October 22 - 28

October 22 – 28

The weeks are going by so quickly I hardly know how to handle it.  It seems like we just came out and already it’s been almost 5 months!  We’re FOR SURE NOT the “newbies” in the mission any more!  Hmmmm I guess that’s terribly evident from the assignment we’re doing!

This past week has been a fun one.  Monday evening we went to dinner again with the “Fabulous Foresome”!  This time we went to Johnny Carino’s.  It was delicious, but even more fun to be together with good friends. 

Goldsberry's,  Fanello's 

            & Pace's

This was the evening at Carino’s.  We were able to celebrate two birthdays.  Both Sister Pace, Maggie,  and Elder Fanello, Pat, had birthday’s within 2 days of each other.  We ordered 2 desserts to share and then found that each of them got a free birthday dessert.  Needless to say, we didn’t eat all of it before we left! 

Even though it’s almost the end of October, we’re having wonderful Fall weather!  It’s interesting to see the way the Church does their flowerbeds here.  
One day they are full of beautiful blooming flowers. 

The next day they are empty but still look wonderful because they’ve been filled with beautiful dark brown mulch and raked smooth!  When I say empty, I mean almost totally empty.  They even dig up all the perennials!  I guess it’s their way to keep everything under control.  

Then the next day, pansy plants and bulbs laid all over waiting to be planted! They have groups of Young Men and Young Women who come in and do all the pulling out and planting of the flowers.  I don’t know if they raise their bulbs, but they do the pansies.  After they get everything planted, they cover it all with some kind of white protective covering.  It keeps the pansies warm enough to survive the winter and by spring, everything’s there and they’re in bloom first thing!  I love these pictures!  

Honestly, this is a picture from Tuesday.  Look at all the beautiful colors and different plants all planted together in the same bed!  BTW – did I mention the Church has their own greenhouse and raises all their own plants?  No wonder everything is so beautiful!  These pictures show the same flower beds on a Tuesday and then on a Wednesday.  It seemed like by about Friday, almost all the flower beds had been made winter ready.  Now I can't wait till spring to see what everything looks like when everything wakes up.  I've heard that when all the the bulbs bloom it's spectacular!  Now I understand why at conference time everything looks so amazing!  They've been preparing for April since October!  

On Thursday, Tami and Norrah, and Brooke, Brighton and Deacon came down for a visit.  It was SO fun to have them here.  It wasn’t long enough, but it was wonderful.  Because we hadn’t taken any “research” time in the past two weeks, we were able to take Friday afternoon off so we spent it with the family!  Friday was Marthea’s birthday and she and Gregg had made plans to go do sealings at the Temple with her family.  They had a wonderful evening and we saw them when they came home.  On Saturday, Terry and Gregg went to the BYU game so they left at about 9:30 a.m.  I had committed to spend an hour that morning in the Family History Center in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  It was a great morning and I LOVED going there to help the patrons who came in.  I was able to help a man and woman who were from Florida but their ancestors were from New York and Italy.  We were so busy finding things in NYC that we didn’t get into Italy at all.  I helped him find his grandfather’s immigration records, 2 different census’s and his death records.  She, on the other hand, didn’t even know for sure what her mother’s name was.  Her husband was able to help her a little bit, but with some deductive reasoning, we were able to find her mother on a 1920 U.S. census.  She was so excited when she saw her mother at 3 years old along with some of the other names in the family that she remembered hearing from her mother.  We looked in the 1930 census and found the same family with 2 more children!  The great thing about that was by finding them there, we were able to find out the names of her grandmother and her grandfather.  It showed that they both had been born in Italy.  She had never known their names before.  We also found her mother’s death records.   Because we only had about ½ hour, that’s all the time we had, but I printed them a copy of a Family Search Center in Florida that’s only a couple of miles from where they live.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they go.  They were pretty excited.

Tami and Norrah were waiting just outside where we were working when the tour left, and she heard several people remark that so far, that had been a highlight of their trip!  I don’t know why, but I’m ALWAYS surprised to see the joy that people have in finding their families.  I think because I’ve always known my posterity, I take it for granted and don’t appreciate that blessing like I should!

After I finished at the JSMB, we, Tami, Norrah, Brooke, Brighton, Deacon, Lynzi, Michael and I all went to Gardner Village for the “Witchpalooza” that was going on.  It was really fun, and the kids LOVED seeing all the witches there!

We ate lunch at the restaurant there and then walked through the shops looking for fun things and finding all the witches on a witch-hunt.  There was smashed witch, hula hoop witch, backwards witch etc.  I’ve never seen it so crowded.  Fortunately they expected a lot of people so they had a LOT of people doing crowd control and directing traffic.  It was really fun, but having the kids here was even more fun.  Only bad part was that we missed Heather! 

While we were at the Witchpalooza, Terry, Gregg and Marthea were at the BYU football game.  They came home happy and sun burned.  The weather was wonderful and BYU won, so what could be better!  So all in all, everyone had a great time!


P.S.  Why is it that when I look at the preview of how this blog will post - it NEVER looks like what I've laid out!  Oh well!!!!!