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The Beginning Since I've been home over the Holiday Break, Mommy and I have basically gone everywhere together - to go christmas shopping, grocery shopping, errand running, taking the dogs to the park - we do everything together. So, when Mommy and Beth got together for lunch, naturally I came along too. Of their alphabetical tour of restaurants, I was around for their C restaurant, which Beth chose, and was called Cancun. It was Mexican Food and I have to say, I was disappointed with the server's suggestion of their carnitas for the tacos - I can't tell if the tortillas were what I didn't like or the meat or both. ANYWAY, getting back to the story, over the course of the conversation, Beth was talking about the parties she had hosted and attended over the holiday season and the successes and failures of different parties.  Mommy remembers the reason we came up with the idea of having a party being for me to meet this boy Beth wanted me to meet, I remember it being Beth

This year of scripture study for "Come, Follow Me" has not been the most inspirational.  I appreciate the pioneers and Joseph Smith and what they collectively did to move the work forward, but I have sorely missed reading scriptures about the Savior, whether from the Old or New Testaments, or the Book of Mormon.  Usually I come into the Christmas season feeling well-prepared in my closeness to the Savior, but this year, I most certainly was not feeling that way.  So, I set some goals. 1.  Catch up on the blog.  This probably doesn't have much to do with the Savior, but it's a good goal to have before 2021 ends. 2.  Read "Jesus the Christ" during the month of December. 3.  Read the four gospels. Along with these goals, I want to just do anything I can to bring Jesus back into my life.  And it's funny--with goals like this, opportunities just kind of fall in my lap.  Something as insignificant as signing up to give someone in the Detroit River Branch "

I am pathetically behind in posting the events of my life and our family.  There have been so many moments over the last six months where I have thought, "This will make a great blog post," or, "I really need to write this down on the blog," but sadly, I haven't had the motivation to do so.  I have been consumed with a melancholy and an anxiety that I have never before felt, leading to sleepless nights, weight gain, and just an overwhelming inability to feel happy. I wish I could say it's depression--I wish there was a pill I could take to make it all go away--but I keep getting up each morning with a list of things to do, and I get them all done. I still have a desire to live life, and through the darkest moments, I still find hope, but there is an underlying sadness and worry which don't ever leave my side. I wish there was a solution.  I have spoken with my therapist about my feelings, and she gives me a perspective which shows me that I don't nee

We've known it's coming for years.  We've known Glo would have to play a recital to fulfill the requirements of her music education degree.  After much effort to align schedules, the date was set: Thursday, November 18, 2021. Years ago (five years to be exact), I bought Glo the music for "The Lark Ascending" by Ralph Vaughan Williams.  I think it is one of the  most beautiful pieces in all of violin literature, and I begged her to study it and play it sometime before she graduated.  Well, when she was thinking about her 45 minute recital, and what she would like to include on it, she took the idea of "Lark" to her teacher, and it was approved!  She also took the suggestion from me that she should invite Mark to play on her recital, seeing as she had played on his recital five years earlier, and she and Mark decided to play the same Brahms horn trio from his recital. It was difficult, hosting a recital in a place where we don't have a lot of friends o

Yesterday, I went to the temple for an office worker training session.  The temple is slated to open in a week, and the temple presidency is attempting to get things in order before it opens.  Full disclosure: I do NOT enjoy working in the office which is very strange, because I've spent any working years of my life as a receptionist/secretary/switchboard operator, and I love the job.  The problem this time is that there is no clear explanation of how to do anything in the office--as the office manager said when I first hired on, "You'll pick it up."  I want a binder that has tabs for every procedure that needs to be done with clear instructions which would make sense because we have   so many   different workers.  Another problem is that because we don't have clear instructions, several of the women who have done this for years have their own way of doing things, often contrary to each other, and if and when I stray from what one of them has told me, the other on

Roxy.  The original Aussie.  The puppy we chose from a litter of pups because she was friendly and pretty.    Like Jake, it felt like she would live forever.  15 years old for an Aussie is really  old, but in the end, not even Rox was immortal. When we first moved to PA and were still living in the Residence Inn (waiting for our home to be built), the kids had the idea that we needed a dog.  We were moving to 11 acres, and John was going to be on call a lot.  We took several "which dog is best for you" quizzes online, and every time we received the same result--an Australian Shepherd.  The kids developed a whole presentation for John to convince him that we needed a dog.  In the end, he caved. Back in 2006, dogs were advertised by word of mouth, or in the paper, so I started searching some papers online.  The only Aussie I could find was advertised near Carlisle, a good two hour drive away.  The kids and I loaded up in the van, and with directions from the woman selling the p

At the end of the ward Halloween party on Friday, there was a scream of pain and sadness. This was our three-year old son, Everett. He had been playing with some other kids, most of whom were bigger than him, and had tripped and fallen in the parking lot, hurting his knee. This is NOT an uncommon occurrence. In fact, his knee was fine on Friday because we already had a Band-Aid covering another scrape that also came from a similar experience earlier that week. One of my weaknesses is when things go bad, I tend to want to blame someone for it. Which isn’t a great response when your child has fallen and skinned his knee, because most of the time it’s his own fault. If he would just slow down and not run, none of this would be an issue! So, this frequently leads to a situation where I’m holding a crying three-year old, trying to help clean him up and comfort him, all while fuming and angry/ irritated because of the entire situation. It’s definitely a parenting fail. There are two majo

 Hello, I have felt often that I should write some feelings about things in my life that are important to me.  I was thinking the other day about how many good experiences I have had with running in my life.  Currently my knees both have meniscal tears and while I hope to be able to run a marathon again, I am not sure I will be able to.  I had a blessing by Ethan and Mark about 3 weeks ago and since then I have been able to run every other day without incapacitating pain so I am very thankful and I am trying to keep running but I don't know if my recovery will be permanent or allow me to run a marathon again.  So I though while I am contemplating my running future, I would talk about my running past. When I was in Ypsilanti High School I always though I should do a sport.  I though about the big 3 - football, basketball and baseball.  My baseball career ended in little league between my playing outfield always and missing the occasional ball hit to me and not being able to hit the

A few days ago, a friend of mine from Chelsea Ward, Stephne Hilgendorf, sent me a Marco Polo, asking me if I would go to the temple with her sometime in the next week.  Her father is having double bypass surgery next week and wanted to go to the temple before he entered the hospital, but he ended up needing to stay for five days before his surgery.  So, all of his children decided to go to the temple  for  him.  Stephne was hoping to go to Detroit, but seeing as the temple is closed for one more month for renovations, she looked up Columbus which is also closed.  Indianapolis and Chicago were both available options, and were approximately the same driving distance, but I could only go on Friday, and Chicago had appointments open on that day.   So I told her we could go on Friday.  I tried to talk her into making it an overnight affair for the simple reason that driving to and from Chicago in a day  with Chicago traffic  was going to leave us exhausted, but she wanted to do it in a day.