Thompsons Together--Coeur d'Alene ID Aug 2009

Here are the Thompson brothers and their wives sitting on their roots at Corbin Park on the Spokane river on the Idaho Washington border. (Spencer, Donna, Chris, Pamela, Roger, Caroly)

Little brother Tom Buckley couldn't make it so we had to get this picture of him at work in Pullman.


Here we are in our finest after church in Coeur d'Alene.


Of course we had our get together at our lake cabin near Bennett Bay on Coeur d'Alene Lake, where the first versions of our Florida Thompson Grandma Camp were held further up the hill at Aunt Lois's for all the Thompson cousins every summer in the 1950's. Whenever the Thompson boys get together we repeat many of the fun activities we had then...


such as swimming in the lake...


eating Paul Bunyon burgers and drinking huckleberry shakes...


and playing pinochle and other card games while we wait the hour and a half between eating and swimming.


Here we are down at the Spokane river not far from where Grandpa Thompson's apple orchard and farm was. The farm is gone so we can't play in the irrigation ditches and the river is too busy now for fishing and skinny dipping.


The old stone school that my dad went to and grandma Thompson taught at is now gone but the nearby stone church is still there. In my dad's time this was a "holy roller" church. The Thompsons went to another church in nearby Post Falls. According to Thompson folklore one Halloween as a teenage prank, my dad and his buddies locked a cow in the church. In those days, teenage boys were expected to do crazy pranks at Halloween. Come Sunday they say the church stunk pretty bad. They were never caught.


We went into Spokane to see the falls. Great Grandfather Dexter Thompson was one of the early bankers and real estate developers who planned the first dams, irrigation projects, apple orchards, and housing developments in Spokane in the 1880's when the city was just getting started. He was also a state legislator.


This is the congregational church he helped found and build in the 1890's. All of my dad Robert's sisters were married here.


We went huckleberry picking in the mountains near the cabin, but all we found were deer. They must have beat us to them.


We also made a trip up to Bayview on Pend Oreille Lake to see where we used to go with grandpa to his houseboat so we could cruise around, swim, and fish with his cabin cruiser, the Ranger.



On the way we think we spotted mounted on a rooftop at a junkyard the 1956 Dodge station wagon with pink trim that we had so many boyhood adventures in. It has to be our car--we'd be the only ones to have a station wagon with custom painted pink trim, mom's favorite color. Even our house was painted pink!! (Correction--"Canyon Mist") This is the car I learned to drive at age 14. It had push button automatic drive--mom was a pushover for the latest gadget. At that time, 14 was the driving age in Idaho not the age 16 of Washington so I could be a wild and crazy teenage driver only in the summers in Idaho. (I wasn't really that wild and crazy no matter what my younger brothers might say)


On the way back to Florida we went by Pullman to see how the house looks today. Notice a more masculine pale blue has replaced the pink. That was Spencer's doing after Mom died.

Palling around with Powells--Oxford ID Aug 2009

What do you do when the Powell siblings get together for a reunion? (Here from youngest to oldest are Kathy, Larry, Diana, Dondavid, and Caroly)

You sing songs ...




assemble things (it blew down later that night)...





eat lots of good food...




play games...


look beautiful...








have fun in the water...



and take nature hikes to look at the flowers.

Where it all started

When we went to Provo and Orem to see where the Florida Thompsons got started, everything had changed. The Joaquin school and the basement apartment I lived in on 600 N kitty corner from the Manavoo Chapel while I was in fourth grade were gone. The Joseph Smith Building where I finally met Mom to start our courtship was gone. However, I can show you where "the bright yellow vision" took place. This was the Language Training Mission (LTM) for German missionaries where I taught 1964-1967. See, I'm even wearing my official teaching clothes.


It was locked so we couldn't get in to show Caroly coming down the winding grand stairway in her bright yellow dress, catching my eye like an angel descending from heaven. Her Spanish district was temporarily meeting in our building. I remember my moment of joy replaced by despair as I thought I was doomed to eternal bachelorhood since all the beautiful girls my age were heading off on missions.


Since the old Joseph Smith Auditorium is no more, I can't show you the aisle at church where my angel returned three years later, this time in turquoise. But here are Uncle Oren and Aunt Burnie Powell who hid her away in Salt Lake City while she did her student teaching. "He who hesitates is lost" kept flashing through my mind. God had given me a six week head start to win Caroly's heart before the missionaries returning from her mission could find her and try to win her affections.


Here's the Salt Lake Tabernacle where the day before we were married we sat with our extended families listening to the Tabernacle Choir broadcast. When it was over, we turned around and there immediately behind me was Carole, the great cook with one blue and one green eye who had been in hot pursuit when angel Caroly returned from heaven, making one last try to claim me. At 7 a.m. the next morning June 12 Caroly and I were married in the temple you see in the background. We took Wendy and Debbie to see the room after doing a session.


This is the first house we lived in after our honeymoon at the University of Michigan summer school. We lived on the upper floor. We found this house in Orem just before I left Mom for a six week stay in Guatemala to do linguistic fieldwork with the Cakchiquel Indians. We brought back three Cakchiquels to work on translating the Book of Mormon. Two of them stayed with us in the bedroom you can see to the right over the porch. This was Carrie's first house. It's also the place that had little mice scurrying around as Mom's pets while I was in Guatemala and had flies living in the walls all winter. That's when we decided that we are thoroughly modern in our housing preferences. I believe this is the corner of 800 South and 800 East.


This is the small chapel several blocks down the street that we went to and where Carrie was blessed. Our first calling was to jointly teach the 14 year olds--a wild bunch we learned later, but we and they both thrived. I also taught the priest's quorum. It's the oldest chapel in Orem. Several wards met here while we built a new stake center a block from our house.

Sending off Aunt Kim!

Here are Allie, Cassie, and Maddie giving Kim one last goodbye hug before she heads off to Australia. For the next couple of years she'll be teaching at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia. Isn't Wagga Wagga a great name? Almost as good as Walla Walla, Washington! It's a town of about 60,000 people in the interior half way between Sydney and Melbourne. Follow the "Kim" link in the right hand column of this page to get to her blog so you can keep up with her adventures.

Fun with Carrie and Jammie

We had great times with the Sabins this summer--first in Florida at Grandma's Camp on the beach, then with the horses and pool in Gainesville, and finally in Colorado. Here are Cassie, Carrie, Allie, and Jammie


Here's another shot.


Do these look like happy travelers?
Maddie...


Allie...


Carrie and Cassie.


Of course, there had to be lots of horses. Here's Maddie with Choco...


and Allie and Carrie with Dream Dancer in Gainesville.


Grandma was in heaven on a trail ride during our Colorado visit.


Allie even brings the horses home!


You can't visit the Sabins and not go into the Colorado mountains at Estes Park...
(grandma with Maddie, Carrie with Allie, Jammie, Kim with Cassie)


or play croquet in the backyard. (Jammie, Carrie, Maddie)


But there is always time to try out some new hairdos complements of grandma...


and aunt Kim.