Merry Christmas

We went to a Caroling Party, which was a sing-a-long of Christmas carols.  It was in the home of the couple in the red sweaters talking to Santa.  Their names are the Baileys, and they have a beautiful home in the foothills above San Jose.  It was a lot of fun.  Sister Bailey baked cookies all week to prepare, and her treats would have received rave reviews from our family of cookie snobs!  They were delicious.  She had dozens of different kinds to choose from, from cranberry orange drops to raspberry bars, almond bars, and mince tarts.  Yum!

Then last Monday at FHE we did a service project.  We helped provide gifts for foster children in the south.  Kimberly, who plans our FHEs, has a sister who lives in North Carolina, and she is a foster mom; she knows lots of the other foster families in the area, and said they don't get much for Christmas.  So we all contributed gifts, along with other members of our ward, wrapped them and Kimberly sent two huge boxes off to them this week.  It was a great way to serve and have a nice time socializing with the mid singles.

Kimberly is the gal in the Santa hat talking to Dad. 

Then last night, Kimberly went to the Oakland Temple to receive her endowment.  It was a wonderful day for us, because we had taught her the temple preparation lessons.  She's been a member for a year, and is very enthusiastic.  She got lots of support from the ward, and the two missionaries that taught her at first were able to come.  We drove 3 missionaries up with us and took them home to Santa Cruz after a dinner of pizza (they ate 2 large pizzas!)  Here are the two Elders who baptized her, and Kimberly in front of the temple.  It was a rainy, foggy night.

We have been having a lot of rain.  The costal areas have received about 16 inches in the last few weeks.  The ground is pretty saturated.  Our drive home last night was in the rain through the Santa Cruz mountains, along a winding road that was slick and scary.  The forest comes right up to the highway, and sometimes trees become so saturated, they literally slide down the mountain into the road.  We know - we hit one!  There was a bus in front of us, and the bus must have hit it first, but we couldn't see it until it was right in front of our car.  There was a horrible crunch, and zoom, we were past it.  It dented the front of the car, and ripped off the side mirror!  We were both pretty shook up, but un-harmed.  We got home and saw some other scratches, but feel very lucky that it didn't break the windshield.  The branch that was sticking up that got us was about 4" in diameter, so it could have done much worse damage.  We called the insurance company today, and will take it in for repairs next week.  We can't drive much without that side mirror, not on these freeways.  So we've been home all day with not much to do.  Sigh....

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas.  We hope you have a peaceful, relaxing, enjoyable week.  We miss you all terribly, but know we are where we are supposed to be.  We don't have plans for Christmas Day yet, but will probably get some invitations at church tomorrow.  Erin and Dave, be safe driving the kids down south; Amy and Rob, have fun in Disneyland, Tracy and Dave, enjoy time with family and friends, and Megan and Shawn, enjoy the fun of having a Santa believer in your midst for maybe one or two more years (?).

Still waiting for pictures of the pocket party!  Blog, people, blog!

Love you all so much.

9 years

Well, family, its been 9 years ago today.  It's still hard, but not as hard as it used to be.  Hope everyone has been able to think positive thoughts all day and remember the good times with David.  We'll tell you what we did today, but first, here is a picture from our ward Christmas party on Saturday.  Cheeky Santa!

It was a great party.  The potato casserole they had me make for it was very yummy.  It called for 3 cups heavy cream, freshly grated nutmeg (thanks, Tracy), and fresh thyme.  I'll share it sometime.

So today, we decided to go into San Francisco, since David loved that city so much.  How lucky are we to be able to do that?  We also wanted to see some places where Grandpa Crockett spent some time when he was in High School there.  We had his address from his journal, but the house has been torn down, as it is now the Dept. of Motor Vehicles, but this is the house across the street, and some sidewalk art from where his house would have been.

He had a newspaper route that we think would have had him delivering to places like this

 

Isn't that a beautiful old home? 

 

We then ate at a bakery/deli:  these are some of the delicious cakes they had on display

Then we drove through china town, down to the Embarcadero and walked over to Fisherman's Wharf.

We had a good day. Hope all of you did as well.

It's back to work tomorrow!  Oh, last night, we helped as hosts at a crèche display that has over 350 crèches from all over the world.  It was amazing.  They didn't allow pictures, but here's the sign at the ward house that has hosted it for 20 years.

They had displays from Africa, Europe, South America, the Islands, Mexico, America.  They were so great to see, and they used very creative ways to display them.  It was very unique and beautiful.  I'd like to start collecting them.  If I could only travel to all those places to get them!

Hope everyone is enjoying the season.  It will be a very unusual Christmas for us, but we'll enjoy it and look forward to talking with everyone via Skype on Monday. 

Love to you all.

 



5 Days with Family

We had a great Thanksgiving.  Amy, Rob and family got here late Wednesday night.  We had a turkey dinner in our little apartment, then cruised down to Sunset Beach.  We played in the surf, looked for seashells, got wet, and saw the sun set.  Pretty fun.

Friday we went up to San Francisco.  The weather was perfect.  We stopped at Levi Stadium, where the 49ers play.  Caleb is a huge fan, so was very excited.  Then we went across the Golden Gate Bridge out to Sausalito.  It is a beautiful place.  We spent some time at Pelican Harbor, watching those majestic birds and some seals.  We then went up to the Oakland Temple and saw the beautiful Christmas lights on the grounds.

On Saturday, we drove down to Monterey and visited the aquarium.  It was crazy busy, and wet and rainy, but we had a good time.  The traffic getting home was nuts, so we got off the freeway and got home on Monterey Road, which used to be the main highway in the lower Bay area.

On Sunday, Dad and I were scheduled to speak in the young adult ward, so the Staleys joined us there.  I got up to speak and a spider started to run across my talk!  I freaked out!  A guy behind me got up and brushed it off the podium, and I was able to continue my talk.  At least I didn't scream into the mike!  Everyone got a good laugh out of that!

They flew home later that evening, after waiting at the airport for them to fix some mechanical problem with their plane (yikes!).  They made it home safely, and we are all getting rested up from our rest (hehe).  Such a fun weekend.

Hope you all had a great holiday.  Christmas will be here before you know it.  The pocket present sign up seems like such a great idea.  Thanks, Megan.  Hope everyone has gotten on and signed up.  It should be fun. 

We're going to be very busy.  There are a ton of special Christmas activities and programs in the Bay area, and we get to help out at some of them.  We're trying to re-design our Facebook page and are wishing we had a grandkid or two here to help us!  Katie would have, but we were out of data on our little hotspot.  What a pain!  But we will get it figured out (eventually).

We have had quite a bit of rain, and the autumn leaves have been pretty.  It's so funny to see the colorful leaves along side flowers!  But we won't miss the snow this winter.

Hope everyone is doing well.  You're always in our prayers.

Happy Thanksgiving

We can't believe it's almost Thanksgiving.  November has flown by. We had the great privilege of going up to Oakland to spend
almost 6 hours with Elder David A. Bednar.  The first meeting was with the 2 missions that are here in the Bay area.  There were about 600 people in that meeting.  Elder Bednar talked about what it is an Apostle does when he travels all over the world.  The meetings and conferences and firesides are not the purpose of their trips.  Their purpose is to find "the one" and tell them what the Lord wants them to hear.  In his trip to California, the ones he needed to see were the two teenage boys of our mission president.  They needed to hear what he had to say as he spent an afternoon at their home. 

But Dad and I feel that he came to give us a message.  At the end of the missionary meeting, he looked right at the row of senior couple missionaries and said, "Some of you have sacrificed a lot to serve a mission.  You have been away from your families.  You have missed the birth of grandchildren, and their baptisms.  You worry about your families.  But I promise you as an Apostle of the Lord that you will do more good for your families by serving in the California mission that you could do for them at home."  That meant a lot to us.

We then had another 2 1/2 hour meeting with him and the single adults.  Both meetings were amazing.  He spent  almost the entire meeting taking questions from those gathered.  And every answer he gave was incredible.  It was a great day.  This was on a Saturday.

Then on Sunday, Elder Bednar talked at the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Oakland Temple.  He gave a brief history of how the Temple was built, and talked about the miraculous way then President David O. McKay was able to stand and dedicate the Temple.  He had had a stroke a few days before the dedication, and no one thought he would be able to speak.  He was brought into the meeting in a wheelchair.  When the time came to speak, he was wheeled to the pulpit, pulled himself up to the mike and went ahead as if nothing had happened.  He hadn't been able even to say a coherent sentence prior to that moment.  Elder Bednar was there, as he grew up in Oakland, and said it was really amazing.  The temple's anniversary is November 17th, the same day as ours, so it was very meaningful to us.

On Sunday we also had the privilege of taking an investigator to church.  Her name is Mira and she is from Bosnia.  We met her by chance when we went to visit one of our MSA sisters that we see every Friday night.  Their apartment building had been evacuated due to a minor flood, and they were across the street at a fast food restaurant.  We sat and talked to them for about an hour, and talked about the Church.  We asked her if she would like to attend church with us, and she said yes.  So we picked them both up.  We gave her a Book of Mormon, and she is coming again this Sunday.  We are excited!  We were even able to find a Book of Mormon in Croatian for her.

We spent our anniversary at the MSA Family Night watching "National Velvet".  I don't remember ever seeing that before, and really enjoyed it.  One of our members is a real old movie buff, and can tell you what movie won an academy award for any year since they began.  He also knows who starred in them, and lots of other trivia about movies and songs.  So he picked this one, as it is one of his favorites.

We met a sister on Sunday who works as a personal assistant for a local wealthy family.  She does everything for the family that most of us do on our own; shopping, cooking; running errands; house repair and organizing.  How would it be to have someone do all that for you?  She really enjoys it, too.  She started out her career as a personal chef, but likes the variety in being a personal assistant.
She served a mission in the Philippines and had some amazing stories to tell about that.

When she first got to one of her areas, she noticed that their activity rate had fallen dramatically.  She and her companion started visiting the less-actives, and found out that the reason they stopped going to church is because the wife of the local church leader was traveling with her husband to visit people and spreading rumors about everyone!  So she talked to the sister and told her she was causing a lot of hard feelings and got her to quit (I don't know how she managed that!) and by the time this missionary left, the district where she was serving was made into a Stake.  It's amazing the damage one person can do, huh?

We are excited to see Rob and Amy and their family.  They get in late Wednesday night and will be here for 3 days.  We are going to squeeze into our tiny apartment for Thanksgiving dinner, and then head down to - guess where - the beach!  Can't wait!

We hope you all have fun plans for the holiday.  We'd like to hear what you are each doing, and hopefully can talk to you by phone on Thanksgiving day. 

I don't have any pictures to share, so I'll close with this:

"Life is like an old-time rail journey - delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed.  The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride."  Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley

I'm thankful for the ride, and for each of you for making it a beautiful journey for us.  We love you.

Weeknight Chili

When I made it, I doubled it, but didn't double the beef broth.  It was plenty soupy that way.  You can also add as much heat as you want, with jalapenos or Tabasco sauce.  The regular recipe serves about 6 and doubled, 12, which can be reheated in a crock pot to take to gatherings.  I took it to the trunk-or-treat, and it was gone.

Anniversary trip

After a busy week last week (lessons taught, Elders out to dinner, meetings, firesides) we decided to take 2 days this week (next week is too busy) and celebrate our 47th Wedding Anniversary.  We went down to San Simeon and stayed in a motel right on the beach.  It was lovely.  The beach down there is gravely and dark, very different from the beaches up north.  The sea was very rough, and we sat and listened to it crash and roar.  It's amazing.  On Tuesday morning we walked along the shore and saw dolphins playing.  There were some surfers there, and they all stopped to watch.  There were also two fishermen who cast their poles from the beach. They caught 3 perch in just the few minutes we were watching.

Then we went up to the Hearst Castle for the rest of the day.  It is an amazing place.  Very over-done; the guy had way too much money.  But it was fun to see.  So many antiques, and some things that are very, very old; vases, statues, ceilings from the 17th century, some older.  Tapestries, Persian carpets - it was all beautiful and intriguing.  They have 3 separate tours, where they show just part of the castle and other buildings, but never all of it at once.  It's quite the scam (hehe).  You pay $25 to see a small part of the house.  We went on two tours and saw everything we wanted to see but the kitchen.  Here are some of the pictures I took.

We had a good time.  It was a long ride home (3hrs) but we made it, and got up at 6 this morning to help get some out-going missionaries to the airport.  We said goodbye to one of the sisters we worked with closely, Sister Ikegami.  She was born in Japan, but lived recently in Spokane, Washington, and that's where she was returning to.  Such a sweetheart!

She promised to keep in touch.  Sure hope she does.

We have written letters to most of the grandkids, just have the youngest three left.  We have been enclosing self-addressed, stamped envelopes, hoping they will write to us.  So far, no luck.  It's sure hard not hearing from our family at home.  Sigh.....

We are doing okay; keeping busy; loving the work.  We miss you all bunches and bunches.  We pray for you and think of you often.