April 22, 2012

Dear Family,

We are enjoying a beautiful weekend here.  The sun has popped out a couple of times this spring, giving us HOPE for better weather to come.  Truly, I hear about Aubrey and Adrianne planting their gardens, even having some blossoms on their plantings, and the thought has NEVER crossed my mind.  Well, I can’t say never, because I have glanced at our garden area longingly.  Dad says that we have three artichoke buds starting.  Growing an artichoke was Adriane’s idea last year and I just tried it.  Since nothing happened with that plant I thought I had done it wrong but maybe, it takes a year before you get the fruit.  We will see!  Working in the garden is very therapeutic.  I think it is because creating is such an important part of our being.

Some quick news items about Adrianne and Blake:  Blake broke his hand playing basketball at the church with friends.  He has received second opinions on what to do to make it heal correctly and is scheduled for surgery this Tuesday.  Because of the bones that were injured, he needs to have pins put in for six weeks and then they are removed; ouch!  He could use some cheerful calls or notes.  He is doing his programming work one handed.

On happier news for the Severson family: Their ducks are laying!  They go out in the little home they built for ducks and retrieve an egg each morning from their layers.  One of the ducks seemed concerned at first that her eggs were leaving the nest so Adrianne put a plastic Easter egg in there and the duck seemed content.  That kind of makes my Mother heart sad to think of the whole egg laying and “mother ducks wondering where their eggs are going” process; I had never really given that a second thought when eating an egg!  They had to sell two of their nosiest ducks to make a neighbor happy.  Gumbo and Taco Bill, their latest two ducks that they purchased, are due for slaughter and barbecue.  They are planning on doing that on Mother’s Day, May 13 this year.  That is nice of them to wait to do the barbeque when we are able to be there. Oddly, eating a pet duck just doesn’t have the same sadness that the whole “eggs being taken from mothers” carries!

On Mother’s Day weekend, we are in Utah for Rebekah’s baptism.  They have changed her baptismal date to Saturday, May 12 at 2:00.  If you have the May 5^th date on your calendar, be sure to change that.  We will be in Utah from Saturday morning until Monday evening that weekend.  We look forward to being there for the baptism and, as you can imagine, Rebekah is of course, excited to be baptized!!!

We spent a fun-filled weekend with Shawn and Aubrey and the boys.  We went last weekend while Aubrey had a large assignment with the annual auction for Gregory’s preschool.  We played with the boys so Aubrey could get things done and helped her with some of the decorating.  We had fun with batting practice, played kickball, played UNO and a funny chicken-egg game and enjoyed a hike in the hills with everyone.  The boys were excited for the hike that ends at a pond.  They went hunting for newts and frogs.  The warm air on the hike in the hills made the surrounding eucalyptus trees fragrance more vibrant.  The smell of eucalyptus is a great childhood memory from the canyon by our Patricia Court home.

We took Flat Stanley with us so he went bike riding with Gregory.  Gregory said that Flat Stanley must be saying, “Wow, this is like a roller coaster ride!” so we put that thought bubble on the postcard with the photo of Flat Stanley using our SendOutCards account. After I loaded the photos, Gregory and Bryson wanted to see them on my computer.  Flat Stanley had gone to work with Dad last week and “helped” do some jack hammer work.  When we sent that post card to Adam’s school I wondered what 12 year olds would even recognized what a jack hammer was.  Well, on my computer screen there was a tiny thumbprint of Flat Stanley on the jack hammer and Gregory immediately saw that and asked, “Is that Flat Stanley on a jack hammer?”  My jaw must have dropped to the floor as I was amazed a five year old even knew what one looked like!

We extended our trip to stay all of Monday instead of going home in the morning s that we could see Gregory and Bryson swim.  We went to the YMCA by their place.  It has a great pool and inviting hot tub!  The most fun part of swimming to me was watching Shawn and Aubrey play in the water.  They know how to work hard and play hard.  It is a joy to see our married children laughing together amid the sometimes overwhelming responsibilities that they have.  I hated to go home.  We cut it close getting to our flight since we waited until the last minute to leave.  We were very lucky that our luggage made it.  When you are standby, there is no luggage guarantee nor luggage delivery.

That same night Morty was sitting in court side seats with Jeremy Luman at a Blazer versus Suns game in Phoenix.  He was on the TV for a bit.  Seems like Morty has that knack!  Hey, Dad and I might be on TV.  I forgot to tell you last newsletter that we got tickets to the Wheel of Fortune Portland taping.  The shows that we watched will be aired next Thursday and Friday, May 3rd and 4^th.  They scanned the audience a few times.  We may show up on the Friday showing since they moved us in between shows.  It was pretty fun and we have Wheel of Fortune light up button souvenirs to prove we were there!  I hope the world doesn’t judge Oregon by one of the VERY inadequate contestants.  I don’t remember which night he was on but it will be obvious.  I mainly was interested in the ticket lottery when my chiropractor said she had been chosen to try out to be a contestant.  That would have been so much fun to see her on it.  They said she wasn’t loud enough.

I ran into Sonja Morton the other evening.  She said that she was Heidi and Scott’s teacher at Cooper Mountain School.  I told her that I wouldn’t know her from that long ago and as I looked closely at her, I realized that she was Shane Morton’s mom.  She said that he lives in the area and is working for some non-profit in Portland after his mortgage business quit doing so well!!!

Relief Society was interesting this week especially since it was a general conference talk, A Time to Prepare, by Elder Ardern who is Jessica Chandler’s father-in-law form New Zealand!  He suggested that we be as quick to kneel as we are quick to text saying, “ I know our greatest happiness comes as we tune in to the Lord (see Alma 37:37) and to those things which bring a lasting reward, rather than mindlessly tuning in to countless hours of status updates, Internet farming, and catapulting angry birds at concrete walls. I urge each of us to take those things which rob us of precious time and determine to be their master, rather than allowing them through their addictive nature to be the master of us.”  He also said that there is no substitute for real friends who can give us hugs and look after our best interest as opposed to cyber friends.

Speaking of real friends and real hugs, an article in the April Ensign, Taking Time to Talk and Listen, brought me to tears as I realized the real expression of feelings that our family neglected to develop in younger years.  Oh, how I wish I could turn back the clock on some things!  As the article spoke of personal communication and stated, “The adversary would love to bind our tongues-anything to prevent us from expressing verbally the feelings of our hearts face to face.  He delights in distance and distraction; he delights in noise; he delights in impersonal communication-anything that would prevent us from the warmth of a voice and the personal feelings that come from conversing eye to eye.”  Oh how I wish we all could communicate our feelings better!

We got to sit outside in the sunshine for part of our visit with Scott on his birthday Saturday afternoon. Plus, his old cellmate brought him over a chocolate milk and pastry from the vending machines in the visitors’ room which was very kind.  Scott said that his block had promised him a burrito birthday party afterwards.  They have figured out a way to create a slow cook oven effect by filing a lined garbage can with hottest water and submerging plastic wrapped foods in the heat.  The ingredients to the burritos sounded rather unappealing but, you know Scott, he loves trying unusual foods; but really, ramen in a burrito???

I hope that you are experiencing some warmer days and fresh smells of spring as we have the past couple of days. 

I love you, Mom

April 9, 2012

Dear Children,

Happy Belated Easter!

Since the last family newsletter, Dad and I have been to Utah to see Rebekah in her school musical, ­­­The Music Man. Her real performance dates were while Scott and Kyre’s family planned to be here over Spring Break so we traveled to Utah to see her in a dress rehearsal (thank you to Katie’s benefits). It was so fun to see Rebekah on stage enjoying herself; the whole play was quite impressive. The students are all very talented and the set and costumes reminded me of Beaverton High Drama performances. I still find myself, almost a month later, hearing the Music Man songs in my head.

While in Utah we were able to visit with Bill’s family, his twin, Jen and her family had come to see the Brady family. While Dad, Bill and Ammer went to some property to shoot guns, Heidi, Jen and I had most of the children and went to tour the Salt Lake Temple area. We went through the Conference Center, the visitor’s center and the temple grounds.

Dad and I lucked out again to be in town for another Smurthwaite reception; their other daughter got married. Their reception was held fairly close to Heidi’ place so that was convenient on our way down to Grandma Bitter’s home for the night.

We went to church at Adrianne and Blake’s ward so I could go to her nursery class. They have it organized very well and on that day, the children were all delightful. The big advantage to being in Adrianne’s class is great snacks. She brings Thrive snacks so they get a well rounded lunch type snack besides the goldfish crackers provided by the Primary.

Sunday afternoon we had a big birthday celebration at Heidi and Bill’s home. We celebrated many of our March birthdays: Dad, Bill, Jen, Adrianne and Rebekah with a delicious chicken dinner and homemade banana cake. Anytime, they invite Adrianne to dinner, their only request is that she brings the rolls. I have seen her make them twice and she just whips them out like they are nothing. They are SO yummy.

We returned home on Tuesday morning in a bit of a panic as the security line was backed up in Salt Lake like I have never seen before. We had to make our plane since I was having a meeting and presentation for SendOutCards at our home that evening. After waiting about 45 minutes in line and seeing how far we still were away from getting to the gates, Dad asked a security person to let us go in the first class lane and that was the only way that we made it.

We had a simple birthday celebration with dinner and a few cupcakes on Dad’s actual birthday since we knew we would be celebrating it in larger fashion once the grand children got here. Grandma Maldonado came over to help with the celebration.

The next day we picked up Sunhee and Meeja for Spring Break and the party and game playing began!!! They also helped me get ready for the rest of the family to arrive and make Dad’s cherry-chocolaty birthday cake with lots of layers of cherry chip cake, chocolate cream and ganache. They brought their chore charts so we had fun thinking of things they could do for extra points. They even helped us plant primroses in between the games, jumping on the tramp and playing games.

The speed of activity and noise level rose on Monday when Kyre, Alina, Adam and Klaire arrived on the train in Portland. What fun that they take Amtrak up here for their vacation! That was the morning that I recorded a KUIK radio program with some of the leaders of the Hillsboro Chamber. They said that they will be sending me a copy of that recording. We listened on Monday night and it wasn’t too bad! Relief but I am ready to do it again with fewer butterflies in my stomach one of these days when the opportunity comes up again.

Our Family Home Evening was run by Meeja and Sunhee. Sunhee prepared a great lesson about the First Vision to pass off a Faith in God goal and they kept everyone on task throughout the week to do scripture reading so we could finish the Book of Mormon while they were still visiting here this time. That same night we celebrated Klaire and Dad’s birthdays.

Lots of games, food and fun filled the rest of our Spring Break. Adam did some scout work with Dad and only part of the family wanted to go to the zoo so Dad took them. A few of us got a 24 hour bug during the week so that slowed some thing down but still, we crammed a lot into the week. Alina left a VERY happy girl that she finally beat me at ping pong. I am going to have to practice!

General Conference weekend was wonderful. I was kind of tired so we didn’t do the whole conference morning breakfast, nor the big dinner that afternoon. One of my favorite phrases came from Jeffrey R. Holland, “It is not possible to travel beyond the reach of God’s love.”

Our Easter weekend was fairly quiet. In this picture you can see that it looks like we colored eggs in that bowl. We didn’t. Those eggs are the Chung’s chicken’s eggs that they brought us this week! We didn’t have any grandchildren here but I still made those cute deviled eggs that look like chicks. Plus, something really fun; Adam sent us a Flat Stanley. Have you heard of the books by Jeff Brown called Flat Stanley? Stanley is flattened by a bulletin board falling on him so he decides to enjoy traveling around the world by mailing himself to his friends. Adam created a Flat Stanley and mailed him to us. We are to take pictures, send postcards or letters with Flat Stanley pictured somewhere, tell a little about the place, send them to his school so they can map out where Adam’s Flat Stanley travels and then mail Flat Stanley to someone else. We weren’t going anywhere exotic so I organized an Easter Egg hunt. It was actually lots of fun to pose Flat Stanley finding eggs all over the yard. Flat Stanley is quite a climber! He even snooped out the egg with the dollar bill in Dad’s pocket! I just loaded the photos into my SendOutCards account and had a blast creating a three panel card of his adventure. If any of you get the Flat Stanley, be sure to take some photos, mail them to Adam’s school and then mail Flat Stanley on to a new adventure.

We look forward to a trip to Martinez this weekend. We had hoped to travel to Oakland for an A’s game but they are not in town this weekend. Instead we get to be in charge of Bryson and Gregory while Shawn and Aubrey are involved with annual fundraiser for the school, the auction. That sounds like more fun to me. We will leave here on Thursday and come back on Monday. Shawn completed the Oakland Marathon this year. We will have to learn more about that as we visit this weekend. We received a copy of an award that was given to Scott recently, Runner of the Year!

I love being in my ward when DeLys Ostlund is teaching Sunday School; she is one of the greatest teachers. We reviewed Jacob this week and the allegory of the Olive Trees. Instead of concentrating on the nouns, we discussed the verbs in those scriptures: prune, dig, even dung. Yes, dung. As she talked about the need to be dumped with dung for our own good, she read these words from Harold W Wood, “I saw a wheat field that appeared to be greener and taller than the others. Thinking about it for a while, I concluded that occasionally some loving farmer drives over the field with his tractor and pumps manure all over it. I thought, ‘My, it’s just like life. Here we are minding our business, growing our little hearts out. We’re really quite green, somewhat productive, and very sincere. When out of the blue, life deals us a dirty one, and we’re up to our eyebrows in manure.’

We, of course, conclude that life as we know it has just ended and will never be the same again. But one day, when the smell and the shock are gone, we find ourselves greener and more productive than we have ever been. Unfortunately, no matter how often we go through these growing experiences, we are never able to appreciate the sound of the tractor or the smell of the manure.” (The Smell of Manure, quote by Harold W. Wood).

I hope that you had a great Easter weekend and another wonderful week lies ahead. I love you, Mom