15 October 2023

We pulled the vegetable plants out of our garden this week. We had a great tomato harvest, but the tomatoes stopped ripening with cooler temperatures and less sunlight. We also grew lots of jalapeños, but we only ate a couple of them. Even though we don't normally eat jalapeños, we'll probably keep planting them because they are easy to grow and pretty to look at. We have a forest of basil this year which we are keeping until frost kills it. We eat a lot of basil and it's nice to have fresh basil on hand.

 

Friday was a school holiday and Becky took advantage of the break to go hiking with Andrea and Angel. We had a wonderful afternoon hiking up Lower Tablerock. This is the view from the top.

Emma Gee visited Sofi in Washington this week and they explored all directions around Wenatchee. Sofi sent this photo of herself with a pig statue at Pikes Place in Seattle.

Here's a throwback photo to Sofi with a similar pig, also in Pikes Place, back in 2002. Time flies! Sofi looked cute with a bob back then, too.

We've been looking forward to the annular eclipse and made plans to watch the eclipse with some friends in our stake at one of the church buildings about 20 minutes from our house. Our home was on the edge of the path of totality and driving east increased our chances of getting a good view. Saturday morning was fairly cloudy, but we hoped the clouds would move away before the eclipse.

By the time the eclipse started, the clouds were still too thick to see much. We got tantalizing glimpses of the sun as the clouds moved east across the sky.

Unexpectedly, the cloud cover thinned so we could see the sun clearly. Now it was bright enough that we needed our eclipse glasses to safely look at the sun. It was a beautiful and exciting experience to watch the moon move across the sun until only a ring of orange appeared around the edge of the moon. Without the glasses, the sun was too bright to look at. It seemed the clouds were blocking more light than the moon was.

One of the women with our group took the next two photos. She took this photo with her phone, using her eclipse glasses as a filter.

She took this photo without her glasses and captured a remarkable image of the sun.

Of course we remembered watching the total eclipse back in 2017 and Becky found this throwback photo. We feel super lucky to have experienced two eclipses close to home and understand why some people travel around the world to see them. It will be 2045 before another total eclipse comes our way.

Helen sent this cool photo taken in Provo during the eclipse. All of the shadows from this tree are eclipse shaped.

This week Helen had fall break, a delightful invention which more schools should adopt. She spent the Saturday until Wednesday in San Diego with friends. This is a photo of Helen trying a gluten free wrap, her first wrap which was delicious.

Here's a photo from the beach. Left to right are Jake, Rowan, Layla, Kristen, Lilly, Detrek, Paige, TJ, Hannah, Helen and Kiley.

This is Helen and Hannah.

This is a photo from a hike. Back row: Detrek, Layla, Kiley, Hannah, Lilly, Paige, Kristen. Front row: TJ and Helen.

This is Kiley, Helen, Hannah and Paige on the beach. Helen had a fun and relaxing time.

Back in Utah, she rode the train down to Provo and met up with Abe. They hung out together for a couple of hours and made brownies.

Helen then met up with some Oregon friends. This is a photo at a BYU women's volleyball game with Abby, Annie, Helen and Kadyn.

She drove back to Salt Lake with Gib in time for a Utes football game, Gib moved from Oregon to Utah with his family this summer. Fall semester picks up again on Monday for Helen.