"Sunday was the Ward Christmas Music Program. The Choir sang a number, which I had practiced with them before leaving for China. Also there was a men's Choir, which Matt and I sang in. I enjoy singing with the choir, except when I get overwhelmed by the spirit and start to cry. It was fun to give out my Chinese ties in High Priest Quorum. Although, for a while, it looked like they were not all going to be picked up. They were, and since then the guys are always coming up to me and showing me the ties they selected. I did most of the work on two Thoughtlets on Sunday. Illumination Modeling (0449.html) was finished on Tuesday the 21st, and Planes and Trains and Taxis (0450.html) was finished on Wednesday, the 22nd of December.
Monday morning I drove Andrea and Matt to the airport early in the morning. Work was kind of slow on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I spent a lot of time cleaning up my office, filing stuff, and going through magazines I had not read. This maintenance stuff seems to be something I continually struggle with.
Tuesday I took off from work at 10:30 AM and just barely made it to the temple and to Brett Alan and Lauri Schmidt's wedding. I was the last one in the room, and only made it because Joel Dunlap saw me come in and guided me on how to get where I needed to be in time. It was very nice. It is so good to see young people sacrifice because they know the importance of starting off their marriage with eternal covenants. I had not made it to the temple during December, Andrea had gone while I was in China, and so I stayed and went through an endowment session after the sealing. I do enjoy the temple and feelings that I get when serving in the temple. Going each month also gives me an opportunity to honor a commitment I made to myself and more recently to Heather in a post card from China. Tuesday evening, at the wedding reception, George Schultz' brother Phillip played the guitar. I did not know he played the guitar. President Pickerd asked for some oil for a blessing, I gave him mine, and he said `I knew I could count on you.' As mentioned before, I feel like there can be mixed messages between things said and actions taken.
Wednesday seemed to drag. I was glad to get home, and yet I ended up staying up most of the night getting ready to go to Cedar City, Utah. One of the concerns I had was the strong cold front that was scheduled to hit Houston on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. So early Thursday morning, after my shower and washing all of the dishes, I turned off the water outside and drained all of the taps in the house. It worked, because we did not have any broken pipes, even though there was snow in Houston on Christmas Eve. Not a lot, but friends told me there was a couple of inches in parts of town. There was about 4 inches in Victoria, and down by Corpus Christi. However, even where there was this much snow, it melted pretty quickly.
Thursday I was up early, to Bush Intercontinental, and took America West to Las Vegas. I finished `Fingerprints of God' by Gibson on this trip. I got into Vegas an hour before Kate's sister Sarah and her husband Matt arrived from Madison, Wisconsin. They are very nice people. Matt is in commercial real estate and Sarah manages purchases for a major shoe store. They had arranged to meet with the Jones family for lunch at a Mexican restaurant in the strip shopping center underneath the Black Ridge in St. George. Paul and Kate were late because they misplaced a coat and wallet or something and had to find the shopping cart it was on. Also Grant dived into some clothes, and hit a support frame and hurt himself. Paul is funny. He described how Grant tipped over a CD case in one store sending hundreds of CD's all over, and as Paul started to get mad at him and correct him, Grant said `Woopsee Daisy,' with an upward tone. The store employees and Paul just broke out laughing. Maybe Grant is a natural leader. Aren't leaders the ones who get away with anything they want by diversion, and other such underhanded tactics?
I slipped over to see Ward and Fern Abbott in the afternoon. I sure do enjoy visiting with them. Ward is doing some really interesting work in the South China Sea. When I told him some of the things I've been working on, and particularly my interest in Red Cove and interest in moving back home to Cedar City, Utah, he told me about his High Priest Group Leader. He had a software company, which did very well, and wanted to move back to Southern Utah. He bought 100 acres, and only needed a small percentage of this for his house. So he subdivided it, and got the best Real Estate Agent in Utah to help him market it. He made $20 million profit in two weekends and completely sold out the lots. Ward thought he would be interested in my Cedar City Project.
Andrea, Rachel, and Matt came down to Grant's second birthday
party. I guess the first birthday party was more for Paul.
The first birthday party was in this big warehouse in Provo
where they have all of these pits full of foam balls that you
can jump in. I think Grant liked it too, but I know from Paul
and from Kate, that Paul liked it. Grant had not had a nap,
and he was a little bit fussy. Ella Dawn is a big girl, and
a very even tempered baby. The digital photo I'm including
was taken of Ella, her Mom, her Grandma, and her Great-Grandma.
There was some red-eye, and I tried to manually fix it. But
otherwise I think this is a very nice photo.
We had pizza and all kinds of goodies. It was fun to watch Rachel and Matt play with the Jones' little dogs. Grant really got into opening presents. Hopefully I can get my disk space problem solved so all of you will have access to all of the digital photos I have taken over the years. In the meantime, know there are some nice digital photos and movies somewhere in Houston. The last present Grant opened was from his Aunt Sarah, Kate's sister (Note Grant has Aunt Sara Ellen Nelson, Aunt Sarah Johnson Nelson, Aunt Sara Penny, soon to be Aunt Sarah Nemec Nelson, as well as Kate's sister). Aunt Sarah gave him some clothes. He opened it, put on a pouty face and said, `I don't want these, I want toys!' I did not get this comment on a movie. Oh well! Sometime during the festivities, Kate's step dad told me about someone named Rex Montgomery, who now lives in Leads, and who developed a new method to pull energy out of the Stratosphere. Brother Jones said that Rex was told by the First Presidency to not distribute knowledge of this energy source now, because the world is not ready for it. This has all the earmarks of a Mormon Myth, which I would love to spend some time tracking down, if we ever do move back up to Cedar City, Utah.
While we were in Cedar City, Utah there were a couple of nice e-mails that came in, which I want to put in the record. On Dec 23rd, Steve Joseph wrote:
On December 24th, Ioannis Kakadiaris wrote:
On Friday December 24th, Bruno Steinle wrote a long e-mail about
his family in Switzerland, including a photo of his daughter and
son-in-law in front of the Swiss Temple.
And so it was Thursday evening, the 23rd of December, that Andrea, Rachel, Matt, and I made the drive to Cedar City, Utah in the car Andrea helped one of David Grant's sons rent to get from Salt Lake to Cedar City, Utah when one of the Sky West flights was canceled and all standby seats went away. It felt like I was coming home, and it feels like it is time to move back to Cedar City, Utah.
Friday was Christmas eve. I went for a walk up Red Cove early
in the morning. It takes 20 minutes to walk to Red Cove from
Grandma Shirts' house. My goal was to find the section marker
at the northeast corner of the property. I did not succeed
in meeting this goal. I did find the old water reservoir. I
saw where a deer was killed, probably by a hunter. I loved
climbing around on the mountain side in the snow. And I did
get a really bad blister on one of my heals. I walked back
down the mountain about 11:00, and went to Ray's office. Mrs.
Gardner told me he had just left, so I followed him up to his
house (my heal hurt too much to run and catch up). We talked
for about an hour. He thinks it will be pretty hard to do
a project in Red Cove economically. Oh well! However, it
felt like I was finally back home, and I was even more ready
to move back to Cedar City, Utah. Then I went across the
street and said hi to my sister. I was there when Matt called
and said Andrea and him were going to run some errands. I
went back to Grandma Shirts' and ironed my shirts, showered
and shaved, and read some more. Later in the afternoon I took
Brian and Matt up the canyon and showed them Red Cove. Brian
was interested, and so I took them for a short hike up the
canyon on the east. There were beautiful ice flows (below),
and when we got to the top, both of
the boys were very excited about the views. Matt had me take
a digital photo of him surfing the mountain (below).
The cell phone started ringing as we were ready to start coming back down the mountain. And between Rachel and Andrea they probably called 10 times before we got to where we had clear reception and learned what they wanted. It turns out Heather had driven her new Saturn (and Bob) to Cedar City, Utah to give Rachel a Christmas present (all of her church books and CD's). Rachel was not home, and so she took them to Aunt Sara's. Sara called Andrea and suggested Rachel come over to see Heather. Andrea said she was not interested in coming over if Heather did not want to see her. Sara went into the living room and said `So, how adult are we going to be today?' Heather said it was fine if Andrea (note, it was not Mom, because Andrea was not a good Mom to Heather) came by to visit with her. Andrea particularly wanted Heather to see how big Matt is. I was cold, wet, had another blister on my other foot, and wanted to go to Grandma Shirts' house and change clothes. But we went to Sara and Des', and Sara let me borrow a shirt to change into. Bob Lynch turns my stomach, and I made sure he knew I did not appreciate the way he attacked my wife, his lies about having a Ph.D. from Arizona State and pretty much everything else he claims to have done, and what he has done in shacking up with my stepdaughter and leading her away from her roots to meet his erotic needs, `which were under the surface from the beginning' of his trolling for college coeds with his lies about being the world class biker and software developer for the UN. Bob and Heather left with out me saying anything either of them, nor either of them saying anything to me, shortly after I came into the room. After he left, I learned about Bob's gross response to Bridget's comment about a woman asking her how she got pregnant, and he became that much more distasteful to me. It is really hard for me to have such strong negative feelings about someone whom one of my kids has chosen as a sleeping companion. This whole experience is very hard for me because I know `the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance,' (Alma 45:16) and yet I also know that we are not to judge, that we be not judged (Matthew 7:1) for wherein we judge another we condemn ourselves (Romans 2:1) and that `man shall not ... judge; for judgment is (God's)' (Mormon 8:20). If Andrea were still editing these Thoughtlets I'm sure she would have deleted this paragraph. However, since the Thoughtlets are now more of a diary, and are not forced on anyone (you have to make the effort to come to the web site and read them), I feel it is appropriate to write about how an experience like this tears my heart apart. Oh well! Life is not meant to be easy, even in Cedar City, Utah.
I got a nice e-mail from Sara Ellen after I went to bed on Christmas Eve (I will retype the e-mail and post it at http://www.walden3d.com/benin/letters/041224.html). I am very pleased with her discovering she wants to be a chef, as her mission in life. I got up and called again and again for a couple of hours before getting past the busy signal. I think all of the time changes made it so Sara Ellen thought I would call at 6:00 AM my time and actually would have been 4:00 AM in Cedar City Utah. Oh well! We had one of our better conversations (see ../041225.html).
Matt and Rachel slept in on Christmas, and so we did not open presents until about 11:00 AM. It was a very quiet Christmas, compared to many in the past and future (for example: the Christmases of 2003 and 2005). We had a nice visit with Sara and Des and Bridget and Justin, and watched the movie Elf with them. I remember being surprised when Andrea mentioned that she is not sure she is ready to move back to Cedar City, Utah. Sometimes it is possible to be too close to too many emotions. Oh well!
Sunday, the 26th of December, we went to sacrament meeting with Rachel. There were three wards combined, and there were not very many kids there. Doug Bonzo was there, visiting with his brother, who is on the High Council and was conducting the meeting. He remembered the time I took him to Calf Springs Ranch, when I was in High School. It was a very good meeting, a four possible stanzas for Prime Words meeting:
I was particularly struck with the last speaker. He was in a
car accident, and the first x-ray showed his wrist was broken
in three places. When he went back three days later they
retook the x-ray. When the doctor reviewed the two x-rays
with him, he said, `I don't know what to think about you
Mormons. I see this again and again. The breaks are gone!'
And he showed the differences in the x-rays. I asked Rachel
to see if she could get a digital photo of the two x-rays
for a figure in `An Open Mind.' She was not very excited
about talking to him, and I won't push it. However, it did
seem a fitting closure on my week, which I summarize as
Cedar City, Utah."