Addendum from the last letter and more...

Addendum to last week:

After having a day or two since posting my blog, I thought of a few things I wanted to add.  

In our relief society announcements each week, a sister in the ward is spotlighted.  This week it was a lady by the name of T Smolevetz (since this is a blog I won't share her full name).  She has a very interesting story.  She was raised Catholic, and as a child she fell into a well and had her first experience with the Holy Ghost.  She said, "suburbs. I spent my youth playing in the woods, swinging on vines, and feeding wild animals, loving every minute of it. I totally became a country girl and even fell into an abandoned mine shaft filled with water which appeared as a mere puddle on the surface. The children I had been playing with all became frightened and ran away leaving me to my doom. That was the first time I can remember hearing "the voice" which, after I finally sunk beneath the muddy surface from exhaustion, gave me directions how to escape. I did not know what that was at the time, as I had no concept of the Holy Ghost; but I was indeed saved from a watery grave by listening and obeying. I then became "the girl in the well" in the news stream but fortunately was never identified. They believed I had sunk to the bottom never to be retrieved as the fire department could not locate the actual depth of the shaft since it exceeded the length of their hooked rope some 250+ feet.

She later met a Jewish man and again felt the spirit leading her to accept this man as her future husband.  She said they had many stark differences, and she balked at the idea at first, but followed the direction she felt and married him.  In her words, "Since I did not understand the role of the Savior, but was always drawn to the Old Testament, it was not difficult for me to convert to Judaism which I did so enthusiastically. Let me first explain that Jews DO NOT proselyte and are not fond of entertaining those outside the fold. The Rabbi, after realizing that I was a serious investigator, put me through a course of 6 years of study condensed into a 6 week period. That syllabus was insane! They want to make sure you are SERIOUS! It is the intent to dissuade you and avoid wasting the Rabbi's time. Fortunately, he recognized I was sincere and quite serious. There was an immense amount of reading (history, culture, etc) and learning how to read Hebrew (for prayer purposes) but I was finally welcomed and given the Hebrew name Navah bat Avraham thus becoming a daughter of Abraham."

"Years later, through another series of events, I was introduced to Joseph Smith and once again took a leap and embraced the restored gospel and Book of Mormon. I tell people that I had to go backward before I could go forward, but the journey has served me well and gives me a unique perspective on gospel topics. I cannot claim one drop of pioneer heritage nor can my husband, but we are ever so grateful to Isaiah chapter 53 which provided us both a unique experience of coming to Christ. I believe it will indeed be Isaiah who brings the tribe of Judah back to the fold and it is NOT a coincidence that his writings are so revered and purposely included in the Book of Mormon. The Lord, yet again, shows his "strange act."

The reason I thought to include her story is because she concluded with these words, and they struck home as I remembered my own father often quoting this scripture.  I too, feel the same and her words could be mine.

"God is indeed merciful and has been generous in his blessings to us, and I feel to say as did the Psalmist "Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are the children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them." (Psalm 127:3-5).

Our quiver is happily one arrow fuller with little Todd's birth.

Roy and I watched a movie last night.  In the movie a young man, at the age of 21, found that the men in his family had a special gift--the ability to travel through time.  There were limitations--he could only go places he had been before, so it basically became an opportunity to fix his own mistakes.  Eventually he meets and falls in love with a young woman and they get married and start their family.  At first he uses his gift often to fix little things.  One time he tries to fix something big for his sister, but finds that he can't go that far back and make such big changes without changing important things in his life.  The couple has two children and his father dies.  He uses his gift to go back and visit with his father.  When his wife mentions she wants a third baby, he wants to say yes, but he realizes that this will mean he can no longer return to visit his father, so he hesitates.  He does agree, however, and he has one more child.   Before his father died, he had told his son to try living each day twice--the 2nd time opening his eyes to the beauty of the little things--no matter how trying the day had been.  He does this for a while and it makes his life better, but then he decides he doesn't need to live each day twice to notice the little things.  He realizes that he loves his "extraordinary, ordinary life" and no longer needs to travel in time. 

His realization was what I loved about the movie.  I too have an extraordinary, ordinary life--made so by my wonderful husband--children--grandchildren and extended family. Relationships make life meaningful.  This is why it's so important to always work to maintain our relationships with each other.

A few more pictures that I missed when I wrote the newsletter:

    Meeting Todd for the first time

Elise is now immunized (as are many of us now)

Ila came over for a couple of hours one day while Adrienne had
a golf lesson.  I think she thought she was meant to go
golfing too, because she mentioned a few times that she was going to
golf.  She is a sweetheart.

Week of 4/5 - 4/11:

We have a lot of grandchildren birthdays in April, and three out of the five happened this week.  Finn turned 6, Hyeji 11, and Ila is now 3.  I'm pretty sure they all had great celebrations.

Finn

Hyeji

Ila and family--Oli, Gunnar, Adrienne, AJ and Finn

Roy, being the brave and wonderful grandpa that he is, wanted to share his new discovery of Simpson Springs with me and some of the grandkids.  I say brave because we decided to take 4 of our grandchildren--Ori (7), Yuna (7), Finn(6) and Ruby (almost 6).  We had a great adventure.  It took a while to get to the area where we were going to camp--we had to make a fuel stop and do a couple of other things on our way. Luckily, Ori was prepared with activities and treats for all the kids.  When we finally arrived, we found that the trailer was coated with a thick layer of dust--inside and out.  It was a very dry and dusty part of Utah.  On the way we had seen antelope, wild horses, and lots of cows.  The kids earned a few cents for every find.  With the age of kids we had, I had to pay everyone who saw the find--which meant everyone  (I came up with a random amount at the end for them to spend).  The kids had a ball exploring our campsite while Roy and I made a delicious spaghetti dinner.  Afterwards, they watched part of the movie enchanted until bedtime.  One of the most exciting parts of the trip, of course, is to sleep in the trailer.  We only had a little argument about who slept where on the 2nd night.

The kids are really squinting against the sun:
Finn, Ori, Yuna, Ruby, Roy and Catharine

Dinner

It's a desolate, dry, dusty area, but beautiful in it's own way.  
The sunsets were fabulous.

Roy made me stick my head into this picture, 
I shouldn't have listened to him :)

The next morning we walked down to some ruins from
the days of the Pony Express.  The pony express only
lasted for about a year before the telegraph was invented which 
ended the need to send riders.

Yuna loved turning her bottom towards me
almost everytime I aimed the camera.  It didn't take long
for the others to follow suit(see Finn, below)

After lunch on Saturday, we headed to a geode bed to look for geodes.  We didn't really know what we were looking for.  We hiked a little around one area and picked up a few pieces of geodes that others had left behind, then we got back in the car to look for a better spot.  After talking with one person to ask if they'd found anything, we took off in search of a 2nd group of people.  We never found anyone else to talk to, so I told Roy to just stop.  The kids (and I) NEEDED to get out of the car.  Did I mention that the road to the geode bed was NOT paved, and was very dusty and bumpy?  Roy was a little frustrated with me because he wanted to look for the best spot.  We dug around for a few minutes, trying to bust open a few rocks (again--not knowing exactly what to look for).  Soon, I found a smallish rock that I thought might be one.  Roy broke it open, and it turned out to be a geode.  It wasn't long before Roy found a spot where he was digging out one after another.  These geodes were quite large.  Interestingly, they were very easy to break open.  I'm not sure what the kids expected to find, because they were rather unimpressed with what we were coming up with, but they were having fun playing with the hammer and digging in the dirt.  Ruby wanted me to "take the crystals out."  All she wanted were the crystals.  I didn't know how to do that--obviously--.  After tiring Roy out and filling up our bucket, we headed back to camp.  Ori was sitting in front as there was no more room in back.  She asked me, pointing to the words, "Super Duty" imprinted on Roy's truck and said, "Does that say, 'super dirty'?"  Roy and I burst out laughing because our truck was indeed SUPER DIRTY.  We explained that we weren't laughing at the fact she read it wrong, but that the way she had read it was so perfect.  

This is the first time to take this trailer to an unimproved 
campground (meaning no hookups).  This was Roy's  pumping system 
to add water to our tanks.

We saw a herd of sheep being herded by two dogs.  No humans as far as we could see, but the dogs were faithfully doing their job by staying at the back of the flock pushing them forward.  One of the dogs wanted to race with us both of the times we passed them.

 Roy, Ori, Ruby, Yuna and Finn--No way was
I going to be in a picture like this!

A small cave near our camp

Friday evening we had hamburgers and corn on the
cob for dinner.  Ruby was doing a great job on her
hamburger when all of a sudden she burst into tears.  
Her first tooth had just come out--luckily she
didn't swallow it!

After the shock of it, and as soon as she wasn't bleeding, she
decided she was very excited and had me send videos to
her parents.  She wanted to "make it a story, not just a picture."
The tooth is in her hand.

We ate at Apollo burger on the way home.

When we got back to Centerville we stopped at Target so the kids could spend their hard-earned money and so that Finn could pick out a birthday present.  Adrienne met us there to pick up Finn and decided to take Ruby with her.  Ruby's uncle Nate and his wife were heading to Logan to see Todd, so they met Adrienne at one of their ball games, picked up Ruby and took her home.  Ruby does not generally 'nap,' but I understand she slept most of the way home.

Meanwhile, at our home, Nick and Dan came over to pick up their girls.  The first thing they told their dads was that they had seen wild horses--"and one horse was trying to ride another horse."  They found that pretty funny.  I heard Finn telling his grandma Lisa the same thing.  

Roy and I felt that this was a very successful weekend.  We felt that we had truly created a bond with these four grandchildren--we're a little closer to them than we were before.  Plus, we were able to share with them grandpa Roy's love of nature and getting out in it.  

We didn't get any pictures of the kids playing with the dogs owned by a neighboring camper--their names, Gunner, Nana, and Gizmo.  They were big dogs, but the owners assured us that they loved kids.  Ruby was a little afraid of them, but the other kids played with them for quite a while. They  threw the dog's ball, and Finn tried racing the dogs.  He is a fast runner!  The next morning Yuna told us she wanted to go out and play with the dogs.  Nick said that when Ori got in the car to go home she started crying.  Nick asked her why she was crying and she said, "I just miss the dogs, and I wanted to go camping another night, and I missed you and mom."  I told Roy that those dogs are the best kind of pet--they were owned by someone else.  The kids can enjoy them for a short time then you never have to interact with them again.  Sadly, I think the man and his wife might have felt some of the same feelings about kids.  They were super friendly towards us and wanted the kids to come play with the dogs, but they had no children of their own.  Maybe I'm unfairly assuming that they did not want kids.

One last story about our vacation.  Halfway through the morning on Friday, 2 F22 Raptors buzzed the campground (we were very close to Dougway).  I ran out to see the jets, and noticed my grandchildren all running towards the trailer--they were scared to death.  We explained what had happened and kind of calmed them down.  I thought it was really awesome, but apparently they didn't feel the same way.