Meridian Magazine

15 January 2010

Ailsa's Book

We have self published a book for Ailsa. See the badge in the left hand column at the top of the blog. I wanted to document another drawing of hers that she sent home from Texas.

12 January 2010

Meredith's Wedding

We had a really fun but quick vacation/California wedding trip on 7 - 10 January. We left Jensen and Lane at home. Jensen has a Friday class that she shouldn't miss and they were both testing in King Fu on Saturday. They didn't want to miss that. Lane got her blue sash. Jensen is now 2nd degree red and Chantal got her Black sash.

We left on Thursday shortly after Lenore got home from Kimber. The drive down to Saint George only took a little longer than 3.5 hours. We had a very nice dinner with grandma and grandpa. In the morning it was decided that we should just drive down to California together rather than separately. I was glad. We got into Orange County around 3pm and just went straight to Kim and Ed's house. The weather was very nice. I was sure this would help my pneumonia. We had made arrangements to stay with Sean and Jenny.

The "meet the families" dinner was very nice. We just stayed at Kim's and had pizza. I visited the chickens in the coop. After the party we left grandma and grandpa at Kim's and drove to Sean's. We got to meet again their beautiful cat and meet for the first time their three legged dog, Riley. We enjoyed a nice couple of hours just chatting. Riley, unsure of me at first, warmed up to me and kept asking to be petted.

The next morning was a beautiful 80 degree Southern California January day. We decided to drive into Laguna. And then we just followed our noses south until we ended up in... yes, you guessed it San Clemente. We had to dip our toes in the water. It wasn't too bad. I was kicking myself because the waves looked very fun. Especially at the beach just down the hill from the old chapel. I hadn't brought my wetsuit or even entertained the thought of surfing because I expected the weather and waves not to be so inviting. Oh well.

Sean let us "borrow" his fastrak transponder so we could use the the toll roads. Good thing, after eating at Pedro's tacos we high tailed it north back to Sean's. We got to save about 10-15 minutes on that leg. We quickly changed our clothes and then again saved another 10-15 minutes to the Newport Beach temple. It is very close to Sean's house. I think it is okay to speed on the way to the Temple as long as you signal your lane changes. I told Sean if he gets a ticket in the mail showing me going 85mph, he should plead ignorance.

The sealing ceremony was very nice, although somewhat long. Poor Ed had given up his seat to Lenore and after a while he was sweating and didn't look good. I tried to rehearse in my mind all that I knew about resuscitation. It was good to see Dave Cluff and the Rozsa boys and their pretty wives. The boys all look great, very distinguished. Not many people pull grey off very well. One had a beard. I'm going to guess it was Doug. He looks a lot like the "world's most interesting man" on the Dos Equis commercials.

After the sealing we went back to Kim's for a couple of hours. The reception was very nice, got to see Toni Trumbo and some other old friends and family. We left at about 8:30pm and drove back to Saint George. I didn't sleep much on the drive. We had too much fun coming and going, just visiting with the folks. We went to their ward Sacrament meeting and SS on Sunday morning. A very fun and interesting time in their Gospel Doctrine class. Then we drove home to Murray in time to pick up the kids and go to Midvale for dinner with the Smiths. A very nice but quick trip.




Cat had to try on Ailsa's costume green contact lenses. You can hardly see them in the picture. But, it's a really good picture of Cat. She is using it as her Facebook profile pic.