The Sylvia Kettle Story

In 1964 Sylvia Low was the vice president of the student association at the LDS Institute at the University of Alberta. Everyone loved her and she had a very active social life. One sunday she had a bunch of boyfriends (not me) over to her house for dinner and her mother had left her in charge of cooking. Well she got distracted with who knows what and the next thing you know there was smoke billowing out of the kitchen. This melted lettle was the result. Some of the guys thought that was kind of funny, so they stole the bottomless kettle and took it home. When word got out about this event, embarrassing as it was for Sylvia, everyone wanted to have the kettle, so several guys started stealing it back and forth and it became a kind of hostage trophy, proudly displayed in various households.

After a year or two of this, it was finally donated to the Institute and it became the annual trophy for "the most phenomenal achievement of the year". Sometimes it has been awarded as a spoof, like the first year it was given to the struggling Institute intramural hockey team who had scored a goal that year (it had been a couple of years since that had happened!). Other times it has been given to serious academic or athletic achievement. As a matter of fact my name got on it about 3 years later for academics. Anyway it has been on display for 55 years now and is still being awarded. I don't necessarily think that this is what Sylvia wants to be remembered for because she has done some truly remarkable things in her life: raising 5 wonderful children, 3 terms as Relief Society president, making quilts that are world class works of art, hiking across England etc., etc., etc..... But I still have fond memories of the kettle story.

We went to San Antonio for Christmas this year. Our flight was cancelled so we arrived about 20 hours late, but from there on it was delightful.

La Cantera golf course has been on my bucket list for years and we finally made it there. It was a fabulous course even though the weather was a bit grey.

Nest day we went ot the "Natural Bridge cave". It has some amazing formations.

Heather workd hard to keep fit and so was delighted with Santa's big gift.

Luke and Olivia really love their grandmother and were sad to see her leave.

We all had a wonderful Christmas.

Arizona December 2010

We had a delightful quick trip to Arizona this weekend. Partly it was to deliver Christmas packages, but mostly it was to have have fun with the family. Mike and I had a great round of golf at Superstition Mountain, a very tough course where they have a senior PGA tournament.

It was challenging but spectacular.

Playing games with the grandkids.

Lisa and Matt and the boys.

Mike's family. This was right after McKay's ordination to be a priest.

Every year we have a frantic month of Christmas, and it's Sylvia's favorite season. It's thanksgiving now so it's time to start the decorating and some early shopping.

We also had family home evening at our house this week, and as usual Sylvia cooked this fabulous mail and gave an inspiring lesson. Everyone was there and they all loved it. She usually has me give the lesson, but this time she had a certain message about hope and optimism that she wanted to share and she did a great job. What a woman!

Cancun again

We had another great 10 days in Mexico with 6 couples.
Paul and Deon Coon, Glee and Pat Zumbrennan, Gary and Katherin Stott, Glen and Kim Overton, Bob and Sylvia Taylor,
Lowell and Judy Anderson.
Beautiful course, beautiful lady.
There are many hazards; jungle, sand

lots of water,

and wildlife.

Riverside has been spectacular this fall.
Peaceful.

Delightful Indian summer.

Gorgeous Sylvia and friends.

Magnificent 5X5 buck and friends.

Fall

One of the best things that has happened this fall was our Canadian Thanksgiving dinner for the Canadian relatives. We had the Witbecks who live in Sandy and the Wests, who just moved to Alpine, and all of their families plus various students for a total of 30 for Sylvia's fabulous turkey dinner. Everyone loved it.

This has not been the very best year for fall color, but we have had a couple of good rides.

We just came back from Canada from Shauna Holt's funeral. Tragic.

Sometimes in the fall we like to go and watch the Cougars play a football game in some nice place. This year we decided to follow them to Florida, where they got trounced by FSU and we roasted in the bleachers at the game. I sweated so hard that the money in my wallet was stuck together after! Fotunately we made up for that disappointment with 4 days of fabulous golf at the world-class Sawgrass resort. I can hardly imagine a more beautiful place and we had a ton of fun.

Almost every hole is a breath-taking vista like this, and very challenging.

We went with the Thomases, Overtons and Zumbrennans.

This is the famous 17th hole. It's island green makes it one of the most famous holes in the world, and according to a Golf Digest survey is by far the most popular hole in the world for TV fans to watch when they have the "PGA Players Tournament" there.

I had been worried all week about whether I would be able to hit that green, but somehow got lucky.

Sylvia played too and was even luckier. Her ball skipped off the water and up onto the green!

This is the 16th green; also very picturesque and challenging. The PGA Golf magazine says that these three holes; 16, 17 and 18, are the best finishing holes on the entire PGA tour. The highlight of the trip for me was that I managed to par all three of them!

Here's the 18th hole with the fantastic Sawgrass clubhouse in the background. It was patterned after the 18th hole at Pebble Beach.

Another great memory!

This weekend we went overnight to Midway with our friends the Coons and played the fabulous Wasatch Mountain course. The trees are starting to change color and it was just gorgeous. This hole was one of only two that I bogeyed on the back nine. With one birdie I shot a 37, which for me is pretty rare these days. We have a membership kind of deal that lets us stay and eat for less so it was a pretty good deal. the friday night seafood buffet was wonderful.

Rough Riders in Idaho

We've been to Idaho many times to ride the Tetons, but we never seem to get tired of it. This time we started out with a hearty breakfast at Rutherfords.

Our first ride was up this nice canyon called Elk Creek. We had ridden there about 12 years ago when we ended up getting lost and spending the night under a big tree. This time it was much less eventful, but still lots of fun.

When we got to Woolstenhulme's ranch we turned the horses loose in this lush pasture laced by springs of clear water. They were ecstatic!

The first time we came here over 15 years ago we took this long ride over the skyline trail in Wyoming and have talked about doing it again for years. Finally we did.
We started up Moose creek and went all the way over to the Tetons and down Teton

canyon to Driggs. About 45 miles.

The flowers up top were breath-taking.

After a long climb it was fun to frolic in this flat meadow.

I always like to get some pictures of the beautiful wild flowers.

The best part of the ride is Marion Lake where we like to have lunch. It is the most beautiful and tranquil spot.

We finally met a pair of hikers, the only ones we say all day, so we had them take this picture.

The majestic Tetons create a spectacular horizon for a couple of hours of the trip.

Up on top we found snow and that brought the kid out in the Champ.
This snowball hit Larry, who probably deserved it.

The camera could not begin to do justice to the mountain vistas.

It was a warm day and we all ran out of water, so we were thrilled to find this nice cold spring. We had never tasted better water.

Instead of going all the way to Alaska Basin we decide to take this cut-off trail which was about 4 miles shorter and looked really good at first.

However it got a much tougher at a
cliff called "The Devil's Staircase".

We discovered that it was well-named when we got to this really scary part. At the bottom we found a sign that said that this trail was "not suitable for stock!"

At the end we were totally exhausted but all agreed that this ride was the highlight of our trip, and probably of the year.

Since we had ridden about 45 miles that day, we decided to match that the next day by playing 45 holes of golf! What a blast!

The gorgeous 18th hole at Teton springs. We had a 3-way tie for champ so had to have a putt-off, and as usual the Champ was the Champ.

On Saturday we had planned to take a nice little ride with Vern and Bonnie who wanted to show us this wonderful canyon trail that we had never done before. It was raining when we loaded the horses, but no-one wanted to back out. When we saddled up it was pouring, but still no-one wanted to give up. then when we got mounted it started to hail but still everyone was determined to go. That scene was so amazing that 2 carloads of tourists pulled off the highway to watch in disbelief as we took off up the mountain in that downpour.

After about an hour it cleared a bit and we had a wonderful ride after that. The flowers were even better than they had been in on our long ride 2 days earlier.

We made the whole loop and came down Moose Creek. Then 3 of us took off hell-bent -for -leather so that we could shuttle back to the original trail head and get our trailers and bring them back before the others made it down.

We had a very exciting race the last mile or so where the trail was wide and smooth. What a great end to a super trip!