Ci Vediamo a Roma

This last weekend was the triennial JRHIMM reunion. Michelle bravely headed this up. Jay and I did our best to keep her from giving us the whole thing. I think she was fairly stressed about it. Anyway, it came off great with only one small survivable hitch.

Shortly after I arrived at the Friendship Park Pavilion to start setting up, members of the Hillside ward Elders Quorum also showed up. We were double booked. We decided to work together and we just (mostly) kept to one side and they the other. (We did have some people without knowing help themselves to their food, yikes!)

The weather was nice, we had some of our regulars show and a good mix of faces we haven't seen in a while, or ever. There was quite a bit of wind for an hour or so. But, overall it worked out fine. Ailsa went home briefly to gather up some books she had borrowed from Blake Ostler before her mission to give back to him. Also, Steve Young went to our house at one point to watch the end of a Stanley Cup game.

Saturday morning we went to the Draper Temple to have a session in Italian, officiated by our own Mark Scoville. This was a very nice thing. Susan Ashby had provided some Italian Family file names for us to do. At one point Ailsa sat for a little while next to sister Jeanne Fillerup. They figured out that Jeanne's son had been in Ailsa's district in Houston.

Afterward we chatted and took some pictures outside the temple. From our vantage point you could see the other three temples in the valley. The Temple itself is gorgeous. It has a Celestial room that is 4 storeys high with an amazing chandelier. They do a very good job of keeping patrons reverent there also. Only problem was with the layout it wasn't clear how you accessed the Celestial room. Lenore, Ailsa and I all tried to go the wrong way. Hmmmm, I think there is an analogy there somewhere. The temple setting and grounds are very nice too. Just up the hill from the parking lot, though are a handful of 8000 square foot McMansions that are nice looking but quite ostentatious.

Lenore and I got acquainted with Ron Hilton who it turns out is the son of Darrell's friend, George Hilton.

The Saturday evening dinner we held at Spaghetti Mama's in Jordan Commons. This was also very nice. Just a tad pricey. But, you have to remember, in this case you are not just paying for the meal. You are also paying for the use of the room all evening. (What really could have been possibly 3 meals for the restaurant.

Really, everything came off without a hitch. They made me MC. But, that was okay. President and Sister Dunaway gave very interesting and stirring talks. There are 7 stakes now in Italy. (Once they got the temple announcement I stopped paying attention. Baptisms have been on the rise. They now have lots of multigenerational families there. He also brought along TOP SECRET/Nulla Osta Segretezza pictures/renderings of the inside of the Rome Temple. The food was actually better than I had remembered, right on par with Buca.

Steve had wanted to see the movie Super 8 afterward. But, we went quite long and didn't get out of there until about 10pm. Have to do the movie next week.