When I look around me where I live . . .
. . . and when I sit on our balcony in the early morning
(I find that I wake up earlier these days),
feel and smell the fresh, gentle breeze and hear the birds singing . . .
. . . all seems right with the world!
Well, God is in His Heaven, but, oh, His beautiful world has been turned upside down!!!
Covid 19, Corona Virus, the Pandemic has brought and is continuing to bring huge change!
Lockdowns, sequestering, home schooling, working from home, social distancing,
wearing face masks and protective gloves, terrifying news reports, mass demonstrations and riots
across the world after an unjust racial murder-
all these things, commonplace.
It remains to be seen for how long these things will continue.
Every individual and his or her future plans are affected.
Roger and I have cancelled or postponed:
*An 18-day Viking cruise leaving from Puerto Rico, crossing the Atlantic and stopping in Portugal and Spain
*Attending two grandkid missionary setting aparts and Temple endowment sessions
(Katie and Jared)
*Going to see Josh graduate from BYU (graduation was cancelled)
*Two granddaughter's (Anna and Londyn) high school graduations (cancelled)
*Roger's WHS class reunion trip to Jerry's ranch
*The Gabrielsen family Back to Roots Trip and cruise to Norway, Sweden and Germany
*Our kids and spouses Rocky Mountaineer train trip through the Canadian Rockies
*And, not eating out in restaurants!
That is some of our Glass Half Empty/Black Cloud Stuff!
But this time of upheaval change has brought some Glass Half-full/Silver Lining Stuff:
Though we miss the members of our Church congregation, I am finding that I am using this down time
to tune in a little harder to my "Come Follow Me" study.
We are enjoying the longer and more frequent discussion times together about Christ.
We have found even deeper meaning in partaking of the Sacrament each Sunday while doing it in our home.
We look forward to meeting virtually with our "Come Follow Me" group every Monday evening.
We have great discussions!
Our service missionary Pathway Connect work has not missed a beat.
Just before the Pandemic shut everything down, we received the Zoom meeting app and training.
Every Thursday at 7 PM we meet with our students. The discussions have been less spontaneous
as we meet virtually, but we're all learning to work with it.
We love these cute kids!
This cute gal has blossomed! When she started last fall, she would hardly utter a word.
Roger and I celebrated Easter . . .
. . . and Mothers' Day sequestered together.
Our kids have all been adament about us doing that and they check on us more often than they did
and show and express their love.
At the beginning of all of this,
we started having Zoom meetings every Wednesday evening with our kids' families.
After a couple of weeks of these fun meetings, I came up with the idea of sharing
memories, bios and pics about Roger's and my grandparents, taking one couple a week.
This week we were talking about Roger's Grandpa George and wife, Melva.
It was so cute - they told Max he kind of looked like his great-great-great Grandpa George, so he parted and combed his hair down the middle to show us!
When we talked about Roger's grandmother - Lois's mom, Laura Laverna -
Chyrrl hooked Lois up to our Zoom
and she met with us! We all enjoyed that a lot!
Mindy said after growing out her roots for so long without having her hair done,
she decided to try out being a redhead!
We love it when our two Home MTC missionaries can sometimes join us in these Zoom meetings!
We had a mystery visitor one night. Guess who?
On the night we talked about Roger's mom, Chyrrl tuned her in again on Zoom.
It was a beautiful evening of honoring her by showing lots of pics of her with us and various kids
and grandkids, telling stories and paying tribute to her.
We all love and adore our only mom/grandma left!
MAJOR LIFE PROJECT
Okay, so we have not gotten bored with nothing to do and here is why.
We have been doing 75 years worth of sorting -
sorting through boxes and boxes
of pictures, slides, papers, cards and notes, certificates memorabilia and yes, junk!
Roger has scanned and scanned and scanned and scanned and scanned and scanned and scanned . . .
His hair grew longer and longer (probably because of all of that scanning),
so we took pics before he finally went to his barber.
We were so sad to not be able to go to Mesa for Londyn and Anna's graduations
from Mountain View High School.
Londyn has been an outstanding Varsity Cheerleader for four years, getting to cheer with her sister,
Maddy this year.
She has many talents, friends and boyfriends and is an absolute baby magnet.
They call her the Baby Whisperer!
Anna was a cute cheerleader for a couple of years and this year she was on the school diving team.
She was voted as Homecoming Queen and this spring was picked as Outstanding Toro of her school!
What a little dynamo she is!
Granddaughter Sydney, husband, Jake and adorable great-grandson, Charlie thrilled us
with a social distancing visit right before Memorial Day.
Charlie is enjoying some custard bread pudding with homemade strawberry sauce.
We adore this darling little family!
Syd and Jake brought me beautiful flowers!
On Memorial Day, after Roger's Monday morning foursome finished their eighteen holes,
we were invited for a hamburger cookout with all of the trimmings on Marilyn and Dave's Uffin's patio.
Marilyn had prepared so much delicious food and she wouldn't let anyone bring anything.
We tried hard to practice social distancing.
Ever since the inception of that awful virus, I remain squeamish about getting around people.
I hope I can quit worrying about it soon!
A day later, Mindy, Jeff and kids stopped in for a quick social distancing visit
on their way home from visiting Jeff's sister in Fresno.
They recently purchased an Airstream trailer, something they have long dreamed of doing.
Everything is self-contained, the only way to travel these scary days.
It was so wonderful to see them! And so hard not to give them big hugs and kisses!
On our following Pathway Connect night, we were invited to an 80th birthday celebration
of our friend, Keith Cannon.
I was again squeamish, but we made a quick appearance in their backyard.
So, here are some of the results of our three-month project.
Below is a minor little project
that I just finished a couple of days ago.
I organized my memorabilia of my growing up years into a box, then documented each item
so that my progeny will know why I kept each item.
I first took a pic of each item . . .
. . . then I made a catologue showing and explaining each item.
By the way, I got lots of good advice from our daughter, Missy. When she asked me what I wanted
for Mother's Day, I said, "Organizing containers, labeler, etc."
so she did some research and she and Stacy sent some great items to us.
I had fun making this list that I put at the back of this catalogue.
Now Dad's old trunk is organized and filled with info of my predecessors.
We have all afore mentioned items organized into decades. We've got everything pretty much sorted
and more containers are coming in the mail.
The larger items are in these storage containers . . .
And the many photos we had collected before digital photography were put into these containers.
And I can't complete my post about surviving this Pandemic without including a few pics
that we took of the food I have cooked and shared with friends and neighbors.
I have tried lots of new recipes and have also made old favorites.
For some crazy reason,
all but the first pic are of desserts.
Go figure!
And speaking of figures, this staying at home and cooking my brains out hasn't been so great on mine!
I rarely have sat out on our balcony.
Now I look forward to going out there each morning and meditating a bit,
taking in God's beautiful world. I'll have to get up earlier and earlier through the summer for it to be cool enough.
We've learned how to communicate with others in a different way with technology
and it has been fun to make and also receive lots of "love" treats to and from neighbors and friends back and forth to each other.
Now our big family meets once a week virtually, which is something new
and is the highlight of our week.
We have loved chatting about our loved ones of the past with them.
And who knows whether we would have EVER tackled all of those boxes
and organized the minutia of our lives!
We have lots of writing in our future, but now we have a base.
Am I grateful for this Pandemic?
That might be stretching it, but I am grateful for its hidden blessings.
