We are grandparents again! Wahoo!! Welcome to this world little Mara. I’ll tell you about that a little later in the post, but let’s start at the beginning of the week.
Monday morning we didn’t have a devotional and I got up early enough to go workout and ride before getting into the library by 8:30am. We spent the first part of the morning doing ZL stuff. At 10am Curtis and I went to the
Group Hosting Committee meeting. As I sat down I looked out the window and saw John the Baptist giving the priesthood to Joseph and Oliver. Well actually it was a statue of that event, but what was strange was that it was sitting in the middle of the road. They had a crane there and I assumed they were going to crane it over the fence into the area by the
Assembly Hall building where they had a pedestal awaiting its arrival. Fun times. I’m not sure if Curtis will continue to attend that meeting or if he’ll send an assistant zone leader, but now he knows about it and it was my LAST one of those meetings to attend. We left a little early for lunch so that we could get some lunch before the LAST
Zone Council meeting. As we walked into the cafeteria we saw they had added a little sign to the Christmas tree that we pointed out last week. Nice! We got there and discovered they had
the bbq bar up and running. Luckily they had burnt ends and a little bit of brisket left along with some ribs. I didn’t chance the pulled pork this time. After lunch Mom took the leftover food home and I went up to the NOB to drop off access badges and a parking pass for the Kopps and Teresa who had left the week before. When I left I decided to see if I could sneak out the back way to North Temple because they have finally finished some of the construction work there and took away the closed sign for the back stairs. Well it worked.
I was able to go through this little sitting area that they have beside the building where people can come to relax or eat lunch or whatever. The gate they have to get out is padlocked shut and I thought I wasn’t going to be able to get out that way after all, but the big gate where cars can drive through and access the under building storage and delivery area was open, so I just walked through there and over to the sidewalk and out. It was nice to have a shorter way to exit and also a bit more scenic. I met Mom back at the library where we had our LAST zone council meeting. Mom had the thought, and what she did for it was super cool. She went around the table and told each person what she was impressed with by them. She of course cried the whole time and made almost everyone else cry as well. The rest of the meeting went well and I think we are leaving everyone in good hands. We then chatted with the Stapps a bit more and went to work on the floor. I was asked to help one guest but spent most of my time working on more Segerstedt line people. There are a lot of them that I still need to find in order for my final 9 generation fan chart to look more full. We closed the library after checking and rechecking the bathrooms and then we
headed home. We dropped off our stuff at home and then went to the Stelter’s for dinner. They invited us to come for a traditional German meal…meatballs and gravy, purple cabbage and mashed potatoes. For dessert Mom brought some of our peppermint bark ice cream bars. Yum! Then we played some games and got to know them a bit better. We then went home to watch the exciting end of the
Monday Night Football game between the Chiefs and the Buccaneers. I must say that Mahomes is a very good quarterback. He does get bailed out by his receivers now and then, but he has great field presence and even runs the ball well when they need it.
Tuesday was Pday and it was a bit overcast when I walked to the COB to workout and ride. On the way home it drizzled a bit on me and was pretty cold so that the drizzle started to turn to very little clumps of frozen water…somewhere between hail and snow. Mom had a dentist appointment and came home and started cleaning out cupboards and closets. I got home and started reading when I looked out
the window and saw this, the first snow of the year. It wasn’t heavy enough to stick, but it was coming down pretty good. We relaxed the rest of the afternoon, me watching
Elementary and Mom watching
Bones. We then went into the library at 5pm to be floor leaders since they needed someone to fill that time slot now that the Kopps are not here. We also said that we will come in on Friday evenings instead of mornings from now on, well until we are replaced by other AZLs or we are out of here in December. When we got to the library we learned that we had missed Stan Kraczek’s last day. Ugh! We thought it was on Wednesday. Bummer. We really like
to be there for a missionary’s last day before their release. So instead we called Stan to say goodbye and apologize for missing his last day. I then got to help three young guys from France. The two I was helping didn’t know enough about their family, so I showed them how to use the different resources and they said they would talk to their parents when they got home and put together a tree. Cool. I then went downstairs to fill in and learned that it was empty down there. There ended up being three of us guys there and we just chatted for about a half an hour. Then Mom told me that Celine and Barbara needed a ride home, so I ran home and got our car and picked up all of them and took them home. We got home and turned on the tv to see the election results. They said it was still too early to call.
Wednesday morning we got up and learned that they had called most of the states and I was pretty surprised that Trump had won by such a large margin. All of the preliminary polls seemed to indicate it was going to be much closer. Well I read for a bit and then we went in to do our LAST new missionary orientation. We had the Stapps come with us so that they could see what we do there and then we chatted with them a bit before we had our LPJ class. That went well and then it was off to our LAST
FamilySearch Library Leadership meeting. In there they talked about the problem with the lady that had been locked in the library and asked us to really check the bathrooms before we leave, although technically it
is the security staff that is supposed to clear the floors. Oh well, we do our best. After that meeting I sat with the Stapps for another hour to finish answering questions and showing them website and document links that they will be using, I then worked on more Segerstedt line names and helped Ambika, our guest that comes in everyday, about 5 times with questions she had with her research. She is working on standardizing place names for people in India. We came home at 6pm and watched a Hallmark Christmas movie called
Holiday Mismatch. Typical Hallmark movie with the “lovers” having some sort of issue they needed to work through, but this one was a little fun because it had two former cast members from
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch playing the moms and they threw in little witch or magic comments here and there. More Hallmark movies to come? We shall see.
Thursday morning I woke up to find this text on my phone. Wahoo! Very good timing since we were flying to Bellingham that day! We got packed and drove down to Bruce and Laura’s apartment in Orem. Bruce agreed to drive us to the airport and let us park our car at their apartment so we didn’t have to pay for the parking at the airport. We got to their place a little early and chatted with them. We learned that they are moving the end of the month to a basement
apartment of a house there in Orem. The owner lives across the street and rents out both upstairs and downstairs of this house. It’ll have more room and a backyard for Leland to play in. Good for them. We then had Bruce drop us off at the airport and proceeded to wait 2 1/2 hours for our plane to finally leave. When we got into Las Vegas we wandered the terminal a bit and found a Philly cheesesteak place and got some food for dinner. Then waited the 2 hours before our flight left there. Luckily they left a little early, so we got to Bellingham about a half hour early. Burley picked us up and Mom asked if he could take us by
DQ for a Blizzard, which he graciously agreed to. We then went over to Zoë and Aaron’s place where Shaunna was waiting. She had brought Franklin over there to be able to sleep in his own bed and also to let one of Zoë’s friends into the apartment to decorate it for Christmas as a surprise for Zoë, because she knows how much she loves Christmas and Christmas decorations. So we ate our Blizzards and chatted awhile and then Burley and Shaunna left for home and we got into bed.
Friday morning I was a little nervous that Franklin would wake up and be scared that we were there and not his parents. But he woke up and opened his door and saw Mom and I and just started saying we needed to come see his
big boy bed and then showed us all the Christmas decorations and some of his toys. He was totally fine with it being us and not Shaunna or his parents. Cool! Mom made him some breakfast and got him dressed and after him climbing under the table to poop and Mom changing the poopy diaper, we drove over to our property to put a stake in the ground where we would like the corner of our future garage to be. Our builder had called us the day before and asked if we could do that so that he can plan out what trees will need to be removed and propose to the city, as part of our permit application, how many trees we plan to replant to replace those we take out. He says usually they will accept a one-to-one ratio, but we shall see. We then came back to the apartment and got here just in time for Aaron and Zoë and Mara to arrive. Everyone took turns holding Mara and saying how
cute she is. They told us the story of how Zoë had started having some contractions Wednesday night and then she suddenly felt like she ought to go in to the hospital. So they drove in and she told the nurse she thought her water had broken and it was kind of uncomfortable. They were able to get her into a room and she suddenly felt like pushing. One time was all it took and she didn’t even give the doctor or nurses time to get gloves on. Mara was here and was all cute and cuddly. Wahoo! We spent most of the morning holding her and taking and playing with Franklin. Then Mom and I did a Costco run. After getting home Aaron and I took Franklin to a park and we played around. He kept asking me to go running around and up the playground stairs and then slide down the slides. I was pleasantly surprised that my old body did ok on the playground. I did get a little nervous when I swung on the rings to get down, but all went well. We came home to a wonderful spaghetti dinner and watched some Disney movies with Franklin. Bed was nice.
Saturday morning was relaxing. When we woke up it was raining outside, so we just hung around the apartment. We read and watched some movies with Franklin and then held Mara and then I watched some football. The number 3 team, Georgia, and the number 4 team, Miami, both lost. Wow. I like rooting for underdogs. Then we ate some yummy stew that Mom made and went over to the Burley’s to watch the BYU/Utah game. It was a wild one. BYU played poorly. The reffing was bad as well. When Retzlaff got sacked on 4th and 10 from the five yard line, Burley grabbed the remote and turned it off. I asked why he turned it off and he said, “It’s over!” But I
wanted to see if Whittingham would have his team kneel for a couple plays and run out the clock or try to score, so I turned it back on on my phone and saw Retzlaff complete a pass out to the 35 yard line. So I told him something happened and BYU still had the ball. So he turned it back on and we watched as they went down the field and kicked the field goal to win it with 3 seconds left. We learned that there had been a defensive holding penalty on that sack play that had given them a first down and a new life. Wow, what a turn around.
This morning we took Franklin with us to church. He was pretty active, but between Shaunna and her stickers books and Mom’s puzzle game on her phone and holding him and explaining that it was church and we didn’t run around and play during church, he made it through sacrament meeting. Then he and Taylor went to nursery and Mom went to Relief Society and I went to Elders Quorum meeting. We then came back to the apartment so that Mom could make chicken enchilada soup for dinner and I could get this blog post done. Franklin showed us more of his fun swinging and spinning in his swing and it is almost time to go over to the Burley’s for dinner.
Hope you all had a great week. We certainly have.
Love you baie baie.
BE GOOD!
Grammie and Paka
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