Celebrating Life and Love!

So, our week started with the great battle of Pikachu and the Dinosaur. I'm pretty sure that Pikachu won, he was definitely more energetic.

We babysat Parks while his Dad went in for a job interview and were rewarded with a nice lunch.

Which then resulted in Mimi fiddling with pictures, for kicks and giggles. 

On Tuesday I worked, having traded away my Thursday.  Dad came by afterwards and we headed to the Ruth to see Fiddler on the Roof.  These three Barbershoppers were there at the same time, but had come to see, not surprisingly, Forever Plaid, the play about a Barbershop Quartet.  I thought it would be fun to have them sing but since there were 3 basses and a baritone, so it didn't work out.

Here are Dad and me.  We have season tickets with just the Heuers this year, and they have gone to Florida for NASCAR racing and Disney World and seeing rockets being launched.  So much fun. 

But Eva was also having fun with a Monkey sitting on her head, though she doesn't look too happy about it.

But she looks pretty happy here.

I worked again on Wednesday.  This gal came in with her colored bead necklace, and when I complimented it, she gave me one.  How nice is she?

After work we met up with Dave and Adi at Chili's in Spanish.

That was a lot of fun.

On Thursday Dad was off to the temple, while I worked on cleaning up in the library and shelving books, before putting away some accumulated craft items in my room of requirement.  I will be doing more in there during the coming weeks. It's gotten to a ridiculous degree of disorganization.

We got the sad news that day that Andy's youngest brother Brian passed away Thursday morning.   It's so hard when someone so young passes, but we know he had been in so much pain as he dealt with his cancer, we have to be grateful that he is beyond that.

On Friday my cousin Debbie came and picked me up on her way to Marysvale, which is two hours south of here. A couple of years ago Dad and I went to Marysvale to stay at the Inn that LaVern and Ron Crumps' daughter Julie owns.  I had no idea at that time that I had a first cousin buried there. Here my artist cousin takes pictures in the Big Rock Candy Mountain area.  We were both fascinated with the multiple-colored stone.

We went down for our cousin Beki Knott's burial.  Beki had lived in Corona California for many years.  Dad and I even stopped there once on our way home from one of our family trips to California. Her Dad, Erling, is my Aunt LaRee's middle child, so we are first cousins.  He married Jesse, who grew up in Marysvale, and was, in the end, buried there.

Their whole family is together again, since Erling and Jesse, and their son were already there.  Beki passed away last month, and my Cousin Mike (Debbie's brother) was in charge of seeing to her burial there.  Beki had her funeral in Covina at the ward there in California.  Mike dedicated the grave as he and his wife live about an hour and a half south of Marysvale. I met Deana last year after Debbie and Mike's Dad, Charles, passed away.  They had a family farewell service at one of Mike's children's homes in Herriman.

Here is Mike, his wife Deana, Debbie and me.

We all went to a place for lunch while they buried her.  It was decorated in Steam Punk, which was surprising, but a lot of fun for me.

Can you see the steam punk decor behind us here?

The pizza was very good.

Then it was back to the cemetery to place flowers.

On the way home Debbie and I stopped in Richfield to visit the DI there, and I found this sweet little Dutch girl who wanted to come home with me.  How perfect is she here with our Danish dishes? She was made in Pasadena, which like Covina is a suburb of LA. So, she's the perfect souvenir from my weekend.  And since I'm headed to Pasadena this weekend to attend the Pasadena City College Flea Market, I might even find some of her sisters while I'm there. Well, one can always hope.

And while I was galivanting around central Utah, Dad was doing his thing in Utah and Salt Lake Counties, delivering singing Valentines with a quartet from his Barbershop Chorus. Here they are with our Ashley.

Here they are singing to Janell's Grandma George.

Darby at her offices.

They sang to Becca at the Capitol Rotunda where she was attending a Real Estate related convention.

A friend took a video, so I got some screen shots from that.

Here they are at a Payson school singing to our Stake President's wife, Cheryl.

Here's our Hannah feeling the love. In all I think Dad and his quartet did like 15 singing Valentines from Payson to the State Capitol in SLC.

Here's his Finnish Happy Valentine's Day Meme.

I've decided to make a Cousin Quest Alphabet Book, so I have started working on the illustrations.

I screen shotted Johnny from a video of him picking up baby Jesus from the floor and putting him back in the nativity scene.  This is what ChatGPT did for me.  Sam titled the video, "I got you Baby Jesus."

Not sure this is what Eleanor what's to be remembered for in the grandkids book.

But Eva might like a little Monkeying around to be her memory, after all she does live in Monkey Town.

This one of Adi with her new cat Diesel, her alternate princess role might be nice though.

Our Saturday or should I say Valentines Day was very low key.  I priced some things to get into the antique stores next week, actually pricing all my back log, of which I am kinda proud.  Dad went to the store for a vegan pizza for dinner, as neither of us was in the mood to fight the crowds at a restaurant on Valentines.  Then we watched the "Love Actually Style" movie, Valentines Day, which we both enjoy. He also bought me sugar-free chocolates.

Today we went to church and found out that we are now members of the Arrowhead 2nd ward.  We had a High Councilman from our ward who spoke and gave a wonderful talk. He shared a recent quote from our Prophet who first quoted President Nelson, "It will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting and constant influence of the Holy Ghost." then President Oaks added "You live in a season where the adversary has become so effective at disguising truth that if don't have the Holy Ghost, you will be deceived."

After church we got home, and I sent the pictures for the blog to Dad's phone so he could set them up to be used on the computer for the blog ... then he headed to Bountiful to meet at his Mission Mom's home for planning the Finnish Missionary Reunion in conjunction with General Conference on April 3rd.  He was gone for five hours.  We ended up snacking for dinner while we watched Follow Him.

And in other news, Darby heard that her offer on this house in Meridian was accepted.  She is five miles west of Brittany and Mike, so that will be good.  Her partner Dallas bought a house in Boise, as he got a job with Micron there.  Fortunately, Darby's company has an office in Boise and she was able to transfer there.  We will all be sad to not see her as often, and I know that grandkids will be very sad not to see her.  Yep, she is the FUN Aunt.

So that was our week, we hope you all made wonderful memories as well.

 

The Greatest Grand Daughters Ever

 

Yes, we have 12 granddaughters, how lucky are we ... On Monday Granddaughter number 7, Charlie celebrated her 13th birthday.  We just happened to spend the weekend with her family in McCall Idaho, which we posted about last week.

Here she is with her 13 balloons.

Opening presents...

and 'fencing' with Alex with her birthday balloons.  One thing we found out about Charlie over the weekend, is that she loves to play games.  We played four games with her, introducing her to 3 new ones.  She is such a good sport, and so fun to play with.

While at Brittany's house we had a chance to watch my cousin Brent's funeral.  I also nabbed pictures that my siblings took while at the funeral.  Here is part of his display table.  He worked at the U stadium in his retirement helping host sporting events.  Such a friendly and fun man.

Here he is as a young man.

In his seniorhood with his wife Dar, who passed 5 years ago, and who is so happy to be reunited.

Bruce, Ross and Doug and their wives were at the funeral, as well as Clark and Jo, who went off to the cemetery before this picture was taken.

Here is my cousin Brenda and her two brothers as she reads the obituary.  Brenda was Brent and Dar's oldest, she is the same age as Ross.  It also happens that Brent lived in a neighboring ward to Dad's, so not surprisingly Brenda worked her whole career at THE STORE, where Dad got his start in the grocery business, so we have known her better than her brothers.

Here's our fancy-dancy set up.

On Tuesday I priced goodies for the shops, ending up at The Grove, where I got so see a new vendor's booth.  She imports much of her stuff from Europe, so not cheap, but a great selection. 

Then I got a message from Trevor saying they were going to be coming to Payson, to borrow items for Penny, my 10th granddaughter's presentation later in the week as Eleanor Roosevelt.

Not long after getting home, we had these amazing visitors. Trevor, Penny and Nell. Lu happened to be there too, but was out of the room at the moment.

Here's Penny in the silver stole I have in my costume closet.

And she presented me with the felted mushroom picture I had commissioned her to do at Christmas time.  I just love it!  Penny is a talented felter, and believe me, I have done some felting myself.  It was seeing a felted gift for her Dad for Christmas. which so impressed with her fine workmanship I knew I'd love this.

I framed it that night, and Dad hung it at the top on the left the next day.

Here's a closer view.

And here she is all ready for her presentation on Thursday.

The week before this week, I babysat for Spencer and Britt.  

And I forgot to share the cute comment that Cam, my 12th granddaughter, made when I came in to take over for the evening. She said "Mimi, you have animals on your sweater, and they are cats, which are of particular interest to me!" I thought that was some pretty big words for a five-year-old.

I worked on Wednesday, and Dad came in and put up some racks for my Ephemera, which has been scattered all over the store.  There were things like old magazines, prints of classic paintings from a subscription service, maps, sheet music, old photos and the like.

This cute couple came in the afternoon, I was talking to the wife for a while, and she mentioned that her husband was a famous sculptor.  It turns out he is Gary Price a well-known LDS sculptor who has had a foundry in Springville, for years, and who has his sculptures all over town.  When I talked to him he said that he had been at BYU with Rick, my cousin Debbie's sculptor husband.  He had not heard that Rick had passed away.

On Wednesday morning I finally got out all my vintage and antique ephemera to make kits to put in the racks Dad put up for me on Wednesday.

I must have been pretty well organized because I also made Runeberg cakes for Finnish Poets Day, named for the premier Finnish Poet, Johan Lundbig Runeberg.  When we lived in Finland we heard the store of his frugal wife, and how she saved all her crumbs from bread and cakes, and cookies over the holiday to make these torts for his birthday.  They are now available on Poet's Day at grocery stores.  I even made them when we lived there.  I super admired such an inventive woman.  They are made with almond flour, the crumbs of course, and rum flavoring.  With a ring of frosting (I used cream cheese) with jam inside the ring. 

I actually made the cake in the morning, then decorated them after work.

And since I was thinking of Valentines, I saw this picture on the Calendar Emily made, and sent an email to Kimberly, my 1st granddaughter to find out how things are going with her since she moved to St. George with her boyfriend. I'll share the news next week when I know.

It was also fun to get all the bright colored, cheerful pictures from Eva, granddaughter number 2, as she had her first week teaching school in the Dominican Republic.

She's loving the littles.

Trevor said, due to their time at Christmas in Mexico the last several years, she really hasn't suffered any culture shock.

I love how she has taken it in stride and has taken advantage of all the good things about the charming island and people.

so fun.

On Friday Dad and I had a chance to take our fifth granddaughter to lunch.  She doesn't have school on Fridays, and both her folks work that day, so it opens things up so we get a chance to spend time with her.  Lucky us.  Did you know she loves vintage band t-shirts.  She said she bought a lot of them at a clearance at her favorite thrift store, UpTown Cheapskate.  I told her about having made all of Trevor's race t-shirts into a quilt, and thought when she gets done wearing them all, it would make a fun memory quilt for her.

A funny thing is that when I was about her age, I stacked soda can empties against my wall forming a pyramid that was 12 feet wide and 8 feet tall ...  all I can say is that 'great minds ....

Then, about 6 weeks ago we saw that this community theater in SLC was doing The Importance of Being Ernest, one of my favorite plays.  We had loved seeing our 3rd granddaughter, Eleanor, playing one of the lead roles, that of Lady Bracknell, last year, and she did it perfectly.  We loved it so much.  I asked her if she'd seen the play performed and she said no, so we thought she'd enjoy it.

We took her to dinner, then headed for the theater, which is in Junior High on 9400 So.  I loved this very Victorian surround.  

Here is Lady Bracknell, in a huff.

One of the two couples in the farse.

The main cast.

Here we see all three of us with the sign.

A picture from Crown Burger. Eleanor was just delightful company.

On Saturday these three girls, Adi (#5), Nenna (#8) and Reagan (#6) all got to go Kitty shopping with Dave.  They finished off the fun with some pizza, so I know it must have been the puurrrrfecct pretties pizza party.

Meanwhile we took Madi, our number 11 granddaughter and her brother Mac to Mc Donalds playplace, for some Mac Magic, and finished off the fun buying toys at Mimi's favorite DI in American Fork.  Papa got in on the fun too!

Then today, we had 6 of our 8 classmates, look at them all with their scriptures.  These kids are just amazing, we worked on memorizing a scripture, Moses 7:18, "And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind and dwelt in righteousness, and there was no poor among them."  We also watched a video about Enoch and how his city was taken up into Heaven.  The kids were just amazed. 

After  church Melia asked me to give her a ride home and told me to tell Trevor he is a donkey.  I guess it's an inside joke from when she was his assistant for a while when he taught singing time here, during our first mission.

This afternoon we had our first book club discussion about the book; Project Hail Mary, which some of the family chose to do as part of a new family book club.  Last year we tried a sisters book club, but it fizzled out. Yeah Ashley for putting the idea forward.  

This one was a great success, as we all liked the book I chose after being strongly encouraged to read Project Hail Mary, by Barb and Robin.  Thanks girls, it was a hit all around.  And it was super fun to hear the insights from our family scientist, and lab manager, Hannah. Zoom makes it so easy to gather, it's a good thing that came out of covid, don't you think?

So that was our week, full of fun with grandkids, mostly Granddaughters.  Its funny when things you've planned over months, end up landing in the same week, giving one an obvious theme for the blog.