Dear Children,
Wow, what a weekend we have had! Yesterday the temperatures were in the 80’s; it felt like real summer weather. It was so nice. Dad and I drove out to Blue Lake Park to scope it out for the triathlon next Saturday. We also wanted to test out our wet suits in open water and see what it was like to swim without poll lane lines! What a perfect day to test them out! Blue Lake Park is so nice: lots of walking trails, picnic tables, covered shelters, fountains and the lake. It was very crowded with lots of family and community gatherings.
Luckily, the clinic that we had wanted to take was still going on so we got come tips about putting on our wet suits from one of the wet suit manufacturer’s representatives. Good thing since the guy at the store told us to get our wet suits wet before putting them on and that is NOT the case! We swam quite a bit in the cold and kind of murky water. Although it took some getting used to, we came away knowing that we CAN DO IT! After pulling our wet suits off, we sat on the grassy bank and let the sun warm our skin. I love that feeling. The best part was just sitting there to relax. Dad and I both commented how good that felt and that we needed to schedule in “relax time” into our lives since it just won’t happen. Both of us seem to have endless work, well, everyone does actually. We just need to get better at replenishing ourselves.
We jogged-walked for some time afterwards to get the feeling of what it would be like to keep our swimming suits on for the other parts or the triathlon. Even when we came home, we got on our bikes to get the full experience. Now we know what to expect.
Even after all of that, when I got ready to do my Saturday evening errands, Dad decided to head downtown and join up with the Starlite Parade 5K! He did it; he actually added that to his day. There were over 4000 runners this years and probably many more spectators due to the beautiful weather that we were having.
Nate is coming for the weekend. He has meetings for Zappos and Amazon in Seattle so he will get here on Friday and do the triathlon with us. Well, he won’t be WITH us since he signed up for the longer swim. Katie is probably looking forward to a food cart companion with him in town! I did buy some Groupons for food carts about a month ago knowing I would have to wait a couple of months before tasting much of anything from a food cart.
It was fun to talk with Sunhee this week. She turned 10 years old! She was in the middle of a “Spa Birthday Party” at her home with a couple of her friends. She is so sweet. She sounded just as excited to talk with us even though she was playing with her friends; it makes us feel so good. For her birthday, she is coming up to Beaverton towards the end of June for a weekend to go see the theater performance of Mary Poppins. We are looking forward to that. Grandma Maldonado and Katie are coming along also. Sunhee is playing softball this spring so we will try and get to a game.
We were able to do some family sealings at the temple this week. I didn’t know I still had some of the cards in my temple bag. Some of the names were even Spanish names so they have been waiting a long time for me to get around to that sealing (I was pregnant with Morty when I started doing the temple work for those names)! A couple od the names were from the Patterson family side. I like doing the work when I can remember the great feeling I felt when I found a relative’s name in my research. I would like to get back to that someday. I did learn how to do indexing this week. It is pretty fun. One of the Whisenant boys in our ward is organizing that as an Eagle scout project.
On Memorial Day Heidi and Bill’s family took Grandma Bitter with them to visit Jack’s grave. The Payne family was there to visit Grandpa Payne’s gravesite so the Payne family invited them to gather afterwards for Thai food. The Payne families were kind enough to tell Heidi and Bill that they would like to help them get a headstone for Jack’s grave. Uncle Jerry was able to get Grandpa Bitter’s headstone inspiration corrected and took Grandma Bitter up there to see it. She said everything looked beautiful.
We are caretakers for Miss Kitty this week. Grandma Maldonado is in California visiting with Aunt Denise and her family. She was anxious to get down there to see Asteria Alice, Wiley and Michelle’s new baby born April 22. I was lucky enough to see her after I returned from Lake Tahoe. We arrive back in Antioch late from our trip to Tahoe for Allison’s wedding and I was leaving at four the next morning so I was so happy that Michelle and Wiley brought her over to Denise’s so we could see her. She is so darling and SO alert. She holds her head up like an older baby. She started rolling over when she was only three weeks old. She loves doing it and it doesn’t take much encouragement!
We visited with Scott this morning. He is feeling well and still working on his running although, it sounds like he is still recuperating from his marathon. He is a great example of doing what he is able with his limitations. He also decided after the Japan tsunami to start saving water in his cell, which he has been successful doing. He said that they have a sand volleyball pit so he has joined in with some of that.
I have been playing volleyball every Tuesday night after 9:00 with some other ladies in the ward. There are some great volleyball players in our ward; I am about the worse. I have the bruises each week to prove it. But this week, I have non so maybe my body s getting used to it! Alina’s volleyball went undefeated this season. It was the first time Alina had played with a volleyball team.
There has been lots of excitement with my SendOutCards business for the past couple of weeks. I have been very happy to be so busy since everyone loves the new Retail Subscription Package that has no upfront fee but allows use of all the bells and whistles of the entire website. It has been a fun couple of weeks!
Dad has been VERY busy with all the referrals we have been getting and especially with the sun starting to shine. He has been busy with lots of bids and probably everyone will be clamoring for their jobs to be done all at the same time; yikes!
Since I was gone on last minute trips so much in May, I bargained with the Primary presidency that I would do all of the May Sharing Times (for which I was in town) plus all of the June Sharing Times. Today, we talked about faith and repentance. The scripture for the month is the Fourth Article of Faith. Since we have stake conference at the end of the month I had to combine two of those principles in one day. That is a lot of doctrine! I talked about the Anti-Nephi-Lehies repenting of being idle, stealing and killing people. I showed the children the picture of them burying their swords as proof that they never wanted to kill again. So I gave each of the children a paper sword and had them write down on it something of which they could repent and promise to not do anymore. Then we buried our swords outside (hope they remember what they wrote down; HA!). I did that before when I was in Primary and the children seemed to understand the concept.
Good news: We got a little bit of our garden in this week. Woohoo! Have a great week ahead. Work hard but play hard also. I love you, Love, Mom
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