Life has been so crazy that it has been awhile since I have written, so in the last week I have tried to get these posts and pictures put together and I am finally caught up. Life is constantly in motion and it takes time to stop and record it. However I do love having this blog for the history and memories it contains. Too bad that I didn't do it for the whole of my life. I have had some many great adventures and opportunities. It has been and is a great life!
If you really want to read on the nitty-grity of the past month, head back to "Highland High School and then on to Texas" and read from there. There are 13 posts. Good luck.
One other thing that has occurred in the past couple of weeks is that the president of the UDSF has resigned as he took a new job in Seattle and is already there working. That has left us without a president and not a clear person to take the position. So currently I am acting as the interim president as we look at the overall structure of the foundation and how best to organize it for the future. Not really in my plans as I really wanted to focus on other things at the moment and then work on the conference for next year, but life is ever changing (I think I have mentioned that.) and we sometimes just do what we can do.
My list of things is: work in the back yard to finish several projects including making a dog path along the back of the yard, adding some more garden boxes and plant them with vegetables; clean out our storage room and pantry and reorganize to get my 3 month supply of food completed; and third repaint Jena's room. Those are my May goals. However I am stuck indoors today as my allergies have been terrible the past few days. Gary "grounded me" to the house today, so no yard work. We will see how my list progress.
My dad and I are making some progress in family history to get some names prepared for Jena to take to youth conference where they will do baptisms for the dead in Manti. They are going in June. I enjoy our monthly day we work together on it. This past Monday we went to the nearby family history library to get some hints on problems we had been having with the new family tree. That helps us and I can see that "Family Tree" will be great when it is completely up and running (and I have a hundred years to add pictures and life histories for my ancestors).
Ben was released from the CRU on April 19 and has been living in his studio apartment since then on his own. He is doing better each day which is great to see. Unfortunately he had to go back on clozaril which has a number of problems for him but it does stabilize the paranoia. We are hoping that he can manage the side effects okay this time. He (and we) is hoping that he can get back into DBH housing with a roommate. No luck yet, but we are hopeful something will work out. That will help him and expand his life, I think.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Friends from the past
It all started when one of my BYU roommates from my freshmen and sophomore year called me and said she was going to be in Salt Lake to see her daughter graduate from the U of U. Mary asked if I had some time to get together. As you know, I LOVE getting together with my friends. It was been over 10 years since I had seen her last so I was so excited. She gave me a choice of Tuesday and Wednesday. It turned out that Wednesday became the day as I contacted our roommate Ruth who lives in Logan to come down. In addition, I contacted our other three roommates--Andrea (Houston, TX), Judy (St. Amant, LA) and Jody (Hurricane, UT) and arranged to them to be around as well so that I could surprise Ruth and Mary with phone calls (unfortunately I am not up on Skpe yet, maybe next time.) to our other roommates. I had reached Judy and Andrea but no luck with Jody. I finally left a message on a number that I found on the internet saying that I hoped this was Jody and I would call back that evening.
It went perfectly and we got to talk to our three other roommates. We spent a little over 30 minutes with each one. Time went by so fast as we reported about our lives and families, three different times. Like Mary commented in a text to me today--our lives have taken us many different directions but we all have faced similar trials and we all are still active in the Church. Judy and Andrea both work as temple workers which was a fun connection. We were freshmen roommates almost 40 years ago this fall.
We are a bit older now----
Our husbands were good sports with it all. We had dinner and then we started calling roommates and the husbands headed down to the pool table and played pool for a couple of hours. Gary was gone until the end helping with a bowling league at the bowling alley. Gary knows all of my roommates as we all met him our freshman year and he hung out at our apartment a lot---not with me but that is a different story.
I love these women. I was so lucky to have them with me as I started my adventure at BYU. We have so many fun memories of being together. As Kirk pointed out, none of the memories we shared had anything to do with getting an education----true, but there are lots of types of education and living with roomates for the first time was part of my education. I loved it and love them.
It went perfectly and we got to talk to our three other roommates. We spent a little over 30 minutes with each one. Time went by so fast as we reported about our lives and families, three different times. Like Mary commented in a text to me today--our lives have taken us many different directions but we all have faced similar trials and we all are still active in the Church. Judy and Andrea both work as temple workers which was a fun connection. We were freshmen roommates almost 40 years ago this fall.
We are a bit older now----
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| Ruth, Mary, And me |
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| With our husbands, Gary, Kirk, and Nolan |
Thai New Year
Last year, we held a Chinese New Year Family Night with several families in our neighborhood who have Asian connections. We have about 12 or so. This year we decided to celebrate together again but selected to do Thai New Year. We originally were doing it on April 15 because that showed up on a computer search as being the day it was starting this year. However bad weather made us postpone it twice. Finally Monday was a beautiful day so most of us were able to gather at Jensen Pond Park.
We called it the "miracle of the monks". We had decided not to reserve tables because it seemed silly to pay $50 when we were flexible about what tables we used. When we got to the park to set up, it was busy as the weather was awesome. As we drove around there were two men in orange sitting in the area I had wanted to use, as we drove around we didn't find anything better so we went back and I approached the men and asked them if we could use the tables next to them (I didn't know how to explain that we were going to do our own version of Thai New Year). They said yes and after a few minutes they headed out. We decided they were meant to save us our spot. However my friends asked us why we hadn't made them stay. That would have made some nice pictures with the kids! Oh, well. We didn't think of that.
We flew kites and then shared food which was all great--Asian and American. We then floated ducks down the stream. One Thai holiday the people build little boats out of sticks and place flowers on them. Then they send them down streams and out into the lake to "get rid of their sins for the year". We caught our ducks before they hit the pond however. At the end, we did the water fight and flour custom. On Thai New Year, the people throw cups of water on each other and then throw or slap talc (we used flour) on each other. Now days this includes major water flights and hard slapping of each other with talc covered hands. We did it for about 2 minutes. Here are some of us during and after it was over.
Next year we will do something Japanese, so start thinking of ideas, my dear friends who have lived in Japan!
We called it the "miracle of the monks". We had decided not to reserve tables because it seemed silly to pay $50 when we were flexible about what tables we used. When we got to the park to set up, it was busy as the weather was awesome. As we drove around there were two men in orange sitting in the area I had wanted to use, as we drove around we didn't find anything better so we went back and I approached the men and asked them if we could use the tables next to them (I didn't know how to explain that we were going to do our own version of Thai New Year). They said yes and after a few minutes they headed out. We decided they were meant to save us our spot. However my friends asked us why we hadn't made them stay. That would have made some nice pictures with the kids! Oh, well. We didn't think of that.
We flew kites and then shared food which was all great--Asian and American. We then floated ducks down the stream. One Thai holiday the people build little boats out of sticks and place flowers on them. Then they send them down streams and out into the lake to "get rid of their sins for the year". We caught our ducks before they hit the pond however. At the end, we did the water fight and flour custom. On Thai New Year, the people throw cups of water on each other and then throw or slap talc (we used flour) on each other. Now days this includes major water flights and hard slapping of each other with talc covered hands. We did it for about 2 minutes. Here are some of us during and after it was over.
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| During "Water and Flour" tag |
Next year we will do something Japanese, so start thinking of ideas, my dear friends who have lived in Japan!
Special Olympics--sunshine meet
After being snowed on the past few years at the Area Special Olympics Meet in Logan, we had great weather this year. It was fun to be there and enjoy one of the first really great weather days of the year.
Gary, Jena, and I left Logan in the afternoon after Jena finished the softball throw where she got 2nd place and raced down to Syracuse. As these things often happen she had her first "16 and older" dance in Salt Lake with the Utah Down Syndrome Foundation. We took her friend Kaitlyn down with us to the dinner/dance. They had a wonderful time dancing the night away with about 75 others from UDSF and then 15 young adults from a local YSA Ward. Fun times......
Gary, Jena, and I left Logan in the afternoon after Jena finished the softball throw where she got 2nd place and raced down to Syracuse. As these things often happen she had her first "16 and older" dance in Salt Lake with the Utah Down Syndrome Foundation. We took her friend Kaitlyn down with us to the dinner/dance. They had a wonderful time dancing the night away with about 75 others from UDSF and then 15 young adults from a local YSA Ward. Fun times......
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