I am going to try and do this quickly as this evening we travel to Las Vegas. I don’t want to start my vacation behind on updates but I haven’t been successful getting much sleep with all that I wanted to accomplish before traveling so writing something that makes sense takes a great deal of effort these days.
Early last year I bought all the supplies for several homemade gifts that I wanted to make for the coming Christmas. My idea was to do them in the winter when there was less to do. My winter and spring free time was spent going through training disks to upgrade my skill on QuickBooks and Excel so I could get a job. The job that I thought I had disappeared when Ivan left on his mission. His office won’t respond and now I just learned that my frien
d who is an accountant (that they wanted to hire) that that they do not need her this winter so they must be much slower these days; makes sense.Consequently, I had to cram all my winter projects into the fall which didn’t work too well. I look forward to a more reasonable schedule when Adam comes and we have an earlier bedtime routine! He comes two days after we return from Utah so he will be a huge help getting things ready for Christmas.
Dad has been a huge help to me these last couple of weeks during my Christmas gift-cram. He is turning into a great house husband: doing the laundry, helping fix the meals, etc. He also learned a couple of steps in one of our Christmas gifts which was very helpful. I know that he would rather be working but I cou
ld really enjoy getting used to his help if we just didn’t have the financial worry!We received more pictures of Morty with Shaw and Aubrey’s boys. He was up there on Aubrey’s birthday to go to a Blazer-Warrior basketball game. Aubrey is a good sport. Morty was there on their anniversary for a sports game of some sort and then back on her birthday. They looked like they were having lots of fun. Morty is always good to send me pictures. Some times I have to look closely to figure out just what location he is for a particular games. He already has several Blazer games on his calendar so that is nice since it brings him north!
Adrianne was here since I last wrote; it was another whirlwind couple of days home. In fact, her plane was much delayed on Friday morning and as they finally announced that they would have to get a new plane after over an hour of wondering if they could take off, she sat there thinking, “There goes my 48 hours in Beaverton!” She was here for Paige’s wedding and to visit the cemetery for Mrs. Gueck. I had fun with
her helping me with the flowers for Paige’s wedding and decorating the cupcakes. She had fun also I think especially since she could vivist with her old Laurel advisor, Angie Bleazard, who had some up form California to help with the flowers alos. It is a good thing that Carol had two helpers there (Eileen was in Atlanta since Stephanie had her baby). Carol was having some weird feeling with her heart so we convinced her to run over to her doctor’s office for a quick check. That quick check kept her away for the entire flower project. They had to put her to sleep to shock her heart back into regular rhythm! She was out for the day so it was nice to have extra hands there with Adrianne being so willing. I took a picture of Adrianne with the bridal bouquet since she liked it so much. It was a simple flower project thank goodness. This bouquet had freesia in it which is a beautiful and fun flower with which to work but it smells INCREDIBLE! I thought of Katie the whole time as I smelled that beautiful fragrance; she is the one who introduced me to freesia.
I had already volunteered to help with the cupcakes so my helping with the flowers only came about since Eileen had to go to Atlanta (so I was helping Carol). Besides, when I found out Angie was coming to help, I thought that would be fun to have a day with her.
On Saturday morning we were back at the church frosting the cupcakes. Thank goodness Grandma said she would help me also because the person assigned to take the flowers to the temple forgot so Adrianne had to stop helping me and run the flowers to someone else to take. Adrianne spent the afternoon with her friends from the barn and then returned for the reception later. And then early Sunday morning, Adrianne left to go back. It was the only flight she could find to use her award voucher so that she could even come out. I hope Paige was grateful!
Adrianne didn’t have any wiggle room in being away from school. She just added another interest to her life; horse therapy. Well, she probably has been interested in that before but now she has an avenue to learn it more. She volunteers at a horse barn I think in Springville with works with children, mostly those with the disorder called RAD, Reactive Attention
Disorder. Mostly children who have been raised in their very early years by Meth parents or in other county’s orphanages have this disorder. Anyway, one of few therapies that seems to be working for this disorder is riding horses. One of the reasons that it helps is because of having to use both the left and right side of the brain simultaneously while riding. It is quite interesting. She has some websites to go to if you want to learn more.Speaking of cupcakes, I made the most darling turkey cupcakes for my first SendOutCards party here. Here is a picture but it is blurry since someone had to email it to me and they don’t have the skills that Morty has (and neither do I). I am bringing supplies to make them on our trip hopefully. My first party was pretty scary since I never do anything like this but it was fun even so. It is a fun product that makes people happy (both the sender and receiver also). Sally Farb couldn’t come so we sent her a card with a picture of the turkey cupcake. We should have added a thought bubble to the turkey saying something silly (there is a whole history about cupcakes and Sally and I) since you can do things like that with the program.
Guess what! Dad got some of the Christmas lights up already. I drove into the driveway late Friday night and had such a thrill to see lights on our home. I love the lights that he does on the front; they are my favorite. He will do the rest with Adam; I think Adam will like that. I love Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays but sometimes I am so rushed with the preparation I miss feeling the excitement and joy (and the peace???). When I saw those lights, I felt it. I would love to concentrate on having that feeling more often.
Speaking of feeling; I heard a great talk in sacrament meeting last week from a new sister in our ward. She was reading from the scripture about us filling the measure of our creation and then she concentrated on the word fill, changing it is feel. I loved the thought; I do need to FEEL the measure (and joy) of the meaning of why I am here instead of just fill the purpose. Does that only make sense to me since I needed to hear that thought?
We are studying Mosiah in institute right now learning that the door to needed daily inspiration can be opened by reading the scriptures. I KNOW that but must be reminded of that often. He also used the scriptures about the admonition to Lehi’s family concerning dwindling in unbelief because they almost didn’t have the scriptures. My teacher warned us that even though we HAVE the scriptures, if we don’t read and use them, we risk swindling in unbelief. We also talked about taking on the name of Christ and honoring our own family names. Another thought fro that class was that the service that we give does not add any more value to us determined by the visibility of that service. And one last thought from that discussion was: the future is spotless, make the most of it with our choices. Wasn’t that a great institute class with all those different principles?
Hey, you know what? If there are any reasons to go out early morning shopping on Black Friday (there is just something thrilling about that whole strategy), I won’t need a coat nor umbrella nor mittens nor scarf. I will be in sunny Las Vegas! Maybe paying state taxes that day will be worth it! With extending our trip in Utah, we are missing Kyre’s birthday on December 4th. We may have to go do something with her after Adam is here. Adam will think that is fun; Klaire loves it when Adam is there to play.
Another bit of exciting news is the Spain trip opportunity that came up from Grandma and Nate. Nate emailed her a killer air flight to Madrid since they had talked many years of going this summer. There was a small window of time to make a decision. They both wanted us to go along, as we had hoped all along in the years of planning, until this kind of work year was upon us. We were just sick about the timing but Nate made a VERY generous gift offer and we decided that the value was too high not to go. And especially to be able to go with one of our children! It made us feel so good that he wanted us along. We made that decision with just hours to spare on the air flight deal and then like wild fire, the word spread to more of his siblings. I kept getting emails of flights arranged by each of them and was so surprised. We just need to find some kind of housing that will be reasonable (I have a few queries out to friends) and transportation to get us around the country since we will try and pack a lifetime dream trip into those days. We are leaving March 26 and returning April 6. I can’t believe it; I am so excited to go back. We all want to go to Miranda del Castanar, the town where Abuela was from but I hope also to get to the town where the Maldonado originated from that isn’t far from Miranda (but I couldn’t go when I was in Spain in college).
We had a very uplifting visit with Scott this week. He is so great at making the most of his surroundings. He finds every opportunity to serve and make his talents available. He has tremendous benefits where he works. They allow him to do special assignments for his branch president in the legal library and treat him with respect for the wonderful and capable person that he really is.
I love you and am so excited to share a bit of time here and there with all of you.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Love, Mom
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