Thanksgiving Blessings

Thanksgiving 2013

It's not yet Thanksgiving Day, but it's Thanksgiving Week, and I want to write this and .losend it on to Seth, to wish him a Happy Thanksgiving and hope he's doing well.  And Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, as well.  We have so.     much to be thankful for this year:  Mark has a job, for one thing (his boss got transferred, and he's meeting the new Regional Director today, along with the Regional Nursing Director; the new boss won a big award for being a great Administrator, so we're hoping that Mark will learn lots from her!);  Hallelujah!!

We're in the lower middle-class squeeze, as it were, but we have enough for our needs, and that is a fantastic blessing!  Especially since Mark likes his job, and the location is sweet. :)

It's beautiful, secluded, and quiet.

We're also in a very nice ward here, which is a blessing, too.

The people here smile at you in a relaxed and friendly way,

and they seem to be happy with their own lives.

Another Hallelujah!

 Leto and Tut are still alive and kicking at 12 years old (at least 12).

Actually, Tut may be 13 years old now.

He's staying with Phillip and Nathan and Andrew now,

where they take shifts attending to his every need, I think.

We'll probably find them all suffocated under a mountain of cat fur someday!

Our family was joined this year by Caitlin Cripe,

the daughter of Ben and Linda, and sister to Josh and Bethany.

She was only 3 lbs. 3 oz., so we are especially thankful that she's home and doing well now.

I got to hold her for the first time at Justin and Tara's wedding!

That was in Utah, where they both work.l

Tara's children join them, and their names are:

Alexandria (the Divine) 

and

Eric (the Bold).

They are a cute, cute family, and we're so happy for them!

 Also, Haley and Dallin, and Hunter and Paige, moved back to Idaho!

They found their dream house near where Kattie lives,

and they are fixing it up and making it a great place for their kids.

Let's see...Megan's ready to start her third semester of RN school (she's in a four-semester program),

and Melinda is in the Pathways college program,

and Ben is studying to be a mortician (he already has the clinical experience),

and Phillip is working at Target (I want!  I want!),

and Seth is away, of course, but studying Spanish and Diesel Mechanics 

and other skills on his own, 

and we look forward to seeing him again this next spring!

Also, his baby Eden made her appearance in the family this year!

She lives in Alaska with her mother, Bre, and family,

and Eden looks just like Seth, with a gorgeous head of curly, bronze-red hair!

 

 

Also, this was the year we had a big Fourth of July reunion with Bonnie and Dennis

and the Ringer cousins!

And Megan and Brooks and family got to come back and stay with us, too!

 

We also lost our great-niece, Hannah Buchanan, this year.  She was only 15 years old, but her example of being loving and giving to others is blessing our lives, and we have grown closer as an extended family.

There's more I want to add, and maybe I'll do a part two later on.  Right now, just know that we really love you.  Take care of each other, and be especially kind to others, every day that you live!   Happy Thanksgiving!!   xoxoxo!!

A Little Update

I'm doing a verbal post this time so it may be garbled but I'll try and straighten it out afterwards. Not much has been happening, which is good. We might go to The Hunger Games tonight and that's exciting.

I'm watching americas next top model. Its on during the daytime on the Oxygen Channel. I just found it! I haven't been out of the apartment for quite some time and I'm really ready to get out.

Leto's really ready for me to be out also because he's been cooped up to. I figured out how to have room for the craft table in here without making it crowded at all so I'm really excited about doing that. I'll have to wait a couple of days till I can buy some large, rectangular baskets to go on rhe bedroom shelves, and there's room for the craft table in there with no problem. That's so exciting for me because I haven't really had any space to do anything so far just watch TV and be on the computer and the telephone.
Mark went to Portland for one day last week for training I didn't go with him because it was just a quick trip but we're going for a couple of days December 2nd and 3rd I think. This time I definitely want to go to the big book store there, and hopefully hook up with Tamathy.

Well we're back from the movie and its the next morning actually about 5 a.m. And it  was really good.  I haven't read that book before so it was interesting to see one of the Hunger Games movies without knowing what was going to happen. There was a line for the movie, and that was really unusual for where we live. I can't remember the last movie we went to see that there was a lot of excitement about.
Leto was acting strange tonight when we got back. He was panting and licking and restless. We're going to order some dog food for his teeth as soon as we can. I think that they're bothering him a lot. He acted like he had an upset stomach last night. Can't deny that he's getting older.
That's about all the news that we have. I've been on Facebook a lot lately and that's been enjoyable. I found it it is a good way to keep in touch with family if you don't overdo the  time you spend on there.
Anyway, hope that you're all well and happy. I'd like to hear from Justin and Tara and see how they're doing. But they're probably just fine. Take care!  We love and miss you all so very much! xoxoxo

PS on Christmas

Please read the post on Christmas again, as I added a couple more memories!

Thoughts of Christmas!

I am more excited, earlier, than I have ever been for Christmas!  I don't know why.  I want gingerbread men and peppermints and wreaths and lights everywhere!  I want every Christmas tradition, like caroling and surprising others with service or food or boxes of toys, to come true.  I really feel the joy of Christ's birth, and I feel that the Christmas season - real Christmas giving and sharing of ourselves, and decorations and singing and Christmas wrappings and stockings and Santa - is all a wonderful way of celebrating it!

My dad always hated Christmas, for the most part.  I think it was the commercialism.  Maybe it was the sharp contrast to his childhood of want (his mother was a waitress and his dad grew vegetables on a truck patch very successfully, but gambled the profits away and gave Dad beatings.  He never had a birthday anything, and he was supposed to wear an eye patch, but his school teacher made fun of it, so he went without and became blind in one eye.  He his his only little toy (I think it was a little car) in the back of his drawer, and one day he discovered that it wasn't there: an older sister had cleaned the drawer out and thrown his toy away (maybe it was rusty and dented).

He said he survived on ketchup sandwiches and developed rickets.  And their house burned down, and he thought all his life that he had done it - we were interviewing Aunt Evelyn, after he passed away, and she just laughed at the notion.  She said it was a bad heater or something like that.  Poor Dad!  The thought had always haunted him.

Anyway, maybe that's why he didn't like most of the Christmas season.

He did like the parts about Christ's birth, though.  He liked to sing O Holy Night in a beautiful Mario Lanza voice (only in front of the family, remember, usually while driving, and in front of Mama Nagy's voice students; she was one of the little old ladies he helped out, and Sandy and I and Dad took voice lessons from her forever!  She was a skiing and opera star in Hungary until her brothers and father were killed in WW II and her family's estates were taken over by the Nazis.  She and her grandson escaped over a bridge at night, with bullets flying around them!)

One of my earliest Christmas memories, when we lived at Harristown, outside of Decatur, was of nothing under the tree and Dad in my parents' bedroom with the door locked.  My mom said that he had stuffed everything in a box and had it in their with him.  He had told her that we weren't having Christmas.  I was really confused.  I know somehow my mom got him to open the door and he brought the box out and we got our presents.  I got one of my all-time favorites, a little barking dog name Fifi, which I always thought of, until this very moment, as "FeeFee."

 we had some fun Christmases too.  I I remember one year when we got the tree from the school when the school was done with it and it was huge it was so fun decorating it and I remember that year I got a case to put things in when I went somewhere and it was round and zipped around the outside and I also got a china doll that my grandma made outfit for and she said to expect it it would break to go ahead and play with it because that's what used to happen with little girls and every year they would get broken in the get a new one for Christmas so since she said that, it was like it had a reverse effect on us: we played with them very carefully and neither one of her china dolls ever got broken except for the foot on mine got broken wwhen I was an adult when one of the kids playing with it but that that's a minor thing we fixed it and she's still in great shape!

It really meant a lot to me to get that china doll from my grandma wakefield!

there was another Christmas time  where we had a big tree and relatives came to our house on Christmas Eve.  I remember we had pork steak or chops, and I ate one that was almost all fat and I loved it, but then it made me feel kind of sick afterwards so I lost some of my enthusiasm for the fat. 

When  Christmas morning came, I remember getting an etch-a-sketch and seeing it under the tree and being super excited about it that was a really fun Christmas!

Usually, though, I experienced stress about Christmas morning, I guess.  I tried to pretend a lack of interest around my dad.

I remember one Christmas Eve night, at 910 No. Water St. in Decatur, when I was nine, I dreamt that I got a baby hippo for Christmas, and I didn't know what to do with it!  I woke up all anxious and I ran downstairs, only to see a screen around the tree and no one in sight.  I knew that a baby hippo was behind that screen, and my nightmare had come true!  Fortunately, my parents showed up with Roger, saying that they'd had to take Roger on his paper route to get him back before we woke up.  And I don't remember what I got; I just know it didn't begin with an H or end with an O!

When I was twelve, at 1040 E. Lincoln St. in Decatur, all of my sibs and I stayed upstairs on Christmas Eve.  On Christmas morning the boys woke us up and we ran downstairs, but the downstairs door was locked!  We got it open, except for the chain, and I heard my dad laughing (for once!) and telling us to wait.  Then I heard tissue paper rustling - they were wrapping our presents!  Finally, we were allowed in.

That was a happy Christmas for me.  I got model horses from Santa Claus and my brothers, plus a little radio all my own!  And a Penny Brite doll and wardrobe with clothes and accessories - so darling, with little drawers and hangers.  (You can still buy them on Ebay, but they're kinda expensive.)  There were tiny accessories, like tiny fake magazines and purses and shoes and all kinds of things.  I love miniatures!

I also got a Monkees album!  I loooooved Davy Jones, after loving Micky Dolenz till he let his curly hair go natural.  I was glued in front of the tv on Monday nights, drooling over Davy.  I wondered if ten years age difference was too much.  I wrote him a letter, which I still have because, fortunately, I never mailed it.   I was going to enclose a pair of  x-ray glasses and a drawing I did of a horse with it, and, in it, I tell him that I Love Him!  Love Him!  Love Him!  And I invite him to come visit us - so much like Megan and Melinda writing to David Bowie and giving him directions to our house in  Perry.  I don't think it was mailed, but they still expected him to jump out of hiding and surprise them at any moment!

When I was fourteen, I was suddenly the only child at home.  Don and Roger were married and Sandy had just married.  It was quite a shock.  Mom and Dad started accusing me of everything, since there was no one else to blame but themselves whenever lights were left on or wet washcloths not hung up properly.  Geez Louise!  I reacted by holing up in my room or going out on our tar and gravel back yard, the roof of The Pop Dock, which we lived on top of, at 240 W. Packard St. in Decatur.   But I didn't go out back in the winter time.  

I couldn't sleep on Christmas Eve after that.  Well, it didn't feel like I did.  And I hated having Mom and Dad watch me open my presents.  It was so awkward, and I felt shy and clumsy; I was never an elegant un-wrapper.  I got some clothes, as I recall.  Mom was working at Montgomery Ward, and I think she got some deals.  I remember a striped burnt orange and gold sweater and 2 skirts in those colors.  I was ungrateful in my heart.  I thought Mom always picked old lady clothes for me, in ugly, drab colors and plain cuts.  I was probably right about that, but it was still ungrateful. 

After I got married, I remember Mom and Dad got us some cans of food storage for Christmas, which I was delighted to get.  And Dad grudgingly liked his radio headphones (after we rushed to the store to get them, when we saw how much he liked Randy's - it was the next day, and we told him that we'd missed his pkg. somehow :)  He wore them after that, as he cleaned the church.  Finally, a brief break in the cloudy winter skies!  

As an adult, I just couldn't feel the Christmas joy the same as other people did.  Well, it was fun opening presents, doing things anonymously, singing carols, telling the real Christmas story, and watching Christmas movies and drinking hot chocolate, but I knew that I was distant from the joy of the season that I saw in many others, and I felt like I was blocked from much of it, somehow.

For some reason, that is miraculously gone this year!  Maybe it's because I wake up happy every day now.  We live in a tiny little space and most of our things are in storage units, here and in IF.  No matter:  The Christmas Kraken has awakened!

Have a wonderful Christmas Season!

xoxoxo

Our trip to Justin's wedding

Its 7:25 a.m. On Friday and we're leaving to go to Justin and Tara's wedding!  We're excited about going, and really excited about seeing the family and the grandkids.   If we look fat you can't blame me because everybody here converts calories in a crazy way.  lol  (Actually, since our trip I've been using child-size porcelain dishes that we got at Ikea.  They help Mark know what my portions need to be!)

(I am listening to the Little Women soundtrack while I go over this.  It is so great on headphones!)

In La Grande, we have a mountain nearby that looks just like Diamond Head and I get glimpses of it and try and get pics, but I'm never fast enough and we're always headed somewhere and are always in traffic.  We'll have to stop and get a good picture sometime. Its very dramatic

We are hitting some major fog on the way and weather might be bad on the way back too, but that's just part of being in November now!

Okay, we've been on the road about one and a half hours and we're still driving through thick fog.  

We're seeing the mountains with snow on top and the fog is clearing, so it's exciting that we're getting close!

Btw,  grapes are great in the car  - food and drink in one.  And we're at Ogden Utah!

We were almost exactly the same place at the same time with Haley and Dallin on the road;  I was on the phone with her and we had turned off to get gas and they passed us as I was talking to her.  Crazy!

----

That was my little verbal post on our trip down.  What was really crazy was that we got to our motel 10 seconds after Dallin and Haley, and that's with us driving 7 1/2 hours from Oregon and them driving 3 1/2 hours from IF, and not talking on the phone till Ogden, or coordinating our times or anything!   Unreal!

Our motel rooms were pretty good for being bargain priced.  They had a swimming pool that the kids got to enjoy, and they had pretty good breakfasts, little refrigerators and microwaves and so on.  We couldn't close the door when my wheelchair was in the bathroom.  I should've had Mark take it out.  Duh!

We got their about 5 p.m., I think, and we went to dinner with our motel-mates (down the hall from us :) at the place that has waiters come by with different meats all the time you're there.  The meat was actually quite good, too.  Then, Mark and I splurged on dessert!  The apple cobbler-type dessert (with ice cream) was wonderful!

The next day, it was so good to see everyone there at Golden Corral for the luncheon.  I love my family!  Justin and Tara seemed happy and relaxed, the kids were having a great time, and the food was really tasty!  

Then we ran to our motel rooms to change for the wedding photos, which Haley was taking an hour before the ceremony.  The reception area of the church was beautifully decorated, and everything was just so.  We only managed to get a couple of photos of everyone, later on, but Haley got some great pictures that you can see on Facebook.  She'll post more of them later on.

No photos, though, were allowed in the chapel during the actual ceremony.

It was very sweet, with lots of advice being given from their bishop.

Someone played Primary music beforehand, and Eric was the bridesmaid and Alexandria the flower girl.  Ben was Justin's best man and one of Tara's friends or relatives was her bridesmaid.

The color was purple, very tastefully done.

The only decoration in the chapel were two bouquets of roses

on either side of the pulpit.

We weren't sure where to sit, but the wheelchair spot was in the first row, so we sat there

Many of the grandkids joined us.

We didn't know that the ceremony was taking place down on the level below the pulpit,

and we were right there on top of them!

Finally, the kids moved back, and Mark was already sitting behind me

so all was well. 

At the end, after Justin kissed the bride, someone yelled out, "Is that all you got?!"  So Justin kissed her again!  It tickled everyone to see the fun.

In the reception area, the bride and groom stood under a pergola covered in white blossoms,

shaking hands forever, it seemed!

Oh, and Mike and Susan (Mark's sister) were there, which really made it nice, I thought.

I really appreciate their coming to the wedding,

and it was so fun for Mark to talk politics with them all through the reception. : )

For the reception they served chicken salad on croissants, I believe, and other food.

It was so nice!

And the guests all got beautiful flower-topped cupcakes, 

while the bride and groom had their own little cake that they cut and fed each other.

Before I get to that, tho, I should mention the first dance.

Justin had compiled the music for the reception,

and he had music for their dance, which was so romantic.

Justin looked so handsome,

and Tara was gorgeous in her beautiful gown and veil!

Her bouquet was made up of large, half-open roses in pastel colors, gathered in tight bunch and wrapped in purple ribbon.

Tara said Justin gave that to her earlier in the day.

Awww...

I'm going to quote Haley's description of the ring ceremony, off her blog, because it's so great:

Probably the cutest part of the whole night was watching Justin be SO so happy with Tara. It seemed like they truly appreciated having found each other, maybe because they weren't super young and kind of naive or taking it for granted. They seemed to glow with genuine love for each other. When they exchanged rings (after the actual wedding ceremony), they both took a minute to say something. Justin read an excerpt from a book that talked about making your spouse feel special every single day, and he said that he has found that in Tara, that she really has made him feel very special every day. She started crying, we all started crying, it was just really sweet.  And Tara said that Justin is the perfect example of applying the Atonement, because he forgives over and over every day and sees the best in her.

Isn't that a cute description?

After they cut the cake, they presented Eric with a pocket watch and told him it was to remind him to always make time for his family.  Then they presented Alexandria with a locket, to remind her to always keep her family close to her heart.

Isn't that the sweetest thing?

Eric's watch has the Tasmanian Devil inside, and Tara said it was because he is one!

The kids seemed delighted with their presents, and they had lots of fun with their cousins,

throughout the reception.

I got to hold baby Caitlin for the first time!  She's such a cute little bundle!

And Paige is walking around, and Bethany has hair!!

I just loved seeing all of them.

 Tara's bridesmaid caught her bouquet and Phillip got her garter.  I didn't see that part, but I don't think their was much competition for either one!  I think a kid gave Phillip the garter, and kids played with the bouquet till there were rose petals everywhere!

Fortunately, the corsages and bouteneirres were made of silk,

so we can keep 'em,  lol!

People decorated the car pretty tastefully, I must say.

They used shaving cream and then put balloons inside.  

We left before Tara came outside because it was getting really late

and there was no sign of things letting up yet.

It looked like they had lots of envelopes,

and Haley said that she has texted Justin and he wrote back

that people have been so generous and are still sending cards.

That's nice, isn't it?

I think they didn't get a bunch of regular presents because

they both had households already set up.

Justin has moved to Tara's house,

which I understand they are selling (probably 'cause it's too little now!).

She said that after Justin brought his things over

it was really full, haha.

I'll bet!

Anyway, we said our goodbyes and went.

Both nights I totally collapsed in bed when we got back to our room.

I'm so glad we were able to stay for two nights and get some rest before heading back home.

We left early the next a.m., because of snow falling in SLC,

but the weather cleared right away.

We had good trips both ways,

and we were so glad to get home!

Nothing like a trip to make you appreciate your own place!

It looked much larger and neater than I had remembered it.

I hope you enjoyed this little travelogue.

Pictures below:

 

And, last but not least, the Boise Temple.

  We love you!

Congratulations to Justin and Tara and Alexandria and Eric!

xoxoxo

xoxoxo