Well it’s time again to surprise everyone with a blog.  The past few months have been fun and work.  We have worked on the basement and added another bedroom to the Maxwell Hotel.  We now have more rooms for guests. You know us, we aren’t happy unless we have a full (to overflowing house).  We have had Masha and her son Grant living with us for the past 6 months and I felt we needed to finish the room she was staying in.  It had cement walls (painted) and an old carpet from Mike Coombs home here in Utah.  So… while she was at Holly’s house recovering from knee surgery, Art and I finished the room.  It looks fantastic, even if I do say so myself.

I also have spent some time installing the wiring and setting up Mom and Dad’s (Gramma and Grampa Coombs) new 56 inch flat panel TV over their fireplace.  We finally got the DVR HD box set up last night but…. couldn’t get the HD stations to come in properly.  S0 a tech is coming out Saturday to fix the problem and also run a second Satellite cable so they can record and watch at the same time.  Their fire place is very nice and the TV above it looks great also.  LOL.

So I am including in this blog a new video on Why the Mormons build temples.  I thought it was great and was given the URL by the church to use on blogs etc.  So… here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/mormonmessages

I hope everyone is having a Happy New Years celibration this evening.  Linda and I are setting down here in St. George and Steve and Cary Kullick and Linda and I are planning on spending the evening watching all the episodes of Firefly and just relaxing at the house.  The twins are going out with the Katelin Moss and they are going down to the town festivities.

We went over to the Moss’s home on Saturday evening for a family dinner and enjoyed their company and hospitality.

We have had a great time down here and went to the Beatles Circus performance at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas Monday evening the Music and performance were great.

Yesterday we went to the Jacob Hamblin Home and Brigham Young homes in Santa Clara and St. George.  It’s been fun seeing some of the sites in St. George we have never taken the time to see before.

Good Looking Guys at the Jacob Hamblin home.

I always wanted to be on Brother Brighams back porch. 

We are having a great time here in St. George and though it is not quite shirt sleave weather, it is warmer than up north.

So two months, (sorry Will am I off your blog site yet?)

Well in two months I have watched BYU go from Ok to Bad.  Exciting Bowl game but I have mud on my face talking about them being put against an inferior team and then what do they do but lose!!! Whats with that.  I think I have figured “Turnover Hall” out.  He plays a great game as long as there is no stress or pressure to perform.  But as soon as the pressure is on he folds like a stack of cards.  (Ok maybe not quite that bad but he sure starts throwing some wild passes, over the head etc.  I think there is room for improvement on BYU’s team and look forward to see those improvements next year. 

It’s been fun with the snow and taking trips down the Cedar City to see chad and Katie, this past weekend.  When I got down their (we went to baby sit while they sang in the Mosiah with the Southren Utah State Collage Orchesta.  Well when we got there Katie said,”Why don’t you sing with us dad”.  Now I have been singing in the PG Community choir up until two years ago so I thought, OK.
I went to the dress rehersal Saturday morning for 3 hours and made two minor errors in all the songs that where sung.  In fact I joked with Chad and Katie that there were sections where I came in at the right time and the Bass section followed.  (I love singing solo’s) and yes I did come in in the right spot.  So needless to say, I did sing with the Sunday Night and Monday night performances of the Mosiah in Cedar City.  In fact I was probably one of the best perfomrances I have ever sung in.  It is so good that I am providing a link to download or listen to the postcast in this blog.

Chad and Katie did and excellent job with Chad singing in the small group that was up in the balcony for one of the numbers.  If you listen to the podcast at the end the director is talking and mentions this group.  They were great.

Handel’s Messiah

Note : push the play button when you get to the page.

Enjoy the Christmas Spirit

Halloween, hum, I had to work to get our JIRA production server moved in house this weekend so I missed out on a lot of the Halloween party and goings on at the house but I did get home and between working on servers and visiting I got a few pictures of my favourite people Lea, Luke, and Anikan.  and of course Darth Maul.

That Darth Maul is one ugly sucker!!!!!

Well a short blog but the pictures speek louder than words and of course there are the griffee girls.

Trish took this one and did a great job.

It’s late so goodnight and don’t let Darth Maul get you.  Boo!!

Well this blog will not have any eye candy but maybe a little something to warm the heart and the spirit.

We had an all hands meeting for Work (LDS Church ICS department, 700 engineering geeks LOL)

Elder D. Todd Chrstofferson presided over the meeting ( link to eye candy   ). http://www.newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/background-information/leader-biographies/elder-d-todd-christofferson

It was a very spiritual and inlightening meeting in which we were give a glimpse of the future of the church over the next 5 years on the internet.  It is amazing at what happens when the spirit guides those who work at and for the Church, in planning and carrying out the Lords work.

Some of the things that are being worked on are:

1. One central church web site which will then navigate to all the different aspects of the church, i.e. family history, lessons, Temples, missionary sites (for non members, kind of a Mormon.org)

2. On line interaction for church callings and positions.  For example if you are a Bishop and use your lds account (the same user name and password that you log into your ward web site), the web site knows your calling as a bishop and gives you access to Bishop related material, ward members, information you add, the church handbook, and other things to make the bishops job easier.  If you are a primary teacher, materials for your calling will be available and taylored for you.

3.  You will get web access based on your geographical location around the world.  The web site will know who you are and where you are located and provide News information and helps for you in from the Church based on your location.

4. More tools for help those who are not members understand the church and ask questions.

5. If President Monson wants to communicate with the youth of the church he can send a text message which will be send to the youths cell phones. (or if a Bishop wants to comunicate with a youth that he is working with, say to go on a mission he can do the same thing through his phone and the web site.

All of the things we saw today were demos of ideas that are being worked on and developed.

I am excited to be working in such a great time when the Gospel is not only here on the Earth but we have the technology to reach such a great majority of the people.

Elder Christofferson said that the Internet was inspired and invented for the Geneology work that needs to be done and we are going to leverage that technology to reach out to the members and non-members and bring them closer to Christ.

So I got back to the Orem office at about 2:00 and started working on a problem I am having with an application I manage.  In the process of doing this I had to call tech support for the company the writes the product I am using.  As I talked to Emalie (the tech rep) about my issues and explained that this product was going live this weekend and I had aproxiately 100 to 200 engineers testing the product now and needed a problem resolve, an enteresting thing happened.

First understand the LDS Church has a contract for support with this company and I have called before.

Now When I started talking about the church and 700 plus software engineers and testers that where developing products for the Church she said, ” the LDS Church? what church is that?, We can’t beleive there are 100 people testing this before it goes live!!!!!”.  Ah the light clicked on and everything about the internet and the church came rushing to the forfront in my mind. “Oh, you might know us as the Mormon Church or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints” I said.   And of course she walked right into the missionary moment for me.  “What kind of applications do you write”, she asked, to which I responded well you know Web applications for one, have you every been out to lds.org or mormon.org?”  As I explained a little bit about what we did she went out to mormon.org and started looking at the site.  Then she exclaimed “Wow you have a better support site than we do and you have a chat site, Wow this is amazing, what software to you use for the chat it a lot better than our support chat.”

Well, I probably spend 15 minutes on a call that should have taken two, and most of it was talking about the Church.  The exciting thing is that she now knows a little bit about the church and maybe she will go back out and visit the sites with no pressure and learn more.

We are so blessed to live in such a time that even the little things we do may affect the lives of people that we my only pass through talking on a phone or chatting on line.

I hope and pray that we may all think about who we are chatting with and what influence for good we may have based on our content that we provide.  We never ever truly know the effect we have on others by our actions.  Keep the faith and forgive my waxing philosophical.

Love you all, Ray

Well it’s that time of year again.  Time for the October hunt for the great Cutthroat troute on Strawberry reservoir.  Its a great opportunity for NUTS like me to get out and enjoy the fall weather and catch some big fish!!!!!   First the beauty…So the leaves and the lake were beautiful on Monday.Harry was doing pretty well with the fishing.  While I tried everything in my fly box, Harry and Art were pulling in the trout.

So Art looks like he’s having a great time right.  Actually he was taking pictures of the fall colors around the lake.  Art’s boat doesn’t have an electric motor for it yet so… We tie out boats together and then I can get him out and into the areas were the fish are.  Once I cut him loose from my boat he started catching fish.  He only stayed up there fish till noon because… It is also the elk hunt this week.  So we had our friend Johnny meet us up there and pick up Art.  So… he is now up on Tabiona Mountain (Tabby) hunting the elk.

So… Here’s Johnny!!!!!!!

And off Art went, after catching 6 nice Trout, leaving me to try to catch some fish.  I only caught 2 fish 3 hours. Now Art and Harry were using a small renegade as a dropper on the line with a white minnow pattern as the end fly.  I of course tried this and only two fish.  Its always a wonder to me how a fish can hit on one fly pattern pretty well but…. If you can find that magic fly that they are hungry for, it’s like a feeding frenzy.

Well about 4:30 in the after noon Harry and I desided to call it quits (Harry 20 fish Ray 2) and started back toward the truck, (about a mile away.  Just before starting back I switched out the white minnow pattern for a dark olive wolly bugger with grey hackle, and copper wire holding the body together.  Also it had a black tail and pearl tinsel.

I cast out and wham!!!! My third fish.This is one of the small fish about 18 inches long.  Most of the fish we caught were 19 21 inches long.

I then proceeded to have one of the bast 1.5 hours of fishing I have ever had.  I couldn’t get the line back in the water before I had another one on.  I ended up catching 18 fish.  So a total of 20 fish for the day.  In that 1.5 hours Harry only caught 6 more fish.  It was a great afternoon.

Here we go again, yet another great blog by the most infamous blogger of them all, the Canner Man.  I know you have all been dieing to read the next issue of Gumpa’s Grumpy blog so here it is.

Linda’s friend from work called her the other day and asked her to come over and pick some peaches.  So we went over to get a few on Saturday.  Well….. we ended up picking a hole tree of peaches, about 2 bushels.  Plus enough apples to make 8 apple pie mixes which we froze.  But I digres, we are talking peaches and the all important subject of canning, or maybe bottling.

We got these peaches home then Linda informed me she had thrown the Cold Pack canning bucket away last year.  I don’t know why she did that, we’ve only had it for 30 years and it only had one hole in it were it had rusted out!!!  So whats a lot of water on the floor anyway. LOL.

Well we spent the next two hours hitting every store in Utah Valley trying to buy a new one.  No luck they were all sold out everyware.  We did call around the ward and found a neighbor that had one she had inherited from her grandmother when she passed away.  So at 8:00 pm Saturday night I started the canning process on two bushels of peaches.

So off I went to the races.  Here we are in the early stages, about 10:00 pm.  I finally figured out that if you get a big tub of water boiling, and dump it on the sink over the peaches, then be patient and boil another big pan and add it to the mix, that the skins just almost fall right off the peaches.  So now I was off to my first batch of 7 quarts of peaches.

So… about 1:00 AM.

Here I am dreaming I am in Cozumel Mexico and slaving over the peaches in the sink.

I will say they were great peaches.  They were very large and very sweet.  I got faster as the evening/morning progressed and by 5:30 AM had all 26 quarts of peaches done and all of them sealed.

I tell you what I am GOOD !!!!!

I evening did most of the Peaches in medium surup, but did do one batch in heavy.  I know the medium is more health, with less sugar, but I grew up with my mother canning peaches in heavy surup and I loved the juice.  My favorite is to have toast with butter and dip the toast in the juice, then eat it.  Wierd I know but it makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

So on a family note: I am thankful to my mother for setting a good example of how to can and grow the things we did in the garden at home.  I remember the cherries, apracots,peaches, pickles, relish, and apple sauce that we always had in bottles from the storage room down stairs, as I was growing up.

So…. here I am Suzie home maker, carrying on the tradition.

So the answer is bottle don’t can.  It’s easier!!!!

For those enterested in starting, I used a canner that I have never used before.  The old method is to put the bottles in the Cold pack bucket and fill it with water and start it boiling.  (4 plus gallons of water!!!)

Well the canner I used was developed at Utah State University, (I think) and uses steam to seal the bottles.  It only uses about 6 cups of water and work great.  I would recommend it over the other. (less water faster sealing times and I didn’t have one bottle break do to heat.

Here is the URL to the website you can order it from.  I think it is well worth the 70.00 dollars I paid for it. and it is aluminum so no rust.

http://www.backtobasicsproducts.com/catalog.cfm?dest=dir&linkon=subsection&linkid=119&secid=53

It is the Model 400A

I have this theory that you can make any competition an Olymic sport if you get enough people playing.  Like….all over the world.  They are taking Baseball out of the next Summer Olympic so I think we need to replace it with some other kind of ball.  So I propose Kick ball  yea!!!!!!

I have the perfect time to represent the US in 2012 in London.  They are young, well some of them, and will be at their peek, or in a gereatric word in 2012.  I snuck into one of their games and got some exclusive pictures of the action.  So with no further adew here they are, the green team.

Trish showing our new star Kailye how it is done.

So Dad can’t be left out, even if both of them will be over the hill in 2012!!

Kailye shows us how it is done and…..

Parker is working on being the rising star on the field.

Another gereactric case, will he actually kick the ball or….slip and fall in the mud.. hum…..

Now there is a power kicker.  She not only kicks the ball but you should see her lightning speed around the bases!!!!!!

There they go Trish and Kailye in the lead with Katy pulling up the rear.

And bring up the rear, and the front, and everywhere else he could get was Braxton.  All I can say is this team is a ringer for the 2012 Olymic Kick ball team.  Go Green, make that goal unit!!!!!

Well last night was an eventful night.  I had to be in three places at once and of course that just doesn’t work out very well, so I had to make choices.

This triple booking thing is for the birds.  I had Lacy Maxwell’s (my Niece) wedding pictures and wedding that I had to take and be at, Boy Scout District Leadership training that I needed to teach at and Stake youngmen’s monthly meeting I needed to be to.  Well needless to say family took first and Scouts took Second, with a phone call being all I could do for Young men.

Lacy’s wedding was great because I don’t get to see my brothers very often and they were all there, along with my mom and Aunt Emma Jean Josie.

The wedding and reception were in Draper and I took the pictures for them.

So the picture of the Bride and groom.

And of course all the bride and brides maids.

The my Mom, Brandy (My Brother Jims daughter) and her to kids, and last but not least my brother Jim with out the beard and mustach and his hair cut short, (yes that is short)  He said he did it for Lacy, and you won’t see him this hairless until moms funeral.  She made him promise that he would be clean cut at her funeral.

I thought he looked great but I guess it would be like my shaving my mustach that I have had almost continuously for the past 35 years.

On a personal note I have started the medication for my sarcoidosis and the stearoids make me antsy.  I feal like I need to be doing stuff.  I actually went to the gym and worked out for an hour today.  I figure if the steroids are going to cause me to gain wieght then I want to look like the Hulk, not the Bulk!!!!!

Well time to call it a night.

Thats three in the past week Will looks like your stuck with me for a while.

A great Sunday is when you have a grandchild that is getting a blessing.  There are a few reasons for this.

1.  I got to go to church and see my grandchild blessed and given a name.  You know Keija is so cute and curious that it was really a joy to standing in the largest circle I have ever seen and listen to Micheal give her the blessing.  One thing that most people didn’t see was that the whole time she was beeing given a blessing I had my hand under her head…..sort of.  She actually was lifting her head up off of my hand and looking around at all that Priesthood around her while the blessing was being said.  She is such and active and inquisitive little girl.

So now I have two wonderful grand daughters.

2.  The testimonies just add to the spirit that is in the meeting.  I enjoyed Mom (Mignon Coombs) comments.  Because of my experiences of the past few weeks I really feel the need to serve others and do what the Lord wants all of us to do…. Be of service to our fellow man, so mom’s comments touched a spot that is tender in my heart right now.  And of course Adams comments about, the childern coming up and bearing there testimonies, then his mother coming up and they didnt’ even have to raise the pulpit.  LOL.

3.  The food after.  What a way to break the fast.  And the company was great.  I don’t think Trisha realized how many people are in the family that care about them and their lives.  I think we had between 45 and 50 people at the house for most of the day.

4.  Wow Will two blogs in a row, oh no you are all in trouble now I am on a role!!!!!!!

So here is the rest of the eye candy for the day.

Now that is one cute kid……and mom isn’t to bad herself!!!   

And of course Dad isn’t bad either.  No wonder Keija and Kaylie are so cute.