HARMONY ON A GRAND SCALE....

Ross and I were still living in an apartment on Grant Street in Denver during the time I was pregnant with Brice.  That was back in the day (1971) when the yearly Stake Relief Society Spring Event used to feature a special speaker—usually someone famous in the Church from Utah—and a very dressy and elegant luncheon.  It was a big shindig and was always well-attended as life was simpler then.  A singular meeting of this type was a priority for most of the women.

That particular year I do not remember what the theme was, but there was a “Fashion Show” slated as part of the agenda.  Any family member could be a participant.  The only criteria was specific: whatever garment was going to be modeled had to be an item fashioned by sisters in our stake.  The articles could be knitted, crocheted, or machine stitched.

I was sooo excited!  Now that I was a stay-at-home mom and we were on a tight budget, I had been perfecting my sewing skills which I had learned years before in 4-H classes.  My splurge after the invitation arrived was a beautiful piece of soft blue polyester knit fabric (YES! Remember clothing made out of that non-breathable material?)  My plan was to make myself a new maternity dress for Easter and model it in the Relief Society Fashion Show.  The sketched woman on the pattern envelope was wearing a scarf around her neck as an accessory.  I wanted to look just like that, too.  So, I bargain shopped for a silk scarf and finally found one I could afford with a blue and pastel pink stylized daisy print.  Oh, I was going to look so fabulous!

My hair had been short for years by the time Ross and I got married. He had asked me if I would grow it long.  So, I did.  By this time it was almost shoulder length, and I imagined that it would be so stylish if it were fashioned in an “up-do”.  But there was no money for a trip to the beauty shop.  However, there was a Beauty College not far from where we lived, and I made an appointment to have my hair done the morning of the luncheon.  Because we had only one car and it was too far for me to walk to the chapel where the luncheon and fashion show were being held, Ross said he would come home early for his lunch hour and take me to the hairdresser and then to the big event.

It had not occurred to me to have my hair styled once before as a trial run or even ask for a “senior” student as my stylist. In consequence I was assigned to a new student, an earnest young man who vainly tried to fashion my hair into the sophisticated style I had seen in my mind’s eye for several weeks.

The clock on the wall ticked past half an hour, forty-five minutes, an hour!  I was panicked!  Ross’ lunch hour was OVER, and I was still in the beautician’s chair.  The panicked look on his face clearly showed the student was almost as upset as I was!  After an hour and a half when at last the stylist was finished, I didn’t look anything at all like I had requested for the fancy hairdo I had in mind. 

Nevertheless, Ross rushed me to the Denver Stake center so I could still be in the “Fashion Show” even though I knew I had missed the luncheon.  We raced through cross-town traffic only to arrive and find out that the fashion show was over, too!  It had been staged concurrently while the women had been enjoying a delicious lunch.  It was time for the speaker to begin her remarks.  I was devastated and didn’t even want to stay for the rest of the program. 

As I stumbled into the car, I fell into Ross’ arms and cried and cried in disappointment as he drove me home.  (I’m sure pregnancy hormones added to that!) I’ll never forget how he never said one word about all the long time he had had to wait.  On top of the wait, he was three hours late getting back to work after he dropped me off at our apartment.  Ross knew how much I had been looking forward to this special event.  He wasn’t one much for verbal consolation, yet I could tell from his tender treatment of me that he felt bad, too.

This experience immediately came to mind when I read our Visiting Teaching lesson for August in preparation for the monthly letter I write to the no-contact sisters on my route.  The lessons this year are based on “The Family:  A Proclamation to the World”.  This month our focus is nurturing families together. 

These gospel principles are simple.  No mystery about them at all.  Loving and caring for one another invites the Spirit into our homes.  Sacrifice and acts of love bring harmony on a grand scale.  A quote from President Russell M. Nelson's April 2008 General Conference talk pinpointed the whole message: “The home is to be God’s laboratory of love and service.”    

I like to review my “success stories” with this principle. I have been proficient at love and harmony on a grand scale before.  I can be again--over and over and over.

Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another;  Romans12:10 

I love this scripture.  It is a good reminder that family nurturing should be so constant and so natural that we prefer our family to any other relationships.  After all, our family is our most important neighbor!

POST SCRIPT:  Though the big picture in my life now isn't from the screen play I wrote years ago, I truly felt loving harmony that day and on numerous occasions during the 29 years Ross and I were married.  That day I was given a gift of love and service.  It has remained one of my bright memories of Ross, who often did the small, quiet things that added up to a significant difference in my feelings--and our lives. And I still have that pretty silk scarf.  Every time I come across it in my drawer, it is a happy memory of love on a grand scale!

Easter 1971-- Georgia 25  (7 months pregnant with Brice) Harold 18 months and Ross 30

in Grandpa and Grandma Nichols front yard 7570 W. 48th Ave. Wheatridge, Colorado

FORGIVENESS...

Last September I gave a lesson in Relief society from President Ezra Taft Benson's opening address  in October General Conference 1989.  It was directed to the elderly of the Church--because he WAS one and felt he could candidly talk about the subject.  At the end of the lesson I challenged each of the sisters to choose some way from our class discussion to become more in tune with older people--in their families, neighborhood, or in any other areas of service.

I told the sisters that my oldest living sister was nearly 88 years old, and since studies show that oral histories die out and are forgotten within three generations, I was going to go visit her.

My parents were only 25 when Bette and her twin Beth were born in 1927.  They were 43 when I was born in 1945.  I was hoping maybe Bette could share with me what my mother and father were like as young parents during the early years of their marriage.

It took until March 2016 before I had some days off that weren't involved with either my work, my own family, or Primary work.  I called Bette and asked if she would be interested in having a visitor.  She graciously agreed to have me come during the days I had specified, arriving on a Sunday evening and  leaving the following Wednesday morning.

We had a good visit.  But I was disappointed in a way that everything she shared with me I had already heard in the Huggins Family folklore.  Except one experience that was the backstory for my mother's long-standing compassionate relationship with the young neighbor boy who had  been the one who pulled the trigger on the 22 caliber shotgun that killed my brother Harold when he was only nine years old.

My mother's steadfast concern for Eldon Mikesell was such a lasting testimony to her Christ-like behavior, I had just assumed she had had that stellar quality before the tragic accident that took the life of her only boy.  In fact at the end of last year when we were still studying the divine attributes of the Savior in our Relief society Visiting Teaching lessons, I used her relationship with that neighbor boy over the years as an illustration of what true caring and compassion are.

But Bette shared with me my mothers' struggle with forgiveness before she arrived to a point where she could let go of the anger, hurt, resentment and other feelings that must have flooded her mother's heart when she could see the boy next door who was still alive--and her boy was not!

I don't know what the time sequence was of this experience my mother had--shortly after Harold died or was it some weeks or months later?  Bette wasn't specific.  But she was VERY specific about the outcome of my mother's struggle to forgive an impetuous little boy for the part he had played in that sad event.

My mother was hysterical. Perhaps she was still somewhat in shock.  Heartbroken.  Worried about what the loss would mean to her husband.  Maybe it was the pure physical pain that overcame her when she thought of a boy who lived when her own boy had died.  What if?  What if?  "IF"was such a big word, she told me once as she shared some of her feelings following the tragic events of that day which had started out with such promise.

Her daughter was soon to be married.  Two weeks, in fact.  There was a lot to prepare for including a bridal shower which was going to be held in Lois' honor that evening.  Her future  groom's brother had come on leave from the Navy to celebrate with them.  The two very responsible brothers would take Harold and the  neighbor boy rabbit hunting to get the men out from underfoot for such a maidenly affair.  My father was on his railroad assignment to Green River, Wyoming.  My teenaged sister was going to take the youngest girls (that included me) to the movies during the bridal shower.  (In my mind it was the Walt Disney film "Bambi" which was still showing in movie theaters all over the country.  I could be wrong, as I am well aware a lot of my own memories are a collage of other people's stories and input about this sad time in the Huggins Family.)

In any event the hunting adventure had gone awry and one boy was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead from a gunshot wound.   My sister's fiancé Dale was the one who had to break the news to the family.

My mother's world unraveled.  My father had to be summoned from his duties at the Union Pacific Railroad.  He couldn't walk without help.  I was barely past two and a half years, so I have no idea what happened for sure that night  and during the following days of loss, funeral preparations, burial, etc.  But from having suffered the accidental death of my own ten year old boy, I know it had to be a nightmare of the worst kind.

At one point my mother was so distraught she left the house and began walking toward the "downtown" of Rawlins, Wyoming, where we lived.  I can only imagine the seething, roiling feelings which were a constant reminder that her boy was dead--and another boy, responsible for the actual pull of the trigger, was alive and living next door to her.

Bette told me that my mother related that as she walked along at a furious pace, the word "FORGIVENESS" popped up at the edge of the sidewalk--over and over and over.  FORGIVENESS.  FORGIVENESS.  FORGIVENESS.  Until she realized it was a message for her.  She HAD to forgive the accident.  She had to forgive the unintentional hurt.  She had to forgive Eldon.  He was just an eight year old boy with no premeditated plan to ruin her life in the split second it took for the gun to go off.

My mother walked home.  but before she got to our house, she stopped and rang the bell at the Mikesell's house two doors down.  When the door opened, she saw a scared little boy standing across the room waiting for the worst.  Instead, my mother simply said, "I forgive you."

I don't know if there was more that transpired:  perhaps a discussion with Eldon's parents, more words between my mother and Eldon who had been my brother's best friend, possibly an "I'm sorry!" from Eldon.  It doesn't matter.

What matters  is from that request to do as the Savior taught his disciples to do, "Forgive that ye may be forgiven..." my mother was able to make out of her son's future that was so sadly cut short, a monument to Christ's atoning forgiveness. An act of forgiveness that also brought with it peace and comfort for the long days and nights ahead, which by their very nature moved my mother away from the gaping hole grief had left in her life.  Forgiveness was the reason my mother was able to find strength to go on when it seemed she would  never ever be whole again.  Forgiveness kept her from being bitter and wallowing in the constant replay of horrific events that had changed her world--indeed had changed everyone's world.

And so on that late afternoon in Minnesota when the light was fading in Bette's front room as she finished the story I had never heard before, I suddenly understood that my mother's compassion had not come without a price.  Over the nearly forty years until her death, my mother's compassion and loving concern was legendary to all with whom she mingled.  But to a small boy whose life could have been forever scarred with guilt and sadness if my mother had not heeded that blatant injunction flashing along the sidewalk, her forgiveness was priceless.

WE'VE BEEN FLOCKED!

Louis was working up at the computer last Saturday on Family History stuff for Church the next day when he glanced out the window and noticed the yard was full of flamingo silhouettes. He mentioned something about it when he went to bed.  I had NO idea what he was talking about.

Sunday morning I got up and while raising the blinds by the dining room table saw a flock of paper flamingos positioned throughout the front yard with a big sign in the middle pronouncing, "YOU'VE BEEN FLOCKED!"    They were dripping wet.  The sprinklers had turned on about four-fifteen and watered the front lawn first.  The birds had withstood the shower, so they weren't made of flimsy paper.

 Is this the new tee pee-ing?  Is this some kind of brotherhood we are now part of?  Is this even something we want to be part of?  The neighbors next door on the right had a party Saturday night.  Lots of people.  Lots of noise.  Lots of time spent playing games set up in their garage.  Was the flocking part of that?  And if not, the flockers were pretty bold to do it with so many people milling around right by our front yard.

Ward Council was later that morning and I was going to ask the Relief Society president who is my friend--and the mother of teenagers--what it was all about. I forgot.   Brittany was here visiting with her two kids (soon to be three year old Ro and six month old Pippa) and I thought it would be cute to take Ro's picture out in the yard with the birds.  She didn't know about the meaning of it.  But we didn't get around to pictures until after Church when Ro posed for the camera in our aviary. 

Then I texted my friend. 

GEORGIA:  I meant to ask you in Ward Council who might have "flocked" us with a yard full of flamingos.  Is this something the youth do now?  And is it because they like us? Or NOT like us?
I've had my yard tee-peed many times when I had teen age boys.  And that is AWFUL to remove from a yard!

EMILY:  Hahaha.  Being flocked is a sign of respect and love!  but I don't know who did it!  I know that some sports teams do it....you are loved!

GEORGIA:   Keep your ear to the ground as to who might have loved us that much!  I'd love to know....

We ate supper.  We relaxed in the back yard until it was bedtime, the I asked Ro if he would like to go and help me take the birds off the lawn.  We went around to the front of the house--and the yard was empty!  The flamingos had disappeared just as mysteriously as they had appeared.  It was still bright light outside.  The neighbors across the street were still on their driveway visiting with another couple two houses down.  They had been there visiting when I had gone out to water the flowers on the front porch an hour earlier--when the flock of flamingos was still there.  Now the Florida natives were gone.

Another of my friends came after Britty had put the kids to bed.  She brought some darling flannel blankets for Pippa.  So, I asked Autumn.  She said they had been flocked last year.  No, they didn't know who had flocked them, but the idea was to take the flamingos and flock someone else. 

If I had known THAT, I would have gathered them earlier.  Again, the flockers were bold.  This time bright daylight and more neighbors outside.  Who are these bird people?

Ah, sweet mysteries of life.....

FLIP....OR FLOP?

Louis' sister and her husband came to see us recently.  It was the first time they had come to our home in the 15 years we have been married. 

I had to work some of the days they were in town, but Louis had planned a robust sight-seeing agenda which included taking them to our Secrest Court house in Arvada to show them where we used to live.  But I happened to be home on that particular day, so I went along.  It has been awhile since we have driven by our old house--remember it was three years before I could even bring myself to drive by it the first time after we moved--but I wasn't prepared for how even more run down the property is.

It was Memorial Day.  The Griffey Family was home and all working out in the yard.  The dad was mowing the lawn on the riding tractor and some young adults were in the garage.  No one seemed to notice us.  But when Louis turned around at the top of the curve just south of the house, Kelly came running toward our car.  Busted! 

I wasn't in the mood to "make friendly" because even now when I think of how they changed the whole persona of our wonderful Nichols Family home, it makes me sad.

However, Kelly didn't seem to notice my lack of enthusiasm as she gushed in ebullient terms how much they LOVED the house .  How they had gutted it to the studs and redone the whole thing.  In nauseating detail!  She shared that their 12 year old son at the time wanted to be an architect, so their architect friend let him "design" the house.  Then they remodeled it.

In addition to the changes not being in keeping with the style of the neighborhood ( 21st century facade and interior changes in a 1970's neighborhood), the workmanship on the remodel is not really a professional job.  The details haven't been attended to as they should be in a total remake.  The driveway is still in the same place, and the new garage just has something like a cinder drive.  The windows are awkwardly situated, and the symmetry of downstairs windows to upstairs windows has been lost.

The fences are completely gone now.  The bushes and the one tree in the back disappeared a few years ago, but all three of the big cottonwoods in the front yard are now gone, too.  It is as bare as the day we moved in!  The grass looks deplorable--remember we didn't have the fanciest or most cultivated yard in the neighborhood, but we had the BEST grass--and the rocks in the front ditch that it took us so many years to finally put in place are all overgrown with weeds. 

It was a sad sight to behold.  Especially since Coleman was out in his yard working, and it still looks as great and as lovingly cared for as it did when we lived next door.  So, it's not that 25 years have eroded the property.  It's the people who bought the house "for the land" who eroded it.  And yet they haven't planted a garden or even kept what "land" we had in decent repair.

At her first invitation to go in and take a tour of the house, I murmured thanks but we were going out to Jeremy's grave to put some flowers on it.  Kelly persisted...anytime we wanted, we could just knock on the door and they would show us all the changes.  I didn't say anything.  Neither did Louis.  As we left, I thanked him for not agreeing to go inside.  He said he had kept quiet because he knew I wouldn't want to.

Still after 13 years, I feel like if I had known that the people who bought our house would want to "gut it to the studs and make it better" I would have waited for a different buyer.  A family who could see it was a special home where the house itself had figured in some great memories and experiences for nearly 25 years.  Some family who could see it had been someplace special and wanted to make it their "special" home, too.

Some cosmetic changes?  Yes.  New paint.  New carpet.  Even change the awkward sharp right turn to go down the basement stairs.  Yes.  But change the very appearance of the house in a flip?  Not!  The Secrest Court house deserved better than that.

Houses get flipped when they are unsalvageable wrecks, mutilated by people who didn't take care of their home because they didn't love it.  I see that channel on TV where the Property Brothers and other "flippers" go into a home and renovate it.

Sometimes the place IS a wreck.  But sometimes it isn't.  And I look at the houses like that and I think, "I wonder what that home's family would think about the horrible things the potential buyers and brokers are saying about the architectural features and room decors they are bashing?  Just ripping it all to pieces like it didn't have any personality at all."  I'm thinking that family might be feeling the same way I do about our Secrest Court house. Sad and disappointed at the outcome of a terrific property that was our home, our sanctuary, our holy place.

I always imagined there would be nostalgic pleasure in driving by 7328 Secrest Court and saying, "There's where we used to live.  Remember the good times we had there?  Wasn't that a great home!"

Instead, I think this "flip" was a "flop"!

"TO THE RESCUE..."

I was asked to give a talk at our Windsor Stake Relief Society Spring Event a few weeks ago.  The assigned subject was Visiting Teaching as it relates to rescuing.   I was asked to reference Elder Mervyn B. Arnold's talk in April 2016 General Conference AND since the Event theme was Alice in Wonderland's famous statement, "Which way should I choose?" I was also supposed to work Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee into the whole mix.  WHEW! 

I was very  pleased to receive the assignment.  After having been in the Arvada Stake for 35 years and having had a fairly good reputation for being a remarkable teacher and speaker there, it has taken a long time here in the Johnstown area for my circle of influence to widen.  This invitation made me feel like I was finally a part of the stake.  And, I think it also helped that our newly created Windsor Stake was cut off from the part of the Greeley Stake that had all the established "go-to" people who were the speakers and leaders over and over and over since I moved here 13 years ago.

Anyway, it was a fun task.  It wasn't overwhelming or daunting.   Elder Arnold's remarks were divided into four sections as to how we could help in the Lord's efforts to rescue any and all who need rescuing, though some may not even know they need that helping hand. After rereading his talk, I immediately thought of personal experiences I have had as a  Visiting Teacher or a Visiting Teachee--especially in regard to my calling to write to the no-contact sisters which I have done for the past 16 years now.  I used some of those experiences to illustrate each of those four directives.  And I managed to work in the  Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee slant, too.  (The other speakers had to reference the Mad Hatter and some other parts of Alice in Wonderland's famous characters and situations.)

It wasn't even scary to deliver the talk!  These experiences were so much a part of me that I just stood up and began sharing the stories that were so remarkable in my more than 50 years as a visiting teacher and a visiting teachee. 

Most gratifying was that my comments resonated with so many sisters.  Not only at the luncheon afterward, but also since, as I have seen sisters in the stake at church and social functions several have expressed to me that my words and experiences helped them see Visiting Teaching in a different light.  One woman even asked me at  a local store in Johnstown if I were Georgia Nichols.  When I replied in the affirmative, she told me it was the BEST talk of the program and it made visiting teaching sound like a wonderful thing to be involved in rather than just a monthly item to do.  I even got notes in the mail.  (Something I loved!)

Spirit speaks to spirit.  And it did that rainy day "down the rabbit hole" where we all shared Alice's adventures in Wonderland.  It was clear we learned which way we should choose to go:  to the temple, to our family history, and TO THE RESCUE!

O LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM...

NOTE:  I ACTUALLY WROTE THIS BLOG ENTRY MONTHS AGO BUT DIDN'T PUBLISH IT BECAUSE I WANTED TO ADD SOME PICTURES I HAD TAKEN OF THE DISPLAYS.  WELL, WINDOWS 10 PRESENTS BIG PROBLEMS TO ME BECAUSE THE WHOLE PROCESS IS SO DIFFERENT THAN WHAT I WAS USED TO WHEN I WROTE THE NEWSLETTER.  PICTURES TO A FILE AND THEN DRAG THEM WHERE I WANTED WAS NO PROBLEM.  NOW I AM AT A LOSS.  

I AM ON A LONG LAYOVER IN TULSA TODAY AND THOUGHT TO MYSELF "WHY NOT JUST PUBLISH WHAT I HAD WRITTEN.  IF I EVER RETIRE--HAHAHA!--I CAN ALWAYS ADD THE PICTURES LATER."  THE PICTURES ARE WORTH SEEING AS A TESTAMENT TO THE WONDERFUL EFFECT THE WHOLE CHRISTMAS EVENT WAS AS A VISUAL.  SO, I HOPE YOU ENJOY READING ABOUT THIS UNIQUE CHRISITMAS EXPERIENCE FOR ME.

I wasn't sure I was going to display all the Nativities I have collected over the years for Christmas 2015.  Because it is a tremendous amount of work, but with a tremendous reward for doing so, I couldn't make up my mind whether or not I was going to be up to it.  

However, when I thought of the great Christmas spirit it brings to me now that my kids are grown and gone and there is no more excitement connected to planning for this wonderful holiday and preparing small gifts for them in fun and thoughtful ways, I remembered how much the Young Women of the ward have enjoyed their YW hour here while I gave a little lesson about the particulars of Mary and Joseph and then I shared my personal conversion to a Christ-centered Christmas.  And...I still had a few vacation days left plus three days of funeral leave after Louis' brother Barry died.  I figured those few days would be enough to pull the whole thing off.

Boy, did I totally UNDERestimate what was involved!  But by working literally 15 hours a day for about six days in a row, I was finally ready at midnight on December 12th.  The YW were scheduled to arrive at 11am the next day for their Sunday meeting hour.  I made it!  And STILL added a couple of things at the last minute before they came. 

Some of those days I hadn't even walked out of the house I was so driven to set up the Nativity sets and stage them so they were displayed in a pleasing way.  I think I succeeded.  The displays were better than last time, though some could still use more tweaking with additional time to do that.  But with some changes I made from the original set up years ago,  along with using the additional  space above the kitchen cabinets, the whole scene was literally breath-taking.

Scented pine cones in a low oven made the whole house smell like cinnamon.  And the Sugarplum spray from Pier One Imports added just the right spice to make it smell like Christmas.  Low background music of the Tabernacle Choir's best Christmas  carols set the mood for a very spiritual event.  Outside lights, inside lights--they all enhanced almost 300 manger scenes, including those on the two decorated trees.

This Nativity Festival in Johnstown at Sweetbriar the last few years was my attempt at missionary work in my own neighborhood.  I have a lot of opportunities to share my testimony about Christ and other gospel priniciples at work as a flight attendant, but I haven't been so good about reaching out to my neighbors with an invitation to find Christ.  This seemed like a perfect way for me to do that.  Some years at my Nativity open house  I have handed out the DVD about Christ's birth that the Church produced a few years ago.  Always there is a basket of Nativity related puzzles or DIY manger scenes or pencils or simple Nativity ornaments which the kids can pick from to take home.

This last Christmas was my best effort so far.  Just about 150 people came for the three Sundays in December I held the open house and also times by appointment for other families in response to the invitaiton to call me for a different time if those Sunday afternoons didn't work.  I said six pm for a close to each week's open house, but every Sunday there were people there long after that visiting and just enjoying the wonderful Spirit of Christmas which enveloped the whole house.  One family had come on Christmas Eve day two years ago as part of their FHE, and made a visit to our Nativity Festival part of their Christmas celebration again--this year seeking the sheep--for their Family Home Evening.  The last guests came on January 10th because the dad is now the bishop in the Severence Ward--tithing settlement, etc--and they had taken their family on a vacation right after Christmas.  It was okay.  I had no plans to take the whole thing down immediately.  I was too tired still from putting it all on display!

Some of our non-member neighbors actually came.  But the one group which made my heart the most glad was a non-member neighbor a couple of streets over who had come two years before with her two teen age sons and had brought a recently widowed friend  with her 12 year old step-daughter.  Sandy told me later her friend had told her she had felt such a spirit of peace when she had been there.  

So, this year a few days before the first open house, Sandy called me to see if she could come on Saturday, not  Sunday, because her recently widowed aunt was there visiting and she wanted her to see the beautiful display.  Unfortunately,  it was our ward Christmas party that Saturday with it's attendant assignments.  So, I had to decline.  But Sandy and her two teen age sons--now much taller--were the first to ring the doorbell on Sunday.  And there was Sandy's aunt with them. Sandy had encouraged her to stay a day longer and come with them.  I was so happy for the spiritual impact that had made such an impression ppreviously.

Though it was the end of January before all lthe Christmas stuff got to the basement, and another month before I was able to pack everything away and reorganize the basement (the Christmas corner has now spilled over into the next section of basement!) the whole event was soooo worth the trouble and effort it took.  

I think the Lord was pleased with my offering to keep "Christ in Christsmas"!  

Why don't you plan to bring your family and come and celebrate with me in 2017?  Surely I will be be retired by then, and we can enjoy this Christmas event together.

CRYSTAL CLEAR...

Louis and I celebrated our 15th anniversary last week.  The Crystal Anniversary (who makes these designations?)  Anyway, I read that the 15th anniversary is a huge landmark for a marriage so it should be properly celebrated.

Well, I think any anniversary should be properly celebrated, so I suggested to Louis that we extend it out for a few days.  I was on a three-day trip laying over in Orlando or Hartford or somewhere on the actual day--May 12th.   But as soon as I got home the following day, Friday the 13th, we began our little commemoration.

We went to the temple.  It was our Windsor Stake day with a chapel meeting at 4 pm which we were able to attend before the 4:30 session.  After that was over we just mosied on home picking up some fast food along the way since we had eaten before we went into the temple.

On Saturday Louis spent the day at the temple as per his usual assignment.  I took Burgandy shopping for some new duds to complement her new position at Lennar Homes.  Her first assignment was to go to Califoronia for training for two days.  Couldn't let her go in raggedy old Levis and a stretched out T-shirt.  Pulled out all the stops and bought some really nice "business casual" attire to send her off in style. 

When Louis got home from the temple Saturday evening, we went to see The Jungle Book.  I had never seen the cartoon version from start to finish and didn't really know the story line, but I had always liked the songs.  The movie was great!  I bawled. I was in awe.  And I thought Mowgli looked JUST EXACTLY like the cartoon boy.  He was outstanding!  I don't know how he did all that running through a jungle.  One of the girls recently graduated from Primary was there with her older sister.  Dani opted for them to sit by us.  (She has always come up to me with a big hug ever since I was sustainded as Primary president.  It makes me feel good that someone in there recogonizes me.)

After Church on Sunday we went to downtown Denver to the Marriott City Center Hotel for the night.  It was fun to drive around the city and look at how things had changed.  And it was really lots more fun because the traffic was light and there weren't a lot of people and cars behind us pushing us along when we wanted to take a minute to look a second glance at something.  We also drove over to Aurora after we ate.  Louis wanted to see Fitzsimmons Hospital--now the Anshutz University of Colorado campus--because they have torn a lot of the buildings down in anticipation of the new VA hospital facility which is still being built.  It is no longer an Army facility, but the "guard shack" at the entrance was still there.  However, the building which was his barracks while he was recouperating was gone.  

All these days it had been raining.  When we got up on Monday morning, the weather was no different.  But we didn't let that stop us.  We had planned to take the new light rail from Union Station out to DIA.  It was fun!  We got a day pass which included round trip fare and jump on and off wherever along the way until 3am the next morning.  We had orginally planned to eat at Elway's Steak House at DIA.  But we'd had such a filling hamburger supper at BJ's the night before, we opted for KFC on the A concourse.  

Took pictures of each other in front of the "Wish you were here signs" at DIA and then rode the train back to Union Station.  The rest of the afternoon Louis took me from thrift store to antique store to thrift store  then to the Zoo where I found my anniversary present--another elephant to add to my ever growing collection!  Surprise, surprise!  And for Louis?  He got M&M's.  Just what he likes, too.  

Might seem like dumb presents or not in keeping with a "crystal" attainment, but we each got something we really like.  Spend the money on the fun.  Didn't need the fancy dinner party with crystal appointments that was indicated as "must have" for a proper celebration.   Then it was home to spend a cozy evening out of the rain.  

Rated five stars by me!  *****  I think Louis gave it the same rating.

So, there you have the story of our drawn-out celebration for a note-worthy milestone.  It has been an interesting 15 years as we have tried to meld two completely different lives--and lifestyles--into a fairly compatible unit.  Lots more challenging than starting out young without the trappings of a previous marriage to get in the way now and then.  But think of what we've learned....patience, acceptance, comopromise but mostly not to kill each other.  HAHAHHA!

Maybe we'll do things up a little fancier for our "Sweet Sixteen" next May 12th.  Who knows, we may have a real need for silver hollowware by then.

Anyone out there have a coffee pot for our next anniversary celebration?