Freedom of Worship

Today, Janet and I did a "girls day out" and went to the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum. They are having a Norman Rockwell exhibit, which was awesome. Three of the paintings were from his "Freedom of..." series. One of them, Freedom of Worship, was very interesting. We noticed that across the top it said, "according to the dictates of his own conscience..." There was a nifty little blurb saying that this painting and this caption had disturbed Mr. Rockwell and his minions because he remembered reading it somewhere, but no one could find any document to attribute it to. Interesting, eh? (In case you don't remember where it comes from either, you should brush up on the Articles of Faith.)

This year, we waited until Janet got home to get our Christmas tree. We looked at a few lots in town, but the trees were $30-$35 for nothing special. In previous years, we went to one of two cut your own tree lots in Mosinee, where the trees were $20. But we heard that the trees there were pretty picked over this year. So we trekked out in the country to a place that really was pretty similar to going out into the woods to find your own. These people planted a bunch of trees many years ago, and then never followed up with any care. Now they just want the trees cut down. So we tromped around a found a tree that Rene really likes (Janet maybe not so much) for only $15.

Possibly a little early...

We really did have a mild fall. It's only been really cold for a couple of weeks, and it's only been super cold once or twice. I think people should know that it's way too early for this:

Yup...this story from the paper was called "Car Falls Into Lake Wausau."

These are a few of my favorite things...

Every Christmas I have the opportunity to take out and display some of my prized possesions. I have a collection of nativities and while I like them all, some of them have great sentimental value to me.This one is priceless...literally. I don't think you can even find one like it to buy anymore. We have had this our whole married life and it's showing signs of its age. I'll have to keep patching it up if necessary so that it lasts forever. I think someone could make a mint by reprinting them, because everyone of "a certain age" loves it and asks me if I know where they can get one.

Rene's sister Mary Ann made this for us quite a few years ago. We got the stable from a friend who was throwing it out. Everyone's favorite is this little lamb, who is standing with his tail toward the viewer, looking at the manger. The "JOY" candles I purchased from the Avon Lady when we lived in Casselton. They are getting faded, but they still smell like Christmas.

I have several nativities from foreign countries like....

Argentina,

Paraquay,

and Ecuador. They all have special meaning to me because they were thoughtfully brought to me by our kids.
Here's one that was kicking around our house for a couple of years and Joanna, that crafty girl, painted it for me before she moved to Minneapolis.

It's always a sweet experience to unpack these little treasures and remember not only the Savior's birth, but the love of friends and family by which we are surrounded.

Mele Kalisimasi!

Tonight was our ward Christmas party, "Christmas Around the World." We were in charge of a display about and food from Tonga. It was pretty awesome, if I say so myself. We used all of Rene's tapa cloths and mats and some fake palm trees leftover from "Christmas in Bethlehem" last year. We served oati, which is a drink made of pureed watermelon, coconut and coconut cream (obviously, I didn't have any say in that because I personally find coconut disgusting.) We wore some of the traditional Tongan clothes Rene brought home from his mission, even though it was 21 degrees outside. Oh, the palm trees were missing ALL of their leaves, so last night late, we whipped some up.

Giving Thanks

There's an old Perry Como song that sometimes gets played during the holidays called "Oh, There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays." It's pretty corny, but I realized this week that part of it is very, very true. One of the verses says "Take a bus, take a train, Go and hop an aeroplane, Put the wife and kiddies in the car. For the pleasure that you bring when you make that doorbell ring No trip could be too far." This week, we had the joy of having all of our family home for Thanksgiving and what pleasure it brought us! We appreciate the sacrifice each family made to be here; the love, kindness and toleration that helped us enjoy each other; and the peace that comes from knowing that despite challenges, each person is trying to do what the Lord would have them do. We're so thankful for Heavenly Father's blessings!

Our Amazing Ancestors

Okay, strictly speaking, Judah McClaskey Gillett is not our ancestor. She is the sister of my gggrandfather, Samuel McClaskey. I have been obsessed with Judah and her family for about 5 years.

She was born in southern Ohio along the Ohio river on land given to her father and brothers in payment for their services in the War of 1812. She grew up there, married there and had several children there. At some point, she and her family made the decision to move westward. On the 1850 census, Samuel and Judah and their family are living, amazingly enough, in Nauvoo. I suppose at some point they heard about the abandonment of Nauvoo by the Saints and chose to move there. From Nauvoo, Samuel and Judah and the younger children moved back to Knox County, Illinois, near Galesburg. However, five of their children headed west to California. Another daughter would move there later.

One of Judah's sons died at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862 and Samuel died in Knox County in 1865. At some point, she decided to journey west and join her children who lived in California. She died there in 1896.

In October, I was able to travel to California with Rene when he went on business. When we decided to take an extra day and go north to the Redwoods, I suggested that we also go to visit the parts of Humboldt county where Judah's children settled and where she died. What a thrill that was! I described the trip to Petrolia here, but let me just say that it was wild and rugged countryside that we traveled through. After zigzagging up and down the mountains, we finally descended into the beautiful Mattole valley. This is where Judah and her children settled. I was touched to see the charming little farmsteads, many with small orchards and beautiful yards. In Petrolia, we went to the tiny cemetery, where we found the grave on Judah's son-in-law. We drove on up over more mountains to Ferndale, where some of Judah's grandchildren lived and died.

This little excursion really increased my admiration for this family. It took us, in a car, 4 hours to make the trip from the main highway to Ferndale. There is only one road that goes through Petrolia and it's not a good one. How in the world did they do it with a horse and wagon? How did they even know that this beautiful, isolated little valley was out there? I'm sure they were very self-reliant and worked hard to be successful. I wonder if they ever felt alone or isolated? I know they lost children and many of them died at a young age. Did Judah feel discouragement as she survived many of her own children?

When we went to Lauren's blessing in St. Paul earlier this month, Preston blessed Lauren to have the faith of her pioneer ancestors. To me, that was a thoughtful and tender blessing and one to be sought after by all of us, too!

Non Sequiturs

For those who may not know what a non sequitur is, it is something that does not follow logically from what preceded it. Here's an example. As we were eating breakfast today, we were talking about what we had to do today and events that we have coming up, when Rene suddenly said, "You know what people never have enough of when there's an emergency and no electricity?" I was just sitting there staring at him because that thought apparently came out of nowhere. The answer, by the way, is candles. When I knew what the answer was, I could follow his train of thought--there is a candlabra thing on the table with 5 candles on it and he was sitting there looking at it while he ate.

Sometimes in life, as we go about living the gospel and developing faith in Christ, we come across things that appear to be non sequiturs in the religious sense. Our friends Jim and Mary have had a hard year in some respects. Eleven months ago, Jim lost his job and in the intervening time, he has had hardly a nibble as far as a new job goes. On top of that, Mary lost her job two weeks ago and now Jim's dad is ill and struggling with his health. Jim and Mary are both converts to the church who married in the temple, served faithfully in callings, keep the commandments and are raising their kids to do what is right. To our human eyes, it doesn't follow that all these hard things would happen to them. Or what about our friends Pam and Ray? About a year ago, they lost their young adult son when he had a two week old son and his life was just beginning to turn around.

Of course, the opposite situation is true, too. There are many in the world today who feel that they have done such horrible things or have lived such bad lives that there is no hope for them, that the Lord could never love them. Many are struggling with addictions and cannot believe that the Lord's grace and mercy are available to help them. To them, it doesn't seem logical that the Lord does love them.

Part of our problem as humans is that we cannot "see" the Lord's thought processes. When I realized that Rene was eating his breakfast looking at candles, I could understand why he said what he did. But generally, we can't do that with the Lord. In Isaiah, we are taught that the Lord's thoughts are not our thoughts, nor his ways our ways. We have to rely on our faith to help us understand and that's hard. I don't think I'm especially good at it and I know there are many out there who aren't good at it either.

In August of 2008, President Monson was asked what members of the church could give him for his birthday, he responded, "Go and find someone who is having a hard time, ....and do something for them." It seems the least we can do in this month when we ponder our many blessings and thank the Lord for them.

Grandmas

Apparently, Macey and Lauren weren't as impressed with the historic nature of the occasion when 4 generations of us were together this weekend. In fact, Lauren appears to be downright bored.

Boo!

Macey came over on Nov. 30 to go to our ward's trunk or treat. (Okay, Ben and Shannon came, too.) She was so cute! Here are some pictures of that night and of the next day, when we all went to Emily and Preston's for Lauren's blessing.

California Here I Come

For many years, I stayed home with the kids while Rene traveled for work. We always looked forward to the time when I could go on some of his trips with him. Well, that opportunity finally came last week. He had meetings in Napa, California and we decided that I'd go with him. Our trip can be divided into three parts:

Napa: We flew into Sacramento on Monday. Since we had nothing to do for a couple of hours, we drove up to the foothills to Coloma, where gold was discovered. It's really pretty there and we enjoyed it.

We then drove a couple of hours to Napa. The hotel we stayed at was very nice, but Napa itself was pretty unimpressive. It has a cute old downtown, but then we've LIVED in cute places before. There are grapevines, but they sit side by side with Wal-Mart, or the industrial park or whatever, like a corn field would here. While Rene was in meetings on Tuesday, I met a friend from Sacramento for lunch and we had such a good time taking about just about everything.
Redwood forests: On Thursday, we left bright and early and drove north to see the Redwoods. On the drive, we saw some pretty impressive crops. We saw rice fields, almond and olive trees, and of course, the ubiqitous grapvines. (I guess that's what happens when you're married to a farmer for 31 years. Crops become an important topic of conversation.) We also saw a bobcat, elk and turkeys (woohoo). We stopped for lunch in Garberville, California, where we ate at an all-organic restaurant with a bunch of aging hippies and surfer dudes. The Redwoods themselves are very impressive--we're glad we made the effort. At one point, we left the beaten path to drive through a redwood forest on this little teeny road and you would have been proud of me. We followed this road up the mountainside, over the top and down to a pretty valley. I'll write more about that in a later post. This winding little road took us right to the Pacific Ocean, up over more mountains and down into Eureka, where we spent the night. This little side trip was about 75 miles, but took us FOUR hours to drive. That's how winding and steep it was.

The next day, we headed back over the mountains and south to Sacramento. On the way, we were told to watch out for these falling pinecones. They are big and pointy and weighed about 5 lbs apiece! I guess if one fell on your car, you'd know it. We visited a really cute old adobe home where the only governor of the Republic of California lived. We also stopped at a place the processes and sells olives and tasted some of the varieties. We finished the day by flying out of Sacramento to Salt Lake.

Saturday morning, Rene, Janet, Sarah and Casie (and a few hundred other people) ran in the Cougar 5K. We enjoyed spending the day together and topped it off with the BYU-TCU game. It was great to see the girls and we're happy that they're doing well.

Sunday, we went to Sacrament meeting with Rene's brother Blair, then hopped on the plane and came home. It was a fun, fun trip, but I was glad to get home.

Some things I learned from this trip:

I don't really like drippy morning fog, but otherwise, the weather in California is great.

Our ancestors were remarkable people. (More about that later.)

Man's creations are nothing compared with the beautiful world God created for us.

Our children have been blessed and are doing well.

I still don't enjoy flying.

Disclaimer: This post has thoughtful and insightful stuff.

We really had a good summer, full of wonderful things. I enjoyed having Joanna and Janet home. Our trip to Memphis was great; we're glad we could be part of significant family events and it was so, so fun to see Joseph, Tracy and Afton. It is great to have Ben, Shannon and Macey close enough to see on a regular basis. We are so thankful for the safe arrival of sweet Lauren and the amazing and wonderful news that Joseph and Tracy's family will add another child in January. The family reunion was outstanding and it's always a sweet experience to be with family. It was a thrill to welcome Sarah home at the end of the summer. We enjoyed all kinds of fun events this summer and as we move into fall and winter, it makes us happy to see our kids' lives moving forward in righteous and fulfilling ways.

Yet, as is always true in life, there have been challenges for all of us this summer. Whether it's the day-to-day challenges of taking care of a newborn, being pregnant or searching for a job, each of us has had need of faith and patience. My recent surgery was an occasion for me to exercise faith and look forward with hope toward the future. I'm not always really good at doing that, so I'm so grateful for all the prayers and the fasting and the warm and fuzzy thoughts that have come my way over the past four months. I love and appreciate you all so much! And Janet, now you have something to include in your next talk on fasting.

So here's the whole long story of my recent thyroid surgery.

At the end of June, I went to the doctor for a checkup. About a week before that, I had noticed a lump in the right side of my throat. Having had siblings with thyroid issues, I assumed that it was something with my thyroid. So, at the doctor's office, she said that it was enlarged and that I would need to have an ultrasound. So that took place about a week and a half later. To my surprise, I not only had one thyroid nodule, I had six of them of various sizes on both sides of my thyroid. Officially, I was diagnosed with a "multinodular goiter." I thought goiters only happened in parts of the world where people didn't get enough iodine. But I learned that the word goiter refers to any swelling of the thyroid. I was sent to a surgeon who does most of the thyroid surgeries in town for further consultation.

I learned some surprising things at the surgeon's. He told me that 50% of women age 50 or older have thyroid nodules, even if they are not aware of it. And the vast majority of them are benign. To determine if mine were benign or not, I needed to go have the "most worrisome" two of the nodules biopsied. They wouldn't do both of them at once, so that took two more weeks. Then the surgeon insisted on sending them to Mayo, since it can be very hard to determine when the cell sample is so small. That took two more weeks. Well, it turned out that the one on the left was clearly benign. The large one, the one I had felt on the right, turned out to be a kind that cannot be determined without being able to thoroughly examine it and see if it is invading the thyroid or just pushing thyroid tissue aside. So, I needed surgery. (And by the way, I was seeing a surgeon. I would have been kind of surprised had he NOT said I needed surgery.)

With all the things we had going on and with Rene's busy work travel schedule, the soonest I could fit a surgery in was three weeks. When I called to schedule it, it turns out that the surgeon was out of town for two weeks then. So it was scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 13.

Despite all my worries, the surgery itself went very well. I'm not a fan of anesthesia, but I really didn't experience any after effects. The official result on the nodule was "benign, consistent with Hashimoto's thyroiditis." So pending anything further on the final report from the pathologist, everything is good here.

I'll admit that I worried some, but for the most part, I was able to forget about it for long periods of time. The Sunday and Monday before the surgery were the most tense.

Here are pictures of what my throat looked like the day after surgery and what it looks like now, with the big gauze pad off. I think it looks pretty good, but the scar really has been one of the least of my worries.

Wedding Ring Blues

Yesterday, I had a partial thyroidectomy. Everything is going well and I'll blog about the actual experience later, but I wanted to tell you about one of the most stressful parts of the surgery. No, it wasn't the uncertainty of exactly what the surgeon was going to find or do, or the rigors of the anesthesia,which I hate. No, one thing that stressed me a LOT was the fact that I had to take off my wedding ring. I don't mean that it was some of kind of emotional event to take off the ring I've worn for 31 years. No, I mean that the act of actually physically getting that ring off was stressful. I can't even remember the last time I took it off. It was probably about 22 years ago when I had some minor surgery. Five years ago, for our 25th anniversary, Rene got me a diamond ring. I wanted to wear it on my ring finger, but couldn't get the original plain gold wedding band off even then. Once I got it almost halfway up on my knuckle, but it was turning my finger purple and making it swell, so I gave it up. Well, now it had to come off. I tried everything I had heard of, including Windex and Becky's dental floss trick. All I got out of all that was a very red and swollen finger. Finally, I decided I'd have to have it cut off.

Well, I found out that the emergency room at the hospital charges $80 to cut it off, and a jeweler costs about $20 if you then pay them to fix it afterwards. Well, the ring does have some sentimental value, but we only paid $35 for it 31 years ago!

So here's what I did. I went to Menard's and I bought a skinny little file. I came home and poked some toothpicks under my ring to steady it and to provide some space between the ring and my finger for protection. And then I proceeded to saw my ring apart. It worked like a charm and only took about 12 minutes of filing. I think it is fixable if I ever get around to taking it in to a jeweler to resize it. I think the hangup in getting it off isn't fat fingers, although I freely admit I weigh much more than I did 31 years ago. I think the reason I couldn't get it off is all this flabby, wrinkly old person loose skin! It's a good thing that I had to take it off, too, because the groove on my finger still hasn't gone away and it's been over two days!

Bibliomania

My sister Emily says that they have a problem with shoes. We have the same problem to a degree, but a greater problem in our house is books. Despite our best efforts, we have so many books! Every good librarian knows that one needs to "weed" the collection, so this week, I did some of that. When we moved from Mount Vernon, we got rid of at least half of our books, but for every one we get rid of, two (or even three!) seem to take its place. A quick reading just now of the top shelf of the bookcase in our upstairs hallway includes these titles: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, 41 Stories by O. Henry, Papa's Daughter, National Geographic's Great Britain, Favorite Christian Poems, Hello, Cosmo! (required reading to be part of the family), Jane Eyre, three of the Ender series, The Metamorphosis, Little Women, Feeding and Improvement of Farm Animals, My Antonia, Agatha Christie: Five Complete Novels, and The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963. Obviously, we're a bunch of pretty eclectic readers. The books we have around here have come to us in several ways.

1. Dad used to send or bring us boxes of books that Northern had weeded from its library and he thoughtfully picked up for us. There are some classics in this group, including the infamous Dam book and Janet's favorite, Here Comes the Bus!

Her ownership of this book is proclaimed this way:

It looks like her name was written by either Emily or me, but she obviously wrote the rest herself.

2. When the kids would bring home flyers from the Scholastic Book Club, they were usually allowed to buy one. When they were in Middle School, they had book fairs in the fall and spring and sometimes the kids bought books there. There are lots of picture books from that era, but also some interesting chapter books, including Dogs Don't Tell Jokes, People Do and A Day No Pigs Would Die.

3. This leads to another category--books people had to read for school. This is a pretty mixed bunch. There are some great books like The Weirdo by Theodore Taylor or The Chosen by Chaim Potok. There are lots of so-called classics that people had to read but would probably never choose to read on their own, like the aforementioned The Metamorphosis, or Their Eyes Were Watching God, or my least favorite of all time, The Lord of the Flies. This category even includes some college textbooks that the bookstore wouldn't buy back, but they're too good or too potentially useful to throw away.

4. Some of us have our own collections of titles. I have most of Georgette Heyer's books and a lot of Ngaio Marsh mysteries. Rene used to have an almost complete collection of Louis L'Amour, but he sold them when we moved. We also have the Twilight series, the Harry Potter series and the series by Scott Westfield that includes the Uglies, the Pretties, etc. That brings up a tangential question. Why do so many popular authors of today write such darn long books?

5. We also have quite a collection of reference books which includes a bunch of Spanish dictionaries and this little gem that Emily used for Power of the Pen:

It is touchingly inscribed "Hi Emily, Good luck at POP. We're Superior", "Hi Emily, Good Luck, Eat Cheesecake factories snake!" and "Good Luck! Sarah Tomita "Haras". I have actually used this book on occasion. We used to have a World Book Encyclopedia and, I swear, the kids would take volumes of it to bed with them as a little pre-slumber reading.

All this does not even take into account our Church books (two bookcases), Rene's work reference library, piano books, maps, family history tomes, and so on. Looks like we won't run out of something to read in the near future!

Olympics

I see from the news that the Olympics were awarded to Rio, not to Chicago. Darn! If Chicago got them, they were going to have the mountain biking venue near Madison. Teehee...it's FLAT around Madison!

Here's something that I find totally baffling and sort of annoying. Why in the world do people who live in Wisconsin put fake deer in their yards? Wisconsin is overrun with deer. We have our own little herd that faithfully comes to our yard twice or three times a day. I'm sure the people who have the fake deer could look out their windows and see deer pretty much on a regular basis!

Our deer have been visiting us to pack on the pounds for the winter by eating all the acorns we have. They are pretty brave and don't scare away easily. They come right up to the deck and to the windows and porch. Rene is really tempted to try to catch one for our food storage. Maybe he could just chase it around the house. Oh, sorry, I forgot...that was Sarah's approach to the turkeys.