Week in Review: May 10-18, 2008

It was a busy week but a fun one. Sarah and I were out of town and so I thought this would be the best way to catch up on what I have missed.

On May 10, we drove down to San Diego for the wedding of the century. I have been waiting for this wedding for many years and am so glad that it finally happened. Jim and Whitney Kringel were married in the San Diego temple. We were able to join them for the sealing. Aunt Patty watched Sarah all day for us. When I called earlier in the week to make certain Patty was still able to watch her she said she couldn't wait. I also asked if she would mind watching her for the reception as well and not just the wedding. "Don't take my day away from me. I had planned on that. Go to a movie, dinner, I don't care just don't take my day away." was her reply! So we didn't--we let her have the entire day. It was nice for us but by the end of the evening both Richard and I were ready to get back and see her. It's always so fun when her face lights up upon seeing us. What a confidence boost that is! :)

We spent the night at the Johnson's house so we could spend Mother's Day with them. Mother's Day was wonderful. We went to the Chart House for Brunch and I didn't have to lift a finger all day long. Sarah made me a wonderful card...I can't get enough of it. (Thanks for helping daddy)

After brunch Uncle Jeff treated Patty and me to pedicures. Because it had been so long since I had had one and my toes looked terrible, I couldn't turn him down. We headed back home in the late afternoon so that I could finish packing for the trip Sarah and I were going on the next morning.

We spent Monday driving with Sarah Zobell to Utah. Sarah has moved to Utah until she goes to graduate school. She drove down for the wedding and so that she could retrieve the things she had stored at our house. We decided to go with her so that we could meet Xander and so that the Berg's could meet Sarah Jane. Ashley and I have been best friends since the 6th grade and finally we have kids the same age. (she has 2 others) Sarah Jane did great in the car and we actually made really great time; 11 hours with 3 stops.

We spent the week hanging out with the Berg family and it was wonderful. Xander is adorable and Maile and Michael are just as cute as ever! Mikey loved Sarah and she loved him back. They played for hours. We could always count on him to keep her occupied. We flew home on Friday evening and found one happy daddy waiting for us. Sarah's face lit up when she saw him. My heart melted!

We spent the weekend trying to keep cool with a backyard BBQ with our friend's the Lovetts. Their kiddos swam in our little pool and we ate and ate and ate. ARGH!

It was a good week but I must say that I am glad to be home and happy that the calendar is looking a little less hectic this week.

Happy Mother's Day

Dear Sarah Jane & all our future kiddos:

I love grandmas. I love grandmas because I have 2 of the best grandmas. You are lucky to know them and they love you just as much as they love me. You are also lucky because you have grandmas who love you, my mom, and daddy's mom. I am so happy that you know my mom, Grandma Bigelow. You will have many opportunities to play with her and feel of her love. I know you will quickly learn how much she cherishes you. It seems that every picture I send her she posts on her wall at work. The collage is getting so large that one of her clients calls it her "Wall of fame". You will know her house and if you are anything like me you will know her smell. Did you know that people have unique smells that can remind us of the special people in our lives? It's true.

When you were little Sarah, your daddy and I slept with your fuzzy frog blankey for a few nights so that it would have our scent. Then we put it in your crib so that you would sleep better. I imagine we will do that with the rest of our kiddos as well. One time when I was little I went shopping with my mom at the mall and we were walking through the perfume section and I refused to leave because I thought my Grandma Weldon was there. I could smell her and so I just knew she was there. It was just her perfume, but I knew her that way.

You will get to go swimming with Grandma Bigelow and bike riding on their greenbelt. We will celebrate many Christmases and birthdays together. I say it again, you will learn quickly just how much she loves you. She is a wonderful mother and grandma. We are lucky to have her.

You have another grandma who's just as special and loves you just as much but you won't get to know her personally while you are here on Earth but thanks to our Heavenly Father's Plan you will know her in the eternities. She's in heaven right now preparing a place for us. I want you to know your Grandmother Atchley. I didn't get to meet her either because your daddy and I got married after she had passed away and so I also want to know her better.

Your dad and I visit her gravesight and from the way he treats her grave I can tell how much he loves his mom. She must have been wonderful! I ask your dad stories about her and I am sure he will tell you many as you grow up. You will know her even if you can't see her now because we will teach you of her. Through the stories we hear we will learn of her, love her, and know her. Won't it be fun when we do meet?

I have asked your dad and his siblings to tell me about Grandma Adele and I intend to share them with you. There are many stories and some of them are long, some of them are short, some of them are funny, but all of them are filled with love!

I want to start by sharing with you the eulogy that your dad gave at her funeral. Do you know what a eulogy is? It's a big, tricky word isn't it? A eulogy is the story of someone's life. Through it we can learn about her when she was little as well as when she was big. We also have a copy of the talk on CD and so one day we will listen to it. Daddy sounds so young. If you listen carefully you can hear how much he loves her! Because this story is long I will only share parts with you at a time.

Remember how much everyone loves you and how fortunate you are for the wonderful extended family you have! Get to know them, whether personally or by way of others--I promise you won't regret it!

I love you!!

Mom

So, let's begin... Part 1(Remember this is your dad talking)

They always assume Rozanne's older because she’s married. They asked me to talk about my mom for a few minutes and I have been stressing over it for the last couple of days and worried about how good of a job I could do. About two minutes ago I was sitting here and I looked out and I thought, “You know, I don’t think I can say anything that can really screw her up in the minds of most of these people here.”

She was born August 7, 1936 in Milford, Utah to Marcus Joy Christensen and Hazel Johnson Christensen. She doesn’t remember much about Milford. She lived there until she was three. She was born into a loving family. Her father had a little jewelry store in front of the laundry and her mother did a lot of work in the jewelry store and sometimes her oldest brother would have to take care of her. Sometimes some of the women in Milford would call up my Grandma and say, “Hazel, you know what I just saw that was very scary?” And she would say, “Yes, I know. You saw Don with baby Adele on his shoulders on the bicycle.” Mom would hold onto Don’s hair or his ears as handlebars.

When she was three, in 1939, the family moved to Las Vegas where she had most of
her memories. She lived in an apartment in the back of a jewelry store which I believe is now the Four Queens. It’s no longer there. There wasn’t a whole lot of room there and she and her sister, Anne, slept on a covered patio or porch or something like that. She had a little tricycle and she would ride around in the alley behind the store and she would talk to the guys who were picking through the trash cans. Those were her buddies. Her Aunt Hattie came to visit … I just started a
story that isn’t right now. Oh, I remember – Her Aunt Hattie came to visit and she
mentioned something about all the trucks out on the street. She looked at her, very astute, and said, “Those aren’t trucks, those are diesels.” One of the rare snow storms, I wouldn’t call it a storm, but one of the rare occasions where there was snow in Las Vegas, she came out and wondered who put cotton on top of all the cars.

She had four older brothers, Don, Vern, Carl and Paul, and one sister, Anne. She respected and loved her brothers and sisters. It wasn’t always fun and it wasn’t always rosy. One time she put a chemistry set in the oven and blew it up. It belonged to one of her brothers and was for retaliation to something that happened to one of her dolls. It was a haircut or something that wasn’t asked for.

She went on a trip to Mount Charleston with her family one day. The family was up there in two or three different cars and when it came time to leave, she stopped into the bathroom. Everyone figured she was in one of the other cars and they all went home. I guess she just stayed there. She found a ride with another family that was willing to take her home. When she got home, her parents said, “Oh, you weren’t here.”

She didn’t like being alone. She never really cared to be alone. In later years when Dad would go on business trips, she would have some of the kids take turns sleeping in the bed with her. She didn’t like for others to be alone. She felt bad after her father died, she spent a lot of time going up to Las Vegas and visiting her mother because she didn’t want her mother to be alone. There is a good portion of people here that are from the Las Vegas area who saw to it that she wasn’t alone up there, but my mom would have to go up there, too, to spend time with her.

She has done a lot of visiting teaching in her life. I was looking through some of her journals in the last week and almost every entry was, “I went and I saw Evelyn today.” “I saw Martha today.” “I went over and took Jane to the doctor today.” She cared for all these ladies and she took care of them and saw that they were not alone.

She was a good student when she was in school. She had a little problem with seeing the chalk board in the front of the classroom. She found out that she needed to get glasses. She got glasses and she walked outside with her glasses for the first time and she realized that grass comes in blades and the trees had leaves on them! She thought that was pretty neat. She decided to keep wearing glasses and she didn’t take them off. I didn’t notice if there were any pictures out there of her “Bat Girl” glasses. She had some Bat Girl glasses that we really liked. Years later, sometimes if she would get a lot of encouragement, she would pull them out and put them on for us.

After Suzanne got contact lenses, she decided she was brave enough to get contact
lenses and so she went up to visit Shelly and Leah Kay Smith, who were friends of theirs from USC, he is an optometrist. She got outfitted for some contact lenses. Maybe those of you who have only known her for the last 15 or 20 years have only seen her with no glasses on.

After a while, as age sets in as some of you, a lot of you, know. She had to get bifocals. So, Shelly set her up with some bifocals where one lens was for distance and the other lens was for up close. She got used to that fairly quickly and sometimes she would be sitting at church and be at the organ testing it out, seeing how far she could see with each eye. Some of my friends would say, “Hey, I think your mom was winking at me.” I would say, “You know, she really likes you.”

She got a piano when she was eight years old. She didn’t get a piano. Her parents got a used piano but when she got married and moved out, then it was her piano. Apparently now it’s Rozanne’s piano. We all learned to play on that piano. She loved to play the piano. She practiced a lot. I grew up hearing the piano at home. She was called as the primary pianist, the Relief Society pianist, and whatever else, choir. She got called as the organist. In my mind, the organ is just the same as the piano because it has white keys and black keys and looks the same. She thought it was a little bit different. She never considered herself an organist. She said, “Well, I can do the piano, but this is a different instrument all together.” So she practiced. She would go on walks in the morning and sometimes she would take her music and walk down to the Church and practice the organ. She got pretty good at it. She did it for a while. She was organist at the temple once a month.

On her mission, in the MTC they bought a little keyboard. They didn’t have pianos in Africa because of the termites. She had a keyboard that she took. While over there, she played for the choirs, Relief Society, Primary, and sacrament meeting.

She taught some lessons. She taught some piano lessons. I see at least one student of hers here in attendance. There are probably more than that. She took that pretty seriously. She was pleased when she saw her students grow and progress and become better at the piano.

She taught piano lessons while she was in Africa. She taught some of the Sisters there and a couple of the Elders. Dad ended up giving the keyboard to one of the Elders. He had to practice a lot. He had a long way to go to catch up so he could teach people to play the piano.

She loved to listen to music. She liked all sorts of music. She really preferred piano music. She liked classical music. I can remember on one occasion where she was rocking out to some particularly happening elevator music. I took that opportunity to criticize the music. She would say, “Why is it that the music you listen to is good and the music I listen to is bad?” I said, “I don’t know. Why do you listen to such bad music?”

She was very quick witted and she could come up with smart responses but she had the disadvantage in that she didn’t ever say anything mean to anyone. So it made it a little more difficult for her than it is for me.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Up To The Challenge--PART 2

Sarah has competition...

According to the agent of the very talented Lauren Huff, "Here's Lauren doing Sarah Jane's trick! When she first tried she didn't get the shoulders up, but if at first you don't succeed, try, try again!"

Anyone else willing to take the challenge?

Elder Ryan Steele, soon to be missionary extraordinaire in Cuernavaca, Mexico has perfected the move in his vigorous missionary training. Unfortunately due to the strain on his neck he will have limited mobility during his stay in the MTC. According to his mother, "His neck muscles are really sore. I couldn't do it. My neck isn't strong enough."

***Please note that this blog writer does not accept responsibility for any injuries occuring while attempting to duplicate Sarah's maneuvers. Try at your own risk!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

I of course do not read the sports section, however Richard does and when there's something he thinks I might find interesting or aggravating in this case, then he shares it with me. Last Friday, on May 2 in The Daily Briefing there was a little blurb he thought I would find, I don't know what. Let's just say I found it frustrating. The second quote is from ESPN.

No way, Jose

Jose Canseco's long and winding road has skidded around another hairpin turn. He cried poor to "Inside Edition" this week after losing his $2.5 million home to foreclosure, saying those big contracts are not what they seem. Said Canseco: " . . . OK, let's say it's $35 million. People have to understand that $35 million, you're paying the government 41%. That leaves you with about $17 or $18 million, not even. Then you're taking care of your whole family."

Makes you wonder how the Cansecos ever managed to scrape by.

On Halloween 2004, Sprewell, who was in the final season of a $62-million, five-year deal he signed with the Knicks, said he was insulted by Minnesota' s offer of a contract extension that was reportedly worth between $27 million and $30 million for three seasons. "I've got my family to feed," he said.

My family could eat well on this kind of money. I almost don't know what to say to comments like this, they make my stomach turn and I have to make myself laugh it off or I get very angry.

In the first place I find it absurd that anyone gets paid that amount of money, especially an athlete. I know there are many people who will disagree with me. They think athletes entertain us and put themselves in danger of injury but I still don't think it's worth this kind of money. People say that athletes train hard and when they are on the field, or court, or course they are giving it their all. Well, so is the guy picking the vegetables that end up on my table. So is the trashman who makes it so that I don't live amongst filth like you find in 3rd world countries. Truthfully, I don't know if there is anything that is worth this amount of money.

It's comments like these when I think to myself, "I can't wait until we live the Law of Consecration and everyone gets what they need." I think our world would be a much better place if everyone was taken care of to the extent that they atleast had food and shelter.

Being able to provide your family with the basic necessities in life should be a given. Noone should have to worry about those needs being met and here we have people who get paid crazy amounts of money complaining that they can't feed their family on millions! Maybe it's not the amount of money that's crazy after all, but the people themselves!!!!

Super Sunday

When I was growing up one of my favorite things to do was go on Sunday drives with my family. One particular trip I remember was when we went to Middleton, Idaho (I think). I remember playing in a park and walking along train tracks for quite awhile just exploring with the Bigelow posse.

I think from these drives I found a sense of peace and some of my love of the outdoors was fostered through these days spent in the Nova or the Explorer. When I grew up and got a car of my own, when I needed a reprieve from things I would drive. It didn't matter where I went, it just soothed me.

Well, on Sunday we took our first, Atchley Sunday drive. We went to Jack Johnson's baby blessing in Santa Clarita. He's the son of our friends Christian (Slug) and Heather. We decided that while we were out we would head to Lancaster in hopes of exploring the California Poppy Reserve. We retrieved directions from our friend's house via Google maps and headed out through a canyon we had never explored. It was beautiful and the drive was much more scenic than if we had taken the 5 to the 14 freeway. Richard's blackberry has a navigation feature so we were able to see if we were heading in the right direction. We drove through some beautiful little towns, and by a lake that neither of us knew existed. Partway there Richard realized that the flashing blue dot, representing us was no longer on the charted course. We had missed our turn. We flipped a U and headed back. It was a sharp turnoff onto a dirtroad. Huh? We took it anyway in the spirit of exploration and Sunday drives, as exploration is what they are all about. We did find the poppy reserve and discovered that had we stayed on the other road we would have made it there as well and the car wouldn't need a wash so badly, but it was fun off roading in the Corolla.

Sadly we were a few weeks late to the poppy fields. When we asked the ranger when the best blooms were she said we missed them by a couple of weeks. We were contemplating not going into the park and saving ourselves $5. To this the ranger stated, "The poppy blooms are mostly gone, but the giftshop's open!" Huh #2. Did she really think we had traveled to go to the giftshop? We shelled out the $5, much to Richard's chagrin I am sure and went on a little hike, despite the lack of poppies.

It was windy, super windy. We put Sarah in her carseat on the stroller and took off. Thank goodness for the Bob. It was the first time we had taken it offroad; which is why we purchased it in the first place. Sarah did great; didn't bounce around too much, and she seemed to enjoy the outing. At one point Richard stopped pushing and let the wind do the work...uphill even! When we got to the top we moved Sarah's sunshade (windshade in this case) and she loved the breeze. She looked like she was in a commercial where her hair is being blown by a fan. It was too cute.

After the poppy adventure we decided while we were out we would stop by Elizabeth's house and hang out with the family. We had a terrific time there eating grilled cheese, shakes, cookies, and playing Scattergories. (And I wonder why I can't lose the baby weight?!) We finally left their house at 9:15 and by this time Sarah was sick and tired of her carseat. We had been gone since 10 a.m. She screamed loudly for about 15 minutes but then she calmed down and went to sleep. Still even today she's a little apprehensive of her carseat so I am trying to keep its use to a minumum so that come Monday she'll be okay with the cartrip to Utah...that I'm sure will be a story in and of itself, so be sure to check back later.

Sunday drives are terrific and this was just the first of many the Atchleys will take.

SARAH'S CHALLENGE

Sarah dares you to take the challenge...

• get on the floor
• lay flat on your back
• put your arms straight out not touching the ground
• lift up your hips and tushy
• roll back on your head, not resting on your shoulders, like she does...

"She double dog dared me and I tried with all my might. It's hard, real hard! She watched me like a hawk, critiqued my every move, and laughed when I couldn't do it. I didn't even come close. Now Sarah thinks she's all that and in charge around here, simply because she's stronger than her mommy." --Sarah's weak mommy

Huntington Library

Yesterday Sarah Jane and I joined a group of moms and a dad along with their kiddos at Huntington Library. Being in a ward where Sarah was baby #17 last year, really has it's pluses--about 17 of them!
Huntington library is an ENORMOUS park (for lack of a better word) located in San Marino, near Pasadena; here is how they describe it.

"The Huntington is a research and educational center set amidst 120 acres of breathtaking gardens. Three art galleries and a library showcase magnificent collections of paintings, sculptures, rare books, manuscripts, and decorative arts. The botanical collection features over 14,000 different species of plants.

A private, nonprofit institution, The Huntington was founded in 1919 by railroad and real estate developer Henry Edwards Huntington and opened to the public in 1928.

Highlights of the collection include the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (c.1410), a Gutenberg Bible (c.1455), Thomas Gainsborough's masterpiece The Blue Boy (c. 1770), Sir Thomas Lawrence's Pinkie (1794), Edward Hopper's The Long Leg, Rogier van der Weyden's Madonna and Child (15th century), the spectacular 12-acre desert garden, the serenely beautiful Japanese garden, the camellia gardens, and much more. English tea in the Rose Garden Tea Room is a popular highlight to a day spent enjoying the cultural treasures of The Huntington."

We made it to one tiny little section of the park and saw... The children's garden, the Japanese Garden, the Chinese Garden, and the Rose Garden. Each of them was so unique and different.  All so beautiful.  

This is Morley and Lisa Boyd, they are some friends from the ward. He is 4 months older than Sarah to the day. He borrowed an extra sun hat I had in my backpack. He is adorable, with the biggest blue eyes and olive skin like his mommy. Sarah can date him in 20+++years. I'd be all right with that! :)

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All of it was beautiful. I only regretted it once I got home and my allergies flared up like crazy. I was a snotty, sneezy mess all night long. It was however worth it!!