While We Were Playing, So Were Others---An Excuse To Share More Photos Of Grandkids!

Scott called it their FIRST "real family vacation" which means they didn't go see family.

They headed to San Diego and had an amazing time.  Not unexpected, the kids loved the beach!

Scarlett and James at the beach

Scarlett

Meanwhile on the home front---Carter and Jasper posed for this picture......

and then Carter and Alex climbed into their baby sister's bed and thought they were very clever!

Liam built this truck and said that Grandma wanted a picture texted to her fast....He was right.  I loved getting a text with this photo.

 Zander----these were taken at Thanksgiving Point in Utah county, Utah.

Twins---

Ezri-----she is growing up fast and thinks she has to be doing what everyone else is doing.  She does not want to be left behind.

Carter

Alex

The Russells-- they headed to Idaho to visit friends and went to a fun water park.

Ava

Cooper

Niki

One of the few things that I am happy about my own parenting is that we did take our kids places--around the corner or around the world (well, for Jessica and Scott!).  And I love seeing my children taking my grandchildren on little and big adventures!

Grandkids (and kids) are the best thing that life has to offer (other than a great husband!)...... well, and Chinese food, beaches, clouds, waterfalls, whales, and books.................life is full of "best things."  Despite the craziness of life, I feel so blessed and lucky in all that we have enjoyed while on the earth. (Remind me of that when I complain about migraines!)

Another Brother Visit...And A Sister, Too!!!

It might be a record except for an organized reunion or special event but in July, not only did my brother Todd and family visit, but then my brother, Rick and his wife, Linda, and their oldest daughter, Anna, and her husband, Anthony came to Salt Lake and when Valerie heard of the plan, she decided that it would be the perfect weekend to visit Dad and us as well.  So it was a game playing PARTY!!!

We were a couple of hours late on Friday afternoon as we unexpectedly got another new missionary and had to spend some time in orientation.  Elder Spencer is another great addition to our zone and comes with a passion about Church History already.  He is a storyteller and I love talking to him about his life in the Coast Guard, his conversion, and other adventures.

When we got there, Valerie had already arrived, so the game playing begun immediately.  We played some of my dad's games-- Misery Loves Company and  Race for the Crown. We ordered food from a nearby Italian Restaurant, Bucca's, and had enough food to stuff us all and leftovers which we ate for dinner the next day. When at 7:00, Jinger and Jeff Aleman stopped by bringing a box of Crumbi cookies which are amazing! And the game playing continued......

Both Jeff and Jinger spent their early years in Amarillo and grew up in the same ward as my family (of course, there was only one ward when we moved to Amarillo in 1971).  Jinger's family was very close to my family (I talked about them in the post about her sister's funeral--Janeen Brink Thompson in mid-July.).  However, they both were much younger than me and I really didn't know them.  I was only there for the last two years of high school and then off and on while I went to BYU before Gary and I got married.  Despite the age differences and the years since any of us had seen them, they walked in the house and it felt totally normal and natural.  They joined into the game playing like it had only been last week that we had all been together.  Such are the bonds of friendship that love and memories bring!  It was wonderful.  The only thing better would have been for her siblings and dad to have been there to share the evening.

Rick and family stayed at my dad's, but we got to have Valerie stay with us for the whole weekend.  Bright and early (okay, it was 9:15 am) on Saturday morning, we met up with Rick and family and had breakfast and walked around Temple Square.  

Anthony, Anna, Rick, Linda, and Valerie

Gary waited with Jena to finish her breakfast while we started the tour.

Still amazing at the process of reconstruction as you can tell by all of the pictures I am including in the blog since starting our mission here.

These are from inside the Conference Center which just recently was opened again for visitors.

This is a view from the garden roof of the Conference Center over looking the north side of the temple.

Rick headed for his plane and the rest of their family headed for Provo to visit some of Linda's family.  I took Valerie to her afternoon appointment at the Jordan River Temple and then the two of us spent a couple of hours just talking with our dad in the quiet of the afternoon.  It was a sweet and great time to spend together--one which I will not forget.  I was so lucky with dad and mom that I was blessed with.  I will always be grateful for them--thankfully we will have eternity to do that!

Picking up Valerie after her session at the temple, the clouds again were amazing to the east.  This picture does not reflect the light and diversity of the clouds.  It was breathtaking!

Valerie stayed over another night and was able to attend Church with us in our mission branch.  And then she joined us for our first "Break the Fast" dinner with other missionaries living in our apartment complex.  We wanted to make sure she saw some of the fun of serving a mission.

It is always hard to say goodbye to my siblings.....we were so busy playing games that we didn't get much conversation in....that can happen when you get Gibersons together!

Until next time.........

A Morning at the Jordan River Temple

On July 29, we joined about 20 other missionaries and attended an endowment session in the Jordan River Temple.  It was great to be in the temple again and to be with some friends and fellow missionaries. And look at the clouds........

I love these little trucks.  They are everywhere on Temple Square and they had one at Jordan River Temple as well taking care of the landscaping.

Here is Gary and Jena with Sister McClure, a brand new full-time missionary in our zone.

These pictures were all taken around 7:30 am but the clouds to the east

were different than to the west.

Jena and Sister McClure became friends fast--Sister McClure is a very easy person to love.  We are so happy to have her in our zone.

Sister McClure took this picture of the three of us---much better than my attempts of selfies of the three of us!

Zone Leadership Meeting

We are very fortunate to have five outstanding zone leader assistants--  Elder Jim and Sister Linda Twelmeyer from Columbus, Ohio; Sister Joan and Elder Mel Young from Holiday, UT; and Sister Elizabeth Audenart from Red Deer, Alberta, Canada.  The Twelmeyers and Sister Audenart are full-time missionaries and the Youngs are service missionaries having served in the library for over four years.  They are all fun people who are great to work with.  We have yet to have an in-person meeting with all of us present.  Twelmeyers were in South Carolina for two months helping their daughter's family and Sister Audenart has been unable to come to Utah due to Covid restrictions on visas between Canada and the US.

This is a picture of one of our recent leadership meetings with all of them while we were at the Church History Library in the Nauvoo Room--

Sister Joan Young, Gary and I, Elder Mel Young

Sister Audenart, and Elder and Sister Twelmeyer

These are just some of the amazing people who we are privileged to be around every day as missionaries. So glad Jena took this picture during our meeting although next time, I will try to smile. We are so lucky!

Sister Hall the Younger

While we still haven't gotten an assignment for Sister Hall the younger, she has been a big help around the Church History Library and our zone.  The latter part of July and the first few weeks in August, she was busy making cards to welcome back all of our missionaries to the Church History Library when it opened completely on August 16th.  (More about that later.)

Gary also volunteered himself and Jena to deliver mail and packages around the Church History Library.  She loves that and is meeting more and more people around the library and learning her way around.  Some people get enough mail that she has learned where their offices are.  It probably will not surprise you to learn that people frequently comment to us how much they enjoy seeing her in the library.

She got her official "Utah Salt Lake City Headquarters Mission" name tag and has her own security badge into the building so here she is on the second floor reception area.

 

Plans!!??!!***

Plans---

John Lennon is supposed to have said:

"Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans."  I have blogged on this topic before.  

In this case, the day of July 23 was a day with no plans on it.  The Church History Library was closed for the state holiday and I was planning to use the day to catch up on time stamps (a document that I create about the oral history interviews I have done that is used to create a catalog entry for the donation.  I was and am behind in doing these.)  Anyway, as I mentioned in the prior post, I found out on Thursday night that the parade was set for Friday morning and then we made a quick trip to the grocery store and headed home.  When we stopped on the first floor to check out mail, the post woman had just arrived so we decided to head to our apartment and Gary offered to check the mail later.  So I still had a free afternoon to make some headway on the time stamps.

After putting groceries away and having some lunch, Gary decided to head down to get our mail.  Just at a very random time!  (Timing is often everything.)

I was sitting at my desk and Jena came in to show me a picture that she had just taken out her window-- a large fire truck parked in front of our building.  We didn't hear any alarms so didn't think too much about it.  When Gary got back, he said, "Call Sister Wilson and see if she is okay. I just saw five firemen heading down the elevator and they came from her hallway."  Sister Wilson is a single sister missionary who lives on our same floor.  I thought he was being overcautious--which isn't really like him so I decided to text her.

Turns out that it was HER.  She had fallen and couldn't get up.  Fortunately she had a life alert so she was able to summon help which included the fire truck below.  She had just arrived at the ER and wanted some company.  So I was able to go spend the afternoon with her as they tried to determine the extend of the injuries to her foot  (turned out after seeing a specialist the following week that it was just a very bad sprain and not a torn ligament that the ER doctor was concerned about.)  It was a pleasure to get to know her better that afternoon and in the following days as we helped her.

Gary met us in the parking garage to help me unload the scooter she needed to avoid walking on her foot for a week or so.  He had fun figuring it out and taking it for a very shot spin around the garage.

Sister Wilson's apartment has a west view and we admired her view of the temple from her balcony.

While we were doing that, a flock of pigeons flew in and settled on the ledge of the window at the edge of our building.  I guess they feel safe up here.

It was not the day or weekend we planned but I was so glad that Gary saw the firemen and had me text Sister Wilson and she let us help her.....

and it reminded me that God cares about each one of us and if we listen, we can help each other along in this crazy world. 

 

Pioneer Days--Utah Style

I am sure I have mentioned before that I grew up celebrating Pioneer Day-July 24th- in my ward. What that meant was that the Primary children would dress up in pioneer clothes and make a covered wagon with their red flyer wagon and paraded around a local park then the whole ward had a potluck dinner. It was tradition---and I think I may have thought that the whole Church was celebrating Pioneer Day in this way.

In fact, the summer our family moved to Amarillo when I was 16, it was reassuring to be attending the Ward Pioneer Day Potluck just a week after we arrived--maybe I wasn't in the middle of no-where. There were kids in pioneer clothes and sack races. Some of the food was different than we were used to--think okra-- but familiar enough.

However, the whole state of Utah celebrates the Days of 47s. It is a state holiday and a time of rodeos, parades, and fireworks. It has not been the same experience that I had growing up.  

All of these words serve as introduction to my first ever Days of 47s parade.  After all of these years of living in Utah, we had never attended one.  First, I am not a big fan of parades in general.  Second, big crowds are not appealing, and third--the traffic.  (For a football or basketball game, I can do traffic, but a parade--not so much.) However, since we literally lived a block from the parade route, it only made sense that we watch it.  Then we got a generous invitation to watch the parade from some of our senior service missionaries who live in an apartment with a balcony that overlooks the beginning of the parade...so the date was set and plans made to enjoy the Days of '47 Parade from the Pierponts' balcony on July 24--which everyone knows is Pioneer Day....

but while I was floating in the pool at Eileen's house, Gary texted me to tell me that the parade was actually on Friday, July 23rd, not on Saturday, the 24th like we thought.  That required a rearranging of our plans for Friday and Saturday, but glad he discovered that BEFORE we heard the noise of the parade on Friday morning.

This was one of the cleanest parades I have ever seen...because no candy was thrown or flyers passed out along the parade route.  After the crowds left, there was no garbage to be seen which was great.  We enjoyed the parade from our vantage point and were able to hear the announcers as they described the floats, marching bands, and other traditional parade entrants.  We enjoyed watching it with Pierponts who are transplants from New York.

Here are some photos from our birds-eye view:

The crowds gathering at the street before the parade

The color guard representing the Mormon Battalion 

He guarded the beginning of the route at State Street and South Temple

Here we are waiting for the parade

Our view from the balcony

To take photos, I had to zoom under the Eagle Gate which is

why you see the frame of it on the side of most photos.

The handcarts

The mototcycle police man had gathered in the road in front of us.

It was very noisy when they all started their motors

to take their spot in the parade.

Very impressive to see them weave in

and out as they went down the road.

Helicopter--probably from a local news station

right over our heads

Loved this truck float

The construction of the Salt Lake Temple float

Look at the head gear on these dancers!

There were a number of floats that feature bees

and beehives.  I guess that makes sense in the Beehive State.

In Texas, they would use Longhorns...

Lots of marching bands--

it is a summer band type of thing to do.

This was dedicated to missionaries around the world--

I wonder if that counted those serving in Salt Lake!

More floats---

People are so creative.  Many of these were designed by stakes in the area.  They must take a ton of time and manpower to create.

Happy Pioneer Day!  Do you know if there is a potluck at the park???   :)