Kith and Kin That Come and Go

Here's our blast from the past for the week.  Brittany posted this picture of herself as a 2- or 3-year-old.  It's hard to tell, but her face was powdered green.  After we took this Halloween picture it became part of a slide show that we regularly showed to the kids.  Britt however was terrified of this picture of herself and would run from the room when it popped up on the wall.  When it showed up on Facebook  on Britt's page proving she'd been 'Team Elphaba', from the beginning, both Dad and I had a nice chuckle, Thanks Britt that was so fun. 

  Here is my book club Christmas party.

Through a scheduling goof up I ended up with two luncheons on the same day.

The gal with the pink hair is a good customer at Treasures who I invited. 

Dad and I spent the morning doing the rest of the work to get ready for my book club luncheon. We had 11 of us at our 12 days of Christmas party.  That included two guests. Down the left side is Carolyn, a former preschool teacher, next to her is KD who was a college professor, next is Julianna, who is a stockbroker, then Sandy, who is a social worker, and her sister-in-law who is visitng.  Across from her is her daughter Brittany who is a lawyer, then Lillian who is an aid in a handicapped classroom, Stephanie who owns the Redmond Real Salt company, and stores, Ann, who has a degree in Scouting, and who was a Scout Executive before the Church dropped scouting. last of all is Suzanne, who has 10 children, is an artist and gives fairy parties that the whole neighborhood comes to. I've taken my grands in the past.

I used my collected 12 days of Christmas dishes.

Sandy brought the grasshopper pie, that represents the Lords a Leaping.

Here KD shows off a slice.

One of the girls sent me this picture she took of the tree.

Time to head into the house.

Here we open wrapped gifts of books, while playing the white elephant game, the books will be reviewed as opened by the giver and will likely become our reading list for next year.  Ann is keeping track of the books for consideration at the end of the party.

Brittany injured her arm and wrapped up in a shawl to cover the braces she wore. Julianna looks on as Brittany checks her book lists and adds recommendations by other readers.  This book club has been meeting continuously for 26 and a 1/2 years. I joined when we moved to Payson 25 years ago. 

Here I am with Stephanie. we finished up around 4, and everyone headed home.

Dad and I had a few hours to washup the dishes, and get the table set again.

Because that Evening I had a Ministering Sister Plus One Dinner.  The guest list included the gal who ministers to me, my partner, the three ladies that we minister to, and the one lady that Dad and I minister to.  I asked everyone to bring a plus one, and there were 15 of us in all, because Dad thought we should invite the mother-in-law of one of the ladies, who lives with her.

The first course was French onion soup with a cucumber tree stuck into the cheese crouton, with a Christmas salad on the side.

Then we had stuffed mushrooms with broccoli on the side.

On Tuesday we had a professional real estate photographer come and take pictures of our house.  Dad has done so much work on the house, and now he is getting into posting pictures of the house and projects that he has done on line.  This is a picture of the entry with a wide angle lense. 

As we were getting ready for him to come, I found this painting under the tree that had been placed there by a sister I minister who had been at the luncheon the night before and loved it. 

Trevor and Nell had given us these wonderful red sweaters for Christmas, and we both wore ours on Tuesday.

On Wednesday I worked, and this customer pointed out that he, I and another customer all were wearing red glasses.  I thought that was interesting.

Then after a day at the antique mall, Dad stopped by and we headed to Salt Lake to meet Clark Sevy and his wife, Kimberly for dinner.

Meanwhile Trevor and Nell went to Nina's viewing.  Here they are with Nina's surviving children, and Bruce's son Jon and his wife Natalie.

Then on Friday morning these folks stopped by to get a compressor out of Trevor's truck. It was super fun for me to see them as they head out. 

There's Scott smunched in the back.

This man is a Spanish translator that helps facilitate their project.

Theres the whole rig.

Later my friend Sharon stopped by with her sister for a house tour.  She saw this frame I had hanging in the entry hall, mainly to keep it from being broken, as it was headed to the antique mall.  Sharon loves frames and asked how much ... so here she goes off with her new frame. It was super fun to show her the house, mainly because she is interested in original art, and asked about all the pieces in our collection.  That was a first. 

After they left, Dad and I headed to Salt Lake for Aunt Nina's funeral. Here are Brittany and Andrew, who are the same age, each with a daughter by their side.

Here is our nephew Jason, Nina and Emory's second child, who amazingly is 50, and his cute Vietnamese girlfriend, Linh who is in the US getting some kind of scientific degree.

And here I am with all my surviving Sisters-in-law, JoLyn (Clark), Shirley (Doug), Dianne (Bruce), and Julie (Ross).

These two are Erik's oldest daughters, who have professional voice training, and who sounded great when they sang, 'Somewhere over the rainbow'.

Here is Bruce's youngest son, Jared and his two children. 

Julie, Ross, me, Scott, Becca, Brittany, Charley, Bruce (Dianne is still inside), two of Phil's daughters, Jo and Clark with Doug behind, (Shirley was inside still) then Andrew's daughter, and Andrew, Jared with his son and baby daughter, and Darby.

Here I am with Sarah, and my brother Ross behind.

Clark and Jo headed home before the cemetery, so I say goodbye.

Here come Bruce and Dianne with their matching canes at the cemetery. She has had arthritis issues for years, and he is still recovering from his bout with sepsis last summer.

Here is most of Nina's immediate family.

Her surviving children, Eric, Mindy, Sarah and Jason.

With their other family members.

He are the cousins, grand children and great grandchildren of Norma and Rudy. Charley, Brittany, Becca, Darby, Sarah, Mindy, Jason, Phile, and his two daughters, Jared and his son and baby daughter.

And of course there's the beloved baby thief, he's entertaining Jared's daughter, Marigold.

Here's a picture of Emory and Nina with their first, Jeff. They are all in heaven together now.

The saddest thing is that Scott Douglass had flown in that morning to meet up with his brother Todd to finish up Julie's estate settlement, and he could have been at the funeral, if he had known, darn it.  He did say that he does plan to travel out this way often after he retires, since he is the legal guardian for Todd's daughter Alissa, who I believe is around 20, who lives here.

On Friday afternoon Spencer flew in to celebrate Christmas with Brit's family in Cody.  Here are the kids on their 17 hour flight from India to New Jersey where they had a five-hour layover.  They really orchestrated the kids schedules well, so that they started out by sleeping the first 8 or 9 hours.  They arrived on Friday at 3 pm and met up with Brit who had flown in from DC on Wednesday.

Here the kids shout for joy because they get to go to Cosco, though I think it was in support of their Dad.

Then those who'd been at the funeral found out that Spencer and Brit would be at Becca's that evening.

We all had fun watching SNL skits.

Charley got to open a gift from the gift exchange.

and so did Cambell, who got a darling play makeup set that she adored.

Here's Dad with the out of towners.

Then on Saturday the four of them drove to Cody where they were reunited with Parks, who had flown there with his Grandpa Peter earlier in the week, after Peter had spent two weeks in DC watching him while Brit worked on her program. 

 The good news is that she passed her language test (Chinese) which was the last hurdle in joining USAID along with Spencer.  Her contract starts in May, but she was happy to get a temporary assignment that lasts until then.

Saturday our darling Kimberly turned 26.

That night Dad and I went to see The Best Christmas Pageant Ever with Heidi and Mike Perry from our ward. 

Here we are by the poster.

I went into work on Saturday, and found out this wonderful Scandinavian cupboard had been marked down, and I missed it.  Dang ... though it's not like a need another, but this gal bought it for her Scandinavian decorated home.

Here she loads it was another customer, who she just met.  I also helped them get it out to the car.

After working a couple of hours at the grove I junked my was home and found this cupboard at the DI in AF for $40.  I was very hard not to buy, as its painted in the Scandinavian manner, but it is not old, and the decorative painting was done in 2022.  Also, I plan to paint up at least one of the cupboards in our family room, but both of them are antique, and I did not have room for a third.  Before I left outdoor-ish display area, another gal had decided to buy it. Such a deal.

I stopped in Spanish to pick up our Indian food, and since Dave and Bri are next door, I decided to drop by for some hugs.  While there they showed me this amazing collection of German goodies they'd been gifted by Bri's mom and stepdad, Lisa and Rupert.  It was amazing. 

Today was lovely as we had a nice Christmas Program at church.  I gave the opening prayer, and there were two musical numbers, including the Primary, where 10 of our 11 class members sang. 

This afternoon we also had Lillian, our basement renter, come up for dinner, as is her birthday, but she had no plans until Tuesday with her boys.

So that was our week, two big parties, a family gathering and two outings with friends.  Trevor's family left for an adventure in Mexico and Spencer's family came back from adventures in India and Washington DC.  Of course, the most memorable event of the week was saying goodbye to Nina, as she rejoins her adored husband and son.