Lots of Stuff

We've had A LOT on our calendar lately and this post is all about a few days we took for a work conference in Saint George in the middle of all that.     Glen works for a cool company that supports dentists in a unique and innovative way and this event was technically considered a retreat.  The word "retreat" sounds it should have been nice and relaxing, and it was for the dentists, and for me and for the other employees' spouses, but it definitely was anything but retreat-like for Glen and his colleagues who worked their tails off to make this event happen, which is why I am referring to it as a work conference for him.    

There were fun events scheduled, but mostly it was a time for the dentists to interact with each other and for Glen's team to meet, coordinate, and problem solve together.   We met A LOT of new people (especially me) over the few days of the conference and I am about tapped out on small talk for the next year, but poor Glen had to be ON ON the whole time and it was especially exhausting for him.  

While Glen was in meetings, I hiked to Scout Cave in Snow Canyon with Katie, who is the wife of Glen's boss.  We knew them back in VA, so it was fun to catch up.  

The weather wasn't too bad yet and the scenery was pretty grand!

 We spent a lot of time small talking around the pool....

We had a cookie decorating class, which I very much enjoyed...

I thought I was quite hilarious when I washed my hair the next day and realized that I matched my cookie.   

And I was quite excited to bring that cookie with me to Alabama to share with Lucie, who appreciated my artistic attempts by immediately gobbling it up!   Haha!  

On Saturday, we had the opportunity to ride e-bikes through Snow Canyon.  I'd never ridden an e-bike before and I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would.  

Even though I'd hiked in Snow Canyon just a day or two before, I'd forgotten how incredibly beautiful it is in the depths of the canyon, which we did not get to on our hike.  

It truly was a delightful experience for both of us and I am already concocting a plan to get Emma and Adam down there for a similar trek sometime!  

The conference technically ended around 8:30pm on Saturday, which meant that most people stayed overnight and went home on Sunday morning.   But we had a YSA ward to attend and a plane to catch...so we headed home that night.  WE got home a little before 1:00am, where I then packed for Alabama (including dirty clothes I didn't have time to wash), and eventually crashed into bed.  We were off to church meetings at 8:20am, then left straight for SLC from Provo after church.   We made a quick pit-stop at a hotel in SLC to visit our long-lost friend, Terri, we hadn't seen in 25ish years, who was in town with  her husband for a  business trip.  Sadly, her husband was in meetings and couldn't meet with us, but it was fun to catch up after all these years.   They had been our neighbors in Baltimore and have kids the same ages as Spencer and Cami, which meant we had a lot of play dates back in the day!     

After arriving to the airport, my flight was delayed, which meant I had yet another long night in front of me, though not as long as Glen's proved to be the very next night.   His flight to Alabama ended up getting totally canceled after arriving to the airport and rather than missing another day of work for the rescheduled flight the next day, he opted to take a red-eye to Atlanta, where he rented a car, then drove here to Birmingham (about a 2 hour drive), and arrived here early on Tuesday morning.   But it was worth it for this...

Lucie is OBSESSED with Glen!   

Glen is trying to keep working while he's here, but he's eating up this time with them...

As am I.   

And now you know not to judge how completely and totally exhausted we look...because we were...and it was worth it a million times over to be here with them!  

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PS  Don't worry, there will be at least one whole blogpost  dedicated to our time here in Alabama, so consider this just a little teaser.   😁
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More Summer Happenings (Part 2)

Okay, here's hoping Blogger is working a bit better today.  This is  try #2 trying to get this blog updated with our summer happenings, since I have been struggling to stay in a blogging routine this summer.    (part #1 is here)

Shortly after picking up Ellie from Idaho, we headed to Saint George for Glen to finish up his last couple of days working down there and for Ellie to get her wisdom teeth out at an oral surgeon who is a colleague of Glen's.   

She was very giggly and talkative coming out of the anesthesia, but, much to her own relief, she didn't end up saying anything too incriminating or embarrassing.  She did, however, insist on coming into Target with me to pick up her prescriptions.  I tried really hard to talk her into staying in the car with Glen, but she was very determined and just jumped out of the car.  She was very friendly and waved at everyone she saw, but otherwise didn't do anything too embarrassing.  And she was in a city far from home, so the chances of seeing anyone we knew were remote at best! 

 WE spent the next three days mostly just holed up in the hotel room while Glen was at work.   I was a bit tired of hotel living after those three days, but it went well and Ellie recovered quickly.  

We doordashed some soft foods...

And got ice cream a couple times, because what oral surgery recovery is complete without some ice cream for the occasion? 

The day AFTER her surgery, we headed to the Utah Food Bank and joined with lots of other families from the dental community in Saint George to work for a couple hours. Ellie's oral surgeon was actually at the project too and was very impressed at how well Ellie was doing. 

We laughed a little that the project for the night was  bagging up dog food, but it's very cool that they help people with food insecurity feed their pets too.    

  

Our job for the night was taping together boxes.

We headed on home from Saint George  on Wednesday night, then on Saturday morning, I took off with my mom and Heather for Star Valley for my Mom's 54th high school reunion.  Yes, 54th.  Why they picked this particular year to celebrate, I have no idea, but they did and a whole bunch of people came, so whatever. 

My Mom was very nervous about going, which was why I was there.  Heather wanted nothing to do with attending the reunion and Mom really didn't want to go by herself, so I was her +1.  It ended up being a great experience for her, so I'm glad I went, despite not being very excited to go initially (mostly because of the drive).    I helped make this class picture happen by arranging people and by going outside to get the banner for them to hold. 

 

Her graduating class only had 98 people in it, so this is actually a GREAT turnout, especially considering their ages!   Recognize the circled person in the following picture?

That's Sister Bednar.  The Sister Bednar-wife of a modern day Apostle.   She gave my mom a big hug and was kind as can be...of course.  

I also sent a few postcards from the cute little Grover post office.   Sadly I didn't actually find any Star Valley postcards, but I took a few from home to write along the way.

We also dropped my cousins' house, who both live on the same property my mom grew up on in Grover.  Tara and Kolt are a few years younger than me, so I wasn't super close to them growing up, but it was great to see them after so many years!   They are both so sweet!

The next day, the Grays (friends from Virginia), came to church with us  and stayed the night before they ventured back on their way home. 

Emma went to a Utah YSA conference one weekend recently.  I know nothing about it, other than Elder Uchtdorf spoke (I think) and they were trying to break a Guinness Book of World Record record with the most signatures on a birthday card for President Nelson.  He turns 100 next month.   I have no idea if they broke the record or not.    I also love Emma's temple selfies from the camera roll.

I've had a very full mailbox lately.   One day I had 8 postcards in there...mostly from Postcrossing, but one from my niece, Anna, and this one from my sister, K, which might be one of my favorite postcards ever.  I love it!

Last week was Alpine Days and we took an after-dinner walk down to the auto show.  This beat up looking one made us laugh...

This 1968 Buick Wildcat was refurbished by an old man in a neighboring.  He was very talkative and excited to tell us all about it!

I really liked this whole pink set up! 

And we were informed that this Corvette was the most valuable of all the autos in the whole show.  It's a 1963 all original (even the tires) and apparently it's worth about $500k, although we also heard reports that it may be only $200k!  In any case, we were very careful not to scratch it!  

The other week, Glen was teaching Alma 36-38 for his Gospel Doctrine lesson. The theme of his lesson was "Jesus is Mighty to Save", however  I had no idea  the theme of his lesson when I picked this as the picture for the cover of the program that week.  I thought that the little boy's use of the word "Saver" instead of "Savior" was very sweet and went along perfectly with the theme of  Glen's lesson.  Someone in the class even brought it up on how powerful a child's simple testimony can be. 

 

So this blogpost was a pretty good effort as a catch-up post, but I'm not done yet. 

Stay tuned for more to come...

Marching Onward

 A peek at the last couple weeks, including a little announcement at the end:  

Ellie's been in the Phoenix area staying with a friend from BYU-I, while they work and go on an adventure in a few weeks.  I miss her here at home, but glad she gets this experience...especially since it would be incredibly boring here at home.    Being able to attend a vibrant YSA ward (the one in our community is a bit on the older side), having someone to go to institute and temple prep classes with, and just having a friend to hang out with is a good thing for her.  Not to mention she would have been stuck at home while I head to Alabama soon.

Glen and I went to a ballet performance at BYU of one of Adam's friends from Virginia.  Bella is a stunning dancer...so light and graceful on her feet...and it was a delight to see! 

 I went down to Saint George with Glen not this past week, but the week before.  I enjoyed the milder weather and the opportunity to spend the week with him.  We attended the Saint George temple together for the first time.  It's been closed for renovations for the last few years and only recently reopened.  It's a beautiful temple and I LOVED the colorful celestial room!    Click here to see pictures of it. 

I've been mostly exercising indoors at home (thanks to the wintry weather and all of the  public restrooms being closed for the winter), so I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to walk outside WITHOUT bundling up...

Speaking of Saint George, we are just starting the process of trying to wrap things up up here, so I can join him there permanently.   There are LOTS and LOTS of very complicated emotions  that are involved with starting down this path and I've found myself crying about it more than a few times, but we feel like it's the right way forward.  I imagine it will be a slow process, since getting a house ready to sell is about 1,208,599th on my list of favorite things to do and we have a new grandbaby I'll be trekking to Alabama to meet soon (!!!), but moving boxes have been purchased and the process is beginning.    It may take a long time and we may yet change our minds, but this is the plan for now.  Wish me luck.   I'm going to need it. 

Zion, Conference, Nerds, and Gala...Oh My!

It's a long story about how we ended up with a Saint George Outpost (a small townhome we're renting in SG while keeping our homebase in Alpine), but, for now, Glen is commuting down there every week and I am trying to figure out as much time with him as I can.     It's not ideal, but selling a house we just bought 2ish years ago isn't totally ideal either, so this is what we feel like is the right option for now.   Perhaps I'll go into more detail about it another time, but this post is for another purpose, so stay tuned! 

We spent our General Conference weekend (a twice yearly conference of our church where we watch messages broadcast at home, rather than at a church building) at the Outpost.   Here's a little recap of our weekend....

  We started the weekend (on Friday) with a trek to Zion National Park.  Glen had never been before and my last journey there was in 2015, so we were excited to be able to experience it together.  We didn't win the lottery for getting a permit to hike Angel's Landing, so we did two shorter hikes instead.  First we did the Canyon Overlook Trail, then Kayenta to the Emerald Pools.  Both were lovely! 

 

 Then on Saturday, we settled in at the Outpost to watch General Conference streamed from Glen's phone onto the television Glen never uses.  We opted not to get internet at the Outpost to save money, so it was just a matter of getting the right cords from Target to stream from his phone.  I imagine that the television will get used a bit more (especially for BYU sporting events) now that we've got cords! 

  It was weird watching Conference without having a houseful of people.   I wasn't really feeling baking a whole batch of cinnamon rolls or doughnuts with just the two of us.  If we'd been at home, I probably would have stopped by a gluten free bakery, but we couldn't find one in SG...

so  we had Nerds Clusters instead.    I'm not usually much of a candy eater, but I have been mildly obsessed with them since discovering them in Thailand.  I can easily eat a whole bag myself, so I was glad to have at least Glen to share them with.  

 On Saturday evening, we went to the Doctors' Volunteer Clinic Gala, representing Glen's workplace.   It was another big reason why we decided to stay in Saint George for the weekend.   It turned out to be a big giant money grab, but it was for a good cause, so it was fun to be there (especially since it was his work that did all the donating).  We did discover that we are pretty terrible at photo booth pics...

Sunday was World Postcard Day (betcha didn't know that was a thing!) and I celebrated between and after sessions by sending around 30 postcards--mostly to people I know and love and a few to some people in a postcard exchange I am a part of.  

All in all, it was a great weekend and I loved the extra time with Glen at the Outpost and being uplifted by the talks.  (I especially love this one, this one,  this one, and this one).   

Have an amazing week!