Sam: Our Budding Artist

 Kristen recently sent this picture of a skeleton that Samuel sketched free hand and without looking at a picture.  I think he has a real talent.

A Sweet Gift in Primary

This little piece of candy may not look like much to you, but it means a lot to me.

 

I play the piano in Primary each Sunday.  One Sunday, Sister Farnsworth- the music leader- had a punch board game for the children to review the songs.  She had large plastic cups glued to the board.  She put two candies in each cup and a slip of paper that said the name of the song we would sing.  Then she put tissue paper over each cup, securing it with a rubber band.  The chosen child would come up and punch which ever cup they wished.  The instructions were to read the slip, then keep a candy and give a candy to a friend.

I was so surprised when one of the children, Atlas, came back to me at the piano after punching the board and shared his candy with me!  It made my day!

Worth a Thousand Words

 

A Song of Comfortable Chairs

 

A Song of Comfortable Chairs by Alexander McCall Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the 23rd book in this series and I have read them all. I think this is the first one that I have rated with 4 stars. I enjoy these books. They are relaxing and comfortable, but not particularly life changing. But this one was a bit more for me.
At the first of the book Mma Makutsi was SO irritating and rude that I thought, ”Okay I’m done with these books. I am so sick of Mma Makutsi.” She ordered a mug that said, “Boss.” And she had a carpenter come and measure for extensions on her desk so that hers could be bigger than Mma. Ramatswa’s. She continually promotes herself in the business, giving herself bigger and grander titles. Mma Ramatswa just tolerates it. I figured I’d had enough.
But that evening, Mma Ramatswa and her husband, Mr. J L B Matekoni sit out on their verandah, as they are wont to do, and Mma Ramatswa tells him about it. Rather than be incensed and speak rudely of their friend, they talk about why she must promote herself in this way. They analyze her background and her insecurities. They think of ways to help her.
This was such a lesson for me. Don’t we all have to deal with irritating people and situations? Can we learn from these good people how to deal with it?
Can you see why I love these books and keep reading them? They help me slow down, relax, and become a better person.


View all my reviews

Hanging with the Prince Boys

 After church and dinner on the Sunday of our reunion, Ken and I left to go back to St. George.  The original plan was that we just stay as we were going to tend the Prince boys while Gabbi and Michelle attended their girls camp.  But Ken was asked to seal a couple in our ward on Tuesday evening.  We also had our sealing shift that evening.  So we decided to come home for a couple of days.  On Monday we cleaned and did laundry and packed back up.  On Tuesday evening we started our sealing shift, then had a substitute so Ken could seal our friends.  It was Ken's first live marriage sealing.  When they walked into beautiful sealing room 4, the room was filled with 44 ward members!  We have such a great ward.  Ken did a beautiful job of sealing them forever.  After doing the paperwork, we hurried home, changed clothes and packed up the car.  We headed for Michelle and Brian's in a late night trip.  We stopped in Cedar City for a late dinner and arrived at the Princes at about 1:00am Wednesday morning.  Cynthia, Brian's mom had tended the boys on Tuesday.  She had lots of grandchildren to tend that day and they had a fun outing.

Jaron helped William climb their big tree.  William loved it up there.

Ken took the boys for a walk and William, inspired by Lisi, collected rocks along the way.

On Thursday, Ken took Kenny and Jaron to the church history building to meet up with Ken's sister Lorene.  She gave them a tour.

They met up with Brian, who works in downtown SLC and had lunch at Crown Burger.

Jaron, Lorene, and Kenny

I stayed home with William and we played games and ate Dino chicken nuggets.  Yum!

It was such a nice few day with these fine boys.  We love them so much.  

Michelle and Gabbi got home on Friday morning.  We visited for awhile, then headed home to hot St. George.  

On Saturday, Ken performed another live marriage.  He didn't know he had been requested as he didn't recognize the name of the couple, but his business manager for years knew them well and suggested they request Ken.  He said, "You won't be sorry."  It was another sweet experience.

Lisi Meets Her Namesake

 Lisi's name is Elisabeth Dawn.  She is named after Jared's aunt, Sheila Dawn.  Anut Sheila lives in South Africa.  She is a delightful, cheerful woman.  Elisabeth Dawn definitely takes after her as Lisi is almost always cheeful and well, delightful.  Recently, Aunt Sheila came to visit her brother, Jared's Dad, and the rest of the family in Colorado.  She was able to attend the Mackrory family reunion and see so many family members.  Because Kristen and three of the kids would be at our reunion and not at the Mackrory reunion, She had Sheila and Mitch and Carolyn over for dinner the Sunday before our reunion.  Top priority for the visit was to have Lisi meet and get to know her namesake.  I cried when Kristen sent these beautiful pictures.  They really touched my heart.

This is my favorite.

What a beautiful, perfect family photo.
Jake, Audrey, Kristen, Jared's parents Carolyn and Mitch, Aunt Sheila Dawn, Jared,Brielle, Elisabeth Dawn, Samuel, Nathan

A delicious family dinner

Holidays as a Child

     I am writing a book of stories from my life.  It is called "Grandma's Stories."  Following is one of the stories from that book.

Holidays as a Child

I started to write several different stories about my memories of holidays when I was a child.  I then decided to combine them all into one.  This entry is more memories than it is a story.

Why don’t we go in order?

Valentine’s Day:  This was a special day for me as a child and girl.  Of course, we always exchanged Valentines at school, putting Valentines cards and treats in each other’s’ boxes.  In one of those elementary years, a boy named Matt had a crush on me.  He gave me a very nice box of chocolates and a love note.

But the highlight was that my dad always went to Penny Wise Drug store and bought my mom a really nice box of chocolates and would get Joan and I each a heart-shaped box of Russell Stover chocolates, wrapped in red cellophane.  I always felt so loved and so special, receiving those chocolates.

Easter

Easter was celebrated traditionally at our house.  The Easter bunny came and brought a basket that included lots of candy, always including a hollow chocolate bunny.  We spent hours and hours on Easter day hiding and re-hiding the eggs we colored the day before.  We always got a new dress for Easter.  Even as a teenager, I looked forward to getting a new Easter dress.  We often took pictures in our new dresses and outfits, so I will include some of those.

Easter with our cousins:  Kay, Joan, Martha, Linda

We often had Easter dinner later with our Peterson cousins.  I think my mom made ham loaves for that usually.  We loved her ham loaves with the sweet, sticky sauce.  I know Joan still makes those for Easter dinner.  I need to learn how to make them.

Fourth of July

The fourth of July was an exciting day for us when growing up.  We usually celebrated with our neighbors, the Blackers.  We would get up in the morning and work all day preparing food.  Sometime in the afternoon, we would go to the Blacker’s pool and swim.  My mom often wore what we called her firecracker dress.  It was a big, colorful dress that looked like fireworks.  We usually would have the picnic on the Blakers big patio.   I don’t remember the entire menu, but Lily’s potato salad was always on the menu. One time, when I was a teenager, I went to Lily’s home and watched and helped her prepare the potato salad because I wanted to learn how to make it. 

After a delicious dinner, we would do a few small fireworks of our own.  I loved lighting the “snakes” and watching them grow and curl.  We would then sit out on the curb and watch the Caldwell city fireworks, exclaiming, “Oooo and Ah!”  We always had sparklers.

 

Janis Blacker, Kay, Joan

Swimming in Blacker's Pool

 As a child, I looked forward to the holidays that we would spend with our Peterson cousins.  We nearly always had Thanksgiving with them- either at our house or at theirs.  We had Christmas dinner with them, too, usually at the home we didn’t have Thanksgiving.  We also usually shared Easter with them.  Those are happy memories.  Our cousins were about our same age.  Martha was one year younger than me and Linda was Joan’s age.  They also had Scott, who was younger that Linda.

 

Thanksgiving

We had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner each year.  We often had Thanksgiving dinner with our Peterson cousins.  The little girls (Joan, Martha, Linda, and I) always had our own table where we spent most of the meal giggling.  I didn’t care for pie back then, and usually scooped the pumpkin filling out of the pie because I didn’t like the crust.   After dinner, the four of us would go downstairs and play “Peep, peep” and other fun games and giggle to our hearts delight.

 Christmas

As is true for most children, Christmas was my favorite holiday.  The Sears Wish Book would come and Joan and I would pore over its pages.   Mom would let us mark three things as I remember with ripped pieces of newspaper in the book- the things we wanted the most.  Oh, that was hard to narrow it down to three.

As a family, we usually provided Christmas for a needy family.  We all loved doing that.

When I was in 4^th grade, a girl named Barbara was in my class at school.  I could tell Barbara didn’t have much.  We were friends, so I learned that she came from a large family.  I told my parents about Barbara and we decided to provide Christmas for them.  I got a list of all of the children in their family and their ages.  I don’t think I was very discreet about this.  I can remember the day when my dad took us to Penny Wise drug store and we chose a gift for each member of the family.  I chose a Barbie doll for Barbara.  My mom got food for a big turkey Christmas dinner and all of the trimmings for the family.  We wrapped and tagged the gifts to fill one cardboard box and the food filled the other.  We were so excited.  On Christmas eve, we drove to the address and parked down the street.  I so badly wanted to be one of the ones to put the boxes on the step and run, but my parents thought I was too young.  I was so sad.  My brother, John did the doorbell ditching.  I can still remember watching him knock and run and hide behind a big bush.  We watched as the mom and dad came out and pulled in the boxes.  It was such a joyful feeling.

After Christmas break, Barbara brought her new Barbie to school with her.  That made me happy, too. 

Other Christmas memories include having two Christmas trees: a silver, metal tree in the living room which had a revolving color light shining on it.  It looked so beautiful in the front room window.  The other tree was a fresh, green tree that we would buy each year at a Christmas tree lot.  It was so fun to go with dad to pick out the perfect tree.  We then worked together to decorate it.  My dad taught us to carefully hang silver icicles on it- separating the icicles so that there were no clumps.  It had multi-colored lights on it and a variety of ornaments.  We had a beautiful Christmas tree skirt made by my mom’s friend, Rosie Simpson.  Gradually, as we got our gifts wrapped, the floor around the tree filled with beautiful gifts, increasing the anticipation day by day.  We always got a book of lifesavers from Santa Claus.

One of my favorite memories was getting to go with Dad to choose mom’s Christmas gift.  He often went to Marge’s who owned a boutique clothing shop.  Marge helped us pick out the perfect outfit for mom.  She knew her sizes.  Dad spared no expense and would buy whatever Marge suggested.  His joy in giving to her was a delight.

We always had a program on Christmas eve which included reading the Christmas story from the book of Luke.  Christmas eve was a long night.  We had a hard time getting to sleep, then always woke extremely early on Christmas morning.  Joan and I would sit on the heat vent in the kitchen, waiting and waiting for morning to arrive so we could go into the family room and see what Santa brought.

Christmas day was such a special day.  Often our Peterson cousins would come for Christmas dinner.  Mom always served pudding with “hard sauce” which was a delicious, sweet sauce.  We had such fun sharing with cousins our Christmas gifts.

New Year’s Eve

As a child, I have vivid memories of getting my mom’s pots and pans and banging on them at midnight.  One year, I put a dent in one of the pots with my banging.  I felt so bad about it.  But my mom never said anything about it.

As a teenager, New Year’s Eve was a very special night.  The stake put on a big celebration for the youth.  We usually had a fireside, a dance that lasted until midnight, and then a breakfast.  If New Year’s Eve was on a Saturday night, the order would be reversed.  It was a much-anticipated event.  The youth leaders really put on a party for us.  I had my first kiss after one of these special parties!

I looked forward to and loved holidays as a child.  I continue to love the holidays as an adult.

Family Reunion- Sunday, July 7

 Sunday was pack up and go home day.  We all went to church with Brian and Michelle.  We then took family pictures.  I don't have them edited yet, but I will post a couple of them so I can get this posted.

Brian taught a really good devotional.

Root beer floats were the treat for being good during the picture taking.

Unedited sneak preview of our family pictures:

Thank you for a great reunion, Princes.  Thank you to all for coming.

Family Reunion- Saturday, July 6

 After two big, active days, everyone was tired on Saturday.  

After a beautiful and thought-provoking devotional by Kristen, 

we held our annual talent show.

Brielle and Gabbi sang the youth theme while Brian accompanied them on the guitar.  It was so beautiful.

William has been in "Let's Play Music"  He wrote an amazing song to present at their recital. It was called "The Ultimate Face Off" and represented a battle between a tiger, a dinosaur, and a dragon.  At the end, we all had to guess who won the battle.  He is really talented.

Jacob did a video presentation of our Thanksgiving reunion last year.  It was very well done.

Kenny and Michelle did a skit from Veggie Tales.  It was so funny.

Hannah did a science experiment

Jaron played a piece on the piano.  He is really good.

Samuel showed some of his art work and his tennis racket.  He has discovered a new talent recently.  He is a really good tennis player.

Brielle sang a beautiful song from a musical.  She is so good.

Gabbi showed her amazing duck collection.

We went outside for Lily to show us some of her gymnastics tricks.  She is so flexible.

That evening we played a game and Brian kept score on the white board.  Brielle is a little OCD and to get her goat, he marked one of the cross through bundles of five cross through the wrong way.  The battle ensued as the rest of the evening, Brielle was trying to sneak up and change it.  It was driving her crazy.

Snow cone time!

Lisi, Nathan, Audrey, and Jared arrived that evening.  Jared's family reunion was scheduled at the same time as ours, so their family split in half and half attended each.  The Mackrory reunion was held in Colorado. They left that morning to spend a little time with us. We were so glad when they arrived, and we were all together.  Lisi couldn't wait to show us her talent, a rock collection.  It inspired William and he is now collecting rocks, too.  

Kristen spontaneously asked the kids to line up by age and I think we got some really great pictures.  I don't want to eliminate any of them.
Brielle, Nathan, Gabriella, Caleb, Jacob, Lily, Jaron, Audrey, Hannah, Kenny, Samuel, Gabe, William, Elisabeth

Have you ever seen a better bunch of kids?

That evening, we all went to Nielsen's Frozen Custard for a treat.

That evening, the kids played night games until late.  This is an annual tradition on the last night of the reunion.  In the past, it has been "the fort builders" who have played.  That's my name for the ones in the past that built forts in the mountains: Nathan, Gabbi, Caleb, Jaron, and Jake.  But this year it involved some of the others: Lily, Hannah, Audrey, and Kenny.  I think everyone had fun.  Audrey fell and cut her knee, so that wasn't fun.  But often when I ask the kids what their favorite activity was they will say night games.