Happy anticipations

Departure update - Still no official word from Salt Lake regarding the Thorntons.  However, Elder and Sister Thornton have a grandson here in north Phoenix who is receiving his Eagle on Sunday, July 14th so they WILL be down here for that and, whether they arrive at the mission office on July 15th as official missionaries or just volunteers, they WILL be here on that date.  Steve and I will train them that Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and we WILL be driving away on Thursday, July 18th and pulling into Columbia on Saturday evening, July 20th. 

Car update -back when we thought it was just our air conditioner, we made a Tuesday appointment with C&R Auto.  After we realized it was just an empty radiator issue, we still thought it would be good to keep the appointment to make sure our car was road-worthy for all the driving trips we will be taking.  A lot of dollars later, our car IS road-worthy.  The radiator actually had to be replaced, among other things.  It means we won't be replacing our current computer with a laptop as soon as we had hoped but we have peace of mind regarding our car.

Why I Believe devotional update - it went SO WELL last Sunday evening.  I was very happy with all the performances.  Elder Harris in the mission office summed it up pretty nicely - it was a walk-off home run.  Here we are with Sister Wells.


I am returning the borrowed Relief Society sewing machine today.  It has been such a joy to use these past two years.  I think I will need to buy one for myself sometime.



Steve and I went to see Aladdin Friday evening.  It was SO good.  I smiled all the way through the movie. 

These next two weeks will be full of family reunions.  We leave Tuesday for a week in California for the Young reunion.  We will be back in the office Wednesday and Thursday, June 26th and 27th and then we leave on Friday the 28th for three days of Lambson reunion and be back in the office Monday July 1st - just in time for the July 2nd transfer.  And, so it has been a busy week at the office as I have prepared for being gone for two weeks.  But, not so busy that we couldn't have another senior sister lunch at Costa Vida on Friday. 

 Here at home, amid all the usual weekly chores, I have been preparing for our trips and I have been packing up all non-essentials for our return home in July.  But, we also found time to feed our ward's sister missionaries, Sisters Jammet and Rossi, last night. 

Lastly, here is Elder Dano and Elder Cruz, Zone 8 Leaders, picking up all the packages that have accumulated for missionaries in their zone. 

Life here in the desert

After a gloriously unseasonably cool spring, summer has finally arrived where everyone stays in their air conditioned environments most of the time.  Mornings are still tolerable and Steve and I still go on our 6:00am walks or bike rides.  I saw this tenacious desert flower one morning...

As temperatures have heated up, we were dismayed on Thursday when our car air conditioning seemed to phase in and out of cool mode.  It continued on Friday and, on the way home from the office, our engine even began to overheat.  I am sure you can imagine our 30 minute drive home with windows open going 65 mph and the heater going full blast in an attempt to keep the temperature gauge away from that big red H.  It was the longest drive of my life!  Saturday morning, Steve checked the radiator fluid and it was WAAAY down!!!  He filled it up and we took a test drive to Wal-mart - first with the AC off and the windows down.  Temperature stayed normal.  That was good.  Then, we drove around a bit more with the windows up and the AC on.  No phasing in and out of cool mode.  More good.  Maybe that was the problem all along????  We have an appointment set up with our mechanic on Tuesday and I think we will still keep it just to make sure everything is all right since we are preparing for a lot of driving during the last two weeks of June (family reunions) and mid-July when we drive home.   The frustrating thing is that we just took the car in last Tuesday for a routine oil change.  Don't they check all fluid levels???  I guess we stop depending upon that to happen from now on and check all our fluid levels ourselves every month.  Even in our mid-sixties, when we should know everything, we still are learning.  

Salt Lake sent someone to train our new Financial coordinator on Wednesday.  Her name was Whitney and her training took most of the day and she also trained the Housing coordinator and Steve, the Vehicle coordinator.  And, she took the whole office to lunch.  I was elected to choose the place and I picked Thai food.  Here we are at the restaurant...

(me, Whitney, Sister & Elder Poulson, Elder Wall, Elder Williams, Steve)

We had planned one last Arizona outing for yesterday but with our car problems, we just stayed home.  It was a lovely, peaceful, restful day for which I am very grateful.  We watched an interesting movie called "Jack and the Beanstalk - the Real Story" which was a Hallmark mini-series made in 2001.  It had an all-star cast and it was good story.  We also watched "Breathe" which was also quite good. 

Last Saturday, if you will recall, we were supposed to have Eric Stott and his son Xang (pronounced Sang) over for pizza but he completely forgot and double booked.  We rescheduled for Tuesday evening.  I admit, going into it, I was kind of resentful of having to alter my usual Tuesday night schedule to accommodate someone's forgetfulness.  But, the dinner turned out to be very enjoyable.  Eric and Xang came but so did the daughter who is going to college - Dalia - and her boyfriend Garrett.  We had lively and pleasant conversation and everyone liked the food and they didn't stay too long (at 8:30 each evening is when we start our end-of-day routine).

Speaking of end-of-day routine, I try to spend my 8:30 - 9:00 time sewing and practicing.  Fifteen minutes on each doesn't seem like very much time but it is amazing how much I can accomplish over a weeks time.  This past week, I had a dress to sew for Lucy and I am accompanying two musical numbers for tonight's Why I Believe devotional.  And, throughout the week, I worked on both and am happy to report that Lucy's dress just needs buttons to be completed and I feel prepared to play tonight.

Steve has had intermittent right ankle pain for the past few weeks and he decided to see a doctor about it Thursday morning.  Happily, the office has a walk-in option so that is what he did and he was able to get in right away with Dr. Willden.  He ordered some x-rays at a lab right next door and Steve also has a July 8th appointment with a local podiatrist.  Happily, the x-rays aren't showing anything too serious so Steve will just have to occasionally hobble around until then.

My adult cello student, Nate Coons, is baptizing his daughter this weekend and so both sets of grandparents came into town to take part.  And, with that, he wanted to reprise his two cello solos he performed at my May 16th recital.  His two oldest children are taking piano lessons and they wanted to perform.  He also talked his mother to play something on the piano and me to play some Bach on my cello and so we had a little recital Friday night.  It went very nicely. 

Moving forward into June

We are half-way to a firm departure date.  We received official Salt Lake notice that the Francos will arrive in Phoenix on September 16th to train with the Poulsons for two weeks.  We have unofficial information that the Thorntons will arrive in Phoenix on July 15th.  Nothing from Salt Lake about them yet because there are still hang-ups with their ecclesiastical endorsements.  Evidently, a medical form was still missing so the bishop was waiting on that.  But, the Thorntons are planning on a July 15th arrival.  Then, we will train them for three days and head for home on Thursday, July 18th and arrive on Saturday, July 20th.  Fingers crossed.

We went into the office for half of Memorial Day.  We always have a Monday office meeting and we needed to finalize our Mission Tour plans.  We left at lunch time and did our usual grocery shopping but then we had a relaxing afternoon back up in Anthem.  It was nice.

The Mission Tour this week was a visiting general authority, Elder Peiper of the Seventy, who came for four days.  Two of those days were zone conferences - four zones on Wednesday and four on Thursday.  I was asked to put together a special musical number and I wanted to take advantage of the several string players we have scattered across the mission.  I picked a simple hymn arrangement to "As I Search The Holy Scriptures" (Hymplicity to the rescue) and created some string parts to accompany.  I had to come up with a couple of iterations because I was not sure which strings would be playing on which day due to a transfer literally the week before the conference.  I had a violin-violin-cello version and a violin-cello-cello version.  As it turned out, for the Wednesday performance, I had NO strings.  All my musicians just happened to be in the four zones for the Thursday conference.  Oh well, we would just have piano and choir that day.  There was to be only ONE 30-minute rehearsal on the day of the conference (which meant getting up at 4:45 to be out the door at 6:00 to arrive at the meetinghouse by 6:30 for a 6:45 - 7:15 rehearsal because a group photo was at 7:30 and the conference started at 8:00)  So, Wednesday morning came and, the sister missionary I had asked to play piano, for various reasons, didn't practice at all and and she didn't let me know.  She also arrived late to rehearsal.  And, it was only then that it was evident she couldn't play for the choir.  So, I got to sight read the music and I had to accompany.  It really wasn't that difficult of music - I just over estimated her musical abilities.  Happily, the number went nicely.  It went even better the next day with four practiced string players, a practiced pianist, and a slightly more robust choir. 

Steve and I hosted my cousin Kay Winfield for dinner on Friday night.  We picked her up and brought her up to our place in Anthem.  We had such a good visit.  

We were supposed to host a man and his son from our congregation for dinner last night (Saturday) - we made homemade pizza - but he apparently double booked himself and was unable to come.  So, we ate on our own, took some of our huge salad over to the sister missionaries, and we watched "The Blind Side". 

I am excited for June.  Two weeks of regular mission work and then two weeks of travel.  Thankfully, our mission president is allowing us to honor those long-time made commitments.