Emily ROCKS the 80's!

So, the 80's are not gone, it lives on in the fashion and in the hair of another generation!

Emily's comment about her Halloween outfit was that she would have ROCKED the 80's.

Hurricane Ike

I just returned from a whirlwind (not tornado, but hurricane related!) trip. I went from snow on the San Francisco Peaks, to over 100 degrees on a Phoenix warehouse, to Houston, Texas. I ended up looking at damage from Hurricane Ike to the Houston and outlying areas. Many included damage from falling trees, windborne debris and others from simple poor construction. I had to condemn a church and I had one guy threaten to tell his momma on me as I told him his damage wasn't storm related.

While I didn't travel out to the island at Galveston, I did have time during my CAT work to take a trip to the town of Galveston.

All of the 'beachfront' properties were pretty much uninhabitable, with the storm surge being over 20 feet.

This was a different experience than being in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Things were a little more organized, with the clean up of the city.

I made it out of Houston area and to the sands of Galveston Beach, where I added some sands and shells to my 'Sands of Time' Collection.

This collection began after the losses of my relatives on my 40th birthday and I traveled up the Pacific Coast Highway for work. I collected a small bag of sand, not knowing why...part of the whole 'midlife crisis thing'. I came home and found several colored and shaped bottles. They now remind me of where I've been and where I want to go.

This little guy kept me company while the rest tromped all over the beach.

His larger relatives were dive bombing the ocean in search of fish. It was quite entertaining to watch.

Access to the beach was down the stairs at the seawall and then across a 2x6 board over the water.

These houses were part of the peninsula, which had survived the stormsurge, relatively unscathed.

Many structures did not.

I visited the Fort San Jacinto Historic Point. The beach is just covered, on either side of the jetty with debris from the houses and buildings that used to be near this area.

Several container ships were out on the ocean, waiting to move into the ports...probably some difficulty with that as a lot of the port area was damaged.

Within the town of Galveston, this 4 block area has been made into a temporary location for all of the debris that people have removed from their structures. It gets piled up outside of their businesses or houses and the city dump trucks are working the streets, removing each pile and bringing it to this location where semi trucks are lined up to be filled by excavators and trucked out to be burned.

You may have to look closely, but the opposite side of the road is littered with broken and beached boats.

This condition was common for several miles along the roadway.

Kamping with Kids or FARR Out

Farr family camping on the Mogollon Rim during the Labor Day weekend. Gorgeous views, great nature including wild mushrooms, ripe wild raspberries and squirrels galore.


Emily strikes a pose. She spent most of the time reading in her 'own' tent. The last vampire book came out and Em was pretty much absorbed with the book. However, when Keenan would 'knock' on her tent and politely ask for a chocolate donut hole, she would drag herself away from her cozy little nook and go get him one. She was great with helping with the 5 year old twins who had never camped in the 'wilderness' before.

Cathy was enjoying a blissful moment of peace as she bravely sat on the precarious slabs at the very edge of the Mogollon Rim.

Dad (Jerry) kept a hand on dinosaur Keenan, who had a little too much energy being that close to the edge!
Cathy and the twins joined the Farr family and half of the Heaton family camping. Great nature lessons (would you expect less from a teacher?) When Kevin arrived, he led the kids to gather their own fresh wild raspberries.

Kiera and Keenan enjoyed camping, most of the time. They like the food and freedom of the wild, but a lot of it was too new for them to truly enjoy. However, the port-a-pot has now been renamed to the 'Potty Box'. Real S'mores from a real fire (and yes, that was another adventure all in itself!) allowed both kids to become very sticky and over sugared, but they loved it.
Grandma Farr did an excellent job cooking wonderful meals in the dutch ovens. Their camping and cooking gear are much to be admired, to the point that I was quite jealous.

Grandad Farr did an excellent job of keeping us mostly dry and providing fire for when we weren't. His very creative tarp layout provided a large space for kids, adults and dogs to be sheltered.

My sister Becky braved the cold (at least it only rained and didn't snow!) with her two dogs, neither of whom had ever been camping. Ollie is now part of her family who enjoyed playing with the other dogs and chasing after the other dogs who were actually chasing squirrels.

Kevin and his friend from high school, Kevin Wellard, had been hunting for deer near Flagstaff. They came and spent an evening with us. After Cathy, with the kids; Becky, with the dogs; left to return to the land of heat (Mesa), the rest of us remained to enjoy the quiet of the campsite, except for the almost constant off road vehicle noise. It continued to rain off and on, with it pouring down during the night. I was extremely upset when we woke up at 4:00 am to about 3" of water INSIDE our tent. Kevin picked up my computer bag and POURED water out of it. Luckily, the computer was protected, but everything else in the tent was soaked.

It had been a long time since we had been camping and we thoroughly enjoyed the break from our normally hectic and stressful life. Hopefully we will be able to do more next year. This is one time that we missed having Justin around to help pack everything up!

General Update

Emily is a Junior at Flagstaff High School. She is doing well with her grades. With me traveling a lot, she and Kevin spend a lot of time watching sports along with: House, Without a Trace and the CSI shows.

Last month, Kevin traveled to Colorado to take his Oral Comps. He passed and is on the final lap to his PhD. He plans on presenting his subject the first of December to his doctoral committee. Once that is approved it is on to the dissertation! Hopefully, by this time next year, I will be married to a doctor.

I am traveling around a great deal. It looks like I may be out in the Houston area next week, working on Hurricane Cat Duty (catastrophe).

That's about it!

Val and Em Travel America

Em and I travelled quite a bit this summer, including: Las Vegas, Nevada; Steamboat Springs and Denver, Colorado; then cross country to Nauvoo, Illinois. While Emily attended EFY, I travelled through Mark Twain land, down through St. Louis, Missouri and continued to Tennessee to visit some Jones cousins of mine. While in Nauvoo, Em and I visited the Carthage Jail. It was a great experience. During our many, many, many hours of driving Em and I discussed her difficulty with having patience. We found this stone marker at the Carthage visitors center. (Patience is Heavenly...)

Also at the visitors center were large bronze statues of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. I thought Em was being a little sacrilegious, but she assured me that Joseph Smith loved children and that he had a GREAT sence of humor!

Justin's MisAdventures (oops) Mission Adventures

Elder Heaton is having a BLAST in Washington. He loves the area and the people. He is continuing his tradition of damage to himself by being hit in the face with a disc while playing disc golf with his companion and the zone leaders. The email that I received following the event was "Don't worry Mom, I'm okay and they already took the stitches out!" Later emails indicated that the new greenie grew up on a farm and he kindly removed the stiches for my son.

We don't receive a lot of snail mail from him, actually, only 3 so far and he is coming up on the 6th month mark. So, I received an envelope that contained a picture. See below: (Nice shiner as well!)

We received an email this week that included his 'miracle day'. He and his companion had found a woman who had been taught for about 6-7 months. She went to the hospital for a surgery and apparently fell through the cracks...fairly easy as Justin's companion had been hit by a car prior to Justin's transfer. They found her and within three hours she was baptised!

Pictures of Justin and Emily

Emily participated in the choir dinner show. She only has a little bit of an attitude!

We received a very nice letter from the Mission President and these pictures from when Justin arrived at the Mission home.

California Trip

For those who know me, I had a somewhat unusual 40th birthday. Kevin's aunt, Yvonne Heaton passed away. She is the mother of the bride for the wedding that we shot a few weeks ago. Also that day, we received news that my uncle, Jimmy Jones also passed away. While I was glad that both had been relieved of their pain, it was kind of overwhelming.

My response to this pain was to travel to California for a couple of jobs in the LA area. I then traveled to the first beach that I could find and stuck my toes in the sand. I then continued up the coast on the Pacific Coast Highway. Stopping to take pictures wherever I wanted to (that was reasonably safe of course!)

I am now in Sacramento at a conference, while Kevin and Emily travelled to Moccassin with Kevin's parents for Yvonne's funeral. I will go back to Los Banos to spend some time with my cousins before I have to return to Phoenix for more jobs..

Life After Dropping Off Justin

Well, we made it home after dropping Justin...I mean, Elder Heaton, at the MTC, we had a very long drive back to Arizona for Kevin to go to work and Emily to go to school. I spent the last two days finishing Emily's formal dress, for the 'Mormon Prom'. Yes, there is such a thing, in Flagstaff, Arizona.

We had to take lots of pictures to send to family and to Justin. My aunt Judy stayed with our pets and house and has stayed on to spend some time with us and got to participate in the 'prom' chaos of finishing the prom dress, hair, makeup, teasing Emily about her extremely high heels.

The hardest thing I've dealt with has been my computers crashing. We have gotten some of the information backed up, but some of my important photos and documents are still out there somewhere.

Kevin has been busy at work. Now that Justin has been delivered to the MTC, we will start getting the office ready so that he can get working on finishing that dissertation!

Marathon Weekend Photos

We had the opportunity to observe the wedding of Andy Monson and Margaret Heaton. Andy is the brother in law of our brother Robert. It was an all white ceremony in the St. George Temple. Justin was able to attend and see his first sealing.

We took the wedding pictures after the sealing, dealing with a LOT of sunlight and what I call the 'Family Papparazzi'. Everyone has digital cameras these days and it literally is like dealing with the papparazzi with all of the flashes going off!


After the wedding, we went to Denver where Justin's previous Stake President, Peter Christensen, who has been called as a Mission President in Las Vegas, set Justin apart.

We were able to visit with a lot of friends and had a great time.

We then went to Utah by way of Wyoming. We were able to take a cousin on the Blau side of the family, Heidi, to dinner. She is attending college in Logan.

We were able to visit and attend a session at the SLC Temple. I had never been through this Temple and enjoyed this opportunity.

This is our family at the entrance to the MTC. Elder Heaton is wearing the same tie that his father and his grandfather both wore into the Mission Field.

Kevin had the honor of 'Tagging' Elder Heaton with the nametag that he will wear for the next two year.

Emily and Elder Heaton after he has been 'Tagged' by his father.

Justin will be at the MTC until Monday, 12 May 08. He will fly to Tacoma Washington and be assigned to his first location and first companion.

Just getting started!

It has been one incredible year. We moved back to Arizona over a year ago. We just had a marathon trip, taking wedding pictures in St. George, Utah, over to Denver where we visited with friends and Justin was set apart as a missionary, up to Logan, Utah, by way of Wyoming, where we took our cousin Heidi to dinner (part of Justin's request), they down to Mary's house where she was in the middle of finals and we didn't get to see her much.

We went back up to Salt Lake City and took Justin through the Temple. It was incredible, to think of the sacrifice and incredible building skills that went into this structure (OK, the engineer in me NEVER stops!)

On Wednesday, 23 April 2008, Kevin, Emily and I escorted Elder Justin Heaton to the MTC in Provo, Utah. It was an incredible experience and I had told Elder Heaton beforehand that I wanted the 'bandaid' goodbye. It is painful, but much easier, to just rip off a bandaid. So, after listening to the New Missionary orientation, a tearful Elder Heaton hugged each of us twice (well, Emily got in three or four hugs) and then he headed off towards the door marked 'New Missionary'. We got to leave out of the door marked 'Family and Friends'. He was one of the first ones to walk away. I was very proud of him. Watching him change over the past year and even over this past week and especially since he was set apart on Wednesday, a confident, happy, young man has emerged. It had been a long road, but he is ready.

After leaving Justin, we went back to the Allred house (where Emily had forgotten her pillow) and was able to visit with Mary, who had just completed her last final of the semester, on her anniversary. It is always good to see them, even if they finally got to see the 'cranky Valerie'. OK, so I was a little tired and stressed.

We arrived home late last night and Kevin had to go off to work and Emily had to go off to school. I am recuperating and will be working on finishing Emily's mormon prom dress for tomorrow night.