Mother/Daughter Outing

Last Tuesday Cheryl and I spent a fun afternoon together. After grabbing some lunch, we attended the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point. It was a beautiful, sunny, but windy day. Even though not all of the tulips were in bloom, it was still a beautiful sight and lifted our spirits. Who knew that there were so many different colors and types of tulips? It was like being in tulip heaven. Here are a few of my favorite pictures.

Best Retreat Ever!

Every year my sisters and I try to get together for a "sister's retreat". We always have so much fun together, but this one seemed especially fun. We were able to stay at a cabin (owned by Janice's boss) up in the Beaver mountains. This cabin was awesome! You can see it in the background of this photo.


Since there was still lots of snow on the ground, and since Janice recently got interested in cross-country skiing, we decided to give it a shot. The high altitude really gave me some problems, but it was still a lot of fun...and a good cardio workout. [Gayle has knee problems so she was unable to join us, but she was willing to be our photographer.]

One really fun thing we did was wake up Friday morning, eat breakfast, and then bust out our sewing machines to sew some lap quilts. We just stayed in our pajamas, didn't shower, put make-up on, or do our hair. It was a crazy, laid-back, relaxing, morning. Janice cut all of the quilt blocks for us. Thanks, Janice! I think our quilt tops turned out cute. What do you think?

Here is Jane, Janice, and Gayle sewing their quilt tops. This photo gives you a view of the inside of the cabin also.

I don't have a picture of it, but both evenings we spent some time in the hot tub, which I had never done in cold winter weather before. It was awesome to relax, look at the stars, enjoy good conversation, and enjoy the beauties of nature.

Now, we just need to figure out what we can do for our retreat next year that can beat this one. Any suggestions?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

Over 35 years ago I suddenly got an urge to learn how to play the guitar so I went out and purchased a cheap one and then had a guy in my single's ward give me a few lessons so I could learn the basics. This is a picture of the Yamaha guitar that I bought...now looking very old and ugly with a broken string.



I have a lot of complaints about my old guitar (it's basically a piece of junk) and have wanted a new one for quite some time now. So for today's birthday I wanted a new guitar, which Alan approved of, thank goodness. I picked it out last week and I'm really happy with it. Here is my new guitar!

Now I just have to learn how to play it well and get my fingers toughened up a bit, which I plan to do soon. Thanks, Alan, for the wonderful birthday gift! I love it and I love you too!

In Celebration of Easter

On Fridays Alan and I often like to get away from the Antelope Valley and experience other things that California has to offer us. This weekend Alan suggested that we go to Forest Lawn in Glendale. For those of you who don't know, Forest Lawn is a mortuary/cemetery. Who goes to a cemetery for fun?, I thought, but didn't express this out loud. Not having a better suggestion myself, I went along with his idea and I'm glad that I did. Forest Lawn is actually a lot more than just a cemetery. It is a place where you can go to find solace and reflect on the life of the Savior...which was the perfect setting for Easter weekend. There are statues as well as museums that you can see but cameras are not allowed in a lot of the areas so my photos are limited.

This is a picture of the Christus which is beautifully surrounded by huge trees and he stands on top of a fountain representing living waters springing up unto eternal life, a reminder to me of the whole purpose of Christ's mission on the earth





In this statue, Christ is surrounded by little children reminding us of his petition "suffer the little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven."

Forest Lawn is huge! I would like to know how many acres it has. This is just a small portion of its size, and yes, it goes beyond the hill way in the background. This pictures covers maybe an 8th of its actual size, but I'm just guessing.

There is a building you can go into where there is a humongous painting of the crucifixion. I couldn't even believe how big that painting was. I would say it was probably as high as a two-story building and probably 5 times as wide. It was awesome! There was another building that had a presentation about Leonardo DaVinci's painting of The Last Supper in stained glass. Five times, when trying to complete the piece, Judas Iscariot's character broke. Was God trying to say that Judas didn't deserve to be in the piece? On the 6th try, he didn't break. Maybe he was forgiven.

After we finished up at Forest Lawn Mortuary we ate lunch and then went to Griffith Observatory in Hollywood. Both of us had been there before but it had been a while. We learned a lot about the universe we live in. It was very crowded, but we had a lot of fun.

This is a close-up of the main dome.

Alan, with the Observatory in the background.

If you look closely, you can see the Hollywood sign on the mountain in the background...much better looking than what's in the foreground. (Click on the picture for a close-up view)

I'm so grateful that we could celebrate Easter this way, even though we celebrated it a couple of days early. I'm also grateful that this Easter weekend we can listen to General Conference and be reminded of who we are, what we are supposed to be doing, and reminisce on the life of Christ and the major role he has in our life. I know Christ lives, that he loves us, and wants us to be be happy. He will lead us to that happiness in this life and in the next.

April Fools Joke

After reading Nicole's blog post about their funny April fools jokes at breakfast this morning, I remembered an April Fools story that also took place at breakfast several years ago when I was a kid. My little brother Phil, a few of my sisters and I were in our small kitchen on April Fools morning. I'm sure some April Fools jokes had already taken place so that was on our minds. I looked over at Phil and saw that he had gotten too close to the stove and his pajamas had caught on fire. I said, "Phil, your pajamas are on fire." and he just laughed and said "no they're not, it's just an April Fool's joke". I said, "no, really, your pajamas are on fire. We grabbed Phil and ran his pajamas under the tap to put out the fire. Pretty funny, but I'm glad that he was unharmed.

Disclaimer: I remember it as me who told Phil he was on fire, but I guess it could have been one of my sisters, but it doesn't really matter who said it...the result was the same.