HAPPY 3RD BIRTHDAY, JAMES!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JAMES!

 We are so glad to have this cute boy in our family.  He loves cars and books and just playing with toys when no one is bugging him.

One time last summer, Scott commented to me that he had wondered why anyone who adopt a 2 year old, but now that he has James, he could see that  two year olds were very fun and he could understand it better.  Fun man---Scott was an adorable 2 year old, but we would have taken him even if he wasn't since we knew he belonged to our family.

It is fun to see James grow.  He is like Scott in some ways and in other ways like Chantel, and mostly he is just a cute person of his own.  Love you, buddy.

Mission Update-No News

Well, a tiny bit of news:  Our stake president reached out to the mission department on Friday and was told that we should hear in the next two to three business days about the exception to take Jena with us.

So we are trying to sit patiently and be patient.  :)

(I am not sure how I will manage the 4-6 week wait for our actual call.)

SEAQUEST WITH FOUR LITTLE HALLS

I wish all of the other grandchildren were there as well to share seeing all of the fish, birds, turtles, and other members of the animal kingdom.  Jena and I were able to join Jessica and Elessia and their four kids on Presidents' Day before we headed down to Provo.

Seaquest is a little aquarium/animal place in the Layton Hills Mall.  I have never been there before.  It was fun but a bit expensive for the size of the whole place.  Unfortunately, since it was a holiday, we were joined by LOTS of other families as well.  Nevertheless, it was fun to watch the kids watch the animals and fish.  We like to teach our people early to love fish and other animals.

Jena and Liam:

The magic of fish on the coral reef  (that is Carter's head in the outline.)

 Checking out the lizards.

This large aquarium had several small rays which liked to come by for a rub.

Carter meeting the ray, safely behind the glass.

Zander loved the pigs at the front door.

Hanging out watching the fish---

 Carter was brave enough to go into the turtle's home and touch him.

Liam with "his" bird--

I can't believe that Jessica actually caught this moment in a photo.  You can't see it but above our head was a branch with a small parrot.  While we were looking at the bird on the cup in my hand, the bird above us dropped a small "gift" which landed right on my hand which was holding the cup. Yuck!  I think Alex just liked the funny sound I made when I realized that I was just peed on.

It was a fun morning together and the stuff that memories are made of.  I hope that they grow up and love animals like my kids do.  Maybe they will even want to scuba dive!

Family Day at Bowling!

In one more Valentine's Day party, families were invited to join their child in a day of family bowling at the Rush on February 15th.  Since Gary is busy with running the show, I got to be Jena's partner.  The one catch was that we had to bowl in the style of our family member.  For me, that meant I had to stand at the foul line and bowl without walking up like I usually do.  I didn't do great, but did beat Jena in one game.  We had fun anyway as we talked and cheered for everyone.  Crowns for everyone!

Turning 65---

It is a good thing that I am not concerned about turning 65, because the mail for Medicaid supplements is piling up.  Here is the stack over the past 2 weeks.  Do I really want to order all of their "free" books about Medicaid?  

Fun times ahead!

Happy Valentine's Day 2020

Gary and I are not big celebrators of holidays, including Valentine's Day.  This year, with wanting to do so many things to get ready for our mission, we decided not to do anything special.  That was good since we both had a busy day.  I had a staff meeting and some clients and an advisory board meeting to attend and Gary took Jena on the regular Friday route of skiing and theatre.

However, on the actual day when I was heading home from the office, I realized that Jena would be disappointed if we didn't do something special.  She had already made personal valentines for each of her roommates and hid them on their beds with some candy before she had headed home the day before.

It is not that she expected things for herself on Valentines, but more that she knows that showing love makes people happy and she thinks that we should celebrate.  I decided that I would make a run to the store and pick up a few things and this is what I ended up with.

 A row of conversation hearts for our fireplace-

I put post it notes around their plates with reasons why I loved them.

I set the table and got Papa Murphy's pizza including their heart shaped pepperoni pizza--

And I waited for them to get home.

At 5 (when Jena's theatre valentines party had ended,) I get a text from Gary asking about Gigi's Valentine party.  I hadn't planned for Jena to attend since usually she doesn't get done with theatre until 6 when it starts, but today because of the change of time, she was available and she wanted to go.  So Gary drove her to Layton and dropped her off-- As she was getting out of the car, she said to Gary:  "Now you can go home and have a romantic date with mom."  Gary was feeling bad because, as I mentioned, we had agreed to do nothing this year.  When he walked in the kitchen and saw the table, he laughed and said that now Jena will be happy.  We cooked a pizza and enjoyed a quiet evening together before getting Jena from her party. Gary said that first thing she asked him when she got in the car was did we have a romantic time together and he told her yes.  (It doesn't take much to keep us happy.)  And she did love the display when she got home!

We are lucky to have Jena in our lives to remind us to take a minute and share more love with each other.  (And, I didn't forget our sweet grandchildren who all got cards and a book in the mail for the holiday.)

And Happy Valentine's to all of you, family and friends who we love dearly.

February 5th, Again!

Like I commented in the preceding post, February 5th is a tender day for me and my family.  Even in the midst of the loss we feel and felt since our mother's death, we also felt the sacredness of her passing and had sweet experiences during the week right after she died as we connected and remembered her as a family and with her friends at her funeral.  Those moments are also part of my memories of that time.  So while I miss my mom at this time of year, I also remember the spiritual experiences as well and the closeness with my dad and my siblings.

Maybe that is why we started another tender journey on February 5th although we didn't know about it until the following day when we (the siblings) got an email from my dad called HU-Part Two.  HU stands for Health update which he started using after his diagnosis and treatment of significant skin cancer on his face a few years ago.  He had sent one the week before telling us that he had a blood clot in one of his lungs, but that they would start treating that immediately and it should clear.  Part Two update was more significant.  My dad who is 86 years old was diagnosed with congestive heart failure.  This time there is no "rescue" by a heart transplant.  He is too old for that.  And so, it has been a few days of emails back and forth, phone conversations, and emotions as we take this information and move forward.  My dad's first words to me on the phone, "Don't change anything about your mission plans and if they call you to go next month--you go!"  (Did I mention that my dad is also a faithful and devoted servant of the Lord as well?)  He doesn't want any of us to "disrupt our lives, because he doesn't know how long he might live."  On our side, we are grateful to know and maybe have some extra moments and conversations with him because we know that time might be short.  There is no set time frame of course.  He had already been experiences some of the slowness and tiredness of this disorder.  We have been so blessed to have him in our lives these many years.  Very grateful that he found Karla and has been able to have a loving companion through these past 24 years and at this sacred time of his life.  We love her for loving him.

2010--April

With my sisters, Lynette, Valerie, me, Robin

Dad and Karla

My brothers--Scott, Mike, Todd, Rick

We have been talking and texting back and forth this past few days.  So grateful to my siblings and the ability to connect and share as we move forward.

On a bright note, my dad has identified three out of the four things to complete on his bucket list--wanting to know how the elections turn out; watching April Conference 2020; and printing 11 games for his game company.  (He hasn't disclosed the final one.)  That should keep him busy for awhile.

So grateful to know that families are together forever!  It doesn't take away grief and sadness, but it adds the brightness of hope which is what we need in this earthly life.

And sorry, dad, I think there will be some disruption of our lives over the next bit, but only in all of the best ways of loving, caring, sharing, and saying again and again, how we love you and are so glad that we are your children.  Thank you, thank you, for picking the gospel and then picking mom.  I couldn't have asked for anything better, even though "I was the practice child."

REFLECTIONS OF A DAY

I have a fairly good memory about dates--historical dates I am okay with but mostly I can remember the dates connected with significant events in my life.  And even that isn't total correct--I do well with figuring out years and the day of the week something happened; sometimes I don't know the actual date unless I look it up.  As a result, much of the year I have floating memories of events in my family's life, significant times in my work as an birth parent and adoption worker, adoption placements I have attended, vacations, etc.  We all do that to more or lesser degree.  For example the first two weeks of February are forever connected with the first two weeks we spent as Ben's parents--driving him as a four month old infant back and forth from the orphanage where he had to stay at night to our house where he spent his days (It was Chinese New Year time and no paperwork was going to be done to release him from the orphanage during that two week time.) 

This is a long introduction to arrive at the topic of this post.  FEBRUARY 5th--it is probably just an ordinary day for you, unless you are my dad or my siblings or you happen to have a birthday on that day.  For me, on February 5th, 1995, early on a Sunday morning, my mother passed away in a hospital in Amarillo, Texas.  Although it has been 25 years, it seems like yesterday in many ways and an eternity on other days.  Losing your mother is a life changing event, despite the "common" nature of the loss--most of us will see our mothers leave this world before we do.  It is the order of life and part of the eternal plan.  Nevertheless, it changes us as humans and makes us (if we allow it) to grief with and comfort others in a better way. However it also leaves us with a certain awareness of loss and a place that is not quite ever filled on this earth. 

My mom (Eileen Jane Owen Giberson) was amazing!! She was in every way just a good person. She loved our dad and she loved us and sacrificed for us in ways that I can not even begin to approach.  She was talented.  She could sing and play the piano and the organ.  She loved drama and often she and dad were involved in roadshows or drama productions at Church. She was a writer--of poems, stories and kept a journal over her adult life which is incredible. I never remember her ever saying something bad about someone.  I am the oldest of my family--four brothers and three sisters--and I don't remember her yelling at us.  She was a happy woman and she cared about the gospel and all of the people around her.  Some day I hope to grow up and be a bit more like her.

In 1980 and 1981, my mother's health began to decline.  This was frustrating to her, she wrote in her journal, because she had begun an effort to be more physically active and to eat more healthy ("now the kids were in school all day.").  Instead, her energy declined and she was frequently sick with pneumonia and other lung inflections--and a cough that wouldn't go away.  After a family vacation to Oregon to visit her sister and other relatives in the area, she was hospitalized which ultimately led to a diagnosis of congestive heart failure--at 47 years old.  I think I cried more that night than almost any other time during the ups and downs of her health.  I couldn't imagine that my mom wouldn't be there as part of my own mothering journey which hadn't even started yet.

Her health declined and eventually she was more and more restricted to the house.  No longer could she lead music or play the piano because of the stress on her heart.  Her visiting teaching became confine to letters and phone calls.  For a while, she was called to visit teach "people in the hospital."  Amarillo was a large city in the panhandle of Texas and often members of the Church would come for treatment from outlying areas.  She would call the hospitals on a regular basis to see if anyone had checked in and marked "LDS" on their medical records.  She would talk to them, send cards, and alert the leadership of the ward as needed.  You could give my mom that type of assignment because she was a faithful, friendly person. She often said that there was a benefit to being home all of the time, because it was a busy time as a mother of eight children with kids coming and going.  The fact that she was there meant she was available for conversations at times she might not have otherwise been around.  That was my mother--she found the good in every thing.

Then one night around Thanksgiving in 1984, my parents called with a request to pray about whether mom should seek a heart transplant.  Without one, she didn't have much more time to live.  Mom said later that she thinks that it was easy for us kids to say yes, because we grew up in the age of such things, but her biggest fear was not the surgery, but the fact that she felt at peace and ready to die at that point and "she might mess up if she had extra years to live."

In June of 1985, she had a heart transplant at Stanford Medical Center and lived another 9 1/5 years in great health.  And "she didn't mess up," she got to see several grandchildren born, served in the Church, and lived life in a full and abundant manner.  She even was able to make a trip to visit us when we lived in Hong Kong.

Oh, how I love her (and my dad.)  One example of the type of person that she is occurred about 6 months after her heart transplant.  I was attending Church with her and happened to be there when she bore her testimony in Relief Society (that used to be a pattern on the first Sunday of the month).  She started her testimony--"I don't know why I am so blessed and have been protected from the trials of life......"  I didn't think anything about it until the next sister started her testimony "If Sis. Giberson who just spent six months away from her family to have a heart transplant says she hasn't had any trials, then we all need to learn to be more grateful like she is."  My mom was grateful and she passed that to me.  She would have dad stop the car on the side of the road so we could look at the black-eyed Susans (flowers) on the side of the road.  She pointed out rainbows and clouds to us all of the time.  She loved the earth, but most of all, she loved the Lord and His Church.

My parents in their reunion shirts from our last reunion
with our mom--in Plano, Texas in 1994.

It was fitting that my mom passed away early on a Sunday morning.  No day represented her better than Sunday.

So it might be only February 5th on your calendar, but on mine, it is so much more.

Til we meet again, mom.

"FILLED" FEBRUARY WEEK

This was a week with lots of commitments and appointments, challenging sessions at work, lots of phone calls--and more phone calls and emails and texts.  And Jena had her usual packed full weekend with skiing, theatre, bowling, ushering, and watching a play (Peter and the Starcatcher--not one of my favorites.) and then heading home to grocery shop and then sit and watch the BYU basketball game.  I am so glad that  it is finally Sunday again.  To slow down, quiet down, and breathe.  I feel so blessed to have a Sabbath day each week.

Few photos from the week (no pictures from any of the commitments, phone calls, etc,) 

Jena at Snowbasin, posing after 2 hours of hard, cold skiing--She said she had "too much fun."

View coming down from skiing on Friday.

Yesterday after I returned from the grocery store at dusk, I saw the moon coming out over the mountains to the east.  By the time I got to our house, parked and came out to take a photo, clouds had covered up a lot of the moon and the moment was gone--just a pretty memories of a beautiful moon.

This was the sky to the west as the sun was setting---

A few minutes later after I carried in the groceries, the full moon was above the clouds.  A photo with my phone camera does not do it justice.  It was so gorgeous through the evening as it made its way across the sky.

I have had a bit of a week, but it seemed like a gift to me that Saturday was a full moon and I was able to notice and enjoy its beauty.  We are so loved and cared about by our Heavenly Parents and our Elder Brother, Jesus Christ, and the world testifies of that in each small action and view.

Thanks, I needed that!

Mission--Newest Update

Last weekend, our stake president reached out to us and invited us to come in and talk about Jena.  He had gotten the information from the mission department and wanted to review with us the questions that he needed to address in the letter that he needed to send back to get the exception for Jena to serve with us.  He has only met her a handful of times and just for a minute or two at a time.  Of course, we are happy to talk about Jena and we had an enjoyable conversation with him.  The only question that stumped us was: "What problems or concerns do you have about taking Jena with you?"  We looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders--neither of us had worried about that at all.  Once we felt she should come, then of course she should come.  We do think that she will be a blessing to wherever we serve, and perhaps in ways that none of us understand at this time.  We joked about Jena wanting to serve in Nauvoo and that we will know who is "the favorite" if we are called there, because our talents are not in that direction.  The stake president in his soft way said: "You will be called where the three of you can move forward the work of the Lord."  Yes, that is what we want--to move forward His work.  In the middle of the paperwork and the excitement, it was a sweet reminder of the reasons behind it all.

Hoping the letter got submitted this past week and that we will hear this upcoming week.  That would be a great Valentines's Day present.

Meanwhile, on our end, we completed our medicals (passed and got two shots to start that process) and got those turned into our bishop and he has forwarded the bulk of the recommendation to the stake president.  (He still needs to scan in the medicals and dental.)  As soon as the stake president received the clearance for Jena, then we will meet with him and submit our papers.  Maybe that will happen next weekend--with a little bit of luck!

They are saying that calls are coming in 4-6 weeks for senior couples so we are hoping by the end of March!  Waiting is not my best quality so we will see how it goes while we wait for such a life changing call.

A Snowy Walk

If you know me, you know I am not a snow person.  Snow on Christmas Day or on the mountains (as long as I am not driving in that direction) is all well and fine.  I understand that snow is critical for our water supply and I can respect that.  I am just not a fan of dealing with it.

We haven't had a lot of snow until the past few weeks, but late in January, the weather was slightly more moderate and I decided to try a morning walk at Jensen Pond.  Snow clouds were forming along the mountains but there were some blue skies to the west so it was a pretty day to be out (if you were dressed warm.)

The sun peeked out between the snow clouds .....

...and the reflections on the dripping snow was magically.  I took lots of pictures to try to capture the view, but it didn't work, so you will have to use your imagination or your memory of a similar event.  Snow and frost covered the dried plants along the path and in the fields along the way.  Due to the increasing temperature, there were tiny drops of water on the end of many of the tiny branches or tufts of grass and as the sun hit them, they all glistened like diamonds everywhere.  It only lasted for a minute until the clouds covered the sun--another sweet moment in nature that you only can see if you are out there.

This one almost captured the reflection of the sun in the water drops---

Nature--got to love it!

UDSF Retreat

Once again, I headed up to Bear Lake the last weekend of January for our annual board retreat to make plans and develop a vision for the foundation.  It was a bit bittersweet as it is my last one as a board member.  I will be stepping down at the end of March after our next board meeting and already my replacement is engaged and ready to go.

This time, Gary didn't go with me as someone needed to manage Jena's crazy weekends, so I enjoyed a beautiful drive through Logan and up Logan Canyon to Bear Lake by myself.  We had all had some snow that week so the scenery was stunning.  It was hard to get good pictures while driving of course, so I pulled off at one point to get pictures of the stream running with snow covered banks.  The chill of the air and the beauty was truly breathtaking.

 

Okay, I was driving when I took this photo and it is a very disappointing photo.  As I started over the top of the mountain into the Bear Lake area, the view was amazing.  There was lots of cloud cover as you can see, but then a strip of blue sky and the shoreline across the way, and then the lake itself--it looked like clouds had laid down in the 'bowl" formed by the lake.  The reflection of the clouds in the water was so perfect.  However, this photo didn't capture the lake part.

This is the house that we held the retreat at.  I got there early and went on about a 30 minute walk in the area while I waited for others to arrive.

Here is a view of the north end of the lake which shows a bit of the cloud-colored lake.

This is a house along the way.  Can you imagine sitting in the glass area room between the two sections of this house in the middle of a storm (rain or snow)?  That would be spectacular!

 

View down to the lake from the top of the hill.

It was a good start to a great weekend as we talked about plans to improve the lives of people with Down syndrome and their families in Utah.  Glad there are passionate people to take care of this part of the cause while I am serving a mission.