Celebrate Good Times, Come on!

There's a Celebration Going On. That's right, all week.  That is one nice thing about a big family if you like to party, there is always something, or someone to celebrate.  This week we had a birthday, an anniversary, a funeral and a wedding in addition to dinners parties, a music festival and the promise of something shiny and new for Paula. 

To start it off right we are celebrating the life of this lively, artistic young woman, Bekie!! She is now 14.

I had a lot of fun that day too, because I got to go and spend hours and hours with my dear cousin Debbie.  She is busy selling off family artwork and we got to discuss the possibility of us acquiring one of her husband's statues that he made a study of on a small scale before doing the life size commission.  Because of the cost of production in bronze, it will be something of an investment for us, but how cool is that.  Here we see several shots of screens with paintings by Rick's Dad who was elected to the illustrator's Hall of Fame. He mainly did book covers, but also a few movie posters. She has more than they can ever hang and is selling off a few to galleries. 

These are some I am considering.

That will be pretty fun, don't you think?

We went through more than 200 pictures, and enjoyed talking about the art, and Rick's time growing up.  Rick's mother was also an artist.

Speaking of original art, the next day I got this painting framed.  We bought it at a flea market in Bolivia.  We rolled it up and brought it home, and lost track of it, yes that was almost 20 years ago.  When we changed out our China cupboard in the dining room in the great cupboard shuffle of 2025, we found it in the bottom of the European one Becca ended up with.  Hurrah!  Definitely something to celebrate.  It took some doing to get it framed as it had creased in the roll.  Dad also had to cut out Masonite to mount the canvas on, and I had to do some pretty serious repairs to the antique frame we used. 

Also, that day I framed this print that my friend Shirley did from a photo of this Halloween Craft from last year.  It just makes me smile to see the two juxtaposed.

Then for the big event of the day.  Dad had wanted to invite the three new empty nester couples in our ward to dinner.  So, this is Dad with the Nicolases.

Next to them are Taylors, then the Fletchers, and last of all the Perrys who have been in the ward for almost two years.  We had curry, and Naan, and a fancy cake from Cosco with ice-cream.  Afterward we played Zilch.  The funny thing is that sister Nicolas' name is Nola, which mean zero, or zilch in Finnish, which is significant because their daughter in-law served with us in Finland.

Then on Wednesday we got to celebrate Emily and Sam's 15th anniversary.  Celebrate good times, oh Yeah!  There's a party going on.

That was the day that Dad had a bonus grandkid siting.  Here Parks watches his Dad, Spencer and his Papa, as they ....

Put up these fabulous shades on the back of their house/patio that faces due west, and is higher than their back door neighbor's house, so there was literally no relief from the afternoon sun.

Being Wednesday, I was off to work but amazingly did not take a single photo.

Thursday morning Dad and I headed out early for an appointment with a surgeon at TOSH, the joint specialty hospital, that Dad said was near where the Cottonwood Hospital used to be, where Darby was treated as a two year old for her broken femur.  Well, he was right about that.  It is the old Cottonwood Hospital.  It is also where I had my carpal tunnel surgery years ago, we just never made the connection.

This is Ellie with her boss, Dr Ferney, who Dad found had a ranking of 4.9 out of 5 with 432 submissions.  We loved him.  My brother Ross is one of those who recommended him to me on FB.

And here is the shiny new thing I will be getting just before Thanksgiving.  Wish me well. 

We celebrated by going out to lunch at the Paradise Buffet.  I got back in time to work a half day at Treasures, but again no photographic proof. 

That evening I found a home for the cute reading niche painting I got at the Art in the Parks show the week before.  I also framed and hung the other two small paintings I got there.

These are both by a Utah Artist, Lynn Bright.  He looks to be about Dad's age and was also born in Logan.  His painting is just below the thermostat here,

And his other painting is just below the light switch here.

On Friday I was at the Grove again.  I moved out a couple of small shelves and added a small hanging rack.  Clothes sell very well at this shop, so I wanted to share the wealth in that department.  Every single piece of clothing I brought in from Julie's estate sold, and its rare to sell every one of anything.  I brought 5 items to hang but have room for at least 5 more. 

That night Dad went to Layton where he participated in an Acapella Festival called Aca.con.  There were 3 different groups and a percussionist or Beat Box performer by the name of Matt Newman.  Are you acquainted with who he is?

Of course I wouldn't have been able to go since it started before I got off work,

But that opened up my schedule to go to my friend Terri Michels' house in Spanish.  I met her at my last garage sale and made arrangements for her to come back for a home tour. She is wearing curlers here because she headed to a dance with a friend immediately after our dinner and house tour. 

She is the little blonde girl here, and the boy on the other side of her oldest sister, Maura, is Delvin, who I hung out with in Highschool.  Maura actually worked with me at Yankee Lunches, where she was carhopping when I came on as a fountain girl.  She ended up marrying our boss, Dennis Leavitt, who was the son of the owners of the store.  I did later make Carhop, which not everyone did, and it was super fun and we got to keep tips.  That's the closest I came to waitressing.  Delvin worked there too, which is how I got to know him.

She made me a lovely, healthy vegetarian dinner.  How adorable is that?  Her house was charming with lots of art groupings everywhere.

She had a singles dance to attend, and here she is all ready to go.  She is my brother Ross' age, in fact she mentioned that after her divorce 10 years ago, she was engaged to Ross' best friend Vaughn Holgreen for a short time.  Such a small word.  Such a bubbly fun girl.

That night Dad got caught behind a fatal accident coming home and didn't get home until midnight, spending double the time he should have on the ride home.

Up early on Saturday to drive to St. George for Wayne Lindsay's funeral.  Wayne and Marge lived in our ward until 6 months ago, when their kids insisted that they move to St. George so the kids could help them out.

We were delighted to meet up with Shari and Scott Lindsay, Scott is Wayne's nephew, they are good friends from Cottonwood Heights.  In fact, when we moved to Orem, Shari told me that we should fit right in.  We loved these two and if Shari had not gotten pregnant with their last child, Anna, we would likely not have Spencer today.  Dad and I had been debating having one more, so when Shari said she was expecting, we decided it would be fun to share the experience.  Yep, Anna was born in June and Spencer was born in July!

Here I am with Daniel.  He was Ben's best friend when they were 6 or 7.  Ben used to call him, 'My best friend', we could not get him to call him Daniel.  "Where are you going Ben?"  "I'm going to my Best Friend's house."  They lived over one street from us.  Emily and Erika were also pretty good friends.  

But we were not the only ward member's who made the drive.  I am sitting next to the Phillips and Kenton is sitting next to his Mom.

Here we see Clair and Raelene Christianson, Ranee Crouch, Carol Lamb Smith, Elaine Christensen and Marie Hatch.  We also saw Stan Haskell.

Here is a picture of their grandchildren and great grandchildren, all in white, which is significant as all of their 6 children spoke and all are living the beliefs they were taught.  The Lindsays are so wonderful, they are awe inspiring. Shari told us that Scott uncle lived in Payson when we moved down here.  We met them, but they were not in our ward, it took 20 years for that to happen, and we learned to love this wonderful couple. 

Here is Wayne as a young man, he was a radiologist at the Payson hospital for 40 years.  After he retired, they started a small family business selling kettle corn at markets and fairs. His was a life worth celebrating.

We got Subway Sandwiches for lunch and stopped at the DI in St. George before heading north.  We managed to get to Grantsville just five minutes after 

this wedding reception started.  Cole Marrott was our young service missionary the second year we were out at Mosida.  He also worked at the Church's meat packing plant in Spanish and we ran across him there a couple of times.  He is a full blooded cowboy.  Notice his leather lapels?  He made them himself and attached them.  We just loved him at Mosida.  He and Dad were the only missionaries willing to get up on top of the shade structures they were building to attach the corrugated metal roofs to the structures with screws.

Audrey, his new wife is a real cow girl. They met doing line dancing, and he will be working out in Rush Valley on her family's ranch.  Some matches are just made in heaven.

How do you love their wedding portrait.  After celebrating with them we ...

headed into Tooele to meet up with Joyce at Cafe Rio.  She'd had a hard week, when her port failed during dialysis on Wednesday and they sent her to St. Marks in SLC.  They replaced the port, but the heart Doctor came in with some disappointing news.  She had hoped to have some stints placed to help with her blood flow, but the doctor, in reevaluating her scans with a second doctor decided there was too much heart damage already for the stints to be helpful.  She is awful discouraged, as she's been so tired since they set her up for dialysis, and was hoping to recover some energy.  On the good side, she was able to sell more than $500 worth of goods at the antique store, as I've been helping her monetize her copper collection.  She said she already know how to spend it. 

Cafe Rio is always a win for me, and it was good to catch up with Joyce.  Being an hour and a half away makes our visits few and far between, though she has been more willing to visit on the phone, since she has fallen ill, so that helps us connect. 

Today in sacrament meeting we got to sing, as members of the choir, Oh My Father to the music for Oh Thou Fount of Every Blessing ... who knew that was even possible.  It was definitely fun.

We had a lot of chances to celebrate, and hope that you had a chance as well.  Life is good and like I picked up in my scripture study this week, it is always better when you focus on the good.  It's hard to do sometimes with all the news of bad or mistaken people doing things that bring sorrow.  But in reality, there is much, much more good going on than bad, and I for one am grateful for that. 

Life Goes On ...

Yes it does, parents give way to their children, who give way to grandchildren to the original parents.  We celebrated 3 of those this week, starting with Kai on Monday.

If you recall from last weeks blog, Cam asked me how she could remember her special day at the Larsen Family reunion.  So, on Monday I made her this little memory book.

This is the last page of the book.  I mailed it as soon as it was done, and she got it on Wednesday.

When Dad went out to hang our pillow cases (Yes, bed washing day) he noticed that one of the supports for the clothes line had rotted away at the cement line.

He got more rope to anchor it until he can figure out to fix the problem. 

Meanwhile I was loading up the new cupboard in the dining room.  Surprisingly it seemed to have more room in the top than the bigger cupboard that would soon be headed to Becca's.

So, I was able to put the brown aesthetic pitchers into the china cabinet, and free this mantel shelf up to place my carved wood collection. 

Then we got the European China Cabinet into the van ...

So that Dad could deliver it, and set it up with Brady's help.

It was also President Nelson's 101st birthday.  Here is a picture of him with his second wife, and his 8 surviving children.  Happy Birthday to a wonderful man, and servant of God.

Meanwhile at home, I found a framed menu that Aunt Cheryl had.  It had signatures on it, but I almost threw it away anyway.  I saved it to reuse the nice frame.  But in looking closely I saw that it was signed by Orrin Hatch, and Mahamad Ali ... how crazy is that.  Cheryl and Craig evidently went to a fund- raising dinner for Orrin during the time that M. A. was in town supporting his campaign, back in September of 1988.  Anyone interested in owning it.  Let me know.

On Tuesday we puttered around the house some more, trying to reclaim the dining room.  I made progress and got things ready to go to the store the next day ... but alas, there is still work to be done.

In the evening we went to Nadine's and saw the last of the 3 episode Hallmark Providence Falls, mini series.  The best part, as always, is visiting with Nadine.

At work on Wednesday Hannah Bibler, as was, came in with her little boy to shop.  She said, "Oh my gosh, I didn't know you worked here, how long have you worked here."  I told her since 1997, which is just crazy and it was before she was born. BTW, with the baseball cap and glasses it took me a minute to recognize her.  

Kathy who has snatched up all the store decor opportunites, (Well, I did leave mine with insufficient protection when I went on a couple of missions) did this great wall.  How fun is that?

Of course, that was also the day that Charley Kirk was assassinated at nearby UVU.   Every customer had something to say, and we listened to sirens on the freeway for much of the day. Kathy got a call from her daughter saying her grandson had been at UVU and heard the gunshot.  He, and everyone, was hustled from campus. We later heard that four of Hannah's step kids were at the rally and two of them fell in the stampede.  Fortunately, there was no lasting physical harm, but what a horrible memory for them all.

At work that day, I found out who I had bought the third business card size art from last week. (It was listed on my venmo account) I looked her up when I got home and found out that a larger original of the painting I bought had been accepted for the church's art show in the spring.  Here she is with it.  It's a painting of her and her husband, and symbolizes the dance, or interaction of righteous couples in supporting each other.  I was so thrilled to hear the back story.

Here's a close up.

And here is her mini that she did from the original.  Soooo fun.

I also found out, when I took the rest of my red transferware to the mall, and researched this plate, that it, and its two compatriots, are almost 200 years old.

I was stunned to find that out, and had to bring them back home.  I mean, they are of an age that Joseph and Brigham might have eaten off them, or ones like them.  BTW the 3 of them were a gift from Joyce back when I was collecting, which is why I held them back in the first place.  

On Thursday the gal here came in.  She is from California but I recognized her.  We lived in the same ward growing up.  The age group that had 16 girls (Patty, Pat, Paula, Debbie, Debbie, Dierdre, Judith, and Carla, who I ran with, also Robin, Connie, Debbie, Debbie, and this gal, Jolane Moulton who ran together in the popular circle, also Kathy, Coralee, and Barbara Terry. And yes, 1/4 of the girls my age were named Debbie.  There were also 4 boys, Barry, Ken, Paul and James.

She didn't recognize me until I told her who I was, and she said she had heard that I was an antique dealer from her sister Cheryl, who I run into occassionally at the DI in Provo.  I helped her get this lovely old soviet cupboard for 100 bucks.  She was delighted.

And since this is absolutely the best picture I've ever seen of life going on, I thought I'd include it.  She is a bride in England during the blitz.

On Thursday I also saw this  display honoring NYC for 9/11.  I thought it was amazing, and the sad thing is, I once own that platter.  Alas ....

At home that night I saw Dad snacking on the Conversation Hearts that my brother Doug gave him the day we picked up the replacement cupboard for the Mall.  Thanks Doug, you made him happy.

Then we celebrated the second birthday of the week, with Alex' birthday that day ... of course we all remember how Brittany didn't want him to be born on 9/11, but he had different ideas.

On Friday when Dad was mowing he found me this lovely mushroom, but since I can't identify them, I dared not eat it.  Dang,

Later I got out my Halloween so I could sell off the excess ... these pictures show the items that made the cut.  Shown here is the witch sign, a battery-operated candle and the banner.

 

Here is the owl, I actually loved so much I bought it new.  The spooky banner is a former craft project.

 3 more wood standing signs, I love and the second hand Bibbity, Bobbity, BOO! sign.

Then off I went to The Grove to display the Halloween items that didn't make the cut.

I was also able to get a trade for my September workday that happens during our cruise time.

I got home in time to make a quick dinner, and then we headed to the Payson Theaters to meet Heidi and Mike Perry to see this movie.  We both actually really liked it.

On Saturday we headed to Salt Lake to attend the Art in the Parks sale at This is the Place Monument park.  Here we are at the entrance.

We ended up buying 6 painting, 2 from each of 3 artists.  The artist that did the round interiors here is one of them.  Her name is Anna Lee Wood, and I didn't realize until I got home that I have bought from her before.

On the way home we stopped to pick up our Indian Food from Davin (Who lives next to the maker) and found that Elias' birthday party was in progress.  Trevor and Nell had brought their younger girls down, and were still there.  Davin and Bri bought me the beautiful flowers I am holding.

This is not all the kids, but here are some of Eli's friends. 

And even though his birthday wasn't until today, I thought I'd put his collage here, as made by Papa.

.

This pink daisy painting that I hung in our room is by Courney Lunt, from whom I have purchased at least three time before.

Here it is in the grouping.

When I got On-Line to check out Anna Lee Wood, who I had been following, I ran across an old post of these paintings ...

and realized that she is the artist I bought these three paintings from.

The one on the top of this grouping in the hallway is also hers.

The close up.

This Payson Temple, plein art painting is also Courtney Lunt's.

This is it in its temple painting grouping in the large guest room.

The last artist of the day was Heather Graham.  I loved this painting she did of Christ, but it was $2500 too rich for my blood, but I loved it.  As it turns out she also did the business card show last week and did a mini of this one.  Guess I didn't see it.  

This morning, I got so see a bit of nature's handiwork.  How beautiful are these clouds, its almost like a polkadot sky.

In Sacrament meeting this morning, a new couple in the ward was speaking.  Dad had already arranged for them to come to dinner on Tuesday, along with three other couples, so it will be fun to get to know them a little before hand. One thing that struck me was a letter she read from one of her sons who was serving a mission in Texas at the time.  I asked for a copy of the letter and thought I'd share it here.  It amazes me that the young people today are often so very, very amazing.  I see it personally as a sign of the times.

"I have learned so much while serving here in Texas.  I have learned that God gives us the strength and opportunities to do the very thing he wants us to do.  I have learned that the natural man wants to look inward during pain, but true healing comes from turning outward, serving others, forgetting yourself.  I have learned that God puts people in our lives for very specific reasons.  I have learned that it is of  eternal importance to learn something from everyone.  I have learned to NEVER EVER judge someone by their outward appearance.  Each is a precious son or daughter of God and He loves them the exact same as you and me. I have learned to see people as Jesus Christ sees them, I need to look for Christlike attributes in them. ... I have learned that God just wants us to be happy."  He ends the letter by quoting the words of the hymn, I Stand All Amazed, a favorite of mine.

and in Primary I look at these young people as they learn and grown, and wonder what amazing things they will do and be in their life times.  

We hope your week was full of the beauties of this world, and that even with the reminders of pure evil in the world that we have had this week, that we can do what the scripture on the board tells us to do as Christ calls us his friends, he tells us to fear not and let our hearts be comforted, to rejoice evermore and in everything give thanks.  This scripture is the words of Christ as his people are being driven out of Jackson Country Missouri in the dead of winter, where some would die of starvations and exposure.

If we look for things to be grateful for, and focus on those things, we will feel the peace that Christ has for each of us, regardless of what is happening around us in these last days.