Pipes of Pam: April 2024

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!