Through the woods and over the river

Our trip to my Mom's for Thanksgiving was great. It's always wonderful to be with family. I inevitably come away uplifted and inspired to be a better person. Although the weather was cold, cold, cold, our hearts were warm.

We didn't do anything too strenuous or exciting. We did do a lot of this:

and this:

Lauren was a big help when it was time to clean up:

On Saturday, a group of us ran the Warner Wobble Gobble. Warner is a teeny town 10 miles south of Aberdeen. Janet's blog will have the full details. It was very small townish and lots of fun.

We are thankful for all of you. We wish we could be together for every holiday, but are happy for phone calls, emails, blogs, facebook, Skype, and letters to keep us close. You are all an essential part of our happiness and we think of you and pray for you always.

New in the Neighborhood

I guess WPS got tired of the drug dealers parking on their property. Just kidding....sort of. More than 5 years ago, Wisconsin Public Service bought a bunch of properties at the end of our street and tore down the homes. But they couldn't do much about the paved streets. Russell St. ends in a cul-de-sac down there. People drive and walk down there all the time. WPS has tried to stop that by dumping a huge pile of dirt at the end, putting up sawhorses, not having it plowed in the winter, etc. I guess this is their latest attempt. There probably aren't a bunch a drug dealers (that's kind of an inside joke) but there are lots of deer hunters who try to sneak back there and hunt.

The bad news:

About 10 days ago, we started to notice an awful smell coming from our upstairs bathroom. It got worse in the next 3-4 days. After lots of sniffing, we pinpointed the smell to the linen closet. I gingerly (and I mean gingerly!) took all the towels out, one by one, expecting to find a dead mouse. Nothing. There's a basket on the floor of the linen closet which holds tableclothes, placemats, etc. I took everything out of there, very carefully. Nothing. I took everything off every shelf. Nothing. The only conclusion we can reach is that some furry little rodent climbed or fell into the wall and died. It's so gross. For a few days there, I thought I was going to throw up every time I went in there. We've managed to contain the smell pretty well by closing the doors and keeping the fan on. I think it's abating now, although it may be that our sense of smell has been obliterated by the stench. Hopefully, it will all be over soon, because the only other option is to tear out the linen closet.

Rene's snowblower, which came with the house and is pretty much an antique, needs repairs in the neighborhood of $450. That doesn't include some other problems that Rene didn't even mention to the repair guy. So this weekend, Rene and Ben enjoyed scouting out and purchasing a new snowblower. When you live in Wisconsin and have a big yard and long driveways, a snowblower is a necessity. I didn't much enjoy the sound of $$$ being siphoned out of our account.

The good news:

I made this cake over the weekend. I made it a couple of years ago for Emily's birthday and it is soooo good! It originally came from Betty, but has not been in her cookbooks for a number of years. Good thing I'm old and have old cookbooks. Levi didn't appreciate it, though. He pronounced it "weird."

The aforementioned snowblower has HEATED HANDLES!

I'm working on a number of projects that I need to get done before Thanksgiving. One of them, while cute, is taking way longer than I anticipated and I'm making 8! I also have three sewing projects that need to get done by then. I'll post pictures when they are done and when they have found a home with their intended receivers. On that note, I'd better get busy.

Homemade

I have had fun making some things for our little grandaughters lately. Here are the goodies:

A dress for Lauren--I want to use the same pattern to make one for Afton and Macey.

A special shirt for Macey with her hero on the front

And a Minnie Mouse skirt for Afton.

They all turned out well. I'll let their parents post pictures of them wearing them :)

Goofy

Play Dough glasses

Lady and the Tramp--I'll let you decide who's who.

Fake sleeping--I wonder where she would have learned that?

Lately

What have we been up to lately?

Well, a little bit of this...

Some birthday celebrations...

She liked her presents.

So did she.

A visit to Minneapolis to go to the temple and hang out with the kids...

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Today is my Dad's birthday. He would have been 82 today. Sadly, he passed away over 10 years ago at the age of 71. I still miss him. Even though we were all long gone from home with families of our own, he was still a source of wisdom, advice and spiritual strength. His passing certainly left a hole in all of our lives.

In many respects, he had a hard life. He was born just before the Great Depression, the tenth of thirteen children. I remember him telling us that one year the whole family got a basketball for Christmas. That's it--one basketball. Dad suffered from physical ailments which affected his ability to live a normal life at times. He worked hard physically his whole life, even after he received his EdD and was teaching at Northern State College in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He and Mom struggled to make ends meet for many years.

Maybe because of all that, Dad was a spiritual giant. Because we lived in a family setting and dealt with the ups and downs of family life, I don't think we always recognized the spiritual wisdom he had. He fasted often; he sacrificed to help others. He was a keen student of the scriptures. I think he had the gift of discernment. He was able to see into the hearts of others.

He wasn't perfect. He was absent-minded. He was a little kooky, eccentric, unique--I don't know exactly what adjective to use. There are some pretty funny stories anyone in the family could tell you. At Ethan's wedding, Todd Hendrickson told us his "10 cow wife" story. Let me just say that Dad enjoyed it as much as Todd did. I remember his attitude toward the solid double lines in the middle of the road which indicate no passing. He believed that those lines didn't necessarily apply to him--they were for those who did not have good judgement of their own.

In the ten years since Dad has been gone, I have felt him very close to me on a handful of occasions. I'm thankful for that evidence of continuing love and support. I have found this quote from the book TheLife Beyond by Robert L. Millet and Joseph Fielding McConkie to be comforting:

"When a righteous man ora righteous woman die, they do not cease to love their family in the flesh, they do not cease to pray for them, they do not cease to labor in their behalf. As their family was their primary concern in this life, so it will continue to be their primary concern on the other side of the veil. We would demean the nature of their labors in the spirit world to suppose that they had nothing more to do than to conduct a daily watch over those they left behind; yet the love and interest is still there, and on special occasions their presence will be felt and in some instances, as appropriate, they may be granted the privilege to more fully manifest themselves, though these treasures of heaven will not be common." p. 85-86

I don't think I ever saw Dad change a diaper. Men just didn't do that when he and Mom were raising their family. But Dad loved children. All of us have sweet memories of Dad dancing with our kids, singing to them, cheering them on in sports, loving them. A small measure of comfort has come to me thinking of Dad and Logan being together on the other side, talking of things of eternal importance, working together, singing together, looking down on us occasionally, maybe even shaking their heads and tsk, tsking over the state of BYU football. I'm thankful for their continued love. Happy Birthday, Dad! Thanks for everything. I love you!