Provident Living

In the church, we are often taught that we should live providently, be industrious, have self reliance, and practice thrift and frugality...meaning, that we should have a budget and live within our means. 

There is an old saying that says "eat it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." Another saying is: "Waste not, want not." Both of these are good reminders about being satisfied with what we have and not wanting more than what we need.

With that in mind, let me just say that we practiced thrift and frugality just this weekend. We have finally awakened to the fact that we definitely live in a day when others might want what we have. With the many thefts we have experienced at our house, the recent theft in Alan's office, and hearing stories from others, we have become keenly aware that we need to be more cautious about trusting others and we need to set up safeguards to avoid becoming a victim again.

Knowing that several neighbors have recently had mail stolen from their mail boxes, we knew we had to make our mail box more secure. We could have purchased a new one like some of our neighbors have, but Alan wanted to save money by simply altering our current one.

My genius husband came up with an idea to put a lock on the back door. He also placed a barrier inside the front opening so nobody could reach inside to retrieve any mail that had been delivered but not picked up yet.

 A key is now needed to access the box, so I will need to train myself to grab it before leaving the house to pick up the mail.

Too dark to see clearly, but if you look closely you can see at least one of four long screws have been inserted to discourage anyone from reaching inside to retrieve the mail while still allowing the mail to drop into the box.

Hopefully, by doing this we can save ourselves from future headaches. I know we saved about $300 by going this thrifty route. Not exactly as good as a new one, but it will do.

Yosemite Valley Lodge

When we were in Yosemite, we stayed at Yosemite Valley Lodge. It's not a fancy place, but good enough for us. 

One "different" thing about this place was that instead of an electronic key, we were given a real key. I felt like I had gone back in time! All hotels and motels use electronic keys these days.

Although, the lodge was fairly old, it was in a great location. This view of Yosemite Falls was taken from just outside our front door.

Views just don't get better than that!

An Inside Job?

On April 1st, Alan came home from work and showed me this picture of a check from his office and asked me if that looked like his signature:

My response was immediate - definitely not! That doesn't look a thing like Alan's signature.

He then proceeded to tell me about how someone went into his office, turned off the alarm, and then stole a bank deposit bag that was sitting in Kathi's (business manager) desk drawer. There was over $1,000 in the bag and some checks ready to be deposited. He/she also took at least one check (the one pictured above) and some other items. Fortunately, no computers or electronic items were taken.

Evidently, the person in the picture above, took the check to a check cashing establishment and tried to cash it. The person helping him got a little suspicious about it and asked where he got the check from. He replied that he worked for Dr. Stott and that it was a paycheck for the work he had done. Unbeknownst to him, Kathi was on the phone and could hear their conversation. She piped in and said, "oh, and what do you do at Dr. Stott's office?" With that, the perp got spooked and grabbed the I.D. and check and left the building.

A police report was issued, but we haven't heard anything back from them yet. I hope they catch the guy. It could be fake I.D. that was used.

Of course, the first few questions we had is who is this guy, how did he get into the office, and how did he know the alarm code in order to turn it off? We figured it had to be an inside job. Alan trusts his current employees (unlike some he has had to previously let go - one was stealing antibiotics from the office) so he didn't think any of them could have done this. The suspicion then turned to the cleaning lady who comes in after hours to clean the office. She has a key and she knows the alarm code. We don't think it was her, but think it was her son or daughter-in-law who sometimes cleans the office when she can't do it. Alan had to re-key the office so he asked for her key to be turned in. Interestingly, the key she gave him had "Walmart" on it. Alan never copies keys at Walmart, so this couldn't have been the key he had issued to her. Most likely, the son had the key copied at Walmart.

Alan asked the cleaning lady if she knew the person on the I.D. in the picture, but she denied knowing him. She lost her job because of this. The staff decided to do all the cleaning themselves at the end of the day so as to avoid having someone come in after hours.

Alan has made arrangements to have security cameras installed in two more days. It sure would have been nice to have had them in the first place so we could see the footage of who pulled off this crime, or maybe the cameras would have been a detriment to someone trying to steal in the first place.

We live in such a wicked world. So much crime goes on around here. I don't know how the police keep up on all of the reported thefts and other crimes that are committed daily. Personally, we have had a bicycle, a motorcycle, a quad, and two air conditioning units stolen in the past. Time to move out of California!!! I have been wanting to move out for a very long time now. I just need to talk Alan into retiring!

Beware of Pride

I have determined that I have a pride problem. I became acutely aware of it on our hike to Mirror Lake while on our recent trip to Yosemite. This particular hike is considered easy (you walk on a road) and is only about 1.2 miles long each way. I don't do much hiking these days because of my extensive back problems, but I wanted to see Mirror Lake and the only way to see it, unless you have a handicapped placard, is to walk there. 

We saw this beautiful river on the way to the lake.

As we walked, my back kept hurting more and more. I had to stop a few times to sit down in an effort to relieve the pain. I told Alan that if a car passes us I was going to hitch a ride. About 10 minutes later, as a van went past us, I jokingly said to him, "I should have hitched a ride."  Evidently, the mother in the van heard me say that because once we reached the lake I immediately sat down on a rock to ease the pain. Next thing I knew, a Hispanic man came up to me and told me that his wife had heard my comment about hitching a ride. When he saw me trying to recover, he decided to offer us a ride back. He said that they would be there for about 30 minutes and to look for them if we wanted a ride. The offer was neither accepted nor declined, but we did thank him for his kind offer.

About 20 minutes later, we were ready to leave. Alan considered having me wait there while he walked to the car so he could pick me up, but we didn't have a handicapped placard so I would have felt guilty if he had done that. Although I didn't want to, I decided to just walk back. I would be the martyr. I could have accepted the ride, but my pride got the better of me. 

Every step was painful. Again, I had to stop frequently to rest my back.  We saw the van pass us when we were about 2/3 of the way back to our car. I longed to be in that van!

After what seemed like an extremely long walk back, we finally reached the car. I was so happy to get there! I desperately needed to rest my back and get a drink of water as we hadn't taken any with us.

Years ago, a prophet named Ezra Taft Benson gave a talk entitled "Beware of Pride." He called pride a sin. Since hearing that talk and studying it myself, I have tried to be aware of situations in which I am being prideful. Pride has many components to it. Some are sins of omission. It is very difficult to not be prideful. It encompasses so many different aspects of life. Knowing I'm guilty of pride, it looks like I have some repenting to do!

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The day we took that hike, I logged the most steps I can remember taking since I started using the Fitbit. Here's the proof: 15,714 steps! No wonder my back hurt so much!

Yearning for Yosemite

I am convinced that Yosemite National Park is one of the most beautiful places on this planet. We were blessed to be able to spend 4 days there last weekend.

Some of our favorite spots were:

Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls

Lower Falls

Notice the rainbow above my head and to the left. Beautiful!

Bridal Veil Falls

We were able to get pretty close to this waterfall. The spray was a nuisance for picture taking, however!


Mirror Lake/Half Dome

 The view of Mirror Lake in the front and Half Dome in the back was breathtakingly beautiful!

Alan tested the water temperature. He said it was very cold!

El Capitan


 People from all over the world come to Yosemite to climb the face of El Capitan.

We found the spot where climbers access the mountain for the ascent. We were so disappointed to see that the SW Face was closed. We were so ready to climb to the top. Haha!

Truthfully, this was the only way I was going to reach the top!

Merced River 

  This beautiful river was just behind our room at Yosemite Valley Lodge.

We took our camping chairs to the bank of the river and listened to General Conference talks while taking in the view.

This is a panoramic view of the area. You have upper and lower Yosemite Falls on the left and Half Dome just right of center. It was such an amazing view. It was my favorite view in Yosemite.

God created a beautiful world for us to live in and enjoy, which I appreciate immensely. But even with the pine trees, water falls, rivers, granite mountains, etc. that I was surrounded by, my gratitude went to God's greatest creation and greatest gift to me - the wonderful man standing in the picture below. He is my rock and my joy. Life would be completely empty without him in it. I'm so grateful that we could share this adventure called life together for the past 43 years. My cup runneth over!

Mormon Rocks

A couple of weeks ago, Alan and I needed to meet Cheryl and Parker in Victorville. They were on their way to Utah to pick up some furniture from his parents. We met them in Victorville so they could acquire our gold plates and then deliver them to my niece Jeni Bonny for their Stake's upcoming Youth Conference Trek.

We left home early so we could have time to visit Mormon Rocks on the way. It is called Mormon Rocks because the area served as shelter and an overnight campsite for a group of approximately 500 Mormon pioneers who traveled through the region by wagon in 1851 on their journey west to California, where they later founded the city of San Bernardino.

Since the Church is trying to steer away from the use of the word Mormon with regard to the name of the church, I jokingly refer to them as Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Rocks. 

We had driven past this striking group of pink sandstone rocks along Cajon Pass many times before, but never took the opportunity to stop. There really isn't a lot to do there, except hike and climb the rocks if inclined to do so. We did a little hiking, but no rock climbing. It was a beautiful, sunny day. We really enjoyed being out in nature for a while.