The Haunted Mansion...

My grandma's house in Vernal sits on the top of a hill, all by itself. It is a big, gorgeous house that my grandpa built for her years ago, shortly before he died. This was the only picture that I could find on my computer but you can't really see all of the house.When I say that it is all by itself, I mean it is ALL BY ITSELF. There is a dirt road that winds up the side of the hill and other than that you can put on your hiking boots and climb up.

Here is a view of her back patio.

And looking down from the patio...

And the right side of this picture shows the land where my parents built their home 3 years ago. ( These were taken when they were showing us where they were going to build.)

As our family has grown we've found that we need more bedrooms when we all get together and the obvious solution is to have some of us stay up at Grandma's. Russ and Chuck both had the pleasure of staying up there alone, shortly after getting engaged to Annie and Kristi. Neither got a good nights sleep as they listened to all of the noises the old house makes. I think this was when Chuck named the house the Haunted Mansion. Grandma was moved to a senior home this past year and so the house is semi-vacant. Semi because Jared has been living there while he is in Vernal, which works out SO WELL for us! I don't know how he does it because you couldn't pay me to stay there alone. He is much braver than the rest of us, even though he said that he hears noises all the time. This Christmas the girls and I joined Jared in the bedroom downstairs and Kristi and Chuck took a room on the floor above. The house is big enough that you really don't know if anyone else is there or not. On Christmas eve I came back early so that Santa could make his appearance at my parents house. The girls played in the family room while I took pictures of them. After Kylie and Sadie went to sleep at 11:00 I came back out in the family room with a wide awake Brynlie so that Jared could sleep undisturbed. I started to hear footsteps upstairs and realized that Kristi and Chuck must have been home. It wasn't until the next day that we talked and found out that they hadn't come home until at least a half an hour to an hour AFTER I had heard the noises. Oh well...old houses creak, right? Then Christmas afternoon Chuck decided to go back to the house ALONE to play with his new Christmas present, Rock Band. He wasn't gone long and came back admitting that he heard a door slam shut and once he ventured downstairs and realized that Jared wasn't there like he had assumed (hoped) he booked it out of there without looking back. I'm not really sold on the whole "ghost" thing, but Chuck was a believer long before Grandma's house. Christmas night Kristi and I stayed up watching Jared plow the drive way (more on that later) and talked about Chuck's fear of ghosts and about "orbs" that show up in pictures of houses that are "haunted". After she went to bed I had lots of fun turning lights off on them, pounding on the walls, and sneaking into their room while they were in the bathroom. The Haunted Mansion was a running joke the whole week. Here are some pics of the girls Christmas Eve...

Now, go back and look at the pictures again and pay attention to all of the "orbs" that showed up in the pictures. Hmmm...