Expect the Unexpected

Yep, I just quoted 'Dan in Real Life', but that is just the kind of week it was.

To start we are saying happy 2nd birthday to our Johnny boy, a week late, as it was last Sunday, because surprisingly, Dad forgot to post for him.

and here are more pictures of the birthday boy, that Emily sent later.

Monday was full of working around the house.  Dad's is continued work on our spa room downstairs. 

Mine was involved in going through more of Julie's boxes. Washing fabrics and clothes and cleaning hard goods. (I wore one of her dresses to Church today.) I have loved sorting her stuff and thinking about her, and how much I always admired and loved her.  The thing that her possessions seem to bring into view, is that she and I are very, very much alike.  There are so many things she had, that I either have or wanted to have.  Her crafting stuff is great! Her clothes are very much like my clothes, above you see my favorite sweater, and hers, side by side.

Here we are together 24 1/2 years ago at our Mother's funeral.

More of the same on Tuesday for Dad and me, including me taking some of the goods into the mall and spending 6 hours there, before Dad came and got me to go to Heuer's for a box sorting party. They are dealing with Jeff's mom's many, many boxes of papers, pictures, letters and files.  We each did between 2 and 3 boxes before rewarding ourselves with a well vetted Hallmark movie, that we all liked. And yes, there was dinner too.

At work on Wednesday, we had these two Charles Shultz's Peanuts collectors in the store.  I told them, as I usually do, that Charles Shultz's daughter lives in Utah, did they know that?  To this question Missy said, surprisingly, YES!  She is our mother.  How fun is that, Missy's brother is also named Charles, after his grandfather.  

In other surprising news, Dad saw this news item on Sister Lehtinen's page in Finland.  Yep, that's right, the president of Finland is walking down the street and runs into a couple of Mormon missionaries and allows them to do a selfie with him. 

Here's yet another surprising picture, Our Hannah is the one with the mermaid pose, how cool is this!!

Then when I saw this adorable post for Parks, I started scanning back on Brittney's Insta page.

Then I found Van's earliest post, which includes these pictures of Spencer and Ben, it made me so happy that I put them together as a collage.  I just loved getting to review all of our Spence-Brit's kids monthly shots. Doing this made me laugh, as I was going to do a named blend with Spencer and Brit's names, like Beniffer and Brangelina but since theirs came out to be Spit, I decided not to do it.  

I found time this week to hang the painting we had purchased at the 135-show last week.  The one on the far left here is the largest of the 6.

These two by Kristen Tye in the parlor. 

This is my fav, it's of Big Cottonwood Canyon.

This set of three cottage paintings found a home in our garret. 

Here's a cutie, no surprises there.

At work on Thursday, I put out a couple of Julie's collections, like these Giraffes. 

On Friday Dad filled the locks in the basement with cement.  The cement mixer did not fit down the stairs, so Dad had to haul it down by the bucket.  I am getting so excited.

Meanwhile I was washing some of the goodies from Julie's estate.

Looking them up for pricing purposes is an adventure.

But I got to listen to the book I have been waiting for on Libby for four months, while cleaning them and looking them up.  Barb recommended it, and I love it too.  Thanks Barb.

On Saturday morning I went to the Springville Library to find some books at their book sale.  Not a huge haul, but what a lovely building.  I adored being welcomed by this Paper Crane Mobile in the multilevel entry. It reminded me of Spencer and Brit's wedding.

The guy back home was keeping busy ... here is his progressive picture for the week.

Then I had a couple of young women from the ward come and help me put the garden to bed for the winter, McKenna Terry and Victoria Eddie.

Then Dad ran to Spanish Fork for our bi-weekly Indian Food from Dave and Bri's (Davahnna?) neighbor.  He gave Dad this deep-fried tube to try.  It was kind of like a giant bugle, without the seasoning. 

Next it was off to the Grove to add a few Christmas items and take out the Halloween.  The blue pots are from my collection in the family room, as we are trying to downsize a bit. Isn't that unexpected?

A few of the children's dishes from another collection.

And a group of vintage (50's) trees that I got at Aunt Julie's.

Then it was time for these three Utah graduates to go to Trevor and Nell's (Trevanell) to root for BYU as they played at the University of Utah!! Now that was an unexpected game, for sure.

Trevor read us all a book about a former and memorable BYU-Utah meetup. 

He did a fine job!! But in the end, I think the game we witnessed might be even more memorable.

Comfy checking stats during the game.

Here he photobombs our photo.

Eva was not as committed to watching the game as the rest of us, but it was fun to have her around.

Lu and Mom

And Penny really got in her laps, biking 15 miles by the end of the game.  What a woman!

Today we had our Primary program, which was simply amazing.  Our President spent a lot of time on her knees and the result was the most spiritual program I've ever enjoyed.  She had each of the families that have primary kids come up and as a family and give one part and then stand to the side for a few minutes, she did 2 or 3 families at a time, so the parent's helped the kids if they needed it, but for the most part they didn't.  There were families with a mom, a dad and kids, some with a single parent and kids, 2 brothers who are divorced and living at their parent's home with shared custody came up together holding infants, and a couple of toddlers besides.  My favorite is our friend Emily Wright, who came up with her recently divorced sister, and her five children, together.  Families are what they are, and there is love for all.  Of course, the singing was wonderful, as the whole congregation got the words to all the songs in their program, and many sang along.  The chapel was so full of love I thought it would burst.

The picture shows all the kids (including the 9 in our class) in a circle on quilts around a faux, flickering campfire.  I had tears in my eyes through both meetings and had to wipe the spillover several times as well.

And look who tuned up at a Missionary farewell that Trevor went to this morning.  The funny thing is that the Dad of the missionary, a friend of Trevor's, grew up in our Orem ward, after we moved out, he lived in the Dicou's house.  Too many coincidences there to even keep track of.  We're still sure how they know the Ramirez'.

Here he is with Gustavo, who, with his family, is back attending our ward again, which we love.

After church we did both tithing settlement and a ministering accounting for me.  It was a truly spiritual Sabbath.