October happenings

After returning from Houston on September 30th, Bud began investigating how we could get our grand piano moved to TX, as Alia now had room for it and could really use it with her students (Nick's students too)... It would cost quite a bit to have professionals move it, and the timeline was uncertain (it could take several months to get it there). So, we decided to take it down ourselves (have professionals help load & unload it), but we would drive it down. We didn't tell Nick & Alia what we were planning to do, so it was a big surprise on Saturday morning, October 18th when a Penske moving truck pulled into the driveway and Alia got a call (from me) that their piano had arrived. We had a fun time unloading everything and spending another week there (we had also packed up Alia's books, bookshelf, desk, etc); Bud found many home-improvement projects to keep him busy, so the week went fast. A few pictures are posted on my picasa web album.

September happenings

Towards the end of September (the 20th to be exact), we headed out on a little trip to take my mom home to Surprise, AZ. To get there, we headed west, through the West desert of Utah, through southern Nevada, and into California to visit my Aunt Ester (my mom's youngest sister) who lives there. We had a great visit with Ester, went to church with her on Sunday, and just had a great time hanging out & visiting. Bud also was able to visit his sister Nabila which was great for them to catch up with each other!
From there, we headed to Phoenix, and after a good day of driving (12 hours or so), made it to Surprise, AZ. Mom was happy to be home again, although knew that she was going to miss seeing the kids, grand-kids & great-grandchild who live in SLC.
From Phoenix, we flew to Houston to spend a few days with Nick & Alia. They had just bought a house, moved in over Labor day, and then "hunkered down" as they say in TX, for Hurricane Ike. They were without electricity for almost two weeks, but miraculously their power was restored the very day we flew in to visit them!! We were all very happy about that. We did get to see some of the destruction from Hurricane Ike, but didn't see the worst of it. Almost everyone had branches down, fences down and debris to clean up, etc. We had a great time visiting them in their new home and spending Alia's birthday with them (the first time in 10 years we've been able to do that!).... to see a few pictures of our trip, go to my picasa web album: http://picasaweb.google.com/joy.khader
the link is also to the right of this column.