Vancouver...Regina...Vancouver . . . Been Gone Awhile

In a few hours, I'll be hopping on a plane and heading home for Centerville, Utah. The past twelve days have been a whirlwind of flying to Vancouver, B.C. to spend some time with my family here, flying from here to Regina, Saskatchewan to be with my Ursaki relatives (many of whom I hadn't seen in over twenty years) and then back to Vancouver to spend a couple more days with my mom and dad. It's been an amazing journey . . . a trip I'll remember always. I'm very blessed to be related to a lot of wonderful people.
Taken from plane while descending into the Lower Mainland area of British Columbia coming from Saskatchewan. The green is almost startling when you've just come from the prairies, although for me, there is a stark beauty about the the prairies that I love. I guess I've always been a prairie girl at heart!

Looking across Wascana Lake in Regina, Saskatchewan towards the provincial capitol building. My dad was born in a farmhouse in Markinch, Sask. and when he was just a few months old his family moved to Regina where Dad was raised.

Flying out of Regina . . . the patchwork prairie.

Okay . . . back to the beginning. I flew into Vancouver on April 25th and my sister Elaine and her husband Len picked me up at the airport and took me to their place in Mission (mom was sick and didn't want us to come to their place until she knew what she had . . . didn't want to share whatever it was!). The next day, we went on a walk at Hayward Lake with my nephew and niece and spouses and three big dogs . . . Jake, Joe and Clementine!

With my sister, Elaine.

Zac (Sarah's husband), Sarah (my brother's daughter), Brian (my sister's son), Michelle (Brian's wife). I love these "kids".

Mom and I planted dahlia bulbs one morning. This is a pose that I remember from my earliest childhood . . . mom digging in the garden with a spade shovel or a trowel. She's always been at her happiest when she's out in the dirt! You wouldn't know she's almost eighty-one!

My Canadian family are, of course, rabid hockey fans! Here, they're celebrating after the Vancouver Canucks took it to L.A. and won the series. The Chicago series isn't going quite so well. The Black Hawks are a bunch of bullies and they keep roughing up the Canuck's goalie, Luongo . . . at least, that's what I'm hearing in Vancouver! Any rebuttals, Chicago fans?

My cousin, Richard and his wife Sue . . . some of the best people I know. My first evening in Regina, a few of us cousins went out to dinner at the Lakeshore Restaurant. Richard and Sue are showing off their Chateaubriand for two. Mmmmm. Richard and Sue picked up the tab . . . thanks so much! The best seafood kabab I've ever had.
I first starting thinking about making this trip, when my cousin, Lynne, let me know that her son Kris was getting married. Thanks for the invite, Lynne! Kris is a member of the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police). The wedding took place in the RCMP chapel in Regina. I wish I'd taken more pictures of the gorgeous stained glass windows in this building. Here, Kris and Melissa are walking down the aisle after the ceremony.

Clockwise from bottom left: Sue (cousin Richard's wife), me, Kathy (cousin) and Eileen (cousin). Eileen has lived in Seattle for many years and got her U.S. citizenship, like me. We're the only expatriates in the family!

The wedding reception was beautiful and included a dance with these guys performing. They were absolutely great. Kris jumped in for a couple of numbers . . . very talented guitarist!

In the front row of this photo are my dad's four surviving siblings . . . Uncle Frank, Auntie Helen, Auntie Alma and Auntie Bertha. They, along with my dad, are all in their 80's (Uncle Frank just turned 89) and just as sharp as tacks! Hopefully, I've inherited some of those Ursaki longevity genes. Back row from left: Richard, Caroline (Lynne's daughter), Sid (Lois' husband), Lynne (beautiful mother of the groom), Lois, me, Eileen, Alan.

My dear cousin, Lois. I stayed with Lois and her husband Sid while in Regina and loved every minute. Thanks you guys. Lois and I are the same age (within a month) and although we didn't get to spend a lot of time together (she was raised in Saskatchewan and I in Alberta and B.C.) whenever we DID get together we had a lot of fun and got into a lot of trouble! I'm pretty sure it was mostly Lois' fault! (Just kidding, Lois. Sort of) I love her to pieces anyway!

Cousins from four different siblings: Uncle Franks's daughter Kathy, me (my dad is Harold), Auntie Helen's daughter Lois and Auntie Alma's daughter Eileen. I can't tell you how good it was to be with these cousins who I hadn't seen for years.

My cousin Alan (Auntie Helen's son) and his wife Gayla. They invited Lois, Sid and I out to their beautiful place in Deer Valley (Saskatchewan, not Utah) for dinner. Their back yard flows into a golf course in a gorgeous valley. Gayla and Alan, the dinner was yummy and the company was great. Thanks for rolling out the red carpet.

I had to include this for all my quilting friends and my daughter-in-law, Rachel. Gayla saves fabrics and old clothing (material left over from her wedding dress, prom dresses, maternity clothes, etc.) and she and her sisters make pieced quilts from this vintage fabric. They sew it into blocks and then finish it with colorful stitching. Absolutely beautiful. Very awesome to the craft-challenged like me!

No trip to Saskatchewan is complete without a day trip to Moose Jaw, where my sister was born. Moose Jaw was sometimes called "Little Chicago" during prohibition, because Al Capone ran a lucrative bootlegging production and distribution enterprise from here. We enjoyed browsing in the Yvette Moore art gallery. Yvette Moore's paintings are of Saskatchewan prairie life and they're absolutely beautiful. Another prairie artist that I became acquainted with was Henry Riplinger . . . loved his stuff also. Google both of them. I think you'll enjoy their stuff.

This photo of me and Uncle Frank was taken at another dinner at the Lakeshore restaurant with Lynne, her husband Brian and the bride and groom, Kris and Melissa. Thanks for dinner you guys . . . it was delicious! Uncle Frank always made me feel like I was someone special. He reminds me a lot of my dad. Frank is dad's only surviving brother. Uncle Vic died a couple of years ago at the age of 89 and Eddy died in a car accident when he was just fifteen.

Back to Vancouver from Regina and at the home of my good friend, Janice. Janice's yard is beautiful and I couldn't resist getting a shot of her rhododendrons.

Janice and her mom and sister started attending our little branch of the LDS church in Port Coquitlam, shortly after we moved in when I was twelve. I was so happy to have a friend my age at church. We attended BYU together and then married guys from two different countries so haven't been able to see much of eachother. When we get together, however, we could talk for hours, just like we haven't been apart at all! I love this girl.

Mom and Dad and I drove out to Mission to take some of the nieces and nephews to dinner. The Vancouver Canuck-Chicago Black Hawk game was on in the restaurant so this is the view I had across the table! From left: Zac (niece Sarah's husband), Dad, and nephew, Dave.

Peeled them away from the game long enough to get this photo. Clockwise from left back: Me, Matthew, Zac, Rachel, Sarah, Jessica and Dave. All but Dave belong to my brother, Mike. Dave is my sister Elaine's oldest. What a great bunch of kids. I don't get to see them nearly enough.

These photos were taken in front of the newly dedicated Vancouver, B.C. Latter-Day Saint temple. Having a temple built in this area is a dream come true for the latter-day saints in British Columbia. We were able to go and do a temple session last night . . . a great way to wrap up my trip home.

The temple grounds were so beautiful.

I needed Brent's Binford 2000 camera to get a better shot of the new temple!

Mom and Dad in front of the temple before we went in. They were honored, this past weekend, along with several others as pioneers of the Vancouver Stake, at a huge youth celebration in honor of the dedication of the temple. Some of their grandchildren participated in the program, which was apparently very well done. The temple dedication was this past Sunday. My son, Scott, happened to have a business trip planned, in Vancouver, for that week-end so was able to attend all of it. Can't wait to talk to him about it.

I guess I'd better get packing my bags. Once again . . . so good to see all of you, so hard to say good-bye and getting harder every passing year. Thanks for everything, EVERYONE! I'm leaving Canada with a heart full of love for all of you.

That's much better!

Anyone remember what the weather was like last week? In case you've forgotten:
One week later . . . spring has sprung! Happy Spring to you!

Welcome, spring! Stay around for awhile, okay?

Also much better . . . no dishes in the sink . . . clean kitchen . . . aaahhh.

I feel much better. Got a little spring in my soul. Oh, and I'm waxing Steve in our new game of on-line Scrabble:) Thanks for letting me exorcise the winter out of my soul last week.

I still miss Annie and my little dog, Calvin. In that order. How are you feeling today? I'd really like to know.

April Blizzards Bring . . . uh . . . May Lizards?

Okay . . . so I couldn't think of another word that rhymed. What the heck? A winter storm warning on April 6th? I have to admit that I thought the whole winter wonderland effect was beautiful but . . . come on! Enough is enough (as my mother would say). I'm so ready for some nice, balmy spring weather, say, 70 degrees and holding for about two months.
I don't know if it's the weather, or daylight savings time (does anyone besides me get messed up by dst?), or massive hormonal disruptions, or what, but I feel like I've been in a major funk for weeks. Perhaps it's that Steve finally put me out of my misery and won our infamous game of on-line scrabble, 508 to 388 (see last post if you're not familiar with the whole "touzle" debacle). Or maybe I've missed my little dog, Calvin, more than I anticipated that I would . . . I know for SURE that I've really missed my Annie girl. What I DO know is that I've been spending a lot of time either riding my broomstick (sorry Brent) or staring off into space trying to get my bearings. My house is a mess, my laundry piled high, my paperwork pile coming dangerously close to being measured in feet, not inches and there are two flats of pansies out on my porch that have needed planting for about two weeks. There are things growing in my refrigerator that are starting to look like alien life forms. They wave at me when I open the fridge door and say "ninner, ninner". Sigh. If I had four children under the age of seven, like I did when I was 28 years old, then perhaps I'd feel somewhat justified in my torpor but I don't!
The answer to this, of course, is to load the dishwasher (there's nothing more exhausting than a dirty kitchen), put in a load of wash and get on the treadmill and walk my buns off while watching an episode of season five of "Lost". That will help. But not right now. I think I'll go to bed instead. I promise to have pulled myself by my bra straps by the next time that I post. Til next time . . .

March/April Smorgasbord

The word smorgasbord can refer to an actual buffet meal of various hot and cold dishes OR it can simply mean "an extensive array or variety". THIS blog post is kind of a smorgasord . . . a little of this and a little of that. Feel free to pick and choose what looks the most digestible and leave the rest.
You may ask how I know what the word smorgasbord means. I looked it up in the dictionary, of course. It's a Swedish word that literally translated means "sandwich table". I have a fascination with words . . . their meanings, origins, pronunciations, etc. I suppose this is why I enjoy playing scrabble and other crossword type games. At least up until tonight.
My son, Steve, introduced me to the seductive world of "Words with Friends" a scrabble like game that you play online. Since Steve and his wife Kalli both have "i-Touch" iPods, as do I, we keep games going with each other all the time. One game can last for days, depending on how busy you are. You just check your i-Touch every so often to see if your opponent has put a new word on the "board". Both Steve and Kalli have been crushing me pretty much every game, with one or two exceptions (see first two photos, below). Another son, Scott, suggested that I use an word-finding program called WEG (win every game), as he believed that Steve and Kalli were probably already doing so (which they vehemently deny). Anyway, we finally came to an agreement that we could all use word-finders and have been doing so for awhile.
Steve is Deluxe 247, I'm Sandi-pooh (which I probably shouldn't admit) and Kalli Jo is, well, kallijo.

In the photo below, I've carelessly cut off the word "arsenite" which was my bomb, my beautiful scrabble word of the century, bagging me 74 points! Tonight Steve upped the ante and used some kind of turbo-charged word finder that guarantees you the most points that you can possibly get with every move, hence the word "touzle" which netted him 121 points!
One hundred and twenty-one points!!!! Does anyone in the known world even know what this word means? I had to know so I looked it up in the scrabble dictionary. It's just another form of the word "tousle" as in to tousle someone's hair. That just doesn't seem deserving of 121 points to me. I'm feeling very bitter about this. We've agreed to stop using word-finders and to only use the scrabble dictionary. I fully expect him to cheat, however! If you wish to see what kind of an unsavory character I'm dealing with, I refer you to Steve and Kalli's blog which is listed with the blogs of my family and friends. Check out "Mustache March". That's all I have to say about that.

Speaking of electronic devices, I made the most wonderful discovery about my cell phone a couple of weeks ago. So I was over at my neighbors, the Smoots, chatting away with Laura Smoot and her daughter Shayla. Somehow, we got on the topic of cell phones and texting and I was complaining that the predictive text on my phone was completely antiquated and that it often spit out words that weren't the ones that I needed and that there was no way to change the word except to get out of predictive texting and painstakingly spell the word out one letter at a time! (My kids can all just push the star key and get any number of words to pop up but that doesn't work on my phone.) Anyway, Shayla says to me, "Have you tried using the down-key on the arrow pad"? What? The down-key? I happened to have my phone with me at that very moment in my apron pocket. With trembling hands I pulled it out and tried it on the word that's the most annoying of all to me . . . "non" instead of the more obvious word "mom". Could it really be . . . it worked! One toggle down and there was the word "mom". Joy! It's changed my life. I've only owned this phone for like, SIX YEARS! What else don't I know about it? Maybe it has the capacity to do my taxes. Probably not. Shayla, my young technologically savvy friend . . . I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The rest of this post is bits and pieces from March and April . . .

This photo was taken by Sister Annie Hale. It's a shot of the Winter Quarter's temple which is in her mission.

The Sister on the left is Sister Gingrich, Annie's first companion and trainer. Annie calls her Mama Gingrich and says she's a great missionary and mentor. For more on Sister Hale, I post her letters on a Facebook group called Letters from Sister Annie Hale (or something like that).

Lucy, with her dad and mom, both of whom she obviously adores. Watch out Laura and Jordan . . . I know she seems sweet and innocent now but someday she'll be grown up and be shellacking you at scrabble!

Scott's 27th birthday on March 15th (yes . . . the Ides of March). Pictured here with his lovely wife, Rachel.

Check out this birthday cake . . . all aglow.

While shopping for Scott's birthday dinner, I managed to let a large, eight dollar balloon fly into the sky, and then replaced it with another large, eight dollar balloon which ended up coming loose from it's ribbon and flying up to the highest point of my vaulted living room ceiling. Also, I was unloading groceries and while carrying a four pack of root beer (in glass bottles) the bottom of the carton bearing said four pack of root beer gave way, exploding into at least six million pieces all over my garage floor. Six million shards of brown glass mixed with approx. 1 quart of sticky root beer. Beware the Ides of March!

Lovely little yellow crocuses, those sweet harbingers of spring. They're presently as dead as doornails under about a foot of snow. Oh dear . . . I'm afraid that I'm still feeling very bitter about the whole "touzled" thing.

Here's something to be truly excited about! Synthia Smoot is home from her mission in Uruguay. I really missed that girl and have to admit that I'm feeling insanely jealous of Sharm and Laura getting their Sister missionary back! Welcome home, Synthia. Laura and Lucy and I took a Saturday afternoon drive out to Antelope Island. We drove to the Fielding Ranch out there and walked around the old buildings. I love Antelope Island. Beautiful views of the mountains to the east. It was sunny, but very cold that day so we didn't stay long.

I love conference week-end and I especially love it when it coincides with Easter. This past week-end, we did our traditional egg-dying party,

culminating with a big egg hunt. Scott did this great frog egg using different buckets of dye and a clear wax crayon. An egg decorating master. I love curling up in my living room and listening to the words of the prophets and leaders of the church.

The only problem with watching conference in the comfort of my own home is that sometimes I get too comfortable . . .

And end up missing a talk or two. My kids are always quick to get photographic documentation. . . I believe I have Rachel to thank for the photo below. Gotta love that triple chin thing that I've got going! I think that Brent is drooling on the couch. Erin, myself and Laura heading out for the traditional girl's night out while the guys attend General Priesthood meeting. Cafe Trio in Salt Lake. Yum. I had some cream of cauliflower and zucchini soup that I'm still dreaming about as well as a roasted beet, arugula, shaved fennel and goat cheese salad. It was absolutely delicious . . . oh yes it was, Jordan!

Easter baskets, all around! Brent loves to hide the baskets in very out of the way places, and then he gives everyone an insanely hard scripture clue to "help" them. It takes them forever to find the baskets and Brent just savors every minute of it. I know it frustrates them but they just keep coming back for more!

So today, the weather was just unbelievable. Clear this morning, lightning and thunder and large hailstones as the day went on, driving rain in the afternoon and now it's just snowing like crazy. There's supposed to be a foot of snow in the benches by tomorrow morning. I think there's already about half of that out there right now!

Thus endeth the smorgasbord. I hope you found something to your taste. Til next time!