True Story

The following narrative is absolutely, 100% true. I remember the events like they happened yesterday. I learned a major life lesson from this and I have tried my hardest to never repeat this misfortunate experience again.

Let’s flash back to the previous century…

Remember the 1900’s?

(Inigo acts like the 1900’s was more like the 1600’s… “Mom, were you really alive in the 1900’s? What was it like back then?”
I always try to respond, “Well, I remember back when dirt was just being created….”)

Let’s not make it sound like it was that long ago. Flash back to the last decade of the 20th century. Specifically fall of 1994.

Max, Buttercup and I were living in Portland, Oregon. Buttercup was a darling little 2 year old.

(Yes, she was a true “Princess.” )

We were incredibly lucky that we lived only 10 minutes away from the Portland Temple and equally lucky that we had a new church house built just up the street from our rented townhouse. That meant that we could actually walk to church! We were so excited!

Our ward boundaries were quite large and we had a fairly young ward. There were many young couples with young children. So many in fact, that there were TWO NURSERIES with about 20 kids each in them.

I felt very lucky to have a lot of friends in that ward. One girl, Margie was a particularly good friend (sadly, we’ve lost touch). I remember one day we went to lunch together, and on the way home it was just the two of us, and we were talking about church callings.

Here is where I made my fatal mistake and learned my life lesson:

I said (out loud): “You know, I think I would be able to accept any calling in the Church, except being a Relief Society Teacher. ESPECIALLY, THE SPIRITUAL LIVING TEACHER!)

(They don’t have that specific calling in Relief Society anymore)

Margie agreed and we shuddered together at the horrific thought that that calling brought to our minds.

Margie dropped me off at my townhouse and I went on with my life. I didn’t think about that conversation again for about 3 weeks. AND THEN IT CAME BACK TO HAUNT ME!!

One day I was at the church. I don’t remember why. It doesn’t matter. I was standing in the meetinghouse library when someone came up to me and said, “Valerie, the bishop would like to speak with you.”

Now I found that interesting. Never in my adult life had I been issued a call from the bishop (I had always served in the Primary) so I wasn’t nervous. Maybe I didn’t realize that the Bishop could actually extend a calling to me.

I went like a lamb to the slaughter.

“Sister Valerie, we’ve discussed this and we’d like to ask you to be an instructor in Relief Society, specifically the Spiritual Living Teacher.”

For the love of….. WHAT!?!?!?

All of a sudden my conversation with Margie came crashing back down on me. How in the world did the Bishop know? Was he hiding in the back seat? Did he pay the Elder’s Quorum to secretly bug her car? Was Margie a secret Bishopric informant?

Nah. It can’t be. surely this was a joke!

But the Bishop’s not laughing.

In fact, he almost looks serious.

My heart jumps out of my chest. Tears fill my eyes. I realize HE IS SERIOUS!!!

My breath starts to come in short, rapid bursts. NOW I am crying.

For the love of everything good in the world, PLEASE DON’T ASK ME TO DO THIS!!!

I will admit, it got ugly. I began to beg. Yes, I groveled. I’m not proud of it, but that’s the way it was. Do you know what I begged for? Instead of a Relief Society calling, I wanted to be the Nursery Leader. It would have been so much easier for me to be in charge of 40 toddlers than to stand in front of a room full of my peers trying to teach them a spiritual lesson.

The bishop was cruel and calloused. My tears did NOTHING to affect him. He was a cold-hearted man. He insisted that it wasn’t HIM that wanted me in this calling, but that Heavenly Father wanted me there. And that he believed that I was exactly what they needed and it was exactly what I needed.

He sent me sobbing out of the door to my home. And believe me, I cried buckets the entire walk home. (I even remember that I was wearing a denim jumper. That’s how vivid this memory is.)

As soon as I got home, I got on the phone and called the only person I could think of that could help me. My mommy.

My body was wracked with sobs. The big gulping kind. My face was red, my nose had swollen up to approximately the size of a grapefruit, my red eyes were now puffy slits in my face.

I remember that my brother, Googenheimer, answered the phone. “Googen (gulp) heimer (gasp), is mom (sob) there?” I remember that I heard him run frantically to get my mom (those were the days when we still were tied to a phone with a cord.)

My mom came rushing to answer my call. I could hear the panic in her voice as she said, “Val, are you okay? Were you in a car wreck?” (Googenheimer, thought that my panic was so severe that surely someone has passed away in a car accident.)

“No, Mom. But I have some equally terrible news.”

“Val… what’s wrong?”

“MOMMY!!! THEY ASKED ME TO TEACH RELIEF SOCIETY!!!”

That pronouncement was met with stunned silence for about 10 seconds. Then, instead of the compassionate sympathy and empathy that I was expecting, I received an earful of laughter.

Oh no!! My mother’s against me too?!?!

She lovingly explained to me that everything would be okay. That the calling really is an inspired calling and that she believed in me. She calmed my sobs down and quieted my hysteria. I still didn’t want the calling, but she made me think that it would actually be okay.

Flash forward a couple weeks to my first lesson.

I was so nervous. I was a wreck. Remember, I had spent all of my married life – all 6 1/2 years of it– teaching Primary or being Primary pianist. I had no idea how to engage the class or how to lead a discussion. My experience was, “Johnny, stop hitting Steve!” and “Marsha, please use a tissue not your finger.” Or, “If you can be quiet and we can finish the lesson, I promise we’ll play a game of hangman!”

Because of this, my first lesson ended 15 minutes early.

(You should have seen the look of panic on the Relief Society President’s face when we looked at the clock and realized what time it was!)

Thankfully, this calling was short-lived. The poor sisters in that ward only had to endure about 3 of my lessons and I moved with my family to the Coast, which is where I began my career calling in the Young Women organization. Whew!

I’m sure the Relief Society wasn’t too sad at my departure.

The preceding has been a true story. It has not been embellished or dramatized in any way.

I tell it for a reason.

I have been able to avoid Relief Society for the past 16 years. I have only had to teach one other lesson, in a Homemaking Class (another program that is gone) and I remember it as being a dismal failure. (I was asked to teach on how to mark scriptures using color codes… It’s a system that still confuses me.) That lesson was at least 8 years ago.

But now, Relief Society has come back to haunt me. Tonight I have been asked to teach a lesson/class for… what do they call it now? It’s not Enrichment, it’s not Homemaking… is it mid week MEETING? I have no idea, but I’ll be teaching one of the classes.

I guess I’ve grown up a little, I didn’t cry when they asked me to teach. But I’m seriously stressed. I can teach kids. I can teach teenagers. But teaching women is seriously scary business!! Thank heavens it’s only one class and one night.

The class is only supposed to be 15 minutes long. It makes me think of my first Spiritual Living lesson… it would be BAD if I ended this one 15 minutes early!!!

Archives

Over the past several days I have been online for HOURS trying to find some of my missing blog posts from my first blog. (Steck has spent more hours than me searching… I really appreciate her help in the Big Blog Recovery of 2011!)

It has been a sweet time, re-reading old posts from long ago. I thought it would be fun to repost an entry from 2006…

March 30, 2006
Little Man

One morning when Inigo was about 18 months old, he toddled over to Max’s tie rack and picked out a tie and wrapped it around his neck. He then toddled back to me and gave me a big old sweet, sloppy kiss. Open mouthed of course, as only sweet babies do at that age.

I didn’t quite know what he was up to, so I just watched him. After that kiss, he walked to the back door and asked to go outside. It was then that I realized that he was mimicking what his father does each morning when he goes to work.

Fast forward a couple years. Now Inigo is 3 1/2. Every time we drive past the hospital where Max works Inigo says, “Mom, that my work!” to which I reply, “Do you really work there, Inigo?” “Oh yes!” is the emphatic reply.

On a recent day, when Inigo came up to me with concern written all over his face. His reply to my question of what was wrong was that, “Daddy needs me, Mama.” Well, ok. What does he need you for, sweetie? “Daddy needs me help at work.”

It was the end of the day on a weekend, so I thought I would indulge him. After all, he was so earnest and sweet in his pleading. We put on our coats and took the long drive to the hospital (it’s just around the block).

Inigo was so proud to ride the elevator up to the second floor (no stair hopping for this corporate mini-dude), walked into his father’s office and announce, “Daddy, me here to help!”

This is a testament as to the kind of father Max is. With only a slight quizzical look at me he immediately got down on Inigo’s level and asked him why he was here to help. When he heard the reason he jumped into action looking for something that Inigo could do. The man is a genius. He grabbed a single piece of paper and the stapler and put about ten staples in it. Then he handed Inigo a staple remover and asked him if he could take them out for him.

Inigo was thrilled to say the least. He looked at me with a beaming face and said, “See Mama? Me helping Daddy!” Who am I to argue with that kind of ego booster?

I didn’t want to be the intruder in this male bonding moment, so I quickly ran to the cafeteria and bought my corporate mini-dude a mini-ice cream cone to celebrate this moment. This moment that I saw a glimpse of what my sweet little boy could grow up to be. And it’s not bad.

I have submitted an inquiry to the people at MSN asking them if there is any way I can retrieve the year’s worth of posts like this that I am missing. Please keep your fingers crossed that they can help me!

Devastated

As most of you know, this is NOT my first blog. When I originally started blogging it was on an MSN Live Spaces blog. I was there for a long time. About 2 1/2 years.

When I was convinced to move over to Blogger, I came kicking and screaming. I was comfortable with Spaces and had it figured out. But the move was necessary.

My first blog with Blogger had all my vital information out there. All our first names. I didn’t ever fully disclose the name of the town where we live, but I gave enough hints that it was fairly obvious. I’m sure I didn’t hide our last name either.

I became concerned about safety, so I shut down that blog and began writing here, using the movie Princess Bride as the theme. So, this blog is my THIRD personal blog that I have posted on. (I also have my cloud blog and the blog of the community theatre group I’m involved with that I manage.)

However, my first blog was precious to me. It documented all the funny things Inigo said and did when he was just little. And believe me, there were a TON!!! It recorded all of Buttercup’s personal triumphs over the hard things in her life. It was my place to write funnies as well as serious posts. It was a great place to practice my creativity.

A year or so ago, I decided I needed to start printing off those blog posts and I began the arduous task of copying and pasting each entry into Microsoft Word so I could take it to the printer and have it copied and bound.

It was a pretty big task. I wrote a LOT back then. So I decided to print it off a year at a time. It saved money doing it that way as well. This was going to be an expensive task.

I got that first year printed and bound. I loved it. And was ready to start on the second year, but our finances got tight, so I put it off. When Max started his new job in New Florin in January I said to him, “Now that you’ve got a regular pay check I would like to finish printing off my old blog.’ We agreed that it was something I should do.

And then I got busy. I became a single mom. I became an art mom and a music mom. I became a Cub Scout Leader. But all that’s okay because my blog would be there waiting for when I could find the time…

NOT!!!

I received a horrifying message from Steck tonight. She had been reading some of my old blog posts and when she went to look at them tonight, she found out that Live Spaces had turned everything over to another blog host, WordPress and my blog was gone.

ABSOLUTELY IRRETRIEVABLY GONE!!!

MSN failed to notify me… they have my email address… I would have made the transfer to WordPress to protect my memories. Instead, they deleted EVERYTHING on March 16.

Steck and I have spend hours on Google trying to find cached versions of my blog posts. I have been able to find and recover about 6 months worth of entries. That leaves me with a year’s worth that I can’t retrieve. That’s a year’s worth of memories. Of good times. Of laughs. Of hilarious Inigo-isms. (I am SO GRATEFUL that the post detailing his adventure with our Temple Dedication and Inigo’s subsequent meeting with President Monson wasn’t completely deleted! I was able to find it on Google.)

I sent an email to the people at WordPress asking if there is anyway I can retrieve my posts. I can’t find any way to contact the people at MSN. I take that back. I found one place where I can get tech support…. for $38! I don’t think so!

I’m devastated about this. I’m praying that in the morning I’ll have a happy email from someone telling me that all is not lost. That I can have my journal and my memories back.

And I’m going to start transferring my posts from my first blog on Blogger to Word. I can’t have this happen again!

What We Saw

Spring break around here is pretty pathetic. This year we got… sit down for this … Thursday and Friday off.

Sad AND Pathetic.

I’m sure it’s because we have a week and 1/2 off in the fall. It’s called Spud Harvest. I call it Potato Vacation. I’m not sure why the schools close. They say it’s so teenagers can go work in the spuds and help harvest, but I don’t know if enough kids participate to warrant closing the entire district down.

Since we have that huge block of time off in the fall, it means we don’t get anything in the spring. As a mom who doesn’t have a kid working spuds and never had a kid working in the spuds, I’d really prefer having a longer spring break. By spring, we’re tired… and having a few extra days sounds HEAVENLY!!

For our two day break, Inigo and I packed up Max’s new pick-up and drove the 6 hours to New Florin. (My National Park opens to road travel this weekend! We are so excited! That means our 6 hour drive can be cut down to 4!!! Yippee!!)

In a few short months, New Florin is going to be home. I have to accept that and embrace it. I’ve only been there a few times… November (job interview); January and last weekend. I have to say that I’ve seen it at it’s worst. No color. No foliage. No growth. (Plenty of deer and antelope playing though! ♫)

Blah!

So this weekend Max drove me around to teach me that there is beauty all around. And honestly, I think New Florin could be pretty. Pretty in a different way than what I’m used to… but pretty in a desert/sage brush/rocky/desolate sort of way.

I took this on the drive to New Florin. It was cold, snowy, and miserable.

In this town of 5300 people there isn’t a LOT to do. The community pool was closed for maintenance… I can’t think if there is anything else available. Is there a bowling alley in town? Hmm…. I don’t think so.
But there was a park. So we bundled up, more than once, and hung out there while Max was at work.

We had some excitement one day.
This was 3 houses down from Max’s rental.
Inigo was excited to see a member of a S.W.A.T. team.
We still don’t know what was going on.
I told Max he’d better start locking his doors! But I’m pretty sure he hasn’t.

We are excited that there are a couple reservoirs close by, but I don’t ever plan on being crazy enough to take my boat out at 35•!!!

Holy Crud! there are a LOT of deer around there! There was a large herd on the side of the road, and since we were the only car there, I decided I’d stop and talk to them. I felt like I needed to remind them that playing by the highway was dangerous and could lead to a death of one or more of their herd.

They listened! And moved back behind the fence!

Either that, or they thought I had bad breath and ran away!

I thought this was interesting. Max wants us to buy/rent/move out here. It’s a teeny tiny “town” that has a population of about 50 people (10,000 antelope). It’s about 1/2 hour away from New Florin.
We were driving through… well, look at the picture. Flat. Brown. Sage Brush was the only vegetation.

It was UGLY!

Then BOOM!!!

We came upon these huge granite mountains.
It seriously took my breath away. (This was a former entrance road into My National Park.)
But I talked him out of moving to such remote desolation.
Such a place would only serve to enhance my insane tendencies.

I’m excited to live closer to this. It’s named after a predatory animal’s cuspid.
I think I can have fun taking pictures of it. When I’m not in a moving car. When it’s not 35• outside.

I think when I look at it, I can pretend that I’m somewhere in the Alps and I’m looking at the anemic cousin of the Matterhorn.

More deer.
We saw some elk too, but they were far away.
They’re smarter than their cousins. They don’t want to be run over.
We looked for bears.
We looked for moose.
Apparently deer rule this area!

I took this picture of Inigo on the way back to Florin. We were the only car traveling in our direction for about 120 miles (2 hours). It was so nice not having to pass anyone or be passed. I could go whatever speed I wanted.

AND…. I could stop IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD without fear
and take a picture of Inigo next to a particularly tall snow drift.
I know… tall, right?
Well, this wasn’t the tallest one!! We drove past drifts that were taller!!
I’m pretty sure spring is going to hit the mountains in July.

I had to take a picture of my parent’s cabin (the top cabin). We can’t drive up there.
The roads aren’t plowed.
But we want to keep track of the snow levels to know when they’ll be able to move back up there for the summer months.
Maybe I should say “month.”

And that is what we saw! I’m anxious to see more of this when it’s green and growing!

Whatchyoo Lookin’ At?

As you know, I’m the ‘Art Mom’ in Inigo’s second grade class.

HA HA!!!

Seriously, every time I say that I bust a gut laughing, because I ALWAYS have to follow it with “THERE AIN’T NUTHIN’ ARTISTIC ABOUT ME!!!”

Thank heavens for websites like this. They give ‘Art Duds’ like me inspiration and HELP that I desperately need.

The last time we had an art class was on April 1. I thought it was extremely convenient that I found the PERFECT art project for April Fool’s Day!

Seriously, how great is this?

(Inigo and his besty, Bull’s Eye)

(I think it’s okay to post D’s picture because you can’t really see her face!)

This Is Intense Work!!

Inigo and I spent our "Spring Break" (all TWO DAYS of it!) in New Florin with Max. (Again, Buttercup couldn't go with us due to her school schedule. )

WE MISS YOU BUTTERCUP!!!

As per normal, the weather was less than desirable. But we made the most of it.

One of the things Inigo really wanted to do was go to the park and play a game of catch with his dad. Baseball season is starting and he knows he needs to work on his game a bit. So they bundled up and headed for the park.

When I initially started taking pictures of Inigo catching the ball, I was just looking for a fun "action shot." But after I snapped about 8 or so, I realized that Inigo sticks his tongue out, every time the ball comes his way.

It made us laugh pretty hard.

However, he IS getting better at catching, so maybe the tongue thing actually works!

Knock, Knock

Now we've done it....

Inigo and I have gotten ourselves involved with Florin Community Theatre.

I have signed on as a member of the board. My official title is "Marketing Director." I'm not sure really what that entails, but here is what I did: I designed a poster for our upcoming production of "Oliver!" and hung them in every business/restaurant/city building/grocery store/hair cutting store in Florin. I also designed a lot of fliers for school aged children to take home to their parents telling them that we need them to audition for our production. "Oliver!" you know is swarming with children in its cast. We handed out approximately 3,000 fliers to 250 different schools/grades/classes in our county.

Inigo has decided he wants to audition. It doesn't matter that this would be his first stage production and other than a few dance recitals and a skit at Pack Meeting, has no experience on a stage. He wants the good, juicy part.

Not Oliver.

That's boring and a little wimpy.

No, my boy wants to be Dodger. The Artful Dodger to be precise. Dodger is a tough, worldly, scoundral that my boy has identified with. I don't know why...

I bought the "Oliver!" soundtrack on iTunes and burned a CD of it. Inigo puts it in his CD player every night -- on repeat -- and goes to sleep to it. You can hear him in his room, asleep with his eyes half open singing either "Food, glorious food...." or "Consider yourself.... at home...."

Oh!

And I signed on to be the practice pianist for the vocal director. My piano playing skills have declined in recent years -- proof that practicing EVERY DAY is essential -- so I'm working my guts out to bring them back up to where they should be by practicing 2 (or so) hours EVERY DAY!

We're consumed with "Oliver!"



On that note, Inigo has come up with his very own Knock Knock joke. Usually his jokes consist of

"Knock Knock"

"Who's there?"

"World."

"World who?"

"In the world there are a lot of people."


****crickets chirp****

Eh?



So I'm kind of proud of him for coming up with this one

"Knock Knock"

"Who's there?"

"Oliver"

"Oliver who?"

"Oliver the world people are cutting the cheese.


BA HA HA HA!!! (Remember he is 8 and just learned how to arm pit fart!)

These Generals Went To Conference

We were lucky enough to score a few tickets to Saturday afternoon’s session of General Conference. Lucky, because our bishop was only given 3 tickets to hand out and by the time we requested ours, he only had two left. But, he is a good man and found an extra ticket, so Max, Inigo and I made the trek to SLC to experience our first Conference Session. (Sadly, we couldn’t take Buttercup due to her school schedule. I’m hoping we can get tickets again this fall and we’ll take her along with us for that!)

Conference totally rocks!! It was such a blast being there. I think it was almost a sensory overload. There was so much to see, hear and smell.

Since this was our first time to go to General Conference, I thought I’d write down my perceptions/experiences of the afternoon:

First of all, we parked too far away. We thought the parking downtown would be heinous, so we thought we’d park at Trolley Square and ride the train to Temple Square. We left my sister’s house in Orem fairly early... something like 11:30 and drove to Salt Lake. We parked in the free area of Trolley Square and hoofed it over to 4th South where the train stop was. Wouldn’t you know it? The train was just leaving when we got there! If I had been able to run in my lousy shoes, we would have made it, but I couldn’t, so we had to sit 20 long minutes to wait for the next train. It made me glad that we had left Orem that early.

Once we arrived at Temple Square I was amazed at how many people there were… all dressed up and happy. We were warned about hecklers, but I didn’t see many and they weren’t really making a lot of noise. No one was paying any attention to them. If anything, there were more pan handlers there, wearing signs asking for money.

I also thought I’d see a lot of people I know, since Florin becomes a ghost town twice a year during Conference time. I believe 90% of our population migrates south every Conference weekend. But we only ran into T-Man, my cute next-door neighbor, who attended the Saturday morning session.

When we got to the Supernacle (aka Conference Center) we had a little extra time, so we stayed outside and took a couple pictures.

Don’t my boys look nice all dressed up in their suits?

There was a lady to my left who watched us take the pictures and asked us if we wanted a family picture... Max  is goofy (we all know that) and said, “Actually, I’m not with them. I just met them on the street. But if you want to take our picture, that’s okay!”

I think she believed him. The look on her face was hilarious. So I kept it going, “Yeah. He looked nice, so we thought we’d bring him along.”

I think she realized we were kidding... at least she hoped we were ... and took our picture. When she handed the camera back, I said, “Well, it looks like he’s stuck with us now. I’ve got proof that he was here!”

Going into the Conference Center was hilarious! Of course we had to go through security... metal detectors as well as have our purses looked through. I have a fairly small purse and it was packed: my huge wallet, a water bottle, my camera, and my cell phone, as well as various pockets crammed full of lotions, hand sanitizers, lip glosses, etc. The poor security lady who had to search it was laughing as I opened each little pocket to show that I wasn’t bringing in any weapons... the line was backing up behind us.

We arrived just as the choir from BYU-Idaho was sitting down and warming up. Of course, it would have been nice to listen to The Choir – Mormon Tabernacle – but this choir did a GREAT job! (I even recognized a few people in it!)

Soon after, members of the Quorum of the 12 came in and sat down. First in was Boyd K. Packer who came in a wheelchair. You didn’t know he was in a wheelchair? Neither did I!

And did you know he was sitting down in a chair at the pulpit while he was giving his talk? It was very inspiring seeing him act with dignity, while he had to be helped to and from the pulpit. What a great man!

Of course, we all love Elder Bednar... not only was he president of BYU-Idaho for a long time, but he looks very much like my brother-in-law! :)

I love this picture. I love that L. Tom Perry is helping Elder Packer with his microphone. That these men have close relationships with each other is evident.

Here they are... almost ready to start.

Of course Inigo was most excited to see President Monson. We hoped he would look right up at our section, see my red-headed boy and wave, but of course we were too far away. But it was very special for him to see, again, his beloved Prophet.

Inigo made us laugh... after President Monson sat down and after we had settled back into our seats, Inigo said, “Mom, I’ve shaken the prophet’s hand before. And if you’ve shaken it once, you’ve shaken it a thousand times!”

I had to tell him I didn’t think it really worked that way. That each time you shake the Prophet’s hand it’s a very special experience and an experience that needs to be treasured.

“Oh yeah. You’re right. I’m pretty lucky, aren’t I?”

Here are my observations from inside the Supernacle:

• I was amazed how many empty seats there were at the start of the session. Conference had actually started and people were still filing in. People kept coming in clear until the first speaker began. I didn’t know that “Mormon Standard Time” applied to Conference!"
• I was amazed at how noisy it was during the opening prayer. All the doors to the foyers were still open and it was LOUD!!!
• In our section, there were very few people around us who spoke English as their native language. The people right next to me were from Africa. I tried to have a conversation with them, but their English wasn’t good enough. The people behind us were from New Zealand and Fiji, next to Max were Spanish speakers, in front of us were Norwegians. It was a melting pot, but we were all brother’s and sister’s in Zion.
• (Don’t hate me for this) But having that many different nationalities means there were that many different hygiene habits. There were times during the session, when the air would start moving, and body odors totally overcame me.
• I loved actually being there. I really enjoy watching Conference every 6 months, but there’s nothing like being there. My mind didn’t wander. I didn’t get bored. I felt like I was just soaking it in. The two hours zoomed by!
• Who doesn’t love the congregational hymn? We all sing it at home (or the Stake Center) but singing in the Supernacle was AMAZING!!! Raising my voice in song along with 20,000+ other people sent chills down my spine. I will admit, I sang pretty loudly. I may have even cried while doing it. Maybe...
• I thought Inigo would get kind of bored, but we downloaded all the scripture picture books on my iPad and he read the entire Old Testament and started on the New Testament. He quit reading about 1/2 way through and just sat and listened. I’m pretty sure he knew that he was where he was supposed to be.
• Don’t hate me for this either, but I was a little sad that while the choir was singing the closing song, throngs of people stood up and left. I know they thought they’d beat the crowds by leaving early, but were they really missing the crowds? Did they forget what was waiting outside? I just think it’s rude to stand up and walk out before a meeting ends. There! I said it! Don’t hate me.

Once the session ended, we walked back to the train. Of course when it arrived it was standing room only, so we decided that it would be just as easy to walk back to the car. After all, it wasn’t that far away... right?

HA!

We walked from Temple Square to Trolley Square. It was a mere two miles. In bad shoes. Through scary neighborhoods. In scattered rain. In fairly windy conditions.

Bah! Who cares that we walked past a couple guys sitting on their porch smoking weed? Who cares that we walked past several crack houses? We were having fun!

Who cares that I grew a nickel sized blister on the bottom of my calloused, dry foot? WE WERE HAVING FUN!!!

Thanks Cheryl!

Yesterday, I was complaining a bit about having to use HTML coding to give my post a hard return… meaning that if I hadn’t used the coding, there would have been no paragraph breaks visible when I published. It was a pain in the patootie typing everything and every time I hit “enter” I’d have to add < br > .

Darling Cherylcame to my rescue, via a Facebook message.

She had problems with Blogger as well and found a wonderful alternative…. Windows Live Writer.  She sent me the link, I downloaded it and here I am, writing in it. Let’s hope it won’t make my computer blow up!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

In the spirit of trying to figure out a new program, I thought I’d post a couple of pictures from last weekend. We took Inigo and his best friend, Bullseye to a wildlife refuge that is near by. The snow geese are migrating. We had such a great time watching them last year that we thought we should experience it again. Who knows when we’ll have this opportunity again?

Even though we went the same weekend as last year, the geese numbers were down. Way down. The weather was a lot colder too! We were hovering in the mid 40• with a pretty brisk wind blowing. The boys really needed to bundle up.

We took our new-to-us truck that Max bought (if you’re going to live in cowboy country, you have to have a pick-up!). Since we were on dirt roads with no traffic and travelling at a mere 10 mph, we thought it was okay for the boys to sit in the very back. (Don’t hate me! We all remember doing that as kids and it was a blast!)

 

 

Bullseye was just trying to be cute. Believe me when I say he was being 100% silly for this picture!

 

 

 

 

Inigo, on the other hand, has decided that spitting is more important than being cute. (Spitting, burping, under arm farting, etc.)

 

 

 

 

(The vehicle was not moving when these pictures were taken!)

We spent a great couple hours out on this preserve! We saw a wild dog -- Max thought it was a fox, but I think it was too grey and TALL, I personally think it was a wolf – because in my thinking, all wild dogs are wolves now – but most likely it was a coyote. (It was a BIG coyote, though!)

We drove and drove out to the middle of the preserve, trying to find a new exit. At the end of the road, we found it was gated and locked and had to drive back out. While out there, we found the weirdest sight… We were literally in the middle of no where. No houses to be seen. The only road was the road we were on. It was as flat as Nebraska… and sitting there on the side of the road was a mailbox with a broken sign indicating it was a parking area. Huh?

I call it the “Lonely Mailbox”.

The boys just call it “Empty.”

A couple more pictures and we’ll end….

(and I think I’ve figured out this new program! If it publishes the way I want…. I think I owe Cheryl a big plate of cookies! Thanks Cheryl! I think this might work!!)