to do some sightseeing as long we had the opportunity to be in South Carolina. There are several plantations in the area and Magnolia Plantation was recommended as one of the better ones to visit.

These massive Live Oak trees are numerous on the plantation. Many of them are more than 500 years old and meant to withstand hurricane force winds and rains. The Spanish moss hangs freely from many of the trees and plants. It's not really moss, but a flowering plant that lives on the air and particles in the air. The trees have a very spooky feeling to them.


This is the home on the plantation and has been turned into a museum. The present owners still live on the plantation in another home, as well as some of their relatives in other homes.

We went on a boat tour of the marsh area around the plantation and saw a lot of different kinds of grasses and birds. Most of us only wanted to see alligators, but only saw one, as they were smarter than we were and were hiding in the cool water. Actually, they are nocturnal so they aren't out and about much during the day anyway. It doesn't appear that way on TV!

We took another tour of the plantation grounds on a train. We saw more wildlife. These wild turkeys took their time strolling down the road and refused to move until they found a clearing in the woods that appealed to them.

This is one of the original slave homes. The 2 doors meant the home was shared by two families with a fireplace in the center for both families to use. Each had one window in the side of the home. They are restoring four of these homes for some big celebration next year.

Several of these guys are walking around the plantation grounds and we took pictures of them while....

we ate lunch. We shared a sandwich and had "big" diet cokes----the humidity really gets to you! Drinking is about all you care about.

Yeah!!! I finally spotted an alligator!!! They say if you measure--or in our case---estimated the distance from the eye to the end of the nose in inches and then change that to feet, it will give you a good idea how big the gator is. Ray figured he was a pretty good sized guy--9 to 10 feet. He came pretty close to the edge, so we left! Apparently, they don't eat much--the problem is--you never know when they are hungry!!!!!!!!!!

We drove toward the coastline to Patriot's Point and this is a picture of the US New Yorker. Too rainy and not enough time to go on the tour. We drove from here to Sullivan's Island to see For Sumter, but is was too rainy and foggy to see it. Then we crossed another bridge to Isle of Palms island and then . . .

HOME IN THE RAIN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On Sunday we went to church at the Cornfield Ward and then home for some dinner. The forecast was for unpleasant weather, rain, wind, hail, etc., so we decided to take a nice long Sunday afternoon drive to Columbia, SC to see the temple. We did encounter heavy rains and were slowed to a creep several times. We were surprised how much traffic there was a on Sunday.

This is the way our Sunday afternoon drive started and the freeway was lined with trees like this almost all the way to Columbia.


Then the rain came and we began to wonder if we were going to have to swim back to the hotel.






The granite had a lot of gray veins, giving the outside the look of a much older building.



The grounds had beautiful flowers, bushes and trees as we have all come to love about all the temples we get to visit.

Lynn, this picture is for you. You need to gather MORE rocks and make the base of each of your trees look like this.

Flowers everywhere. The grounds were beautiful. When we returned home, we encountered similar weather conditions. But, we made it safe and sound!