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Monday, May 23, 2011

Dear Friends and Family,

Here I am in Sunny California!

Last Monday afternoon I fixed a nice double batch of Cherry Chocolate Brownies for Empty Nester’s FHE.  The four missionaries were drooling for them, but they couldn’t try them until AFTER Empty Nester’s.  We ended up only having two show up for FHE so there were plenty of brownies and Blue Bell for the missionaries.

Tuesday morning we got a phone call from Charlene Pope telling us that Bill Tyree had passed away during the night.  I got up and went up to the Church to work on the May VT report.  From there I stopped by IHOP to see if Trish was there.  I just had a Diet Coke with her and then went over to Bed Bath and Beyond to get a lid for Cookie and to Miracle Nails to get my nails done.  I then drove to Fort Worth.  While there, I went to The Container Store, Hobby Lobby, and to Sam’s Club.  On the way home I stopped by at David’s Stove Shop to pick up a new pulley for our lawn tractor.  When I got home, Bob helped me put the stuff away.  That evening we went to Rosa’s Café for dinner and then Bob went to a meeting with the Stake President and I mended a pair of pants for Elder Stanworth and did some other sewing.  After that, I finished “Maze Runner” by James Dashner.  I found out that it is a series.  I decided to start another book rather than read the second in the series.  I’ll finish them some other time.  I chose “Among the Hidden” by Margaret Peterson Haddix to read next.  It is good so far.

Of course, last Wednesday was Temple Day.  Charlene Pope, Sharon Carter, and Marsha Norwood went with me.  We had a good day at the temple—busy.  We ate at Logan’s Steakhouse here in Weatherford when we got back to town.  Bob was up at the Church when I got home.  I then packed.  It was late before I got to bed.

Thursday morning I was not ready for the alarm to go off, but it did and I got up.  We left a little before 8 for DFW airport.  Bob dropped me off and then he went on to the Dallas Temple.  My plane left around 10 CDT and got to SLC at noon MDT.  Cookie picked me up.  We went to the SLC Distribution Center and then went to lunch at Kneader’s.  From there we went to Walmart at Jordan Landing and to Bon Worth in Draper.  Then we went to Grandma’s.  Soon after we got there, we took Grandma to PetsMart to pick up Lucy.  Later that evening we all went to Applebee’s for supper.  We went to bed shortly after we got home.

Friday morning Cookie and I loaded up her car and headed for Reno, Nevada.  We had a nice drive.  I’d never been in that neck of the woods.  Parts of the trip were boring, but most of it was interesting—the Great Salt Lake and all the salt fields.  When we got to Reno, we went to see the Reno Temple and then found a hotel.  When we got settled in our room, I reserved a room in the Sacramento area for Saturday night.   I then did the ward bulletin and got it sent off.  We went and got a hamburger at Burger King before going to bed.

Saturday morning we got up and had a wonderful breakfast and then we went to the Reno Temple.  Cookie forgot to bring her temple clothes and her temple recommend!  They called her Bishop so she was able to go in and they loaned her clothes.  The people were so nice and friendly.  The Endowment session was full—which was nice.  Afterwards we left Reno and drove to Folsom, California where the Sacramento Temple is located.  Also, it is where the Folsom Prison is/was located that Johnny Cash sang about. The grounds of the temple were just beautiful.  It was like a large park.  The temple was beautiful.  We got in again and went on another Endowment session which was also full.  When we entered the Celestial Room, I couldn’t believe how gorgeous it was.  It was unbelievable.  From there we drove to Woodland, CA where our hotel was located.  We went to eat at Subway and then went back to our hotel and crashed.

Sunday morning we left for Magalia, CA up in the mountains to see our Cousin Doug and his wife, Peggy.  When we got there, their son, Erick, was there.  Doug has Louis Gehrig’s Disease.  Bob and I had gone to visit them back in October.  At that time he could still feed himself and walk around.  When we saw him this time, he was on Hospice and not expected to make it through the week.  We were so glad that we decided to go see him.  We stayed about 45 minutes visiting with Peggy and Erick.  It was so sad to see Doug that way, but we were happy that he was going so fast.  It would be awful to drag such a horrible disease on.  Peggy is handling it pretty well.  Cookie and I headed to the San Francisco area after our short visit.  We had pre-reserved a hotel room in Vallejo.  We rested for a while and then went to eat at Olive Garden.  When we got back to the hotel, we watched some TV and then lights out.

This morning we headed for San Francisco.  We had planned on taking a five hour tour of San Francisco and Alcatraz, but they were all sold out.  Poor planning on our part!!  We decided to just look on our own.  When we went over the Bay Bridge it was just too crowded for us country girls.  And we couldn’t find any places to park so we just took pictures of China Town, the Piers, etc.  Then we headed for the Oakland Temple to see where it was.  On our way, we got a call from our Cousin Peggy.  Doug had died at 9am.  We were SO glad that we had gone to see him the day before.  While at the visitor’s center of the Oakland Temple, a lady told us about a really good fish restaurant down the road a little ways.  She gave us the address and I put it into my GPS.  It was in San Mateo.  Well, my GPS took us on a wild goose chase.  Instead of taking us over the San Mateo bridge, it took us way down around the bay and back up to San Mateo.  We did finally end up at the Fish Market and Café, but it took about two hours to get there and it should have only been minutes.  The food was really good.  I got wild salmon and Cookie got halibut.  We then headed back to Vallejo to our hotel, but didn’t go the way that the GPS wanted us to go and we made it back to the hotel MUCH faster.

Now we are sitting it the hotel watching a stupid animated sort of movie on TV about a fox family.  I can’t send this out because the internet doesn’t work in this hotel!  I’ll send it tomorrow when we get to our next destination. 

Sorry, but that internet didn’t work there either.  This is two days late!

P.S.  Bob had his surgery on Monday.  He found out on Tuesday that they got all the melanoma.  So he went back today for them to do his reconstructive surgery.  He will be ok.