By the sea, by the sea....

 .....by the beautiful sea! Although the Oregon Coast will always be first and foremost in my heart, there's something to be said for the wonderful Outer Banks and Carolina beaches and their 77 degree water. There's nothing like the ocean to center, refresh, calm and bring me joy. The sounds, smells, rhythms and routines are timeless.

 

Happy 17th Anniversary Andrew and Andrea!

"The pose!"........

It was such a pretty walk through this path as we'd head to the ocean from our little house.

We had a wonderful time, including this adventure taking photos of kite boarders a few miles up the road!

This is one of my favorite photos. Totally caught Brandon in the moment!

I took this photo for my friend Lynette at work because she loves to untangle things. This poor guy had made an emergency landing and part of the aftermath was untangling cords for hours on end. He seemed pretty philosophical about it though.

 We hunted ghost crabs at night (I couldn't believe these kids with their uncovered toes). Yikes, a crab could attack your little piggies!

We also celebrated Father's day while we were there, and Andrew BBQ'd some of the best steaks I've eaten in a long time!

Whitney and I collected shells by the bundle and made shell jewelry sitting on the back porch. I've worn my bracelet to church and to work!

 We visited this beautiful lighthouse..........

and then we doubled our fun and joined up with the Hallstroms!.............

More vacation memories....

Woo who! Andrea just walked me through how to download a "Blogger" app onto my Ipad so I can blog using that method. Hooray! So, to continue with another snippet of our vacation:............

When we got up our first morning in Greensboro, I got such a kick out of reading this message on the whiteboard in the kitchen, written by Brandon:

We spent part of the day visiting some of the sights unique to North Carolina. It is so interesting to go back to NC and Minnesota where they are the thick of businesses with campuses and major headquarters of "stuff" that we don't have here in Utah, and they didn't have in La Grande or Rexburg either, so it's all heady stuff to me! North Caroline is one of the centers of furniture manufacturing and we went to this AWESOME store:

We probably spent two hours there looking at the uber-expensive "real" furniture. I've always wanted a fainting couch:

At one point in our travels through the thousands of square feet along came two young professional women pushing a cart full of home decorating pots and flowers. Turned out they were setting up the space to shoot an episode of DTV Design T.V. They said this is where the magic happens. It was really fun. Andrea and I sat in massage chairs and my legs still remember being sqoze and how goooood it felt! I think it's therapeutic and gets the blood flowing?

Andrea also drove us to an old neighborhood and we took in the flavor of the older home (which she knew I loved) and got to see some magnolia trees in blossom.

We also got to see Brandon graduate from 7th grade. To quote Angie's Jr. High Principal when she addressed all of the crying 9th-grade girls at their graduation, "Believe me, there is nothing sad about leaving Junior High!" Brandon received an award for his grades and also for achievement in science. It was so interesting to see the melting pot of kids that attend his Middle School! And how the girls are full grown WOMEN and the boys are rockets on a launching pad but nobody has lit the fuse yet. Oh that they could stay just like that!

Whitney is making a quilt! It was so fun to see it and sew a little with her. She has even made friends with the seam rrrrrrrrrrrripper which is an integral part of sewing!! A friend in their ward,a sister probably my age I think, thought Whitney would like quilting and brought over the fabric and got her started and everything. How sweet is that?

And then, we set off for the Outer Banks. The OBX!!! So fun! 

Brandon and I shared the middle and talked about all of the many things grandmothers and grandsons have in common, like playing 2048 and piano tiles on our phones - yeah baby! We also played speed scrabble with Andrea and Whitney and Caroline and Andrew. One of the things about having our family grow older is we don't have as much crying as we used to when there were lots of babies and 1-year-olds and 2-year-olds. As a matter of fact, there was NO crying on this trip. The only time there was a hint of it was during a game of speed scrabble and I could hear a little muffled whimper from the back seat and heard Andrea ask Caroline what was the matter. Care Bear's little sad voice said "I can't make a word!!" Yes, Caroline had been playing Scrabble with us and she was rocking it, 6 years old, and I guess she only had vowels and couldn't figure out any words to play. She was all choked up, bless her heart.

 Dennis and Andrew sat in the front and talked about manly things;

And Andrea, and her young bendable torso, folded herself into the third seat between Whitney and Caroline. We played trivia games, listened to road trip CD's, talked, snacked and enjoyed the journey.

It's unforgettable to arrive at the Outer Banks and have the sound side on one side of the bridges and roads and the ocean on the other. Sure glad we were there two weeks before the hurricane hit!

One of my favorite things in life is when I do have the opportunity to stay in a rental place somewhere, and that moment when we see it for the first time. Especially beach houses because they're all so unique and beachy! This one didn't disappoint - it was "just right!"

It's so fun to listen to the kids tear through every square inch of the place! Up the stairs, down the stairs, everywhere. I loved our cozy little breakfast nook:

One of my other favorite things in life is the first sighting of the ocean. Really, is there anything more thrilling? And it was a blast watching Brandon and Whitney and Caroline frolic along the shoreline (it was dusk by then and getting dark quickly) and then just like always, pretty soon a wave caught them a little high on their ankles, and then, boom, before we knew it Brandon was diving into the breakers fully clothed. Loved it. Sometimes that's my favorite part of all, that fully clothed drenching!

Our little breakfast nook was another one of my favorite things:

I loved watching the USA soccer game while we were there and listening to Andrew and Brandon bellow "GOOOOOOOOOAAAAL" at the top of their lungs and then hear Dennis mutter "Sheesh, it's only SOCCER!" (this is the man who just got home from going down to Energy Solutions Arena and watching the Jazz's first open practice of the year. He said there were 10,000 of him there.)

And more later, and faster now that I know how to use the ipad and can rest my tingly wrists!
XO Mom

OBX

I have "old blogger's x-haustion" or rather OBX. I returned from our marvelous trip to the Outer Banks/Greensboro, with a lifetime of memories and 500 photos, and have been a failure at bloggerizing it. I even kinda DREAMED about it last night. In my dream I had a great idea for a novel. I was struggling so hard to make myself wake up so I could write it down because I KNEW I'd forget it. I didn't wake up or write it down, but I didn't forget it either. The idea was that I was writing a scholarly article and needed to interview an expert. I found a blogger, and quoted them in the article, only to find out, and here's the twist and dramatic tension, THE BLOGGER WAS LYING AND WASN'T AN EXPERT AT ALL!! So, yeah, I'm having issues.

When I returned from our trip, I realized that using my home computer was giving me carpel tunnel. BAD! When I went on vacation, my wrists/hands/arms were relentlessly bothering me, fire, tingling, cold, numb. I told Grandpa Hiatt I thought I had "peripheral neuropathy." Say it syllable by syllable - it's fun. Not fun to have though. I had started squeezing my fingers for relief. But while I was gone, the symptoms blessedly disappeared, only to return when I came home and started using my computer. So now I don't have a new set-up figured out. And I have sworn off playing Words with Friends endlessly on Facebook (insert sad face here). 

Last week I started writing about the trip using "notes" on my ipad, and it was a blast to use the bluetooth keyboard Angie gave us. I propped myself up IN BED and with the ipod under the covers next to me and  held the untethered keyboard separately on my lap and TYPED!. I was riding high, pouring out all sorts of stuff. At the end of my writing session, and it was a doozy, pages and pages, I copied and pasted over to my email, but it didn't work. So I tried another route, and in the process deleted everything. I'm so ticked. And now I can't make myself do it over again.

So, this attempt is a lurching, unorganized mess. Case in point, try making rhyme or reason out of the following:  I love looming dark afternoons when a summer rainstorm comes rolling in and I'm home ironing. It happens every so often. I'm making myself laugh out loud right now thinking about teasing Andrea about ironing, actually teasing the younger generation about ironing, which is something you aren't a slave to and neither am I; but you've grown up with synthetics so it's not in your lifeblood like it is in the veins of we, your mamas. While I was in NC, I got go attend Sunday Relief Society with Andrea and they passed around a sign-up sheet asking for household items for sister who was moving into a new apartment. One of the needs was an iron. Andrea perked up and whispered to me "I can give her mine!" Just made me giggle.

There's a scripture in the Book of Mormon, one of my favorites, Alma 48: 17, that reads: "Yea, verily, verily I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men."

Well, yea, verily, verily I say unto you, if all gospel doctrine teachers had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Andrea, behold, the very powers of hell and Sunday School would be shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men." We loved being able to attend her gospel doctrine class. I got to play the organ in their ward too! I LOVED it. And Brandon gave a talk and he seemed like a young man, like a missionary-in-training, like a man/boy. I beamed at him the whole time. It was awesome.

And I got to see my sister Julie's dear friend Dee who lives in Andrew's ward.She told me stories about when she and Julie were roommates in San Franciso- back in the day -and were starving young professionals trying to cobble together a life in that expensive town. She said she spent the year changing jobs and Julie spent the year fending off men. At one time there were 8 or 9 guys who wanted to marry Julie. And then she told me a story about needing 43 cents to buy a bar of soap so their houseguest would have some, and only having 41 cents and finding the other two cents on the street!

Here is me and Dee at church, and also a selfie Brandon took of all of us in the parking lot, right after we said our final good-byes at the church, and were headed to the airport in Raleigh (and Brandon found my earring in the parking lot that I didn't even know I'd lost):

Okay, I'm going to write a little about our long, luxurious trip. I will feel better for at least starting, and will add more in the coming days as I can.

OUTER BANKS TRIP 2014!!!
Since we were going to be gone for two weeks, we decided to ask friends and family to take us to the airport and pick us up so we wouldn't have to pay for airport parking.Our neighbor Roger took us to the airport, and Denny picked us up when we returned.

Roger is a retired fireman and the class clown of our ward. He has that gift of being funny in the moment (like Forrest) and he makes me laugh out loud on a regular basis. Roger lives four houses down from us and as we pulled up to get him he was standing outside holding up this sign. He cracks me up.

Roger dropped us off at the airport and we flew to Atlanta where we were to make our connection and fly to Raleigh/Durham where Andrew would pick us up. At least that was the plan..............until we found out our plane out of Atlanta was delayed because of weather, and they actually gave the plane away to another destination. So we listened to a guy playing live music which was a treat.

Dennis assumed his Kindle pose, and I bought a book and some snacks. We called Andrew to let him know of the delay. With his vast experience on planes being delayed, he told us to be prepared for a looooooooooong wait. He said they will tell us they should have us leaving around 9:45 pm then they'll change it to 10:15, then 10:45, then they'll say we won't be leaving until the morning. REALLY? I called him back and said they had a plane for us and he said in an ominous voice, "But, do they have a CREW?"  Well, yes, they did have a crew and we flew into Greensboro in a terrifying lightening and thunder storm. I thought I was going to die. It's the only time I've ever had a fear of flying. It was scary. But there were no announcements about impending death from the captain and nobody else seemed scared. I was never so glad in my life to feel those wheels touch mother earth. We were seriously playing dodge-'ems with lightening.
It was so fun to see Andrew Boppy Sweat's tall self waiting there for us at the airport. (side note, man he's tall! He said he gets comments about his height on a daily basis). I provided him with comments every day while I was with him. Andrea has created a brand new guest room (here's a photo from her blog). She even had books for us to read and a basket of toiletries. Heaven! Well, heaven for Dennis, because we don't fit so good in one bed any more, and I fit better on the hide-a-bed. It seemed a crying shame to waste this room on a guy. Not that he didn't deserve or appreciate it, which he did and did, but, still. I took many daytime "resting my eyes" moments in the room whenever I had the chance! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!

Memorial Day Weekend

Where exactly did May go? Before too much time goes by I wanted to post some photos of Memorial Day weekend. We had three different Memorial Day visits this year. On Friday we picked up mom and dad and drove up to the Salt Lake City cemetery. Such a grand old cemetery with prophets and apostles galore buried there. Here we are next to Grandmother Nan's grave. She was the only grandparent I had and I thought the world of her. When we would come to Salt Lake City to visit, on our way to Iowa City, I would be SICK with excitement as soon as I saw the lights of the refineries on the North end of Salt Lake City. We were there! The big city, the lights, the traffic, the exits! Grandmother's house with the curved stairs and the apartment in the bottom where nameless law students lived, and the little stained glass window at the curve of the stairs and her bedroom at the bottom, and the serene veranda and grape juice with 7-up in it and toast with honey.

Doesn't grandpa look sporty with his cane? The ground is so uneven at the SL cemetery that I wished I had a cane myself! Before we left I called Uncle Steve to see if he knew the location (I always forget) and he told me he remembers being a boy and running around through the headstones while grandmother and her sisters would visit and clean the headstones and spiff up the plot and make sure the grass wasn't growing over the edges. He said he was going to go up on Monday and bring a shovel and do that, but his knees were too bad now so he couldn't kneel down to wash off the headstones, so I told him we'd do it. Windex and bottle of water we brought are in the background.Uncle Steve will always be 28 in my mind. And I will always be eight. But alas, he's 82 and I'll be 62.

The Russell headstone is quite grand! You can find it on the far west side of Salt Lake City cemetery. It's in that first quadrant if you park on the street on the West close to the North end - second little cemetery street from the top. It might be" P" street and 6th Avenue. I already forgot. When we were first married, we lived across the street from this cemetery, at 1023 3rd Avenue. I would take Angie over and she'd trace the letters on the headstones with her fingers and I'd tell her what they were. Come to think about it, we did that day after day after day! Much more exciting than buying Fisher-Price toys. And she was only 9 months old and speaking in full sentences..........really!.......

After we were done visiting the cemetery we drove by mom's old house on Harvard Avenue and gaped at the beautiful homes and streets and trees. Dennis spent his entire boyhood at his cousin Mardy Jolley's house on Michigan just a stone's throw away from mom's childhood home (Uncle Joel and Aunt Mary's house where I spent many happy hours as a newlywed, bless their hearts). Uncle Aaron and Aunt Dorothy's house is just across the street from mom's Harvard house and I never realized that!

Then we took our annual Sunday night drive to Valley View cemetery with Tony and Cindy and the kids. Dennis and I have plots on one side (don't know which). It will be a nice place to rest. I hope great-grandchildren bring whirlygigs and mums for us on Memorial Day if they live close by! Last year Calvin LOVED the whirlygigs when we went to the cemetery so I bought two mostly for him, although I think he was kinda over them this year.

Earlier in the week Tony and Cindy stopped by the cemetery in Heber City on their way home from St. George. While they were at the graves, I guess Calvin spontaneously flopped down on the headstone, kinda in the attitude of a Muslim prayer. So Tony asked him to do it again and here he is bowing to Mohamad in the East!. Grandpa Ranquist always included all religions so I think it's a fitting tribute, for as grandpa was once overheard saying to a stranger: "Hello! I'm from the tribe of Ephraim! What tribe are you from? ".

In the sideways photo below, Lauren is holding a picture of grandma and grandpa Ranquist. I bring that along because she is the only one of Tony's kids who remembers Grandpa Ranquist (and she only remembers riding in his Jazzie). Grandma Ranquist has been gone for three years and Grandpa for eight years (I think eight years, now I can't remember for sure). He died on my birthday.

I have flipped these pictures to be going the right way twice in my photo file on my computer and they are straight when I download them, but then they download sideways. Such is life.

On Monday dad and I headed up to Heber City to finish off our Memorial Day weekend. Such fond memories of Memorial Day picnics in Heber and softball games in the rain with the Hjorths!

This year we didn't run into anyone we knew and wouldn't you know it, another family there had a gas-powered weed eater and were "whraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang-ing" the dickens out of the reverie that is usually that little spot of paradise.

Below in the background: The "whraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang-ing"family caught in the act!

Remember the "Rasband" headstone? This is so engrained in my memory that I had to take a photo of it!

And finally, it has been so beautiful here lately. We've been working hard on the yard, with much left to do, but it looks kind of like retired people live here.

Is that a happy man? He LOVES being retired. He said Sunday night is his favorite night. I concur. Sunday night is like Christmas Eve every week - it's the night before NOT HAVING TO GET UP AND GO TO WORK the next day. It's sweet! He also loves getting a good night's sleep for the first time in decades. He has been working out at the gym religiously (and teaching sunday school and going to the temple once a week, speaking of "religiously!" AND doing family history too). He goes to Lifetime fitness and works on the treadmill. He tried swimming but that didn't work. He likes the treadmill although it's still hard some days. His blood sugar is down like 40 points, his blood pressure is down, he's dropped some weight, he doesn't have headaches, diarrhea or leg cramps any more.It's marvelous.

He's also selling the motorcycle. He said now that he's retired he doesn't want to take the chance of someone turning left in front of him! He puts it out in front of the house every night and lots of people slow down and look at it but nobody's called with any offers yet. I get wistful and want him to take me on a ride through Daybreak on warm summer nights. It's time though. They are dangerous. Don't ever buy one children!

We had quite the month at our house as all four girls (Angie, Amy, Andrea and Cindy) were all serving as Relief Society President at the same time for about an hour last Sunday until Andrea was released as a result of Andrew's new calling into the Stake Presidency. I honestly can't wrap my head around that happening. It's just beyond belief, and I smile with wonder and gratitude each time I think about it. Love all of you!!!
XO
Mom