Sibs Reunion

This is a two week post.

A week ago, we left on Tuesday to drive to Miranda's house. Up until that Monday, we thought we were going to drive to Las Vegas via Miranda.  But then things changed.

Mom suddenly was not doing well.  She was back to being about as sick as she was when I was there about a month ago.  So off to the hospital and they found fluid on the lungs.  Her heart was not able to get all the fluid out.  We also think the medicine was again partly to blame.  They decided to put in pacemaker. So she had that done on Thursday.

Since Mom couldn't travel, we decided to move the siblings' reunion to Laguna Woods instead of Las Vegas. So Tom and I spent Tuesday night and Wednesday night with Miranda and Dan and family and then made a beeline to Albuquerque.  We'd planned on spending two nights there and going to the temple and maybe doing some sightseeing.  Instead, we got up early on Friday and did a session at the temple.

Then drove to Needles, CA. Saturday we drove to Sally's house in Downey. Sue and Steve were there... and a sick Sally.  I slathered her in oils and she seemed to improve a bit each day of the reunion.

We watched the Women's session of the General Conference at Sally's house and we all went to church the next day.  Then we drove down to Laguna Woods. Tom and I stayed with Cynthia and Jim. Steve and Kathy were already with Mom.  And Sue, Steve, and Sally stayed at an AirBnB nearby. Cynthia and Jim are always such gracious hosts!

It was a low key reunion.  Mostly we ate, visited, ate, visited, put together jig saw puzzles... oh, like most reunions.

 Behold us eating a toasted meringue that was a bit resistant to biting through it.  We took the creative approach... but sometimes the fruit and the whip cream got in the way.

Each day Mom seemed to be a little better. The fluid was gone from her lungs and she used less oxygen... but still had a cough. We had a TON of food! Oh my goodness. No chance of going hungry. I guess that's what happens when you have lots of good cooks in the family.  Kathy made delicious sticky buns. We had ham and funeral potatoes, pot roast, baked potatoes and toppings... and enough left-overs for lunches and another meal.

Wednesday Tom and I went to the temple in the morning.  Then we went to their special shoe store and Tom got fitted for special inserts and both of us bought supportive shoes. Sue, Sally and Steve spent some time going through Cousin Walter's photos and letters.  Some from 1918-1921.

Thursday we left by 7am to start the trek home. We made the 14 hour drive to Albuquerque the first day.  We hit a few snow flurries, but for the most part it was a smooth drive. The second day we finally ran out of books on tape. Those really help the time pass. We made it to Miranda's house.  They had already left to go to Jonathan's and Kristy's so we had the house to ourselves.

We again left early to complete our drive to Jonathan and Kristy's house.  We actually went to their church to help them since they had the cleaning assignment for the week. Then we visited animals and watched General Conference at their house. Miranda made cinnamon rolls and Easter egg salad for lunch. Jonathan made pizza for dinner. The men went to the priesthood meeting in the evening.

 Here the boys are licking the flour off the counter top after the cinnamon rolls were rolled and into the pan.

 Pizza eating.

Sunday we went to church for the first session of conference.  In the morning, I listened to the Morman Tabernacle Choir's Messiah.  It was supposed to be a sing-along... but I thing Jonathan found an older version of the MoTab... still lovely.  What was fun was that Zachery and Alex were fascinated with the singing.  They'd just sit enthralled. At one time 2 year old Alex was on the balcony waving a stick and singing Hal-lu-yah!

After the second session of General Conference we headed home... to an amazingly busy week planned. Got most things unpacked and are now off to bed.