Henry at Christmas

Hi all -
I emailed some Christmas pictures of Henry to everyone earlier today, but I thought I'd put a few more on the blog.
Love, Amy

John Brundage

I know you are all so very busy these days...BUT will you please post some pictures of baby John? I'm sure he's changed a lot since he was born and I would love to see him.
Thanks!
Love you all!

Our first snow

Hi Everyone,
I thought I'd learn how to put pictures on our bloggs. They are from our November snow storm, the following days stayed in the 20's so the snow stuck around for a while. Amy, I know all of you get used to these sorts of things in Utah but since it only happens once in a while in Seattle, it's exciting for us. I added the picure we took at night because it's kind of creepy.. Notice the 2 pairs of eye's in the background, we have looked all over that area in the daytime and can find nothing that would have reflected like that. It must be some critters traveling across our fence, at least we hope!
The greenhouse has been fun this winter, look how warm those little broccolli's look when all around is frozen. I kept them covered with 4 layers of garden cloth during those days and the rest of the greenhouse was totally frozen, all but my brocc's. I let the salad freeze to see if they could handle it and about half of them have died since then.
Kate and I both miss all of you, we love you!

Henry the Leopard

Here is Henry in his Leopard Halloween costume. He didn't much like the hat and so we just put it on for the pictures.
We hope you all had a happy Halloween!

what fun

What a beautiful little baby John is! Good job Brooke! John looks wonderful and healthy and you so do you moments after delivering, how do you do it? Thanks for sending those pictures Dad, I felt like I was right there with everyone.
Kate had a blood test yesterday that confirmed YES, we are having a baby!!! She should only be about 3 weeks behind Amy so they can be together during their pregnancies. What fun that all of us Brundage children and our families are having baby happenings at the same time. This should keep Mom and Dad busy! We Love all of you and wish everyone luck on their peticular baby adventure!

One more of John

By the way, Grandma and Grandpa are coming along just fine!! Delighted as ever,

Here is John

John has arrived, November 1, 2006 around 4:45 PM. He weighed in at 7 lbs, 8 1/2 ounces and 19.5 inches long.

Our cup "runneth" over

Some very exiciting news today...both Adam and Amy and Nathan and Kate called to say that they are expecting in June or July. That is just such a great blessing to our family. Our prayers will be with both Amy and Kate that all will go OK...and that Amy does not get too sick again!!

Also, Brooke has been rescheduled for the delivery of "John"...the hospital had no room today...the new time is for next Thursday. (Nov 2)

Love Dad

missing pictures

Going to try again and posting the four pictures.
Dad

End of October

Well, time for me to start working with our Brundage Family Blog again. Since the wedding up in Seattle, it seems like there was not too much to say...since we were all together and had such a great time. Many thanks to Nathan and Kate for a beautiful wedding (and good weather).

Last night we had the annual "trunk or treat" at the ward building. San Luis Obispo I, II and the Pismo Beach Wards all joined in. There must have been at least 100-150 kids there. We had lots of fun. Since we have been having very warm weather, the night was not too cold (you probably have read of the fires near Palm Spring and the problem of the Santa Ana winds). Tomorrow the temperature is suppose to drop 10-15 degrees so we will be back to normal, somewhat. I have inserted several pictures of the grandchildren. Harry and Larry Boy, Charlie was the tomatoe and Joe IV was a storm trooper. (Joe is with a friend he brought to the party) Maggie was at a birthday party and so was not in the pictures.

Well, if all goes as "planned" Brooke will have her baby on Monday. Everyone is very excited. Mom and I will be on hand to help at their home with the children, etc. They plan to name him John Steven (or Stephen, they are not sure). John is for a very longtime ago Grandfather and Steven is for Brookes Father. Back in 1585 Abner Brundage had a son named John. There followed four other Johns, father-son, etc, and the last John was born in 1753 in New York. ( 5 John's in all) To my knowledge there have not been any other John Brundage's in our direct line family since that time. So with the sixth John joining our family in 2006, it is an exciting time. We will keep everyone posted and try to get some early pictures on line for all of you to see.

Love to all...Dad

PS...tried to add the four pictures...twice, but nothing happened...I must be doing something wrong

countdown

Hey Everyone,
Just wanted to confirm with our family weather man that, yes, the blessings are already showing in the forcast. With these last 10 days of showers everything will be beautiful and green with all this sun. The nights are pretty cold, especially in the mornings before the sun is high up in the sky. Today I am nice and warm with just a t-shirt on but if I stay in the shade for too long I start to want a long sleeve. After the sun goes away it gets chilly pretty quickly. Since we just hit the equinox...sunrise is around 7 am and sunset is around 7 pm. That's kind of fun, we are in perfect balance right now. For the wedding, the ceremony will be at 3:30, dinner at 5:00 and the band will play untill 8:30 (We have to be out of there by 9 pm). So expect the last half of our celebration to be requiring extra clothes. I'm so excited that all of you will be here in 4 days! That's fantastic!
Love you

Just 1 week!

In just one week Nate and Kate will be getting married! Hooray.
Do you have everything ready? Are there any last minute preparations that have to be made? Have you found your shirt yet Nate?
We're all so excited to come and we can't wait to be there!
Good luck this last week!
We love you!

Rehersal dinner

Hey Everyone,
I should have done this a while ago and just thought about it. Kate and I have been searching for rehersal dinner spots and the one that we like best is the Flounder Bay Cafe in Anacortes. Anacortes is a little marina town where the San Juan Island Ferry's all come into, about 10 min from the wedding site. Check out http://www.flounderbaycafe.com/banquets.html ....as you scroll down you'll find the rooms. We have the quarter deck room held for us and then if you scroll down further you'll find the different menus and prices, we can choose which one's would be best. Let us know what y'all think! It seems really good for our purpose.
Happy Sunday! Love, Nate and Kate

great pictures

So I guess my concern of posting a comment on a blog is that maybe no one will see it because you have to go back and view the blog to see the comment....are we all just making a habit to check our old blogs to see if theres comments posted? is that the way it works? Anyways Dad, I like your typing errors, don't worry about them, it helps me accept all of my typing errors as well. Those pictures are just beautiful.....almost 80 years ago! jeesh! It's interesting to see 4 generations worth of our family now....I wonder if Papa Joe, Grandma Grace, Thelma, and Henry (when those pictures were taken) even thought of the fact that their children were going to have children and then those kids were going to grow up and have children and now, here we are!
Interesting that we are all going through the same weather changes, especially snow on mt Timp....although it is 11,000ft tall!
I hope we are all taking lots of vit c, zinc, garlic, etc. to help our immune systems stay strong during these quick changes. This is when we are the most vulnerable to all the little bugs out there.
Love you all!
Nate

traveling to Seattle in two weeks

Hi to everyone: In two weeks we will all be up in Seattle, having a great time with Kate and Nathan. Since we are all going on the airplane and the rules and regulations keep changing, I am listing the government site which has the latest information on what can be carried on board and what has to be checked...especially when traveling with children and also with our beautiful wives and their need to have "makeup".

The site is:

www.tsa.gov

The center part of the screen has a section with permitted and prohibited items. I would suggest that we each look at it a few days before we leave, since the rules can change at any time.

Love Dad...safe and happy trip to all...

other picture

Here is the "missing" picture of the two Joe's up at Adams graduation in August.

Dad

Odds and ends on a Saturday

Hi to all: I enjoyed Nathan's posting on working with garden and the weather. I also noticed some errors in my typing on the comment, so please forgive. I am an "old" man. I am going to post several pictures...Amy asked for some earlier pictures of Mom and Dad, so I found some taken around 1925. Dad is with his sister Katherine who lived up in Oakland. I also took a picture of Harry picking our first tomatoe. We ate some it yesterday, and it was really sweet and good tasting. Then there is a picture of the two Joe's up at Adams graduation in August. Finally, we found these two pictures of Grandma Thelma, one with her sister in law..Aunt Gladys (remember she lived in Bakersfield..this taken in 1929) and the other of Grandpa Henry, Aunt Jeanne and Uncle George and Grandma Thelma taken in 1929.

I tried to be sure the spelling was all ok...hope is was

Love to All

summer's gone?

Hi everyone,
How fun to have Joe IV on line. So, It seems that when someone posts a blog...we all respond to that blog? what if I decide to respond by typing a new blog? it's easier for my tiny little brain to stay on this main part . Is that ok? Maybe I'll get better as I go.
So, I don't want to be pessimistic but it appears that our summer has been taken away from us. Darn it! I'm still trying to get some winter squash and pumpkins to ripen but I think I've lostmy chance. It's been in the 40's in the morning lately. Brrrr, I'm cold! As I'm typing, my fingers are having a hard time moving yet we refuse to turn on our heater, it's only mid sept!!! And we need to clean the air filter before we do so that is also keeping us from warming our house. Maybe I'm just not accepting that summers over. It started raining again, that northwest rain that settles in for the long haul. I've been checking the extended forecast and it keeps showing many more rainy days than sunny days. We are making arrangements to have our ceremony in a greenhouse if it rains so that will be cozy...loud, but cozy. I spent a few hours harvesting tomatoes in a greenhouse yesterday while it was pouring rain and it was kind of nice...once again, loud, but cozy and dry. So I wanted to let everyone know that the weather is rapidly deteriorating, hopefully we will have some sun on our day but it's also nice that all of the wildfires are being rained on.
I love everyone, 1 1/2 more weeks!!!!
nate

seeyou.

seeyou sometime bye

seeyou.

Happy 69th birthday!

Joe 4th hi Grandpa happy birthday I hope you are having a fun time.

69 years to celebrate!

Happy Birthday to Joe Robinson Brundage II! 69 years of excellence! You are a wonderful husband, father, grandfather and father in law. Thank you for your kindness, your love, your service and your support that you always so freely give. We all love you and hope you enjoy your 70th year!

We're here!

Hi all..
This is Brooke. I finally found the email to access the site. Joe 4 has been bugging me for a week to do it. He may be the only one in our family with enough time to post regulary, so look forward to that!
All is well here...we had another seemingly endless Sunday, but the children are finally all sleeping (is the day really longer than any other or does it just seem that way?) :). Joe and Maggie are looking forward to school tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to a day of catch-up around the house after the weekend.
It was fun to read all your posts...looking forward to keeping in better touch!
Brooke

Birthday eve

Wow, seeing those pictures is really special. Thanks Dad! It got me thinking in terms of our lineage, looking back at our ancestry and how each generation "propels" our lineage into the future. Each of our spirits taking turns coming in and out of this world as time goes on. Pretty amazing life we are all apart of! And it's a lot of responsibility we share if you think about it. How honored you must feel to be entering your 70th year and have a healthy family of children AND grandchildren. With hopefully more on the way!
I also enjoyed hearing that Henry is now crawling, that's great. Dad's right, you just entered another level of parenting.
I love you all, Nate

Tomorrow is my day!!

Hi to all....on the eve of my 69th birthday and now entering my 70th year, I though it would be fun for all of you to see "many years ago". I am surprised that I am still here, but enjoying everyday and I think it is fun to get up every morning.

Love Dad

Stake Conference

Today we had stake conference. But it wasn't a normal stake conference. It was held at the marriott center at BYU and it included all of the stakes from Pleasant Grove down to Elk Ridge. They had 2 sessions and our ward went to the second one.
Adam and I (okay, so mostly me) thought that we could just go to a broadcast session at our stake building, but this morning we found out that none of the provo buildings were doing that. SO we left our house about 10 minutes till 1:00 (oops) and we drove to byu campus and it turned out that everyone else was there, too. We drove around looking for parking for a while, finally finding a spot by the wilk. So then we hurried and tryed to get over to the marriott center, but we were puzzled as to why huge groups of people were walking in the opposite direction of us. So we asked them and they said there was no more room in the marriott center and that overflow was at the HFAC and the wilk - right by where our car is, darn it. :) So we walked back to the wilk and we were only about 20 minutes late...
President Samuelson was speaking when we got there, then Elder Wirthlin and President Monson spoke. President Monson was actually really funny - he seemed to be cracking jokes through his whole talk. All in all a great meeting. They spoke about following the spirit, doing your best in your callings and working through adversity.
I'm glad we got to go, even though it was a struggle to get there!

Henry is crawling

This last week has been a monumental week for Henry. He started crawling! At first he was sort of crawling, but his body was acting funny and I don't think he quite got was he was supposed to do. But for the past couple of days he's been doing a great job. Actually, he's doing too good of a job because now he gets into everything!
We're so proud of him. We took a video of him crawling and we'll either email it out or figure out how to put it on the blog soon.
Hooray for Henry J!

Like Nathan, end of a nice week

Hi everyone. We moved along from day to day this week. Wish we had some rain like Nathan, but at least it is somewhat cooler and not so hot. On Friday, it was foggy all day. I got my stiches out (5 on my left side and 4 on my right shoulder) from the minor skin surgery last week, where Dr. Fishman removed two cysts that were slowly getting bigger and bigger. No real problem, but I am glad they are now gone.

Friday we went with the Keeps and Roldans to our last play of the season at Hancock. It was Dames at Sea and was just so much fun and beautiful. It was the story of six actors in a play, but all done with dancing and music. It was just great. If you have every heard of 42nd Street play on Broadway, it is somewhat like it, but not so much on a grand scale.

This week was Brookes birthday, so we were able to help with the children last night (Saturday) while Brooke and Joe went to the movie. We always enjoy having them over. Joe and Maggie are still excited about their school, now in the 2nd week. Harry is all concerned about getting his costume ready for Halloween and Charlie is just enjoying life with everything. I have enclosed two pictures from last night. We have the various puzzles in a corner of the living room. He was walking around, saw two of the small box puzzles, got them out by himself and as you can see was working at the table by himself. All of this was alone and without any help. Joe III states that he can now put the "faces" together, but needs help on the rest. He puts all of us to shame.

Glad that Nathan and Kate could get some garden rewards and I am always happy when Nathan is putting up his vegetables and fruits. Our one tomatoe plant has about 7 tomatoes and everytime Harry comes over, he runs out to see if they are turning red yet. One is almost there and he is excited.

Well, everyone joy life...we are.

Love Dad and Mom

It's Saturday!

Hey Family,
Happy Saturday :) yipee! Did we all make it through another week? Kate and I awoke to our first real rain in almost 3 months! Quite a change from our soggy winter. Not much has happened this week but a badly needed house cleaning on Labor Day. I brought home about 10 lbs of tomatoes and 15 lbs of plums from the farm on wed and spent all day thurs making pasta sauce and jam. I'm really enjoying processing the large amounts of food I've been bringing home from the Timken's this summer. It's quickly becoming one of my favorite ways to spend a day. Kate and I also got our first harvest from our backyard corn (finally) Thursday so that night we ate our pasta sauce and corn on the cobb, we grew everything but the pasta...pretty satisfying! I must note that our poor little corn cobbs were only about 3-4 inches long....so it took 4 or 5 to equal a normal corn....that's what I get for cramming in so many corn plants in such a little garden, live and learn! And on Monday we are going to the courthouse to get our marriage license and then to some antique stores to look for wedding bands. That should be a fun day. I hope everyone has a great weekend and upcoming week! Love you and miss you.

back from LA

How great to have Nathan and Kate join our little group and I also agree that Henry's haircut is really great.

We returned late Saturday Evening from a fun day in LA (arrived Friday evening). We celebrated Charlies birthday on Saturday...he cried everytime we sang Happy Birthday (what do you expect from a two year old). We were delayed about one hour in driving home Saturday evening as there was a very bad accident just south of Santa Barbara...and stopped all traffic for about one hour. Joe and Brooke were about two cars ahead of us, and since we had Maggie and Harry in our car...Brooke brought back their pillows and pajamas, and so we got everyone comfortable and sort of had a "picnic".

Joe and Maggie came over after the ward's Labor Day breakfast this morning and Maggie wanted to draw. As you can see, she is really great. Both Maggie and Joe really enjoyed their first week of school...however today was a holiday, so they barely got started.

Love Dad and all

Hi,
Im here too....we have changed our name to NaterKaterPotater :) Cute huh :)
Amy, the haircut looks great!!!!!!!!! I think you did a great job :)
Cant wait to see everyone soon.
Love, Kater & Nater

I'm here

Ok Fam......I've joined ya! Kate's still sleeping right now so after she wakes up we can sign her on. Honestly though, I'm using the internet less and less these days, mostly because theres so much to do outside and the weather has been beautiful! Now that the sun's going down earlier and earlier, maybe I'll be getting on the 'ol computer a little more often. I love all of you and can't wait to have everyone up here in a few weeks!
Love Nate

Mommy's first hair cut

This morning I gave Henry a hair cut. It was his second hair cut, but it was my first! It went alright. It's definitely not perfect, but I think it will do...hopefully. He was a moving target! And there were a few places that he was fussy about me doing - like around his ears. He didn't appreciate that too much. I'm hoping that I will be satisfied with it until I have the chance to try again (for his next haircut). It's kind of a scary thing and I'm actually surprised that I did it!
Kudos to Brooke for doing this on a regular basis!

Joe and Maggie at school

Just to let you all know, we heard from Joe and Maggie yesterday (Tuesday) and both were very excited about the new school year. Maggie reported that her favorite thing was recess and that also she got to work with some blocks of different colors and shapes. She really likes her teacher. Joe was very excited about getting back to school...called Grandma almost immediately to report on the first day. He reported that one person did not come to school, so now they only have 19 in the class. He is in a first and second grade combination and so will probably be able to help his teacher alot.

Today (Wednesday) I have been asked to drive the missionaries up to Paso Robles as one of them has a doctor's appointment up there...so that will be a good thing I can do to help the missionary work.

We will be going to LA on Friday and Saturday. The plans now call for Joe III and family to stay with Jaron and Roz who live very close to the temple...they are good friends from the past, and Mom and I will stay in the Temple Apartments. On Saturday, Joe and Brooke will go to the temple and we will help with the children and then we will all go to the Visitors center to see the new film about Joseph Smith.

I will keep all posted as we move along.

Love Dad

Joe and Maggie

I hope that Joe and Brooke sign up soon because we want to hear all about Joe and Maggie's first day of school. We hope it went well!

garde work in SLO

Here are two pictures of the work that Amy helped us with when she was here in July. The tomatoes were doing OK until we went to Provo for a week in August, and no watering, but at least the tomatoes still seem to be holding in there.

Thanks to Amy for a lot of fun.

Joe