September 21, 2008

Dear Children,

I had a great weekend catching up on some home projects. It feels like I haven’t been home for many weekends. The home is now a step closer to the entryway rock project; the rock man is supposed to come next Monday-let’s cross our fingers! With the weather turning more fall-like these days, a project such as this could get stalled again. Now “all” that is left so things are ready for the rock man is the breaking out of part of the entryway and putting a new footing in for the rock post that will replace the old wood post. Dad had one of the siding workers that he knows come to finish the prep work on the walls on Saturday. Dad said it would have taken him all day had he tried to do it himself. Instead, Dad and I went on a bike ride and stopped at several garage sales to look for canning jar rings for a Christmas project, took Grandma to the airport (she will be visiting Denise’s family, Shawn and Aubrey and some high school friends this week in California), defrosted the freezer, cleaned the garage, replaced the garage light fixture and went to the symphony. That is much better than Dad working on the siding project all day!

I took over on the defrosting the freezer job this year. I love Dad’s way of pushing it out to the edge of the driveway and taking the garden hose to it and then the best part: drying it out with the leaf blower! It is FAST! I can do everything now except getting it out to the edge of the garage. The freezer job had to wait until the YSA took all their hamburgers and hamburger buns out (all 150 of them)! Defrosting the freezer allows me to know what I have and even helped me to know what to fix for the missionaries tonight; I combined several packages of frozen berries from last year to make a cobbler for dessert. I invited the missionaries twice this week since their Sunday dinner fell through at the last minute. And since one of the missionaries said at the Wednesday night dinner that his favorite dinner was sour cream burritos, that is what was served on Sunday. On Wednesday I was dying to try out homemade hot mustard that one of Dad’s clients made for him so I had a stir fry to go along with it.

The symphony on Saturday night was absolutely beautiful. The guest artists were Michael Harrison on piano, Patrick Lamb on horn (oh, I love how he sounds) and Katie Harmon singing. Beautiful piano music is so amazing when backed up by the symphony!!! It was a great night. I am so grateful that Dad enjoys doing things like this.

On Wednesday the swelling on Rebekah’s broken arm was down enough that she was able to go in for more evaluation at Primary Children’s Hospital. She came home with a “hot pick cast”. Her only request to me was, “Tell my cousins that I have a hot pink cast!”

Morty called and he has made arrangements to also come to Utah for the homecoming weekend in October; he will come on our flight from Las Vegas. He is trying to get Shawn and Aubrey to plan their trip to come in a day earlier so they can be together longer. I don’t know if that can be worked out since Aubrey is in charge of a big event on Friday night. As a mother I am just very happy that my children love to be together. Maybe we should make it a tradition to try and get to the BYU homecoming game each year. I know that Dad and I would love to be there. I understand that this year’s game is sold out now.

I had the best start to institute class this year. We will be studying just the Gospel of John; it should be very interesting. I came away from this first class with such a greater appreciation of the Bible; now I am even more anxious to read the book, “Fire in the Bones.” From that book, Elder Ballard, in a talk from the 2007 April General Conference entitled The Miracle of the Bible, quoted from William Tyndale saying, “The nature of God’s word is, that whosoever read it, or hear it reasoned and disputed before him, it will begin immediately to make him every day better and better, till he be grown into a perfect man.” I will enjoy studying John since he had an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ and his purpose was to chronicle the divinity of Christ and the power of Christ’s Atonement.

We had a bit of an unplanned-home-project-urgent-situation the other night that left both Dad and I exhausted. For the first time in many, many years, we had both the front and back lawns aerated and thatched. To save on the costs we opted to rake and haul away the grass after the company was done thatching. Wow! That was a huge job since the grass was so packed. The service man came at the end of the day so Dad and I worked furiously but were still out past dark trying to see what needed to be done by the light of the decks. Mainly, we just beat the rains which was perfect since the lawn definitely need some rejuvenation after all of that.

I am attaching this picture even though it really does not do this tomato justice. I am getting the largest tomatoes from one of my plants this year. And, they are so yummy also. I have made lots of salsa but again this year, many of the jalapenos are not spicy. And thanks to Grandma Bitter, I have cooked lots of batches of green beans (I had given up on them)!

Dad and I were finally back in the Singles Ward on Sunday; it feels like we have been so back and forth this summer. As much as I really do miss sitting in Beaverton First ward, one must admit that it is highly unlikely to hear Professor Dumbledore from Harry Potter and Jack Handy from Saturday Night Live (I had to Google his name to even know why everyone was laughing) quoted in a most interesting and actually, spiritual, sacrament talk on the topic of agency! It was from a new guy, a first year dental student, in the ward who seems very likeable and certainly captured everyone’s attention. He ended his talk with some great thoughts on what he called the enemies of agency: debt, addiction and depression. So true!

“Happiness is a choice” was the theme of our visit with Scott this morning. He is doing well and showed us the brand new jeans that he was pleased to be wearing. He only wears them for choir performances and visiting so he doesn’t need to send to them to the laundry, as he knows that he will never get them back. He received them recently since one of his choir buddies asked if he had better looking clothes for the concert and when he said no and explained other clothing needs that he had been hoping to get, the next week everything he asked for showed up in his laundry bin. The prisoners really do run that prison!

He had a good visit with the Washington County counselor that comes every other week. The counselor said that he appreciated that Scott is prepared to ask for things that he needs. Since the legal dealings that Kyre is going through right now don’t shred a favorable light on Scott many times, Scott has asked for a psychological assessment which has never been done. This may even come through this counselor. Scott learned a couple of weeks ago that his A.C.R.S. score (a score that is assigned to every prisoner that uses age, nature of the crime, behavior in prison and prior history to indicate the risk to offend) is so low, and their work load is so high, that he will rarely see his assigned prison counselor. He has never actually met with his new one and probably won’t unless he is a problem. So, Scott is using this outside counselor for the things that probably wouldn’t get attention in the prison system for quite some time anyway. Scott is very smart and resourceful.

With the anticipation of state ballot initiatives being passed this November that will affect prison population greatly, there has been a lot of moving of prisoners. Scott will lose his cell mate probably by the end of this week. He has a list of possible new cell mates. He will likely move to C Block, the block where all the prisoners have jobs. The cell mate that he is planning to have is a former BYU defensive tackle who played with the New York Giants for a short time, Kelly Hoyer. He is also LDS and has 6 children.

Scott was recently asked to be one of eight prisoners to meet with all the Oregon prison chaplains as they met with the president of the International Prison Association from Sweden. They held a day of training and group orientation which Scott enjoyed and of course, made his contribution. I asked, “And did anyone there say to you that you shouldn’t be in prison?” His reply was that one of the chaplains, after spending some time with him, told him that she felt that they weren’t much different people and that she knew she made mistakes as a mother that might also put her into the prison system.

He also asked Dad to donate any old concrete tools to the Oregon State Penitentiary saying that he was asked if he would like to work on a concrete project there or at least help to plan it. He thought it might feel good to get his hands dirty!

Enjoy these last warm days before the weather completely turns! I love you! Love, Mom