Well we went to Utah and are back again and how do I describe how much WONDERFUL FUN it all was?  We got to visit with everyone and even friends so that we feel filled with happiness.

It was so good to see Atticus baptized.  He is such a sweet, wonderful little boy.  And a new cub scout!

There was a roomful of people and most of our family were able to come to see Atticus.  Colin even came to video the group and let some people talk to Atticus on the video.  We didn't do it because I usually cry at things like that.  There were yummy treats and it was so fun to get to see everyone there and visit with James' family. He has some relatives nearby that his mom and her husband were staying with and they came and made the occasion even more special.  James' mom is a great lady that I like a lot.  I wish now that I had taken more pictures, but I spend too much time visiting and having a good time to think of it till it's too late.

We stayed with Heidi and her family which was nice.  We got to see Atticus more than we would have otherwise.  Here he is eating boiled peanuts with his dad.  It's a southern thing.  He loves them.  I remember that Dad told me he liked them but he swears that he has never tasted them.  What's happening to my memory?

We got there Thursday morning and Heather picked us up at the airport and took us to put our stuff away at Heidi's and then we went to lunch.  We hung out with Heather and talked about her plans to move here in the fall.  She will pack up everything between now and the last of September and have it all ready to put in a Uhaul that she and Dad will drive here.  He will fly out to patch up her wall where they attached the TV when she moved in.  She is good at cleaning so she should get a lot of her deposit back.
Then in the afternoon we went to meet who could come to the Chuck a Rama dinner that Heidi and James had arranged.  It was great to get to see Kathy and Lisa there and visit some.

Friday we had lunch at Mike's house and got to see him and his family.  What a great family!  I love being with them.  Raylyn is now RS president and doing a wonderful job as we would expect.  That's a job just made for her and her talents and sympathies.  Mike is happy in his job and the kids are growing too fast!  Aubrey is a teenager now!!  And beautiful.  Ella is still in clogging and happy as usual and Henry seems to be much more confident and happy and adjusted well to his diabetes.  It was good to hear what they have been doing.

In the evening we met Erin and went to dinner at the Med, a little Mediterranean restaurant where we had sumptuous food.   It was good to catch up with what she is doing and see how great she looks and feels.  She has been working hard at taking care of herself and it is paying off.  She inspired us to try harder and so now we are hoping to lose some inches and get stronger before the summer with all its yard work.

Saturday morning was the baptism!!  Good to see everyone there.  What a great day.  So very satisfying in so many ways.

And then we went to Roy with Kathy and Lisa to a barbecue at Lisa's mom's house.  We got to meet all her family!  What nice people.  We had a great time getting acquainted with everyone and eating more than we should have.  It was all delicious.  And we also got to see Tyler and Grace there too and visit a little.  Grace is gorgeous and looks happy and Tyler is just as gracious as he always has been.  There's never enough opportunity to get in enough visiting.

Sunday was church and dinner with Bennetts.  For dinner James made cheesy grits along with other things, but I ate way too much of the cheesy grits!  Oh they were good!  And we got to visit more.  For a special treat in the evening Atticus wanted to play a game that I can't remember the name of that was fun.

Monday we went to see Kristin and hang out till lunch.  We learned all about what her family is up to and then learned that Kelli Riley is just around the corner from her there in Alpine!  When all the time I thought she was in Heber.  They get together regularly.  At noon we went out to meet the Rileys at a restaurant.  What fun to see them again!  They have moved to Utah and are staying at present with Mike in Syracuse which is just above Salt Lake.  They are finally retired but Bro Riley will be working with Mike in his electrical business.  Mike has started his own business now.  Sis Riley is looking for things to do with herself besides hang out with grandchildren.  It has taken me a long time to decide what to do with myself so I have total sympathy with her.  I think I have found some good things to do now and am pretty happy with them.  But you have to decide for yourself what is meaningful to you.  No one else's ideas work.

Monday we went to the Oasis for lunch and had wonderful food!! I love that place.  And then Heidi and I went to the fabric store and got some things to make her some tops and skirts, and then time got away and I left her in a mess with a shirt try-on half done.  But she was better at getting it figured out than I was so I think she will be fine.  We got on the plane and came home.  And it was over.  What a very special, satisfying time we had.

Back into the routine with temple Wednesday mornings, literacy with Da Wu on Thursday morning, and then stake conference this past weekend.  We learned some disturbing information about pornography at the conference.  They said children as young as 5 to 8 are receiving pornography from 10 and 11 year olds.  So young!!  What a destructive epidemic.  It's so important to be careful with our children.  One family told the stake president they knew their son was safe because they had so many protections on their electronics, but then later learned that he had been walking down the street and using the neighbor's wifi to download porn and then he would watch it later in his bedroom.  The only protection is to help them understand how destructive it is and how to avoid it.

On a happier note, Dad substituted for a temple worker Friday and I went too and before his shift started we did 13 baptisms and confirmations and the same 13 initiatories and then I did two endowments while he was working.  What a wonderful day!  I was full of joy the whole day.  I didn't used to enjoy the temple but now since we have started working there I do really feel so much joy when I am there.  It's a pleasure to walk in the door and spend the day helping people and feeling the joy there.  That's one way I know that Heavenly Father and Jesus are supremely happy beings.

Another thing that we learned was that the Riley's old friends the Haineses are now in our temple presidency.  What a surprise!  I wondered briefly when I heard their names. I didn't really think it was possible, but it is.  I'll have to mention it to Sis Haines one day.

And the very good news is that we get to see Adam again!!  He is back in Dallas doing more training and we get to go see him tomorrow!  Lara will be able to go this time too which we are glad for because of her delightful company of course, but also because she can be the guide through all the streets and traffic with her trusty gps.

The talk didn't kill me even though I felt like I was going to faint.  Why is it so scary to talk in front of nice people?  And it was fun to hang out with Barneys for Pi/Pie day.

Dad's cough is still hanging on but he's feeling so much better we aren't worried about it anymore.

The party at Moshan and Monsour's house was fun with many of our ESL students there.  It was Norouz  or the beginning of Spring for them.  They have a special table with the specific things on it to represent the things they want to come in the new year.  Candles, mirror, certain seeds and spices, fruit, eggs, flowers, and so on.  And it was fun to visit and eat everyone's dishes.

Our Easter was meaningful and satisfying.  I was to give the lesson to the Beehives that day and had been preparing the lesson on "how do we show our faith in Jesus Christ" and it was a wonderful experience preparing and reading and trying to see what would be the right thing to present as I teach.  I gained a deepened appreciation for my Savior and His love for us and His great, merciful gift.  We just can't do enough in our lives to show our gratitude, but we can trust Him to know what will make us happiest and trust that He understands when we try to do as He says.

Lara invited us over for dinner and we had a lovely meal and a happy visit.  I made a bunny cake for dessert that was fun.  Jon can't eat eggs so we substituted garbanzo bean juice for the eggs and the cake was tender and tasty.  Instead of coconut on the bunny I shaved some white candy coating and it came out curly and really pretty.  I think there was as much icing and candy on it as there was cake, but that's okay too.

The day before we had made chocolate marshmallow eggs with Sarah and her friend.  I made the whole batch of marshmallow and I had forgotten how much it makes.  We had marshmallow all over the place and when I poured it into the molds it came out fast and there were some mutant eggs to deal with, but no problem.  We put chocolate on them and they were fine anyway.  It's fun to do happy things.

And the most wonderful thing happened this week!  Adam came to Dallas on a business trip to help train some people in the office that will be opening there soon and we got to see him!  It has been way too long since we have seen him and it was worth the trip to Dallas to get to have dinner with him and visit some.  We went to a restaurant that he had chosen from the ones in the area.  It's called the Magic Time Machine.

It was a fun place with the wait staff dressed as cartoon characters and a sassy attitude.  The waitress we had was Joy from the movie Inside Out.  She was really cute and fun to watch.  Perfect choice for our little meeting.  It was so GOOD to see Adam.  He looks great and is happy and successful in his new job and responsibilities.

We are looking forward to seeing everyone at the reunion that is in the works now.  It isn't fun to be away from family.  And it's SO good to be together.  We are really excited about seeing all the Utah family next week!

Today I give a talk in Sacrament meeting.  And tomorrow we will go to Lara's to celebrate "Pie Day" with her apple pie and some ice cream.  :o)  So things are good.

Dad and I have had colds but are getting better.

It's a beautiful day today with warm breezes and sunshine.  A perfect time of year.  Wish you were all here.

What I wanted to talk about was something that I experienced a few weeks ago.  We went to an Empty Nester's family home evening and met a couple that we didn't know before.  The sister was wearing just any old thing, hair askew, no attempt at makeup.  Obviously didn't care about her appearance at all.  You can tell I wasn't very impressed with her.  And then we started talking.  They as a couple have taken in several young people from other countries and helped them get a start here.  They are currently fostering a young woman from Vietnam and will keep her with them through high school and college.  (She is a dear young woman in our YW organization.)  And the sister herself has been a major influence in helping many others do the same thing.  She is a GIANT of a woman.  I was reminded of the movie Shallow Hal where he saw everyone as they really were inside.  I was so sorry to have judged her so quickly and so negatively just from her appearance.  I wish I could dislodge that tendency from my heart and mind and allow people to disclose their real selves as they wish, not prejudging.

I am remembering that experience as I prepare to talk today.  Please let me set aside judgement.  Please let me see people as they really are and care for them and about them as they deserve.  Everyone has a right to determine who they want to be and how they want to be as do we.  They have no responsibility to fit my expectation of what they should be.

And now, good news for me.  The ESL class is permanently disbanded.  We decided that it was no longer serving the students because most have other English classes and are very busy.  Also the new teacher that was going to take over can only teach 2 months so why start?  So this is a picture of the most faithful students.

Second from left is Igal Mozes from Israel who still wants to be connected to us.  We are willing because he is delightful.  But I don't enjoy teaching English so it will be social only.  I will start the reading class with Da this week.

Monday night Barneys came over for a s'mores party and visiting.  It was a pleasant night and we had a good time.  Sam wanted mostly to rest inside and Sarah spent most of her time playing.  

 And Tuesday was Lara's birthday with a nacho dinner and a carrot cake.  That was fun too!

Tomorrow is the birthday of two very special people (Alice and Atticus!) and Tuesday we have the missionaries to dinner, Wednesday the temple will be open and we will be back to work there, Thursday I have a mammogram appointment, Friday we will have dinner at the house of our ESL couple Moshan and Monsour with the rest of the ESL class, and Saturday looks like Jared Collins' birthday.  So a nice full week of good things is ahead.

We are looking forward to seeing everyone there in Utah soon since we already have our plane tickets!  We will arrive early Thursday April 7 and leave Tuesday April 12.  We love you every one!

I went for a walk this morning because it was a perfect day for it.  It was overcast and 69 degrees; there was no sun to make it too warm and there was a pleasant breeze.  Dad was still printing out his genealogy sheets so I took off alone.  We have a lot of sidewalks that go through greenery--lots of trees and bushes to look at and birds and squirrels.  I loved it because it's spring and there were blossoms that I remember since I was little here.  Along the sidewalk were lots of dewberry vines that were coming into flower.  I remember going into Mr Beezley's field behind our house in north Houston and surveying acres of dewberry blossoms that would eventually turn into delicious dewberries.  One summer we picked gallons and gallons of them and enjoyed every one.  My mom made a pie that was out of this world and she bottled lots of them too.  They mostly turned into juice but it was delicious as well.

See all the little white blossoms?  They will each turn into a delicious berry!  They will probably be picked before they even get ripe by all the kids that will pass by them, but that's okay too.

And as I reached the end of my walk there was a wonderful fragrance in the air!  I remember it from long ago too.  I looked all around and finally found this vine that I don't know the name of that has little yellow trumpet flowers that smell beautiful.

Maybe it's the vine we had growing on the side of the deck on Cloud Way.  Do you remember that vine that was by the kitchen window?  It made me happy to smell that remembered fragrance.

When I came home I made some potato salad for lunch and made some whole wheat bread just to have handy for toast.  I slice it and freeze it so I can break off a slice when I want it.  I eat it with butter and bottled peaches from our little tree in Orem.  I'll be really sad when they're all gone.

Now Dad is working in the front yard, getting the patch smoothed out where we took out a little tree.

 He will plant some grass stolons and cover them with good stuff and we hope it will grow and look beautiful.  :o)  The azalea is making me very happy with big fuchsia blooms.  The other little ones we bought are covered with little buds, one white, and one red.  I'm so glad they decided to bloom this year!

I love the color and the shape of these blossoms!  I just hope it will fill in some more this summer.  We pruned it fairly severely in the fall because it was all over the place.

So I guess it's just another day in paradise for us.  :o)

We have had some interesting experiences since the last blog entry.  We were challenged to take a relative through the temple from start to finish so I found about 13 people that we were able to take from start to finish that Dad graciously helped me with.  It was a thrill to be able to do it for them.  I especially felt strongly about Mamie Fisher.  When I was getting the initiatories for her the worker helping me started crying and I felt the same way.

Now Dad has finally gotten into his family history and started printing it all out.  He finally stopped when he got to the 1400s with GP Harward's line.  There are a lot of royals there.  King Henry III I think to start with.  So you can start having everyone call you "your majesty."  If you want to check it out you can ask Dad what their identity code is and you can look them up.  There are LOTS.  And he finally just stopped printing.  They go back to the 11th century.  He is hoping to find a line closer to the present to pursue so he can experience the fun of the whole thing.

The temple is closed this two weeks and just in time.  I've had some lessons to prepare that I really needed the time for.  One down last night and another one Sunday and then free for a little while.

Good news from the ESL class!  We were going to teach till the end of March, but only two came today and the library guy in charge said the lady that was supposed to take over for April won't be available for very long--just two months.  Not a good setup.  So we decided to cancel the class after next week!!!  Yay!  The students aren't coming not because they don't like me, but because they are all involved in so many other things and other English classes.  I'm the first to admit that I'm no professional, but we have a good time reading and talking and learning better speech patterns and vocabulary.  I teach grammar too, but they don't pay much attention to that because they still speak the same, not remembering the things we learned.    Practice and more practice is what they need. Last week we planned a party at the Iraqi's house that we may go on and do.  We'll see.

 Anyway, there is a sweet young woman from Myanmar that needs lots of help and I will be teaching her alone once or twice a week, helping her learn to read.  She needs to start with the alphabet since her alphabet is totally different.  She tried to come to our class but was totally out of her depth.

The weather is gorgeous with warm sun and cool breezes.  We are so happy to be here and looking forward to seeing everyone soon.  :o)

                 How we spend an hour or two in the afternoon:

Spring has sprung here!  We are enjoying beautiful clear sunny days and warm breezes most of the time.  Sometimes they are a little chilly, but the warmer days are getting more plentiful.  Saturday we decided it was too pretty to stay inside any more and tackled the front grass and bushes.  Dad put the border around in the fall and it was getting crowded with little green things that weren't supposed to be there. I raked the leaves and Dad attacked the weeds and we got most of it done Saturday.  In the raking I sprained my back muscles and am sort of incapacitated now.  My body isn't used to that kind of workout.  We got 6 bags of leaves and weeds.  This morning Dad finished up weeding under the bushes and has gone for more mulch.  I've been a boob today hoping to recover from the back muscle stresses.   But I'm doing the blog so it's not a total waste!

Our first azalea blossom!  We look forward to seeing more and more.  It has several buds.  We also planted two more azalea bushes in the fall along there so we will see if they feel up to blooming.

This is our little lemon tree that is getting lots of blossoms on it this spring.  It's still too small, I think, to have babies, so we will pinch off the blossoms, but it's still healthy and growing.  We hope it will put on some growth this year.  It has had the winter to put out some roots so we hope it will start to really grow.  Lara's bush is more of a tree and had almost a hundred lemons on it last season.  Ours still has a way to go, but maybe it will get a good start this year.

In other news, do you remember when Dad broke off his tooth?  He has been waiting to see the dentist and finally got in for his root canal last Friday.  His tooth hasn't been hurting at all but it had a sharp edge that would catch his tongue from time to time so he is glad to have that started.  He got a temporary cap, and he says it's great.  He hopes the actual permanent cap is as good when it is ready to apply.  He thinks this is a great dentist so we will probably keep seeing him.  We don't think we have dental insurance, but we can hope till we learn differently.

I finally went to another doctor to get my prescriptions renewed.  The dr I first went to didn't okay any more refills.  And I am really glad I went to another dr.  They are husband and wife and in the same office, but he is stiff as a board and hardly looked at me or talked to me and she is very efficient and ordered a lot of tests to get me checked out and my records up to date.  I will see an eye doctor, get a mammogram, and have a colorectal exam because of her.  :o(   She also ordered some blood tests and I was very pleased that the sugar and liver results were fine, but the cholesterol test wasn't.  She ordered some statin to bring it down, but I'm trying to take care of it with diet.  One of the side effects of the statin is that it can cause memory problems and I'm thinking if I have any more memory problems I won't be able to remember my name.  I can hardly remember my address or zip code as it is.

One wonderful result was the bone scan.  In Utah my bone scan showed some beginning osteoporosis but this scan came out normal!  I have been taking calcium and exercising so apparently it's making a difference.

We had a fun day yesterday with the Beehive class.  Sister Means taught and she is an interesting lady.  She is older than Dad and sort of teaches what she wants.  She was supposed to teach about choice and accountability but she apparently wanted to do David and Goliath.  So she worked in choice and accountability with Goliath.  And had the missionaries come in to talk to the girls.  They loved that.  So we shot baby marshmallows at the statue of Goliath and at the missionaries and ate Cheerio manna.  You never know what she will come up with, but it's going to be spectacular.  She's a hard act to follow.

Goliath, Beehives, and missionaries.  He was an awesome Goliath!  Then she had beautiful gooey cupcakes to eat afterward.  Only have about half the beehives this time.  The elder on the right is Elder Heaps, nephew to Mimi Heaps who you remember was in GM's ward in Orem.  

So everything is going great for us and we hope it is for you all too.  We love you and look forward to seeing you as soon as we can!

Okay.  Today I did something that I haven't done in a looong time.  I washed all our whites including garments and temple clothes and a pair of Dad's khaki pants and forgot to take the lipstick out of my pocket.  :o(  What a mess!!!

I was sick thinking of all the money it would cost to replace everything.  Then I remembered that one time long ago I washed the little polyester suits GM had sent to all the girls and had left a crayon in one of them and the crayon got all over everything.  I spray and washed the outfits and they came out fine.  So I did the same with these and after multiple, multiple applications and washings most everything came out okay.  We just lost one of Dad's garments and one of his white shirts.  All my nylon things finally came out okay.  Whew!!  I hope I don't do that again!  I always check pockets but forgot my white dress has pockets.  I should have taken a picture, but I was too depressed to think of such a thing.

In happier news, Mary had her 18th birthday party this week and we were invited!  We ate at her favorite Chinese restaurant and then went to their house for cheesecake and toppings.  It was very nice and she was a happy girl.