In the search for words that rhyme with seven I discovered bevin. It’s of Irish origin and means “fair lady”. So here is what I learned with my bevin this week.
Monday morning there was no devotional, so we went to the apartment gym to workout. Mom walked on the treadmill and I rode the
Proform bike again. I learned that the bike does indeed change the incline and resistance automatically for you, just as long as you don’t mess with it yourself. I guess it assumes that if you make a change you want to be in
manual mode and not have it do it for you. So I rode for a little over an hour. I also learned that the bike route I had chosen both times, a ride with a woman going around Ireland, was considered an
advanced level ride. I was tired after the first one because I tried to keep my cadence up around 80rpm even when the resistance was up higher than I would have put it. So this time I just kept my cadence lower when we hit hard hills and I felt better at the end of the ride. We then went into the library at 10am and found it much like it has been since Thanksgiving…quiet and slow. I did however get asked to help a guest from France. Her name
was Juliette and she is a graduate student at Columbia University in New York. She is here studying French Literature. I teased her that she came a long way to study something she could find more of at home rather than here. She laughed. Her desire was to learn how to do genealogical research, so it was fun showing her all of the resources available, not so much actually looking for records of her family, although I did use her family names as I showed her how to do searches in
FamilySearch records and on
Geneanet and
MyHeritage and
Filae as well as using the Wiki research page and the
archives en ligne. She kept saying how amazing it is that there is so much available online to search. She was extremely happy when I showed her that there is a FamilySearch center near her home that she could go to to continue using our resources, like free subscriptions to
Geneanet and
Ancestry. I spent most of the rest of the day working on my Segerstedt line, trying to find parents of people I don’t have parents for. We left a little early to go meet the Montgomerys at our apartment. They spent Thanksgiving here with Cameron and Alex and Hannah and families and were heading to Colorado to see Laura and her family and wanted to crash at our place to go to the airport the next morning. It’s always fun to have them come visit. We went to the food court at City Creek Mall and got dinner and then
came home to play mahjong and chat. We walked through all of the lights on Temple Square on our way back from dinner and saw the new
First Vision statue which is in the plaza area north of the Tabernacle. It is nice. Mahjong and chatting lasted until pretty late, but we had to finally head to bed in order to get up for their flight in the morning. One thing we learned from them was that we are definitely closer to being family than just friends. We think much the same things, believe the same way and love and do things for our kids and grandkids very much the same. We are so comfortable around each other and just feel love for and from them the way we do our biological family. Fun times.
Tuesday we got up and I drove the Montgomerys to the airport. Then came home to get ready to play mahjong with the Carpenters. They were the big winners this time. Mom and I won zero games! The student has become the master. We then
went to the COB for lunch with them and then into the library for our noon to 8pm shift. Of course the library was quiet again. I went to work on my Segerstedt line and was able to figure out who Eric Holmberg’s parents were. I found in one of the birth records for his children a mention of a person as the witness that was from another village near where he was living. So I checked the household record there around the time he got married and moved away and found his family. Wahoo! His father is Eric Andersson and his mother is Karin Larsdotter. Unfortunately I still couldn’t find his birth record. I’ll keep looking. I then switched to try to find his wife, Lena’s parents. No luck yet. I of course know from the patronymic naming pattern that her father’s name is Anders ________. But I am striking out finding her records. Sadness. We of course were floor leads for the end of the night and sent a lot of people home early because it was so quiet. We closed at 8pm and headed upstairs to inform the security folks that our floor
was clear, and to leave through the front doors before they lock up, and found Aaron and Jacque Auna there visiting with Sister Riess, who is a missionary from the Keaau Ward. President Auna and his wife are here to drop off their daughter at the MTC and came to visit one of their stake members, Sister Riess. I can’t believe they have a daughter old enough to be a missionary. Their kids all seemed so young when we were there. Amazing how fast time goes by and kids grow up. It was fun to see them. We came home and watched
Prisoner of Azkaban together. We have been reading the Harry Potter series and Mom started watching the movies right after finishing the book, so she wanted to watch this one. It was nice to just sit back and relax watching a familiar and fun movie. I had forgotten how much scarier they made this one. I think I remember way back when learning that they had made a change in directors for the movies and the new director wanted more of the scary parts brought out. He did it.
Wednesday was Pday. I got to get up early to go to the dentist at 7am. It was for a cleaning and check up and they found everything okie dokie, except for one tooth that has an old filling in it that has a crack. They said it will most likely need a crown in the future. I came home and went down to the gym to ride while Mom taught sourdough skills to Sister Stelter. So now I have ridden 3 of the, I believe, 6 rides in the series. Not too bad, except I wasn’t able to totally complete today’s ride. The apartment folks have programmed in an hour max time limit on the bike and the ride was an hour and twenty minute ride. So I tried to restart the ride and learned that I couldn’t fast forward to where I was, I would only be able to re-ride what I had already done. So I did that for about 10 minutes and called it good. Mom then wanted to go on a
WinCo run to get the makings for cranberry nut bread. Yum! So off we went. Unfortunately we learned that they were all out of cranberries. Apparently they sold them all for Thanksgiving and hadn’t received a new shipment yet. So we went over to
Costco to
get some, but learned the same was true for them. No cranberries. So I got some chocolate milk and egg nog and Mom looked for Panettone bread, but they were out of that as well. Sadness. We then went home and Mom made cranberry nut bread using craisins instead. Not exactly the same, but still very good. I then took off to give platelets for the last time. I watched
Best. Christmas. Ever! on Netflix. It was quirky and unrealistic like most Christmas movies, but it did have a fun premise. When I was finished I
learned that they were giving out special Thanksgiving/Christmas socks with a
Friends theme, from the tv series. The Thanksgiving socks looked like a frog with glasses and I couldn’t figure it out, so I went online and learned that it actually is a turkey with glasses and comes from a fairly famous episode of
Friends when Monica puts a turkey on her head to cheer up Chandler. As you can tell I wasn’t much of a
Friends watcher. The other pair is just a nice color of gray with snowflakes on it and
Central Perk stitched at the top, which I learned is the name of the coffee shop they are always in. Any who, free socks. Yay. Then I decided to try and surprise Mom and get some Panettone bread for her. I looked online and it said that Walmart had some. So I stopped there and after wandering the store finally found some on top of a cold case display in their deli area. It was just left there by someone. However, after looking at it more closely I learned it was chocolate chip Panettone. Yuk! So I went to customer service to see if they had original Panettone and learned that they didn’t. So I gave up and sat in the car and ordered some on Amazon. It should get here by Friday. I got home and told Mom why I was late and she smiled.
Thursday we went in earlier to the library since we were leaving at 3:45 for the temple. I was chatting with one of the missionaries, Kimball Carter, who is an accredited genealogist for New England research and mentioned that I had an Andrew Jackson Brooks that I couldn’t track down the parents of. He told me to give him the PID for him and he would take a look. Wahoo. I then decided to look into Abraham Philipse de Moer. I had found some info on
MyHeritage but it wasn’t all lining up. Ugh. I’ll keep looking. In the afternoon Kimball came and told me about all of the property records he had researched with Andrew Jackson Brooks and he may have some leads. Cool. We were able to leave a little early, no problem since it is so quiet these days and got to our 4:30pm initiatory sessions at the Taylorsville Temple. We followed up on that with a sealing session. Afterwards we just came home, no shopping or restaurants. Mom tried taking this picture of the lights at the Conference Center as we drove past. We were too fast. We really do like having all of these wonderful lights so near to us that we get to look at every night. Light is definitely one of my favorite reminders of Christ.
Friday I went and rode again. 4 stages now. I forgot to tell you that we had originally planned to go to the
Christkindlmarkt with Kim Reyne on Wednesday, but she was sick. So we figured we would go with her on Friday before we needed to be in by 2pm, but I totally forgot that we had the last
Leadership Pattern Journey class scheduled for 12pm. Ugh! So we got ready and went in for that. It was ok. Not as many people showed up for it as I thought would. We should have just done the last classes all separate instead of trying to combine all three classes. Oh well. We then just stayed at the library and I started working on Abraham Philipse de Moer. This time I did some more in depth looking at the notes others had left as well as the few records associated with his name and learned that he was from the New York area and his birth record is in a Dutch Reformed Church book. His last name, Philipse, is the patronymic way to give a surname for those from the Netherlands. The only
problem was that his birth year would make him 61 and his wife 51 when their son and my ancestor George Henry Phillips was born. But in looking into it a little more on the
MyHeritage records I learned that Abraham Philipse had a son named Abraham Philipse, and apparently he is the father of George Henry. I am pretty sure this is indeed the correct line. I sent it to Lisa Phillips to take a look as well and she felt good about it. So now I want to find at least one more record to verify these identities and I’ll add all the info to my tree. We then worked it out to leave early and have the Allreds close for us so that we could go to the symphony. Maria Eppich gave us
tickets. But when we walked into the lobby of the concert hall we learned they were having some sort of gala and there was no concert going on. We turned around and went outside and looked at our tickets and discovered they were for Saturday night, not Friday. Zoinks. So then Mom asked if I wanted to go to the
Christkindlmarkt, it was open ‘til 8pm. I answered honestly and said that I really had little desire to go. I had seen it last year and really it is just a bunch of little vendor shops and I really don’t enjoy shopping,
but I would go if she wanted to go. She said, no we don’t need to go, so we came home. I felt like watching a “classic” Christmas movie and settled on
Miracle on 34th Street, the newer version. I like that movie. I especially like this moment at the end of the movie. “A baby brother.” Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that Mom’s Panettone came. I got a message telling me that an oversized package had arrived and was left in the offices of our apartment. Instead we learned they just left it on the floor in the mail room. Yum, Panettone for dessert.
Saturday morning I slept in until 7:30. Whoa, that doesn’t happen often. So I read a bit in
Saints: Volume 4 and then went into the library at 10am. I was usher first thing and then steward for the next 2 hours. It was quiet as per usual these days. I started looking at Lena Andersdotter’s records again trying to find clues. As I was doing so, Savannah, one of our Nordic specialists walked by. I asked her to take a look at what I was doing and what I had found and if she had any suggestions on where else to look. She had no ideas for me. So I finished my stint there and we went to eat lunch up in the 3rd floor break room. I turned
on the Georgia vs Texas football game and continued to watch that whole game as I also searched for Lena records. It was a good game. Overtime and everything. We closed the library and then went to the ward Christmas party. It was a Mexican fiesta themed party with tacos and salads and
Penguin Brothers ice cream sandwiches. They were really good. Small homemade style cookies and yummy ice cream. We got oatmeal cookies with Honeycomb ice cream. We sat by a sister who was in the other ward before they combined wards. She also serves in the elderly care
home that is in our stake boundaries. We learned that they actually have a branch there and people from the stake are called to minister and organize sacrament meeting, etc. for them. Very nice! I got home in time to watch the second half of the Penn St. vs Oregon game. That one was more of an offensive fight as opposed to the Georgia/Texas game which was more of a defensive struggle. I watched the rest of an episode of
Elementary during which I had previously fallen asleep while watching and then headed to bed.
This morning we drove up to church, since Mom was teaching her primary class and had a bunch of stuff she needed to bring for her lesson. She learned this morning that her co-teacher wasn’t going to be able to come, so I got to be her co-teacher. She taught about the “things” associated with Christmas. “Things” that are about the real meaning of Christmas and things that have come to have a traditional part of Christmas, but really aren’t part of the true meaning of Christmas. The last thing she did though, was had me read them
The Legend of the Candy Cane while she showed them the pictures on her iPad. They loved it, and it showed how some of the “things” that have become just traditional parts of Christmas may have had a real meaning of Christmas in the beginning.
Tonight we get to attend the
First Presidency Christmas Devotional. The mission was given a few tickets for the event and they had a little lottery drawing to see who would get some and Mom and I got them. Cool. (break for devotional) The devotional was great. The whole First Presidency was there and the talks and music were just what you would expect. I was surprised to hear that Elder Cook was a missionary in England the year I was born. I knew he was older, but I didn’t realize he was that much older. When we got ready to leave President Nelson, who was in a wheelchair, turned to the audience and blew kisses. Everyone started waving and blowing kisses back. Kind of sweet.
We sneaked out the back way from the Conference Center to head home. We learned about this way from when we attended General Conference in October. It takes you out to the North side of the Conference Center and then it is just a short walk to the corner and across the street to our apartments. As we got to the corner the security folks were there by the back entrance to the underground parking. The door was open and they asked all of the pedestrians to please stay in place for a minute. As we waited a white mini suv came out and turned right, right in front of us. In the front seat was President Nelson. He looked over and I waved and he waved back. My own personal wave. Too bad I didn’t think faster and get it all on video. Oh well. The rest of the night will probably be a Christmas movie and then bed.
Love you all. May the Light of this World be with you always to light your way and may you follow it.
We love you baie baie!
BE GOOD!
Sister and Elder Phillips
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