Merry March

Each year, I look forward to St. Patrick's Day. I always wished I had a little Irish blood because I like all things Irish - the brogue, the music, the dancing, the food, and we loved our road trip there years ago, traveling down winding roads exploring Irish villages. And green was my favorite color most of my life!. It fell on a Sunday this year. so we dressed up in green to go to church. - no pinches (silly, huh)! 

I used to make lamb stew every year, and the last several years I have made a corned beef meal. And, of course, we have a green dessert - this year, pistachio pie.

Roger and I were both invited to play in an Aggie Alumni Golf Tournament at the Oasis Palmer Golf Course in Mesquite, which was a pre-Mountain West Basketball Championship Tournament event. I don't play golf, but Roger was tickled. The Mountain West Basketball Championship tournament was in Las Vegas. The Aggies finished 1st in the Mountain West, which assured they would play in NCAA March Madness.

Roger golfed with Alumni Relations personnel, Sian Smith, who was in charge of the golf tournament, and two other alumni Aggies.

We headed up north March 18 to pick up our new car, a Mercedes SUV GLE 450. The dealer in Farmington could get it in 3 months earlier than the dealer in St. George, and Roger's sister, Chyrrl, purchased one from the same salesperson we had, and she was great to work with. We have never had an SUV, and certainly not a car with all of the computer bells and whistles that this one has. We had a 2 1/2 hour orientation when we picked it up!

The night we arrived, I got to go with Jodie to a marvelous musical concert! 

Jenny Oaks Baker is an exceptional talent on the violin. Jodie is her close friend and Jenny told her that she loves performing with her kids in the wonderful Christmas concerts they do, but her passion is to do a concert with music of the Atonement. Kurt Bestor's original music was beautiful; he weaved familiar Sacrament songs into his music and the orchestra, soloists and choirs were outstanding. Jodie and I saw it in Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake, and this program with different choirs and orchestra was actually performed the following Saturday night at Tuacahn in St. George, and Roger also got to see it, as we were offered tickets by friends.

I love this Chihuly blown glass sculpture in the foyer at Abravanel Hall that was placed there in the SLC 2002 Winter Olympics.

Jenny Oaks Baker after the concert - we took a quick pic.

Another perk of going up north is getting to see Josh, Jaylene and our cute great-grandkids. Lydia was asleep, but Jaylene and Caleb came to the back door, looking so cute in their hats.

Spring Break for Two Daughters

Missy, Jedd and their 3 youngest, Ellie, Anders and Claire, from Boise, got to our house a little before we did when we returned from up north. They spent 3 days with us hiking, biking, swimming and watching the first round of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. We do a Stratford Family Showdown every year, filling out the brackets, and we had so much fun watching the games and cheering for our picks. Anderson and Claire were into it as much as the adults! Ellie is a graduating senior from Mountain View High School, and she is planning to go to Utah Tech University (recently name-changed from Dixie) in St. George this fall. Yay! We are so excited that she will go to school here and we can have her over for some meals and hopefully, hangin' out time! Ellie, Missy and Jedd went on a golf cart campus tour with the newly-elected SB President and they came back high on the school, its facilities and its friendliness. 

We love this wonderful family and we missed Jared and Sam, who are attending USU.

They wanted a ride in our new car, and then we drove on top of the hill behind us for some sunset pics.

NCAA strategizing

So exciting to watch the USU Aggies win their first round, beating TCU. Missy and Jedd are our only fellow Aggies; all of our other kids and spouses graduated from BYU (who lost their first round).

Just sayin'.

We belong to a wonderful "Come Follow Me" group who meet on Zoom every Monday night for an hour, discussing our Sunday School scriptures. For Easter, Ed and Jolene hosted a potluck in their home and we had delicious food and fun conversation. We are all great friends.

It was Spring Break for our youngest daughter, Mindy's kids the following weekend, from Alpine, and on Sunday, it was Easter and also their oldest son, Jack's, birthday. They came to visit us in St. George first for a couple of days, then they headed on to Sedona, pulling their Airstream trailer. It was so fun to have Mindy and Jeff and their 4 kids, Jack, Addie, Charlie and Fiona for a visit! How we love this precious family!

Pink Box doughnuts made great little Easter treats for them.

The Easter bunny brought sidewalk chalk and Addie decorated our sidewalk out front with this.

Rog took a pic of us singing, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," together. I know, cheesy, but Addie has such a beautiful voice. She sang a song she had prepared for us, some fast, wordy thing from some new musical, and it was amazing!

Charlie used up one whole piece of chalk to see how far he could make a line on the sidewalk before it ran out.

Easter morning

Easter Dinner

Mindy made the dessert every kid in her family requests on their birthdays - Tres de Leche cake. And it was delicious!

Mindy and Jeff put this jigsaw puzzle together that afternoon. Amazing!

I have 2 massage guns and they all loved them!

And I have to include these Easter pics sent to us.

Great-grandson, Caleb, and his sister, Lydia on Easter

Our granddaughter, Abby, serving a Church mission in Oklahoma with her companion

Happy Easter, Everybody!

He Lives!

 

February Love Notes

I have always loved February! 

Not only is it the Love Month with Valentine's Day, but that day is also my birthday. It was fun to put a love spin on our happenings this month.

First up - have you ever owned a car that reached this milestone (see what I did there?) in mileage? Our Mercedes actually has over 350,000 miles on it now, but Roger was watching for it to turn over to 333,333 and got the pic. We bought it with just 6,000 miles on it, and it has been a wonderful car, even though it left us stranded on the freeway entry ramp at Nephi recently and our son in North Salt Lake had to come get us. But I will never say a bad word about this car. How can you not love a faithful car that has had only two major repairs with this amount of mileage? She (I am assigning a personal pronoun to this beloved car) has served us well! 

Mercedes sends a medallion when a car is still running at 250,000 kilometers (about 150,000 miles) and one at 500,000 kms (3000,000 miles). Ours is still going strong and we're going for the 100,000,000 kms!

USU Aggies held an event in St. George at Utah Tech February 2, and Dane Graham, Director of Advancement for USU's Cane College ofArts and our friend, invited Balladier Lewis Rawlinson and Roger and I to lunch. Lewis, also living in St. George, was an amazing guitarist, banjo player and beautiful soloist singer with us and he recently lost his wife. We had an enjoyable time reminiscing.

We attended the evening's dinner with fellow Aggies Bob and Mary Brady, enjoying a roast beef dinner followed with baked goods and our favorite, Aggie ice cream. 

Highlight for me was being with my dear friend, Balladier, Craig Jessop. Former director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir ( now called The Tabernacle Choir on Temple Square), he is the founder of the Caine College of the Arts at USU, and we also sat with some of his vocal students before he arrived. They raved about him, what a wonderful teacher he is and how much they love him!

Since our granddaughter, Claire, started school, she has made "work of art" Valentine boxes and her mom has braided her beautiful, long hair into a Valentine. Missy tells me this will be her last year to do this. This is a Minion (I forgot his name!) I surely love this little pixie!

Roger treated me to a great birthday, which helped soften the blow of which one it was! I appreciate and love him so much!

Aren't these roses he gave me lovely? The color was so vivid and they lasted for about a week.

We took this pic in the morning, and I later received more treats and cards from grandkids and had lots of fun conversations on the phone with my kids.

Roger took me shopping at Polish Pottery Cottage in St. George, where I picked out several pieces with birthday money. I love hand-painted pottery and I have collected it at many of the places we have traveled. The irony of that is, my favorite is Polish pottery, but I've never been to Poland!

We enjoyed yummy sushi for lunch at Benja Thai #2 . . .

. . . and loved our lamb shish kabob meal at Wood Ash Rye that evening.

As we were leaving the restaurant, we ran into one of Mindy's best friends, Jessica Maron. She is such a kind person with a bigger-than-life personality.

Rick put together a golf junket in St. George, February 16-20, for four of his favorite boys - his oldest son, Josh, his son-in-law, Joe, and Roger. The first day, they played 18 holes at Black Dessert, the new PGA golf course in St, George, and 15 (it got dark) at Sunbrook.

That evening, Rick took us all to dinner at his favorite place in St. George, Viva Chicken!, a Peruvian rotisserie chicken restaurant with lots of sides he ate when he served a Church mission in Peru.

Next day they golfed 18 holes at Copper Rock and until it got dark, 14 at Sand Hollow. Each guy loves to golf and they lucked out with  great weather and had tales to tell of great shots and near misses.

I fixed Roger's favorite, Sloppy Joes, and Rick's favorite, Italian macaroni salad, for dinner Saturday night, and we had White Almond Sheet Cake I made with ice cream for dessert.

Sunday morning at 9, they attended church with us and we had an especially good Sacrament meeting with a musical number by a guest soloist with a beautiful voice, and our Sunday School was taught by a great teacher (a retired attorney) who gets you to really think and gets great audience participation. We outdoor grilled salmon, had baked potatoes with homemade ranch dressing, asparagus and Brenda Gantt's Southern Cabbage Casserole. Rick and Josh loved the cabbage and Jaylene texted for the recipe. We had their favorite, Nielsen's custard with sugar cones for dessert before they cleaned up and headed up north for home. We love these good  boys!

We received GREAT NEWS - a beautiful love note for February! Grandson Jared and McKenna are engaged and they planned to be married August 2 in the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. We met her when we took them for pizza in Logan at Fredrico's in December. They said they wanted to date through all four seasons to know each other, which is what they did! We love her and it was so cute to watch them interact with each other. Jared is a kind, wonderful and talented boy.

It was back up north February 22 to go to the Jazz game with Rick and Jodie. He invites us up for a game in great seats and dinner in the box every year. We look forward to it and love to go. Jodie took a pic of Roger and grandson Blake riding little ride-on scooters in Rick and Jodie's indoor gym. Blake rides one around every morning while he blasts his favorite music, then he gets off and shoots baskets. He sometimes shoots 8 out of 10 shots! 

Rog caught a thrown Jazz t-shirt!

We each got a Crumbl cookie!

Next day Roger, Rick and Josh went skiing at Snowbasin. Roger loves outdoor adventure, but he might have had a little more than he bargained for! They arrived a little early and Josh and Rick were excited that there was no line for their favorite run, John Paul, the downhill run for the 2002 Winter Olympics. Roger didn't realize it was a Triple Black Diamond run. He soon found out that he was a little rusty to be skiing black diamond, and he said he returned down mostly off his skis! He was lucky to just get a sore right hip and sweaty wet! He forgets he's going on 80!

Jess T. did my hair on Friday and I hung out with Jodie.

We stopped at Mindy and Jeff's on our way home for a couple of hours. The whole family was home and we had fun visiting with them all. I took a pic of these three little cuddlers - Mindy, Addie and the cat! Sure love this family!

We returned home Saturday night. Rog took these pics of me after church on Sunday.

Sunday up north, Rick and Jodie had all of the Stratford cousins in the area over for a big dinner to meet Jared's fiancee, McKenna. The cousins love to be together!

On Leap Year's February 29, we were invited to a three-couple luncheon at Menlo and Kathryn Smith's, then we went through the Red Cliffs Temple Open House before its dedication. It is so lovely with its purple and green interiors and stained glass windows with the desert paintbrush flowers theme.

I love each of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints temples and it was such a wonderful way to end the love month of February!