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At the end of September, I went to the temple to see a friend's daughter receive her endowments.  There were several ward members there including Kimberly Majeske who has been a friend for the past few years.  She is also a skilled pianist.  While waiting in the celestial room, Kimberly told me she had a question for me about a job.  My interest was immediately piqued, and I didn't delay in getting the details. The middle school that her children attend, Millenium Middle School in South Lyon, Michigan, was looking for a studio accompanist for the choir program. Hold. The Phones. Seriously? If I have hoped to have one dream job in my life, a school studio accompanist would be it.  In fact, I had always hoped for a job like this when I had kids at home because it follows school schedules (which means I'm off when the kids are off school) and because it was a chance to spend some time with own kids.  With no kids at home anymore, obviously I couldn't focus on the second pa

As the summer ended, John anxiously waited for the brochure to come from Symposium Medicus for the annual OB/Gyn conference in Grand Cayman.  For reasons unknown, they decided to no longer host that conference in Cayman but instead hosted one in Hawaii.  John thought it was really one half dozen or the other, but I remembered that Hawaii isn't nearly as easy for us to reach as Cayman is.  Nevertheless, he signed up, and I put it on the calendar. Our last experience in Hawaii wasn't the best...although to be fair I don't really remember it at all....which is why it wasn't really the best.  Unbeknownst to me, I was a month away from my first back surgery, the result of a herniated disc.  Being yet undiagnosed but in terrible pain, I was sent on my first trip to Hawaii with a bunch of muscle relaxers and pain medication which led to me not remembering pretty much anything we did there.  I hoped this trip would be different. On August 8, 2023, the historic district of Lahai

For the fifth (?) year now, our family has a fantasy football league.  While the family members have remained consistent, other people come and go (think ex-boyfriends).  This year brought Gordon to our league (he's a newbie to the play), but it also brought his grandfather, Gordon Jolley. Who's that, you say? Gordon Jolley of the Detroit Lions and Seattle Seahawks? The offensive coordinator and offensive line coach for Dixie college for 21 years as well as  the baseball coach for ten? Yep.   Grandpa Jolley has also been inducted into the Utah Sports Hall of Fame. I've tried to get Grandpa to talk about his glory days, but he's pretty tight-lipped about it all.  It was kinda just a job for him--a way to support his family--but after seven years in the NFL, he decided to step away himself because he was moved from being a Tight End to a Tackle...which he didn't like. With Glo currently living with Grandpa Gordon and Grandma Jean, you might think there is a bit of sma

Back when the wedding date was first figured out, and we knew that Glo wanted a private reception afterwards, I worried if there was no public celebration planned so I asked Shannon Bridge, Gordon's mom, if she and Rich would like to host an open house.  She said that she didn't know what that was but that she would do it.  We put it on the announcement. To be honest, I dreaded meeting up with the Bridge family again.  I hadn't had the best of experiences with them to date, and I didn't see much hope for anything changing. I wasn't originally going to attend, but several people told me that I should, so John and I bought tickets to go.  As it turned out, we needed a break--a chance to get away--and Glo and Gordon needed some help so it all worked out perfectly. Gordon was in Phoenix, Glo was in Provo, their wedding gifts were in St. George (at the Bridge home) but needed to be transported down to Phoenix.  This is how it happened: Gordon flew to Provo. We flew to SL

Okay, let's start with the night before ;-) Our home was a flurry of activity.  There was so much happening between the newly-bought steamer and the iron--clothes were being tried on for one last time, making sure all was ready to go.  There were clothes hanging everywhere! I realized that we had quite the schedule we were going to be following in the morning, and I wasn't sure who should take what car to do what so I sat down with a legal pad and drew it all out: Hannah had the earliest appointment at the hair stylist, followed by Glo.  Glo wanted to be able to come back home before we drove to the temple. Somebody needed to pick up the doughnuts from Dom's as well as the flowers for the temple photos.  Thankfully both of these locations were in Ypsilanti.  Unfortunately, it meant that the entire back of one car would be full (with no back seats available). John's Tesla wouldn't make it all over southeast Michigan without a charge so his car was out.  We had Mark&#

When thinking about ALL the details for the wedding, I added "wedding favors" to the list.  Being the gift-givers that we Kennedys are, I wanted the wedding favors to reflect the interests of Glo and Gordon AND be something that people would actually want to take home with them.  Combining those two interests, I thought of books.  Glo and Gordon's favorite books, our family's favorite books, books that I thought people would like to read. There were so many great parts to the wedding, but this was a really FUN part of the planning.  Glo and Gordon came up with a list of books that they like, and we went from there.  Of course we initially thought we would only need 40 books, but as the guest list grew, so did the book list. I started in our own library.  Did we have extra copies of any books?  Sure enough we did ( The Help  being one of them).  Next, Glo and Gordon went to Pioneer Book in Provo, a most excellent used book store, and found about 20 books there. And whi