Sandwich Love

These past few weeks have been filled with experiences from the generation younger than me, and the generation older than me, so I am the sandwich filling in the middle! The first side of the sandwich is we were able to fly out to Minnesota to see Mr. Wyatt Dean Hallstrom get baptized and confirmed. Minnesota is so beautiful, even in the winter time. The sky is azure blue and the sculpting and lay of the land and the natural habitat of the trees is so pleasant to me. I just love it. And I love those Hallstroms that live there, plus I love their beautiful home, neighborhood, ward, and Angie's caramel-colored car which I think might be a Subaru? You can find it easily in the Target parking lot.

Here is the "unbaptized" Wyatt the night before, doing one of his favorite things - falling asleep in front of the fire! Oh my, their carpet is so plush and their fire is so warm.

I also love to fall asleep in front of their fire - with my hand-holding-open-my-deviated-septumed-left nostrilled self in all its glory!!

Hazel Hallstrom is a delightful kitty. She comes from the strain of kitties for which the phrase "curiosity killed the cat" was coined. Hopefully she's also from the "cats have nine lives"strain!

Below is a photo of Wyatt dressed up with somewhere important to go! He's standing in Jonas' bedroom, where I got to sleep in his comfy, comfy bed.

It was such a special baptism and the spirit was so strong. I think Wyatt will always remember how he felt that day. Every time I go to a baptism and feel the spirit that is there, I think about how missionaries must feel when they see someone enter into the waters of baptism. It's really undeniable and different than other church meetings. I'm so grateful to have been able to be there and share in all of the emotions and feelings of that day.l.

Angie and Forrest have a fabulous ward. I love visiting your wards. I meet so many exceptional people who  all support and love one another. Angie taught Relief Society on Sunday and hey, she's a great teacher! This year's theme is on charity and she taught "suffereth long" and they had such a good exchange of thoughts and ideas from all of the sisters. Way cool Relief Society Angie! Before class began, Angie handed out a full printed page with all of the quotes that were going to be read. It was so nice to be able to follow along, and if you really liked one you can take it home and put it on the fridge!

Happy, happy baptism day Wyatt Dean Hallstrom!

Wyatt is taking piano lessons and doing great! While we were there I taught him how to play "Blues in the Night" and so it's now passed down from Great-grandpa Hiatt, to Grandma Sweat, to maybe Angie/Amy? and now Wyatt has it hard-wired into his brain. Funny thing is I taught it to him in the key of C and dad and I play it in a different key so I'm going to have to think hard when I teach him the next parts :-)

Angie says he plays it all the time and with his eyes closed which is awesome because I showed him how I can play it with my eyes closed too!.

It's truly incredible to see their basement set up as a working seminary class for 24 students. I loved seeing the scriptures and fleece blankets and notebooks all laid out. It really had a special feeling. What a labor of love!

.....and at the other end of the basement is their super big screen t.v. where there is a super soft love sack where Wyatt and I watched the Super Bowl!!

And now, the other side of the sandwich has been going through the experience of Grandma Hiatt fracturing her hip! What a shock when four weeks ago, the doctor came back from looking at her x-rays and leaned in toward her and said so kindly and matter-of-factly "Shirley, you have broken your hip." I was dumbfounded! And to think she'd been hobbling around for maybe the better part of a year with what they term a "compression fracture" to her left hip. Mom had been complaining of pain for a few weeks and finally could hardly get around, culminating in her being unable to get out of bed, having to call the Paramedics (such handsome young men marching into her bedroom and lifting her gently out bed onto the gurney and off to the hospital where we ended up coaxing her into getting out of there and going home, which in hindsight I'm sooooooooooo grateful we did because had she stayed the night, and been admitted, they might have ended up having some on-call surgeon to perform the surgery and we wouldn't have had the surgery performed by dear Dr. Kimball who saved the day by going in and doing it the posterior old-fashioned operation instead of the more common anterior they use today. We are in the 4th week of her recovery and I'm grateful each day that she is getting stronger. Grandpa Hiatt has been a true angel by her side for every moment day and night. They are a love story and I have loved watching, and being their daughter.

It has been a sweet experience to spend so much time with my mother. I've spent more time with her in the last four weeks than I have in the last 45 years. We've had more genuine heart-to-heart conversations than I've ever had with her so I treasure much of this experience, even though I would never ever have wished it to happen at all! When Grandma Hiatt dries her hands, she dries off each finger individually. I just do a big ol' dry of each palm and call it good. Well, now sometimes after I wash my hands, I DRY OFF EACH FINGER! I'm easily influenced in things like that.

Here are mom and dad pumping iron together. They really worked mom in physical therapy and it made a huge difference in her being so far along in her recovery now! The occupational therapy was kind of a joke, especially the day they tried to force her to play Yahtzee with a group of other patients. Yeah, that didn't go so well :-).

My Red Bull photo below was taken the day we took mom in for her 2-week check-up with Dr. Kimball. They told me they got poor mom up at 5:30 a.m., and I was there by 6:45 a.m. to make sure we had her dressed and breakfast eaten and ready to be transported by van to the doctor to arrive around 8:00 a.m. So it was a long day at the good ol' Health South Rehab center (although a GOOD day because they said her hip looked good, which I was slightly nervous about because of the night they found her on the floor at midnight, which they ended up calling a "slide" but anyway, it was good to know nothing had been ruined by her "slide." We were just passing time in the room later that afternoon, and I had such a splitting headache that I decided I just had to go home and take an Excedrin. I told dad I was leaving and would be back again later that night. The minute I pulled out of the parking lot I started having second thoughts and feeling like maybe I should stay for the rest of the afternoon, but I so needed to go home and get an Excedrin. Then it hit me that, duh, there are these things called "stores" where I could go buy a bottle of Excedrin. So I drove to the Smith's on 13th East (where I'd also gone to buy some snacks the night we were at the Emergency Room so that Smith's holds lots of memories for me now). There was a cooler of Red Bull in the checkout line and I thought what the heck. FYI, in dire straits an Excedrin and a Red Bull will do the trick.I also bought some Grape sparkling cider so we could celebrate the good report from the doctor.

When I returned to Health South who should be there, but my dear friend Lynette who had come to visit mom. So we had a toast to a good doctor's report and also ate the cookies that Lynette brought. My friend Debbie brought a lemon pie one day too and ooooh la la did we feast on that!

And this picture is too cute for words :-) Mom and dad were the subject of many of the employees at Health South saying they were the "cutest" couple - because they are!

Mom is doing so well, and dad is the champion of caring for her! Denny and I have tried to fill in the gaps but dad is doing all the heavy lifting. He called last night to say mom was back to doing the dishes so all is going well at the Hiatt house! I am grateful beyond measure.

Well, that's a quick recap, from someone whose brain isn't quite back up to snuff, because unlike mom and dad, it seems it s taking me a bit longer to bounce back!

Love you all - Happy President's Day!!!
XOXO Mom

Christmas Lost and Found

Christmas 2014 is officially in the books! We just stuffed our Christmas tree into it's big green plastic bag (shezam, that takes a lot of stuffing)!. Tomorrow I shall take down the village...... one of the things I found this season:

I didn't put it up last year, and was feeling kinda bah humbug about it again this year, and told my friend Debbie that I wasn't going to do it, and she said, "Oh come on, you can do it, just put up one house at a time." And it just that little suggestion worked on me! I'm easy. Each year I don't have a clue how I'm going to get the cords and wires and everything plugged in and arranged so I just do it one house at a time and end up with a unique village.

The reason I do it is so that little children can enjoy it (and so I can play master of the universe). And thank heaven for these little children. They loved it! Just as I hoped they would. I remember when Angie and Forrest lived here a few years ago and Wyatt was a little guy and I got such cute photos of him looking at it. Hey, I can go find one! Rats,I can't find it. I am so grateful for each of you, and so grateful to have the love and solidarity we feel as a family, and grateful beyond words for each of you, and love being with these little cherubs, and dearly miss each one of you during the holidays.

Tony's family were visiting one night (Tony and Cindy and the older kids had tickets to the Tabernacle Choir downtown with the MUPPETS, which they said was awesome and I bet it was, but mixing the high brow word "Mormon Tabernacle Choir" with the MUPPETS can't help but make one smile).I got out my box with the "leftover" village pieces that I didn't use this year, put up a t.v. tray and covered it with one of my new snow white bath towels that I bought last summer when everyone was here (oh yay, it's almost summer again!) and told Eli, Viv and Cal they could built an additional t.v.-tray-sized strip mall to the side of the village. Here it is below. Isn't it adorable? Masters of the Universe in training!

I found this "tree of life" being posted on Facebook by everyone in the greater Salt Lake Valley. It's in Draper, just a few minutes from our house, so we drove over there one Sunday night with the kids, grabbed my mom and dad, and experienced it together and LOVED IT!!! I felt like I was at the tree of life because everyone around it was so lively! Lots of families taking it in, and it's at the bottom of a hill (plus it was warm-ish weather). Little kids rolling down the hill having a blast, everybody walking around with smiles on their faces, it's a fun, free, unfettered and fabulous find. My mom and dad weren't able to walk down the fairly steep hill that led right to the base of the tree (and good thing because I about had my feet taken out from under me a couple of times by a rolling child) but they enjoyed it from the sidewalk up above.

I lost my marbles and took the above picture of my co-worker Randy Dow, because it's what I stare at all day long. He is the Director of Children's Services for Valley Behavioral Health and doesn't even have his own office. He shares this with random other people who all share the computer. He is hard-working and eternally polite and calm. You also can see the top of my phone list peaking out of the bottom of this photo, and also the word "think" which somebody made a few years ago that says "before you make a decision THINK WWTD (which is "What would Tracy do" and she's the HR Director and a good egg) and also in the lefthand corner our blow-up snowman that my co-worker Marney's mom gave her. Between being kinda deaf, the big fan over my head constantly whirring and the blower going to keep the snowman inflated, I spent two weeks saying "what?"

I "found" three boxes that were exactly the right size to fill with the out-of-towner's Christmas presents. This is no smell feat. Keeping the tradition alive that my mom and dad started of sending the Christmas presents in a box with candy sprinkled on top just about does me in! Some day I'll retire from it all and just send a check, but for now, it's worth it!!

We lost our health, exactly three weeks ago today. And we're still hacking and sniffing, but it looks like we're gonna make it. I think we went through four bottles of DayQuil and Nyquil. It's been a doozy! And now poor Lolie has the flu, it sounds like. Oh it's so true, when you have your health you have everything!

I lost my dignity and took this selfie to send to Forrest, while frying bacon one night on the bed of the truck in the garage in 20 degree weather. I always think of Forrest when I do it because he was so non-plussed when he saw me doing it last summer.

I found the Christmas decorations, patiently waiting in their various boxes and shelves in the storage room. Isn't it fun to open a box and find something you forgot you had? I LOVE that. I kinda like to buy one 75% off thing every year after Christmas and tuck it away to surprise myself the next year. It takes a lot of time to decorate for Christmas. We all know that, and the pluses outweigh the minuses, but it's a stressor. I put up less and less each year though, and it always feels good to do "less." I did the "most" the year after Amy and Dave were married and had this house muffled in garlands and Dave was a little overwhelmed. That was the beginning of me thinking I may have overdone it, and it's much more under the radar now!

This year at times I felt like I'd lost the Christmas spirit but then Hallelujah, Christmas Eve rolled around and ho ho ho here came six beautiful kids and their mom and dad, OURS, and my mom and dad and we feasted on YUMMY Honey Baked Ham dinner, and watched Tony and Cindy's awesome family video about the first Christmas, and sang Christmas carols, and listened to strings playing along with the piano, and read Christmas stories, well, luckily the true meaning of Christmas was found that day. I also found it singing beautiful Christmas songs with our ward choir. Oh we're so GOOD! We have two ringers, one a tenor who looks just like Tim Tebow, and the other a soprano, brother and sister, and the children of our accompanist. I'm not sure how she convinced them to sing with us since they don't live in the ward, but YAY. It makes everyone soooooooooo much better. However, the Sunday we sang, I couldn't squeak out one single sound because of my blasted sickness. Not a peep. I did the best lip-synching job you've ever seen. I fake sang with gusto from my heart!

 My visiting teaching companion dropped off this bubbly on Christmas Eve - it had a real cork in it and everything! It was sparkling pear juice and was deliscioso!

Reagan sharing the love - and Jane, seems like the quiet one, but I have found she is the goofiest one of all!

Lauren got a selfie-stick at her basketball team gift exchange. What a COOL contraption!

I could listen to these girls play piano and instruments all night long. And I love that Jane is being the music stand!

"2 Nephi 2:2" is the way my dad wrote who this present was for. Clever!

 

And I found pie happiness at Village Inn!

We lost ourselves in the hilarity, nostalgia and occasional naughtiness of "A Christmas Story" - classic!

And then when we got up Christmas morning, it SNOWED. IT really SNOWED, just like in the movies. Just like the ones we used to know. It will be a Christmas everyone will remember for that. And I found deer tracks going right up to our door when I went outside first thing to get the morning paper. Just like Santa and his reindeer had really come in the night (and by the way they did come and we got all of your wonderful presents - THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING!).

I was sick all over again on Christmas day and was so bummed to not have the wherewithall to go down and see everything the kids got, and hang out with them in our jammies. That's the BEST! But we went down the next day (not quite the same, but still so fun to see all of their toys. Calvin took me upstairs the other day and pulled me by the hand and said "Come on grandma, I'm going to show you EVERYTHING!" Okay buddy, you keep doing that for the next 15 years!!

We were able to go see Denny and Joe and Emma Christmas night with my mom and dad and FEASTED on homemade clam chowder and shrimp and warm, crunchy bread and oh it tasted so good! Well, that about wraps it up.............................

 Speaking of "wrapping" it up, we had a blast the other night going out with Tony and Cindy and the kids, supposedly to see the lights at Temple Square, but it was snowing so hard, it took them an hour and 45 minutes just to get to our house, and as we ate dinner at Chick A Fil we watched the snow just descending non-stop and blanketing State Street (the freeway was a parking lot and out of the question). The guys "called" it and we didn't go downtown after all, but whoopp-too-do, they took the three "littles" home and me and Cindy and the girls went to Target. Oh you girls love Target. It's a generational thing. You love it so, and my generation just doesn't have that lovin feeling. I love that you love it! We were having fun looking at wrapping paper and I noticed Cindy had someone in her cart.....

Somehow Lauren can look dignified no matter what she is doing.

and Reagan is the best movie star-in-the-making of them all!

 and yeah, Jane, I TOLD YOU she's the goofy one!  See?

HAPPY 2015 - May it be filled with unexpected opportunities, thrilling adventures, exploration, trips, family bonding time, testimony building, Forrest finding the right job, and love. XOXOXOXO mama bear