Rebecca left us for the week. For the few days before she departed, she’d
been communicating with the siblings.
She’d planned to go to Silver Dollar City on Monday on her way to visit
Jonathan and Kristy. Did anyone want to
come with her? She got a kind of Meh
response… and was thinking about skipping it.
This mattered to Tom and me because we thought we’d go to
SDC with her. Then we decided we’d go on
to St. Louis and go to the temple. So by Saturday night, we’d decided there
probably would be no SDC trip. Then
Deborah called… she was going… and it would be nice to have someone help with
the kids. Okay. I guess we’re back on. Then Kera said that Charlotte was better (she’d
had pneumonia) and she was coming.
And on Monday, as we were heading out, Deborah let us
know that Ian had the day off and he was coming, too! So we had a fun, low-key day at SDC. We went on kiddy rides. We went to see the Harlem Globe
Trotters. Callie convinced me to go on a
fireman’s ride where they shoot you up into the air and you kind of bungie fall
back down—bouncing along the way. But it
wasn’t as scary as it sounds… well, it was scary. You were seated on a machine around a square
that thrust you up. So you didn’t feel
like you were dangling without support.
Anyhow, it was more fun than I thought it would be.
We left about 3 pm.
That was before the slight incident with Simon bashing his head on the
stone wall and the first aid responders. Apparently it was more if a
scrape. But heads bleed a lot. He is
fine now.
Tom and I drove up to St. Louis and got there about 8 pm. We got up pretty early to go to the temple. Marian, Isabelle, and Katie had done baptisms
for this side of the Walder family on the last trip up. Tom and I did about 18 initiatories and two
endowments. We planned on doing one more endowment… but things were a little interesting
at the temple that morning. Apparently a
motor burned up and shut the power down.
So we were on auxiliary power.
The lights flickered periodically.
The film ran with the lights on.
There was no air conditioning so the endowment room doors were open, but
it still got a little warm.
Nevertheless, it was a great session. However, they were not going to
run another session until the power came back on. So we headed home.
It was a quiet week without any children or grandchildren
here. Fortunately there were enough
shoes collected by the door and a few toys left out that we didn’t feel we’d
been totally abandoned.
When we went to our family reunion at the Cottage Resort,
the first night the noise in the Reunion Hall was overwhelming. We thought, what if we have 100 or more
people in here. It will be impossible.
We talked to the owners about using the other two rooms in the Reunion
hall as well. One is a for-sure
yes. The other…. Not sure. So Miranda
talked to someone and her family went to a place near Joplin. In checking that out, we found some other
possibilities. While Rebecca and Miranda
were at Jonathan’s, they went to the George Washington Carver museum and then
stopped by the Joplin retreat center.
FANTASTIC commercial kitchen.
Large meeting area… only chairs, no sofas or relaxing chairs. Cabins with A/C but walk to bath. Not a good trade off.
We found that by searching for “retreats” we get other options. But do families want to be squished into one
room… or put teens into a bunk room… in exchange for better play areas and a
larger meeting place? Or do people want
more comfortable lodging and a ho-hum meeting place and kitchen. Ah the dilemma of reunion planning. I did find a monastery…. One person rooms
anyone?
Our garden is starting to come on. We are getting plenty of beans and
cucumbers. The tomato crop is a bit
irregular. Some cherry tomatoes, stunted
roma tomatoes, and a few HUGE beefsteak tomatoes. Our pepper crop is pretty good with the
useless hot peppers but not so good with the bell peppers. The zucchini and crookneck squash and winter
squash and watermelon have HUGE leaves. If you judged by the leaves, we should
be seeing a plethora of squash. Right
now, its a few every few days. And the
gray squash bugs have appeared. I’m surprised; perhaps the huge leaves keep the
plants alive even with these buggers gnawing on them. So far, they are still
alive.
I froze some beans, gave away some cucumbers, and Rebecca
is planning meals with zucchini and tomatoes. She made a great roasted tomato
soup.
I’ve been working on some publicity with some of the
start-up companies. It will be interesting to see how it goes. I also worked on a Relief Society Newsletter
this week and finally ordered pictures from the family reunion to put on our
wall. We have a family display in the
dining room so everyone who comes in sees our family. We get lots of comments on it. Rebecca will help us duplicate it with
updates.
Friday Tom left early to go to a 4 stake Youth
Conference. Jonathan, Isabelle, and
Joshua came with the Monett stake, Tom took the youth from our ward up. Everyone seemed to have a great time. Josh
seems sweet on a girl from the Monett Stake. One of our boys likes
Isabelle. I love these long distance
romances! Here's a photo of Josh and Isabelle at the Youth Conference.
We learned Friday that a ward member passed away. She had not been to church in years, and Tom
contacted the funeral home to let them know he was available to assist the family
as needed. A friend was the executor. No
other family involved. So I am to give
the eulogy. Except I only knew her for a year or so about 12 years ago… I called the friend and got some information.
I guess we do the best with what we have.
Saturday I went to a wedding shower for a young woman in
our ward. I also checked out a small house that has some good potential. Saturday afternoon Rebecca returned home and
later that night, Tom and Josh got back from youth conference.
Today was a good day at church. We had a great lesson in
Sunday School about Alma 30-31 and how to recognize the lies and evil spread
both then and today. How an anti-Christ
is really a counterfeit and tries to look very much like the real thing in
order to deceive.
This weekend has also been a Worldwide Indexing
Event. I indexed some files on Friday, Saturday,
and Sunday. Tom indexed today. This is where you take photographed images of
records and record them into fields so they can be searched by people looking
for their family history. I did some
Kentucky marriage records and some Alabama draft records. I was surprised that there was a “bride price”
back then. The husband-to-be posted a
bond for the marriage—like $100! That
was a lot of money back in the 1880’s.
Below are random photos. The top is Marian with her cotton candy mustache at Golden Corral at the family reunion.
When we went to Andy and Kera's the kids enjoyed the large corn snake.
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