Happy Sabbath – right now your Grandma and Grandpa Frazier are only a
few hours from you in Paris, France. They have spent the past week cruising along
the Rhine River and now they will be enjoying Paris this week. Grandma was super
worried that if we tried to call her it would only be because something bad had
happen. I tried to explain that the world has shrunk and communication is so easy,
that just because her phone rings, she shouldn’t panic. She even went to the effort of
getting an international data plan for the time she was gone. She’s also getting very
proficient with instagram and is posting multiple pictures daily which has been
really nice for all of us to keep up on what she’s doing.
The rest of us here in the USA are enjoying a nice Labor Day weekend with various yard projects and of course on Monday, we’ll do our family hike – however, this year it will need to be shorter than usual, since Dad and I plan to take a long bike ride that morning (only 2 weeks left to the big race – hallelujah). I’m not sure if Dad told you our Saturday yard projects, but they (it) was intense, some background information is required.
We inherited a large piece of Granite that was cut from the Temple Quarry when the SL temple was being built. It was abandoned in Holladay in what became Grandpa Walker’s yard. Grandma Frazier used it as a table for tea parties when she was growing up. When Grandpa Walker built his home on Cottonwood Lane in the 1970’s he incorporated it into the steps that led to his back yard. When his house was torn down, the stone was discovered and given back to the family. Dad and I thought it would be a fun center piece in our “grove” by the hammock and drinking fountain.
About 4 months ago Dad and I rented a small backhoe to move the earth around on our side yard and while we had the machine we moved the stone down to our yard (that’s another story completely – it took us 1 hour to drive the machine to Grandma Walker’s home, get the stone, and bring it back). Yesterday, we attempted to move the stone about 5 feet into a better, more desirable position. Remember the flagstone we moved together? This thing weighs 10 times as much as the flagstone, it’s about 2’x2.5’x4’ and dense granite. So, in order to move this, we put on our Physics brains and used levers with appropriately sized fulcrum points. It took us over 90 minutes to move this thing 5 feet. We tried rolling it on logs (too heavy – it just crushed the wood) – we couldn’t figure out where to hang any pulleys or we would have tried that. It took all (literally) of Maren’s and Dad’s weight to lever the rock up a few inches then I would slide rocks underneath until enough was off the ground that we could slide or roll the stone by twisting the lever along it’s fulcrom. We filmed the entire thing so Maren could get extra credit in Mr. Summerhay’s if she needs it (which currently she doesn’t since she has 110%). We then marveled at all the big stones that were moved without the help of modern cranes – the least of which is the SL Temple (i.e. Stone Henge, The Pyramids, Machu Picchu – they didn’t even have the wheel in the ancient Americas – right?). We finished off our night with dinner at the Pi Pizzeria (hey – it was a math day, so it only made sense).
The big news at church is that we’ve switched our sacrament meeting to the first hour of the block. We had a hard time figuring out if people were out of town
The rest of us here in the USA are enjoying a nice Labor Day weekend with various yard projects and of course on Monday, we’ll do our family hike – however, this year it will need to be shorter than usual, since Dad and I plan to take a long bike ride that morning (only 2 weeks left to the big race – hallelujah). I’m not sure if Dad told you our Saturday yard projects, but they (it) was intense, some background information is required.
We inherited a large piece of Granite that was cut from the Temple Quarry when the SL temple was being built. It was abandoned in Holladay in what became Grandpa Walker’s yard. Grandma Frazier used it as a table for tea parties when she was growing up. When Grandpa Walker built his home on Cottonwood Lane in the 1970’s he incorporated it into the steps that led to his back yard. When his house was torn down, the stone was discovered and given back to the family. Dad and I thought it would be a fun center piece in our “grove” by the hammock and drinking fountain.
About 4 months ago Dad and I rented a small backhoe to move the earth around on our side yard and while we had the machine we moved the stone down to our yard (that’s another story completely – it took us 1 hour to drive the machine to Grandma Walker’s home, get the stone, and bring it back). Yesterday, we attempted to move the stone about 5 feet into a better, more desirable position. Remember the flagstone we moved together? This thing weighs 10 times as much as the flagstone, it’s about 2’x2.5’x4’ and dense granite. So, in order to move this, we put on our Physics brains and used levers with appropriately sized fulcrum points. It took us over 90 minutes to move this thing 5 feet. We tried rolling it on logs (too heavy – it just crushed the wood) – we couldn’t figure out where to hang any pulleys or we would have tried that. It took all (literally) of Maren’s and Dad’s weight to lever the rock up a few inches then I would slide rocks underneath until enough was off the ground that we could slide or roll the stone by twisting the lever along it’s fulcrom. We filmed the entire thing so Maren could get extra credit in Mr. Summerhay’s if she needs it (which currently she doesn’t since she has 110%). We then marveled at all the big stones that were moved without the help of modern cranes – the least of which is the SL Temple (i.e. Stone Henge, The Pyramids, Machu Picchu – they didn’t even have the wheel in the ancient Americas – right?). We finished off our night with dinner at the Pi Pizzeria (hey – it was a math day, so it only made sense).
The big news at church is that we’ve switched our sacrament meeting to the first hour of the block. We had a hard time figuring out if people were out of town
today or just very late. Sacrament meeting was very sparse when we started at
exactly 9:00 a.m. There were a few very nice things about this though – it was VERY
reverent at the begging of our meeting and we started Young Women’s on-‐time, and
with 100% attendance (at least with those that were at church that day). The weird
thing was that after I left Young Womens and managed to walk down towards the
RS room – EVERYONE had already left the building and there was no-‐one to sit and
chit-‐chat with. I guess everyone was starving and just wanted to get home.
Hope you’re doing great – I’m so happy that you get to meet such wonderful people all trying to be there very best on the other side of the world. That’s one of things I like the most about the gospel; good people trying to be better every day. Have a great day!
Love you, Mom
Hope you’re doing great – I’m so happy that you get to meet such wonderful people all trying to be there very best on the other side of the world. That’s one of things I like the most about the gospel; good people trying to be better every day. Have a great day!
Love you, Mom
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