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.
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