Cotton Time of Year

I have a lot of trees in my yard. Along the west boundary, we planted hybrid poplars because they grow fast and provide shade. In the yard, we planted several "cottonless" cottonwood trees. However, after they got big and mature, the "cottonless" cottonwood trees started producing copious amounts of cotton as did the hybrid poplars. Needless to say, this time of year gets cottony around here. Luckily, there are many other trees in the neighborhood producing cotton so I don't feel like I'm the only one causing the problem. You will probably have to click on the photos to enlarge them so as to get the full view of the problem. As you can see, the Austrian Pine in the front yard is full of cotton. The white dots in the photo of the street and neighbors house aren't scratches, they are cotton seeds floating by, and PJ was trying to sweep the cotton away with his little American Flag.

Thomas the Train

I swear, I don't know why anyone likes Thomas the train. He seems a bit of a stinker to me, always complaining, getting his feelings hurt. But PJ likes Thomas and last week, his Mommy took him to Heber City to ride Thomas. When he came back, he had a whistle, a shirt, and two tattoos.

PJ Swinging

PJ doesn't much like the regular swings at the park, he'll ride on them, but not too high. However, the string swing in the backyard, is another thing altogether. The higher the better, he likes to make his belly button feel funny.

Snow in May

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the snow we had the first week in May. The weather then turned nice enough for PJ to wade in the irrigation water the next Sunday. Since then the weather has been off and on but today it snowed again. According to the weather report on KSL, today's storm was the latest date for measurable snow, beating May 18, 1977 as the previous late date. Today's storm was very wet and heavy, so much so that it tipped over a flowering crab apple tree we have in the back yard.

PJ's New Haircut

Dustin says it is not a Mohawk because it doesn't go down the back of his head. He says it is more of a military jarhead haircut.

Spring Weather

The first week in May, we woke up to snow on the ground. It didn't last too long, but still.




A week and a half later, we irrigated for the first time of the year. It was warm enough that PJ had fun playing in it.

Easter 2010

This year JoAnn decided she wanted some new ducks for Easter. Our other ducks, Pearl and Elmer are getting old and may not be around much longer. Parker named these ducks Easter Egg, Donald, and Daisy. He knows which is which and if you don't believe me, just ask him.




Sometime around Easter, I've lost track of time, Dustin took PJ to the park for the first time of the year. He loves to go to the park as you can see. I love this photo.

JoAnn's Honor

JoAnn received a very nice honor a couple of weeks ago. She was selected as an outstanding educator in the Jordan School District. The bad thing about it is that I have to accompany her to a banquet at the Little America Hotel next week. I really don't like banquets. But it is a big honor, I think there are about 10 teachers in the entire Jordan District being honored that night.

Mr. Lucky

I don't know why but I've always been lucky at "draw your name out of the hat" kind of things. I used to go to "Western States Land Commissioners" conventions for work. At these conventions, they always had a dinner on the final day and they had prizes which they awarded to those whose names were drawn out of the hat or box or whatever. I won at least one grand prize, one or two runner-up prizes, and lots of other prizes such as briefcases, totes, shirts, that kind of thing.

There was also a name drawing at work a couple of years ago. The Director at the time, who didn't like me and towards whom the feeling was reciprocated, had a couple of tickets for a sky box to watch the Jazz. Much to his dismay, my name was drawn.

Anyway, last week, JoAnn and I went down to BYU to listen to the last in a series of lectures about Hugh Nibley. Since it was the last lecture, and since it was given by Michael D. Rhodes, who co-wrote Nibley's last book, One Eternal Round, they had a drawing for an autographed copy of the book. As they were getting ready to draw the name, I leaned over and told JoAnn "I'm pretty lucky at these sorts of drawings". She just said that she never won anything. She's been to at least a million teacher educational gatherings where they drew names and she's never won anything. Well, you guessed it, they drew my name for the autographed book. Now I feel obligated to read it.

Not Boomer's Favorite Day

Boomer is a pretty good dog but he is somewhat, how shall I say it, wild. JoAnn likes to take him and Sadie for walks but he is so rambunctious that it is difficult. He barks all the way to the park and he whines and cries while JoAnn is getting them ready to go. He refuses to walk at a leisurely pace and instead, tries to pull her arm off. When Richie comes home from school, he tries to use Caesar Milan's tactics to tame him down (as has JoAnn before him) to no avail. Richie finally swore that he would no longer work with Boomer until he got neutered. JoAnn has been after me to take him to the vet for at least a year now. Well the day finally came. I knew what was in store for us; Boomer becoming a small bulldozer, using the Elizabethan Collar to push things out of the way including the lower legs of any human beings in the vicinity. He crashes into doorways especially often and usually is moving at full speed. In the first photo you can see the collar is beginning to split. He only wore the collar for about 6 days and I had to tape the split in the collar 3 times. Luckily, he is now healed , stitches are out, and life is back to normal. Dustin told me I should have had him fitted with neuticles, but by that time, it was too late.

What is Senta up to?

One of the reasons I started this blog is because Senta had a blog and I loved to read it. She always had such great, creative stuff, it was wonderful. So, I figured if I loved to read Senta's blog, maybe my mother would like to read mine, which she says she does. Anywho, Senta is too busy these days to keep her blog up, which is a loss to the world. Since she hasn't posted lately, I thought I'd put some stuff on my blog that she has been doing. Besides working at SOS, she does a lot of freelance stuff, some of which is designing Cricut cartridges (whatever they are). She came over the other evening and was showing JoAnn a couple of cartridges she had designed so I guess I'll show you.

The BYU Museum of Art (MOA)

Last Saturday, JoAnn and I went down to the BYU MOA. She has been reading a book entitled "The Healer's Art" by Lloyd D. Newell and Don H. Staheli. On the cover of the book is a painting titled "Christ Healing at the Well of Bethesda" by Carl Heinrich Bloch. The book talks about various aspects of Christ's healing powers and relates some of them to the painting. Anyway, the painting is in the BYU MOA so we went down to see it (the story of how the painting, a national treasure of Denmark, got to BYU MOA is fascinating). It was a great experience to be able to contemplate this work and some of the other great works that are on display. Did you know the BYU MOA has the world's largest collection of Maynard Dixon works? Probably not.

By the way, if anyone from the BYU MOA reads this, I did not get the photo from their web site so don't go tracking me down for copyright violations.

Fun at the Burger King

As everyone knows, I always take PJ and usually Trey out to dinner and to the Walmart on Thursday evenings. This Thursday last, we went to the Burger King in Draper. The boys had the playground all to themselves and played for almost an hour. PJ started being silly and put on a bag instead of the BK crown. The reason he looks so funny is because I was trying to get him in a pose where I could see his face and the bag. As you can see, it took some contortions to get it.

Are We finished with Winter?

Looking at the photos taken by Richie this last weekend brought back fond memories of this winter's best snowstorms. We have actually had a fairly mild winter as far as snow goes. As far as temperature is concerned, we've had some very cold days and the inversions have been terrible. We're lucky here in Bluffdale that a significant number of folks have tractors and other assorted pieces of heavy equipment. Ron Johnson to the SE across the street has lots of equipment and has done a lot of work on the lane, winter and summer. Pictured above is Tim Llewellyn on his dad John's tractor scraping the snow off the driveway. As I recall, we only had about 5 or 6 inches, but when it is wet and heavy, it's a lot of work to remove. Now, in the second week of February, the snow has melted and the temperature is fairly mild. I hope it stays that way.

Parker's Fourth Birthday

January 22, 2010 was PJ's fourth birthday. I guess he had quite a celebration with the Grayson's at Chucky Cheese. The Wilcox sponsored birthday party was a lot quieter I'm sure; it was on Sunday, you know. We were going to have enchiladas but when JoAnn asked PJ what he wanted he replied "cheese pizza". So on Saturday, I went over to Papa Murphy's and got several pizzas including a cheese pizza so we could cook them on Sunday. However, when PJ arrived and was shown the cheese pizza, he definitely wanted chicken noodle soup. Senta made the lovely cake and the rest of us ate the pizza. For all of PJ's birthday photos, go to this link.

More Christmas

Over the the Holidays, when Richie is home, we go out to eat as a family several times. We had a debate on where to go the Wednesday after Richie got home and really couldn't agree. What made it bad was it was a total blizzard outside so we didn't want to go far. We ended up going to Chili's in Riverton because it was close. PJ had a blue raspberry drink as you can see.


I'm not even sure what day it was but one day we went to El Rancho Grande in Draper. The nice thing about this place is that it is never crowded. The food is also pretty good. PJ doesn't eat much of anything but we got him chicken fingers and fries. He was fascinated by the ketchup squirt bottle and spent most of his time carefully putting just the right amount of it on each fry.

Where's Santa?

It's Christmas Eve 2009, so of course we go outside to look for Santa. The weatherman on the TV says Santa has been sighted on radar so we rush outside to look for him. PJ swears he saw Santa and who am I to doubt a nearly 4-year old?




At Christmas time, even the dogs get into the act. Notice the holiday collars the the doggie treat Christmas presents. They're part of the family, aren't they?




PJ got some Transformer toys and Spongebob pajamas. His two favorites.

To see all of the Wilcox Family photos, go to my picasa page.