A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION SHAM HOVERED OVER NOVEMBER

 It is hard to even know where to begin. Our country had its national elections this month. By all means of any logical reasoning, President Trump should have won in a landslide. He held rallies all over the swing states, sometimes 5 a day, in which tens of thousands of people attended with flags flying. There were spontaneous car and boat parade all over the country all in support of our president. His opponent, Joe Biden, hardly held any rallies and when he did he only attracted a couple of hundred people, even when former president O'Bama was there speaking with him. He stayed in his home most of the election season and if he went out he was protected by the media who asked only softball questions. He never had to answer the hard stuff on policy. On election night, the count was going Trump's way in most of the key states until the counting of ballots was stopped. (That has never happened before in the history of our country.) Miraculously, when we awoke the next morning, Biden was ahead by thousands of votes in all the key states. We've heard incidents of major voter fraud all over our country including computer glitches which turned Trump votes into Biden votes, illegal votes, and different voting procedures in democratic cities. Of course, the media was quick to call the election for Biden. 

 If the election results for President of the United States stand, our beautiful American, with all her freedoms and liberties, will be a thing of the past. If the left can literally steal an election with such outrageous fraud happening and with full support from big tech and the news media, we will never have another honest election in this country.  We'll become just like Russia as far a elections are concerned but like Venezuela economically. Gratefully, we have a current President in President Trump who will not let this rest. He is a fighter and will fight to the end to expose the corruption blatantly displayed on November 3rd and beyond.  He loves this country and stands for the average person. We pray every day that God will step in and help President Trump expose the wrongs being done to this country, knowing that if it can be done, God could do it.

We were so depressed after the elections, we just couldn't sit home and fret. On Wednesday, we drove to Provo with no real purpose in mind, except to get away from the news. We stopped at Home Depot and Costco and then returned home. On Thursday we decided to take the newly paved road from Heber to Cascade Springs. It was a beautiful drive with magnificent views of the valley and reservoir.  On Friday, we jumped in the car again and drove over Guardsman pass. The pass was scheduled to be closed the next day and we didn't want to wait till Spring to take the drive. The road to Guardsman pass began at the Wasatch State park here in the Heber Valley and took us over the mountains to the Snowbird ski resort and then down into Salt Lake City. The drive was exquisite. On our side of the pass, we could see forever down into Heber Valley. On the other side of the pass, we drove through incredible rock outcroppings which almost took our breath away. Little did we know that this beautiful drives was so close to us. We ended up at Freddy's in Sandy for lunch and then drove to Jon's to see his progress on their home. When we got to Jon's, we found that he needed Paul's help hanging a chandelier in the office so it was good thing we stopped by. 

Jon's house is coming along

With the rain and snow we received on the following Saturday and Sunday, we stayed close to home. We had to find things to keep us busy like cleaning house and fixing the garage doors so as to take our minds off what was happening in our country. We also decided to look at very little news, to drop the Fox news station from our viewing list, and to turn to the new News Max station for a conservative look at our world. We were in survival mode, with a prayer in our heart for our country.

Our first accumulation of snow for this winter

Aria and Avery enjoying the snow in their backyard

After two weeks of counting votes, the election was still up in the air.  Several states were continuing to count votes.  In my lifetime, all votes in previous national elections have always been counted by the end of the election night and a definite winner announced, with the exception of Al Gore VS George W. Bush where we had hanging chads in Florida disputed. This year, because of states sending out massive amounts of ballots to everyone, whether requested or not, the counting continued.  It was found that many ballots were sent to old addresses and to people who had died or moved, thus making the ballots received in question of legal votes. Somehow enough ballots were found over those two weeks to put Biden in a substantial lead in the swing states. It was found that several laws were broken, such as not allowing Republican poll watcher to see the tallying of votes, except from 40 feet away, or sending them home and tallying more votes before they arrived the next morning. We found out that the accuracy of the counting machines used in these states was questionable and easily manipulated to switch votes or double count votes. According the experts, it was statistically impossible for Biden to have received the amount of votes he received. He underperformed Hillary Clinton and Barack O'Bama in the previous elections in every large city except for the 6 where voting malpractices had been found. Also, President Trump received ten million more votes than he did in  2016. Republicans flipped seats in the House, will probably keep the Senate, and Republicans in state races were extremely successful. One has to wonder, if the down ballot votes went Republican, how did President not win in a landslide. Two weeks later we were still praying that Trump's legal team and advisors could find undeniable evidence of this fraud and expose it to the world.

On the second Saturday after the election, and after it became apparent that massive fraud took place, a million man march was organized in Washington D.C. As seen in the pictures, there was an incredible turnout of tens of thousands, maybe even a million people. They were all holding signs and flags supporting President Trump. He even made a surprise visit in his motorcade to show the people of his love for them. The protest was totally peaceful until ANTIFA showed up as people were dispersing and started attacking the Trump supporters. Of course the media didn't cover anything except the violence and probably spun it to look like it was the Trump supporters that started it. So sad that the left has inspired such hatred in our country.

It's hard to believe that this many people would descend on Washington
on such short notice to show love and support for our president.

Amazing !!!

By the end of the month, many lawsuits had been filed but the courts were not ruling in Trump's favor. The only hope was that the Supreme court of the land would hear these cases and rule that thousands of votes should be thrown out due to fraud. The Pennsylvania state legislature heard the evidence in a special session in which the Trump lawyers presented testimony of several witnesses. They have taken it upon themselves to write a resolution to delay the certification of the vote in their state and to reclaim their power to elect people to the electoral college that will vote for Trump. They saw the fraud and were appalled, yet the media still claims there was no evidence fraud. We will continue to pray for Trump and his legal team, hoping for that miracle from God to save our country.

Sad but true.... many dead people voted for Biden

As to corona virus, COVID 19, the number of cases in the U.S., including Utah, skyrocketed this month. Governor Herbert put in place a mandatory mask mandate for everyone throughout the state. He put major fines on any person or group organizing and holding large events or parties. He suspended all high school sports for two weeks and asked us to keep our social gatherings to immediate households, also for two weeks. We abided by all of this except for having Todd and family up for Sunday dinner. We hadn't seen them for two weeks prior, and knew they had been careful in wearing masks and keeping away from other people. In Oregon, the restrictions became ridiculous. The governor asked everyone to not travel for Thanksgiving and if they left the state they were to quarantine for 14 days upon returning. They also asked neighbors to report on neighbors if they noticed an increase number of cars at a home, suggesting they were breaking the law about not having anyone but your household for a Thanksgiving celebration. This was like Hitler's Germany. As a result, Ryan and Katie canceled their Thanksgiving trip to St. George, Utah and to see us after the holiday. Andrea and family were planning on coming our way, too. They were going to leave Oregon the weekend before Thanksgiving, go pick up the girls at BYUI and then head our way to spend the holiday with us and away from the stress of Oregon. Andrea called the week before to tell us that Maggie was quarantined, pending the testing results of her roommate who was experiencing symptoms of COVID. Luckily her roommate tested negative, but it was still determined that the Westovers would not be coming our way for Thanksgiving , either.  They were afraid that Maggie could be asymptomatic and expose us to COVID. They were also afraid that the quarantine order would be enforced in Oregon, after their return, so they would have to forgo any possible business for their company as they would not be able to go out and set anything up for customers. 

Sad but true...wish people would take this virus for seriously.
Right after this mask mandate was put into place, Paul 
went into two stores and found several customers without masks.

The Monday before Thanksgiving, Paul and I drove to the other side of the mountain to deliver checks to Jon and a Christmas present to Mom. We first went to Sam and Kathy's home to visit with Mom. It has been our tradition to send Mrs. Call's caramels to Mom and Dad at Christmas. We wanted to keep the tradition going so we ordered caramels online (Mrs. Call's moved from their location in Heber.) and took some to Mom. We also gave her a tin of dipped pretzels which she loved last year. We had a good visit with Sam and Kathy and were amazed at what they had done to their home in just three months. It looks entirely different on the outside - both the home and the yard. They are in the process of putting in pavers for a new driveway. At Jon's we left a check for his boys for Christmas as well as birthday cards for Jaron and Mindi. We would not be coming to visit them for a while as they were having Mindi's family in for Thanksgiving and we didn't want to take a chance on COVID exposure.

When we ordered Mom's caramels we also ordered some for Paul's family. We were able to get presents to Derrill and Bill in the mail before Thanksgiving.  That's a first.

Our Thanksgiving was not what we had been planning for weeks but we were grateful that Todd and Kailee and their girls could still come up to spend the day with us. Instead of 13 of us, we only had 6 but dinner was wonderful and we loved being with Todd's family for most of the day.  We gave the girls some magnetic, wooden paper dolls of Belle and Aria. They spent part of the day dressing them in different gowns. It was a great day.....A day to remember our blessings especially in these difficult times.

The day after Thanksgiving began the project of decorating the house for Christmas. Every year, I vow to get a new Christmas tree that is pre lit. It takes me hours to string the lights on our present tree. The problem is that every time I see a tree I like, when I get up close to it, I find it's a plastic tree. That's the last thing I want is a plastic tree. This year, I'm going to make a concerted effort to find the right tree for next year. I do love our tree once it is decorated, though.

Appropriate for 2020 

The week before Thanksgiving, President Nelson put out a video in which he told us that a sure antidote for overcoming difficulties was to find gratitude in our lives. He challenged us to recognize our many blessings and to post on social media those things for which we are grateful. Facebook was flooded with hundreds of people following this counsel.  It was a treat to read all the posts of gratitude from so many friends.  It truly changed my perspective from fear of the future to counting my blessings in life right now. It helped me know more fully that God's in charge and we must put our faith and trust in Him. I'm not great at posting, so I expressed my gratitude to my Heavenly Father in my private prayers to him each night and will continue to do so. 

Grateful even for having to wear masks? No - grateful for 
having masks to wear to protect us from COVID.

I must acknowledge a miracle in Andrea's life this month. As I've discussed many times before, this pandemic is playing havoc with their business. They say they are ok financially for a while as they do have savings but, if these lockdowns last much longer, they will be hurting for income. Andrea had been looking for new health insurance as she was not happy with her present coverage for her family. She made a call to the Oregon state based insurance company to ask some questions. She gave them the information they needed and when she hung up with them, she was told she would have to call back in a few weeks to see if her family qualified. Without her calling back, and within a few days,  she received a notice in the mail that she had been accepted into the program and that her health premiums were zero.  That's a savings of about $700 a month. Yes, that is a miracle from God who promised He will look out for each of us.

With that positive note, I will end this months edition of the Millar Blog.....and will keep praying for a miracle for our country or strength to accept the outcome if one doesn't come.

MOM'S 100TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATED IN OCTOBER

 

This month we celebrated Mom's 100th birthday.  Her actual birthday isn't until December 15 but we wanted to acknowledge her earlier so we could all gather and not have to worry about traveling in bad weather.  Nine of the eleven siblings and their spouses met at a country club in Sandy on Friday, October 9. We had a wonderful dinner of  beef tenderloin and then watched a video of Mom's life. We visited with each other for a long time afterwards, as many of us hadn't seen each other since Dad's 100th celebration three years ago. It is always amazing how much love exists between our siblings even though we are a combined family. That evening was no exception - so much love expressed for each other.

Nine of the eleven siblings surrounding Mom

The Thursday before the celebration, Ed and Deb and Don and Dana came to our home to stay for the weekend. Dave joined us after Friday's event. I had set out all of the things that had been found of Dad's so everyone could look through them and see what each person wanted to keep. Don had brought some books of Dad's so we ended up with the pool table and another long table filled with things to look at.  On Friday and Saturday morning, everyone had a chance to put a sticky note on any item they wanted. Except for a few books, there ended up being only one sticky note per item so it was easy to divide up everything. When all was said and done, I saved only a few things that no one had chosen. I put them in the old suitcase of Dad's and secured them in our safe.  Sonnie was unable to come so I put together a box for her of pictures she had given Mom and Dad and a couple of things I thought she would enjoy of Dad's. 

Debbie loving all the old books of Dad's

Ed looking at Dad's missionary scrapbook

During the month leading up to this event, I put together a Shutterfly scrapbook, entitled "A Forever Love Affair." It highlighted Mom and Dad's life together as high school sweethearts, husband and wife, and dad and mom. I ordered enough for each of my siblings and gave one to each of them as an early Christmas gift. They loved it and want to order some for their children. It's a beautiful tribute to the love Dad and Mom shared and their life together.

Right after our reunion with my brothers and sisters, the Fullers and ourselves started planning a get away trip. We decided to drive to Colorado and deliver some of Dad's things to Sonnie in Buena Vista. We found a World Mark resort in Granby, Colorado and planned to stay there for 4 days. When we contacted Sonnie, we found that she would be in Denver that whole week, hence staying in Granby which is only a little over an hour from Denver. Our plan was to arrive in Granby on Monday, the 19th, and then drive to Denver Wednesday morning to spend some time with Sonnie and deliver the things to her. On the Saturday, before we were to leave, Sonnie called to inform us of a couple of major fires in Colorado, one being just outside Granby. I called the resort and they told us the fire was only 8 miles away and that the winds were blowing it toward Granby. We, of course, canceled those reservations and were lucky enough to get three nights at a Wyndham Club Pass resort in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. This World Mark affiliate was located in the southern part of Colorado, away from any fires, and only 3 hours from Buena Vista. Even though Sonnie would not be there, we thought we could drive through and drop off the things at her home. That was our plan until Sonnie called back and said the her son, Christian and his wife, Momoko, wanted to fix us lunch while we were there. Thus our new get away vacation changed into something even better, even though we would not be able to see Sonnie.

Just some of the unique, yet beautiful, rock formations

we saw on our drive to Pagosa Springs.

Our condo unit in Pagosa Springs call the Eagle Loft.
It included an indoor hot tub on the lower level.

Our view outside our living room and bedroom windows.

We arrived Monday evening, fixed a spaghetti dinner, watched a movie, and went to bed. The next day we set out to explore Pagosa Springs. We drove to Treasure Falls which ended up being only a trickle this time of year so it wasn't that impressive. It was then on to downtown Pagosa. It is famous for its hot springs. There is a huge resort built along the San Juan river that has 23 different soaking pools and a large swimming pool. We didn't soak in these as the price was ridiculous and the sulfur smell was pretty strong. Some people love it, though, and pay $500 a night to stay in the resort and soak in the different pools.

Treasure Falls - only a trickle

The San Juan River that runs through the town

The Hot Springs Resort

The source of the hot water - the deepest hot springs in the world

Inside the resort's hot springs

That afternoon, we found a Mexican restaurant located right along the San Juan River. The view was wonderful and the food was delicious. Later that afternoon, we swam in the pool at the resort, ate dinner, watched a baseball game and went to bed. Such a relaxing day.

Deon enjoying the view of the hot springs from our table

The next day was another laid back day of exploring the area. This time we drove in the opposite direction to see the Chimney Rock National Monument. It is an ancient Pueblo sacred site that was used as a place to study the sun and the stars. Because it was late in the season, the drive to the base of the monument was closed so we could only see it from a far.

We loved not having deadlines on this trip. We had lunch at the condo, watched a movie, and went for frozen yogurt. That evening, after dinner, also at the condo, we watched a movie which we rented from Red Box. It was called 'The Call of the Wild' and was based on Jack London's book. Such a relaxing and enjoyable day. 

On Thursday morning, we checked out of the resort and drove the 3 hours to Buena Vista. We were asked not arrive at Sonnie's until 1:30 as Christian had a business conference that wouldn't be over until then. We arrived in Buena Vista earlier than that so we drove around the town, ending up at the local cemetery where Jim, Sonnie's husband, is buried. We had attended the funeral two and a half years ago so we could remember where his grave was. Of course, we took pictures to send to Sonnie. At her home, we had a delicious lunch of Momoko's creation - vegetables and tofu over rice. We enjoyed our visit with them and made them promise to come visit us someday soon. 

In Sonnie's back yard

Jim's grave site. Christian said he was saving
up to have a headstone to be made for both Sonnie and Jim

Christian and Momoko

After leaving Sonnie's in Buena Vista, we drove 2 1/2 hours to Glenwood Springs where we spent the night and then drove home the next day. We loved getting away for 5 days but it is always good to be back home in Heber. 

We were glad we did our little get away trip when we did, as that weekend Colorado had snow as did we. Snow in October is unusual but this is 2020 so nothing surprises us anymore. On the Sunday, after arriving home, we had almost blizzard conditions - snow blowing sideways because of the winds. It all left us with just a little over an inch of snow which melted within a couple of days, thank goodness. Not ready for a cold winter yet.

Todd and Kailee came up that Sunday and took advantage
of the hot tub with their children

October snow...YUK!!

The cold weather even warranted us turning on the fireplace

A lovely surprise was delivered to the door this month. Flowers from Ryan and Katie as a thank you for letting them stay with us in September. They must know my weakness for flowers. I loved seeing them sitting on the hearth for a couple of weeks.

Halloween, the last celebration of the month, had a COVID 19 influence as has most aspects of our lives. Some states had canceled Halloween while others discouraged large parties and/or trick or treating. Often individual neighborhoods decided how best to handle giving out candy to children. Todd and Kailee's area said only one person was to hand out candy and that person had to wear gloves and a mask. Todd and Kailee had a party at their home with Kailee's sister and family. They went trick or treating in the neighborhood and had dinner after their party. We usually are a apart of these celebrations with them but because of COVID we stayed home this year.  We missed not handing out candy for them while they took the children around the neighborhood. We did, though, drive to Lehi on Thursday before Halloween to see Todd and Kailee's decorations. They add new things to their yard every year so their yard is becoming a pretty spooky place. 

Just two of the many scary new additions to their yard

Andrea's Halloween was a little different too. They only handed out candy and popcorn to 200 instead of the usual 600. People are just a little scared of COVID.

I thought these memes were very appropriate for this Halloween 2020.........

Everything is virtual this year.....even Halloween?

Perfect for this election season

Of course, I 've collected some more great memes. With the increasing number of cases of Corna Virus all over the U.S. and Europe, we have to find things to laugh about. So here goes.....

But we must remember God is in charge. We must put all our faith and trust in Him and our Savior, Jesus Christ and things will work out. Faith, not fear, is the answer.

A most important concept during this election year, for sure

One blessing of this month, is that we have been able to return to church, somewhat, every week. Our ward has been divided into two groups, with one group attending sacrament meeting in person, while the other groups streams it into their homes virtually. Last month, we were attending only one week of the month with nothing virtual so this change was very welcomed. The first Sunday was the same weekend my family was here. It was real special to share our televised sacrament meeting with them and then have my brothers prepared, bless, and administer the sacrament to me. (Paul was at the actual meeting as the Bishop had asked him to attend each week.) Our ward has also begun streaming classes through Zoom. The first and third Sundays, we have Sunday School and on the other Sundays it's Priesthood and Relief Society. It's so wonderful to have Sunday meetings each week again. Hopefully the day will come, soon, when we can meet all together each week, without wearing masks and sitting 6 feet apart.

And then there's Aria and Avery......Family  picture time

Aria and Avery both wanted to be Skye so they are
in matching costumes.