6-14-25 Bird Poop & Pizza & Family & Funerals
Retired/Missionary Life. Sunday.
We needed this day of rest. We've been running at a high-octane pace.
Sacrament Meeting. Men's Meeting. Missionary Coordination Meeting (which included wishing Sister Palmer well as she begins her travel back home this week). Leftover meatloaf for lunch. (No worries, it had been frozen.) Read. Wrote. Watched Church Videos. Responded to E-Mail from some of our Stewards. And then....I never watch NBA. Too many political rants, too much money, not intense enough game playing. But since it's the finals and two teams I don't dislike are playing and it was a come back and close game, I watched the prerecorded game 1. #GoPacers
Pictures (other than Jesus...)
- Where Gus likes to sleep.
- I was actually up early enough to do the dishes before leaving for church. (If we were to get inspected, we would pass. Maybe...)
- Frivvy likes napping with his paws in the air.
- Moose at Stewart Highlands. (We need to go up there and hang out soon.....
Retired/Missionary Life. Monday.
The morning was spent reading, studying, working on Spanish, writing in my book, walking Gus and Frivvy, doing my stretches, stuff like that.
After lunch, we did the usual weekly grocery chore. Planned our crazy busy week, made up scrumptious menus, created a grocery list, typed it into the Safeway app, pushed submit and watched the money run away from our bank account. Great news is that egg prices dropped from over $10 a dozen last week to around $4 this week. Quite a drop for just a week!
Then I did the other weekly chore of paying bills and making sure all the finances are in order. And I changed out a timer on the sprinkler system that was leaking.
Hanna mad up a batch of taco salads for dinner which were yummy. And I watched a prerecorded football game. Syracuse vs Miami. Great game. Great upset.
We'll start running again tomorrow...
Oh yes. Hanna cleaned the bird poop off our poor mailbox and was proud of the job, so took before and after pics. Enjoy!
Retired/Missionary Life. Tuesday.
So...FB has now categorized me as a Digital Creator. Apparently 300 - 400 folks a day look at my stuff. I had no idea. I saw the 20 or so likes (mostly from family) and thought I was doing pretty good. I'm shocked, really. Trying to guess what the attraction is and today I guess it is because I'm the only FBer in the entire world that posts pictures of bird poop on a mailbox.
To that end, see below. Apparently, the birds don't like a clean mailbox and solved that problem quickly. Hanna was shocked at their bad manners.
One of the things I get now as a Digital Creator is a box that says "money earned". Seeing that, I got really excited thinking that soon I will be one of those internet influencer millionaires. But so far, the only numbers in that field are zeros. Kind of like other plans I had when I was younger. Like becoming an NBA player (I couldn't even get a starting position on the church ball team....) or rock star (could not be patient enough to even figure out the guitar...). I don't want the extra money anyways. I would just have to pay taxes on it and I'm done with that gig! Retirement is blissful.
Today, I spent the morning fixing breakfast, cleaning the kitchen, taking the boys out for their walk before it got too hot, read a little bit, showered, ate lunch, then we rushed off to town.
We met with the Cemetery People to make sure the arrangements for this weekend's funeral are set up, sign paperwork, and give them money. We picked up a bunch of drugs at the pharmacy. We went to Value Village and bought an iron for a guy we are teaching that needed one. Picked up the groceries we ordered yesterday. (Yes, we had a huge cooler for the perishables...) (Huge order because it includes food for the family luncheon scheduled for Thursday.) Worshipped in the temple. Went to that Fancy Like place for dinner. And then we taught the guy a great lesson (and gave him his iron). He wants to be an Elder. He wants to go to the temple. Exciting for us all! Finally, we set out to find some missing members of our congregation to see if we could help or teach them. Home 1, only the kids were home with the uncle. Home 2, no one was home. Home 3, new tenant told us that the folks we are looking for moved out months ago. Typical missionary work...
Great experience in the temple today. Several missionaries are finishing up their mission this week and they, as a group, were in the temple just a bit before we were. We could feel their strong spirit lingering there in the temple. Great young men and women who have sacrificed a lot to serve the Lord and bring people to Christ. Great experience to serve with them.
Pictures:
-Bird Poop. (No doubt I have even more followers now!!)
-Hanna showing off her roses and cool hat.
-Temple day!
-Dinner
-Wild Nocturnal Beast at the Highlands.
Retired/Missionary Life. Wednesday.
- What in the world are Gus and Frivvy focusing on.....
- Oh THAT!! I cut the used up Peanut Butter jar in half so they could each lick out a half. They were very happy!
- Preparing lessons we have given many times in English now to be presented in Spanish includes marking the scriptures in the Spanish Quad.
- I had part of a conference talk I wanted to read in the lesson. So I found the talk on the church's website, asked it to show it to me in Spanish, then copied and pasted it into Word so I could easily print out just that section. And Word proceeded to tell me that just about every single word was spelled wrong.......
-Tons of pictures of the family.
The morning was typical (besides feeding peanut butter to the boys.) Breakfast. Clean up. Walk the dogs. Read. Separated out two-serving portions of ham and sausage to be frozen for future breakfasts. Showered. Ate lunch. Ran to town.
Taught a lesson. She wants to go to the temple. Hanna rocked the lesson by testifying on the spot in Spanish! And then we declared our mission work done for the rest of the week due to the funeral on Saturday and family coming into town tonight.
We took over the Hu Hot. Good food. Good family. Enjoy.
Retired/Missionary Life. Thursday.
The family met in downtown Fairfield. We took a cake to the Assisted Living Place and served it to the residences and staff there as a token of our appreciation for how kind they were to Mom. It drew some tears. Gratitude is always a good thing. One of the staff said they rarely get a "thanks". Come on folks, we can do better on that one!
Spent the afternoon at the park eating sandwiches, telling stories about Mom, and playing some horseshoes.
The evening was spent at the Harvester. 28 of us. A huge crowd for a small local diner like that. But they rose to the occasion. The service was awesome. The food was delicious. Hanna ordered them six orders of the mozarella dippers to start with. They were a huge hit (as always)!
Here, also have a couple of pics of the nocturnal creepy beasts from the Highlands. (Yes, we're making plans to camp there, maybe even a couple of times, over the next few weeks.)
Retired/Missionary Life. Friday.
Then back to family and funerals. We met at the church park for more family togetherness. Pizza was served. A lot of pizza. Mom's jewelry collection was laid out on the tables and divvied up. This included an amazing collection of name badges from all the missions they served. We then drove back home for a bit. I took a quick nap. We ate a fine dinner of leftover sloppy joes, then went back to town (a two-trip day...) for Mom's viewing. My buddy, August, was there and we played. Until Aunt Maria took a turn with him. We share nicely.
Today marks one year since I last saw my Dad. (See the pic below). He recognized us, hadn't lost his sense of humor, and we had a great visit. He passed 13 days later. I was thinking of him a lot today. I really miss him.
Hanna's Mom was the best of all mother-in-laws. She made me feel like part of the family from the first time I met her. And that includes including my kids, even though they are "steps". She sent her weekly newsletter to my daughter during her entire mission. She always greeted me with a huge smile, including the last time I saw her coherent on Mother's Day. Always a huge smile.
Tough day to stay upbeat, but being surrounded by young missionaries that are on fire to do the Lord's work and then by family helped quite a bit.
Retired/Missionary Life. Saturday.
- Mom loved quilting. Thus the chapel was decorated with quilts, a lot of them made over the years by her.
- Her Wedding Picture.
- Our adorable grandchild singing at the funeral along with a bunch of other grandkids and great grandkids.
- Sons and daughters of Mom gathered graveside.
- The Stewart-Longhurst-Franchino Clan representation. Raised kids now grown up and married. All three were missionaries too.
- Six missionaries in attendance. Service Missionary in Utah. Me and Hanna. Service Missionary in Spokane. And Elder and Sister Longhurst serving in Portugal. Legacy!
The day was full, both with busyness and emotions. Getting back to normal life tomorrow...
Comments
Post a Comment