Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

Eighteen months out.  Eighteen months done.  Seriously, I'm so thankful that my daughters didn't have to serve missions as long as my sons did, or if I can state that better, I wish my sons had only served eighteen months. All of the elders who came out with Glo were sent home at 15 months, and three of the sisters went home when given the option with COVID. Glo's mission has certainly been different from the three before her.  I'd like to say it's because she served in the States, but really it was because she could call   home .  I can't even imagine how different it would have been if the boys and Hannah could've called home other times besides Christmas and Mother's Day.  There was a closeness and a connection to Glo that I wish I had been able to have with the other three. And wildfires.  And COVID.  She certainly had to have some flexibility in how she served. I could hardly wait for her to come home.  As everyone says, Glo ...

Michigan summers will always be linked with mulberries for me.  They usually show up around the 4th of July which makes them perfect for pies and other delicious desserts! This year, our best bearing mulberry bush was cut back to almost nothing, and what was left was unreachable, even by ladder.  There is a bush that grows over the Dexter B2B trail, and the roots sit near the bank of Mill Creek which I think gives the bush the juiciest berries around.  I think the powers-that-be cut it back because it would stain the boardwalk something terrible, but it still was just tragic to me.  We've found other bushes around, but none that has such good berries. This year, I went back to the courthouse in Howell, mostly because the bush is easy to access, and I know exactly where it is.  John likes to tell me where he's found a "good" bush in very vague terms ("it's on the back side of the hospital".....I mean, how am I ever supposed to find that?), but he won...

Growing up, I was definitely not a fan of the Star Wars movies. They just didn't resonate with me the way Harry Potter or Barbie: Swan Lake did :) I always found Luke to be a whiny baby, and Leia was this princess-turned ambassador-turned fighter, but her main role really still seemed to be a love interest. She felt too perfect, and while Harrison Ford was way good-looking, he was kind of mean. The prequels were okay, but that's because Ewan McGregor pretty much carried those movies. I mean, if we're honest, John Williams made all the Star Wars movies what they are. Anyway, recently, I have come to sing a different tune. I love the newest trilogy. I think Rey is just amazing. She learned from a young age to take care of herself, and she's strong, and confident, while also humble as she learns to be a Jedi. She believes in people, and she's kind and caring. She struggles as she tries to learn who she is, and she works to bring Kylo Ren back to the light because she ...

A phrase that have I learned from Glo over the past few years is "crossover".  When there was a Supergirl/Flash "crossover" episode, it meant that Flash would be on Supergirl, and Supergirl would be on Flash...and we would all ugly cry as Grant Gustin sang "Running Home to You" (ugh, to IRIS of all people....) Well this is my crossover post.  I have two blogs at the moment--this one, and our book club blog.  This is definitely a post that could go on the book club blog, but I'm not sure I'll ever put that blog into print, so here it is. A couple of months ago, Rebecca chose "The Scarlet Letter" as our book of the moment.  While reading it, I enjoyed the description of what Hester Prynne did to her scarlet A, a symbol of embarrassment.  She embellished it into something beautiful and jealousy-inducing for all to see.  Nathaniel Hawthorne spoke of the needlepoint work.  I immediately thought of us having a needlepoint activity to go along w...

Every super hero needs an arch enemy to make them a super hero, right?  I mean, if there was no Gotham City, Batman wouldn't need to exist. John's nemesis?  Among other things, poison ivy.  He has had a struggle with it our entire marriage, and the battle between the two has existed even before we met.  There are stories of Hugh burning logs with poison ivy on them at Scout camp, and John needing to be hospitalized (?) because the inflammation went down his wind pipe.  He ran into it other times during his childhood, and I think there's an instance of him feeling like he was going insane, sitting in his hot, not air-conditioned bedroom during the summer, with a fan blowing on him to ease the discomfort. Our first run in with it as a married couple was at our home in Dayton.  Our neighborhood situated the homes on very small lots that backed up to each other.  So at the back of our backyard, we had the backside of the detached garage from the home on th...

I've been driving for 34 years, and I've never been in a car accident.  Yes, someone in a grocery store parking lot in 1990 cut across parking spaces and dinged the front of our Firebird, and yes, someone backed into our car in Germany when they didn't look behind them, but a full-on, scary, I-could've-died accident? No.  In fact, I've always worried what it would be like, and now I know. Rebecca and I were headed to Blocks via Chick-Fil-A so that she could pick up some cute succulents as gifts to take home with her.  Anytime we go into Detroit now, we take M-14 east to 275 South to 94 west.  275 South is known as Southfield Freeway around here, and unbeknownst to me (who doesn't drive it daily like John does), the speed limit drops from 70 (which means 79 to Michiganders) to 55 pretty quickly.  So we were cruising along.  Traffic was heavy like always, but everyone was going 80.  I was in the middle lane of three.  Suddenly, the truck in front ...

"The perfect day."  That's what Rebecca called today....and it's only 2 o'clock in the afternoon ;-) My over-arching goal for my adult life is to have a house with a pool.  I didn't need it any earlier than now, because I wanted it for one reason:  the grandkids. Literally, my happiest memories of being a child are wrapped up in my grandparents and spending my summers in Florida.  Sometimes people talk about the horrendous childhood I had, but I wouldn't give up a moment if it means giving up that time with G-Mother and G-Dad.  They were part of the package that came along with Chuck, as did my religion, so it's all working out in the end. My grandparents lived in Tallahassee, and when I spent my first summer with them in 1976 (at the age of six), they were living in Woodcrest Apartments while their home was being built.  It was in that apartment complex pool that I first learned to swim.  Every summer after that (for ten straight years as they a...

Hi Glo, I have been feeling like I really need to express my thankfulness to Heavenly Father not just in prayers but as a journal/blog entry.   Since 2020 has started our lives have really turned around.  I have to say how grateful I am to Heavenly Father for how things have turned out and one way to do that is to write out how I see the blessings he has given me. So, last year in the fall when I lost my hearing, I was really worried about some very specific things:  would I be able to find a job, would I be able to find a good job, would I be able to pay our bills, would we be able to find a house and mortgage due to the troubles we had selling our old house in Pennsylvania for a big loss, would we be able to pay off the bills we were accruing when I was not getting paid as of September 3, 2019 and when I started a new job.   At the time I had 6 things in the works: I had applied and interviewed and been offered jobs with Geisinger, Pittsburgh and B...

There are few things that I will always remember during this very strange time with COVID-19:  moving into our new house and feeling the weight of that blessing, John working again, having Ethan and Rebecca and the babies here with us for over a month, having Hannah home, and losing weight . Yep, I'm not sure how it started, but one night several of us were sitting in the family room talking, and we just decided that we would join Weight Watchers. I think John might have received an email promotion (buy 6 months, get 3 free), so we joined before the promotion was gone, but we decided to start the following Monday. There is power in numbers.   From the beginning, I've had either Hannah or Ethan and Rebecca home with me, and we have been killing  it, learning about the plan and making it work. Hannah and I originally set a goal to lose seven pounds each before she left in a month.  We lost the seven pounds in the first two weeks.  Next, we set a goal to lose 2...

This.  This right here.  John was blessing the sacrament for us today, and this happened yet again. This picture just mirrors what happened several weeks ago: In fact, Rebecca found BABY preparing and blessing her own sacrament the other day.  And there are so many other pictures like this: It is incredible for me to watch how much our examples are literally watched and mirrored by the babies.  How thankful I am that our babies are surrounded by such good people!