Grandkid Speeches and the Eye of an Artist

We loved our week with three of our grandchildren on their own this summer. Grace (11), Claire(9) and Lucy (5) delighted us every day with their acrobatics and their speeches at dinner time, which was a tradition while our kids were home. We gave them one minute to talk about a topic that came off the top of grandfather’s head and they had to come up with a attention getting start, a little information and a fireworks ending in one minute. You would be amazed at the things they came up with in talking about things like doorknobs, salt and trees. Such fun! 

Lucy’s profession is pretty much art. Every spare minute when she wasn’t running and skipping, playing with dress-ups or pretending with princesses she was busy with her magic markers! She would turn out pictures by the ream! For some of her earlier work, check out these pointillism masterpieces from her mom, Shawni’s blog here.

Although large dots still appear, she has gone to her BIG stage. Since she had big magic markers, her creations match. This is seriously amazing stuff from a five year old!

A beautiful crown. Just look at the color combinations!

RAINBOW!

She also knows how to do mono-colors too. How does that come out of her brain?

Below you will find she and I. I am the small one of course!

 

And speaking of artists, Saren’s nine-year-old Eliza is also an incredible creative artist!

Just look at this cut paper creation:

And her sense of design:

And her perspective on these children of the world:

Three simple flowers in a pot….

And whimsical fairies watching over a child in a swing. 

What joy to see what comes out of a child’s mind via speeches out of their mouths or art through their fingers!

A Whirlwind Extended Weekend

On Saturday, August 11th we took off for Charity’s stomping grounds…San Francisco and specifically the Oakland Temple where we got to to speak at a Young Single Adult conference at a huge multi-stake center on the grounds of this beautiful temple.

Sadly, even though Charity was on the planning committee for the conference and arranged for all the food for at least three and maybe four meals for 1500-2000 young adults during the conference, we traded places. She had committed to be at a Manti temple wedding with one of her dear missionary companions whose family were not able to be at the wedding. She stood is as the “mother” at the wedding on Saturday and spend some time with her gaggle of wonderful friend who happen to live in SLC on Sunday. 

In the meantime we were speaking to a group of outstanding young single adults. There were about 2000 there on Sunday. I spoke to about half of them (the women) for Relief Society and Rick spoke to the young men in Priesthood meeting.  It was one of about eight groups that were meeting at difference locations in Northern California that weekend. Altogether there were about 10,000 single adults aged 18-35 gathered together on the same weekend.

Luckily we got got pick Charity up at the airport on Friday night and we saw her for about 10 minutes downtown before she headed for the airport on Sunday night. We sure love this girl! So do a lot of people where she lives in California. Many people came to us to tell us how she had influenced their lives. Plus, what a job she did on that food! What we tasted was terrific!

Just to prove we were there, here are a couple of scenes as we drove in Charity’s car through her favorite city in the world, San Francisco. We drove through the city and over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito. Below is the always-full-of-tourists-Lombard Street and the view of Alcatraz. The bridge was shrouded in fog. 

Charity is truly a wonder woman.  In fact I used one of her blog posts during my talk on Sunday to about a thousand young women from ages 18-35 called “Being Alone, but not Lonely” which you can read here.”  The name of her blog perfectly personifies her life. You can check on her fun life at drippingwithpassion.blogspot.com. Are we blessed to be her parents or what? 

While we were there, we stayed overnight with our wonderful friends and co-grandparents, Ron and Nedra Shumway. They are Jeff’s parents (Saydi’s husband) and are always such stimulating company and inspiring friends besides the fact that we are almost related. Jeff grew up in the same beautiful home where we were kindly and royally treated that Saturday night. 

We arrived home on Sunday night and on Monday morning we headed for Provo and Education Week. We just did four classes on Monday this year, which is a lot easier that doing four classes a day from Tuesday through Friday.

The best part of education week for us nowadays is meeting so many of our kids’ friends and fans. Just after we were raving about Jonah and Aja’s creative lifestyle in one of our classes, a couple came up from Sequim to say that they were the best thing that ever happened to Sequim!  For a look at their unique lifestyle check it out here. In the end we heard something about almost every child. Such fun!

Funny Family Pictures

Family pictures at the reunion this summer were pretty funny. Dad/Rick got the idea to have pictures taken in front of the old Ream Mansion in Dingle, which is probably the most famous old house in Bear Lake Valley. It fell into disrepair after it’s productive years of raising an outstanding large family but has been recently lovingly restored by family members.

Because we had at least five fabulous photographers in our family and two professionals, it was a pretty funny scene. The real photographers had certain things in mind and Dad had some other things in mind. The ensuing clash of strong wills was pretty funny. In the end, Dad/Rick pretty much got his way, including the crazy poses that you will see below. The first is pretty microscopic considering we crammed 42 people into this photo.

(Aja, I did it….inside joke).

Probably only family members can appreciate these next photos! And maybe not some of them either! We got more and more into it as we went along…..

All in all it was a very funny day!

Joy School Gruru, Grandma Ruthie turns 90!

On August 9th our darling Grandma Ruthie had her 90th birthday. The past few years have been so hard for her! She has gradually lost her memory to the point that she doesn’t know who any of us are anymore, but she does know that we love her and she clearly loves being surrounded by people who adore her.

Even though she suffers with dementia, she is still pretty much who she is, still almost always good-natured, patient and kind, and still has her sense of humor, is great at asking questions (usually the same one over and over) and is enjoying her grandchildren and great grandchildren. She can’t see much any more and her ears aren’t good either. Even though her quality of life isn’t good, she carries on! Still, old age is the pits!

Grandma has now been a widow for 50 years. Her husband, our beloved Grandpa Dean died of colon cancer when she was 38 and he was 39. They were just getting started in life.What a tragedy! Her oldest son was Richard who was 15 at the time his dad died. Four younger siblings ranged in age from 13 to 3. 

Grandma raised those five children on her own with faith and strength. Next to that great feat, probably her greatest accomplishment is having written the original lesson plans for the Joy Schools which were based on our book called Teaching Children Joy which we wrote 37 years ago, just before we left the country because of a call from our church for Richard to be a Mission President in England.

Incredible people came out of the woodwork to help us with music and art way back then when we were crafting the Joy School idea. And while we spent three years in England, Grandma Ruthie used her expertise as an Early Childhood Development major at USU to write minute-by-minute lesson plans that included finger plays, creative dance, stories and fun activities to teach 12 Joys in life that every pre-school child could and should experience!

After writing the plans, she taught the lessons for many years at the very first Joy School in Logan. Even though the lesson plans were designed for moms to use in their homes as they rotate teaching with their friends and neighbors to teach their children JOY, she used this school as a laboratory to see if her ideas worked. They did! 

We had no idea how far that idea would go. We have now had about 200,000 parents who have or are presently participating in Joy School since that first experimental school began in 1975.

So for her birthday we took her back to that cute little original Joy School. Many of her great grandchildren sat where so many of her students had sat for so many years where they sang her favorite Joy School songs to her. And somewhere back in her memory came all the words to the songs which she sang along with them!

Not all her family could be there, but all of her children and their spouses and well as three of her grandchildren and their children as well as two unmarried grandchildren all joined the chorus. Wish we’d have gotten the whole song but you’ll get the idea:

 

First part until Grandfather asks the kids to sing louder…..

 

 

And they did get louder. And more joyful? Isn’t grandma the cutest?

Here’s who came:

Granddaughter Aubrey

Son Chris and daughter-in-law Hedy…

Grand daughter-in-law Kimberly and her darling children. Looks as though Grandma was thrilled to see them!

Grand-daughter Tenille and her brand new baby and as well as her two little sons….

 

Granddaughter Saren and her little crew….

The two Eliza’s…second cousins born on the same day with the same name!

All these cute great grandchildren….

And all these onlookers, including not previously pictured: son Kevan (who takes care of Grandma in her own home of 55 years 24/7 and to whom we are forever grateful), grandson Howie, daughter Sheri and her husband Lynn and of course Dad/Rick and I were there too!

These pictures we painted on the walls of the school 36 years ago still looked pretty good!  Although we’ve sold the Joy School, it’s still a working Joy School that has delighted hundreds of children in Logan!

After our capers at the Joy School we all retired to the park for a pizza and salad. Below is Emma Rae who is Grandpa Dean’s only brother’s widow. These two have spent a lot of time together through the years.

Grandma’s sister Margaret also came with her amazing husband Lael who was the Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication at BYU for many years. They were driven by their son and his wife. Her son Rawlin and his wife Karen and son and daughter Elizabeth and Patrick were there to but they came a little late and I neglected to get their pictures. Darn!

During a short program, all of the adults remembered good times and good things about the life of Grandma Ruthie. All happy memories.  Dad/Rick shared a beautiful poem he had written about her life called “Nine Decades of Courage” which was heartfelt and delivered with his usual gusto.

For the kids the highlight was the cake and ice cream at the end.

Joy School has gone farther than we could have imagined in our wildest dreams! After every speech all over creation, moms come up to say that they did Joy School when their kids were little or that they are currently doing Joy School. Below is Joy School graduation from Aja’s group this year in Hawaii. They look pretty joyful! If anyone out there is interested in forming a Joy School of your own go to JoySchools.com.

Thanks to our extraordinary Grandma Ruthie for her contribution to the world!  We know she is sad every day that she wakes up and hasn’t passed on to the next world to the arms of her precious Dean, but we’ll keep her as long as she can stay. What an inspiration she has been to us and so many throughout the world.

Orphans, a Wild Ride to Arizona and a High School Reunion

Wow did we have fun the after we left the lake and returned to Baliwood.  We had the privilege of taking care of Shawni and Dave’s three youngest daughters while they took their 15 and 14 year olds on the trip of a lifetime to India.  For the amazing details go to Shawni’s incredible blog posts at 71toes.blogspot.com

Grace, Claire and Lucy were a pure delight! One of my favorite things (that you will already know if you’ve been following this blog) is having our grandchildren all to ourselves without their parents!

We were having so much fun that I took precious few pictures! Here’s a blurry one of Grace and Claire looking at their older brother and sister on an enormous elephant in India. Grace showed me how to Instagram of which I am now a fan!  It’s so fun to see what they post AND it’s great they know that I will see whatever they post. Such a nice “heads up” into their lives. 

We spent a lot of time outside. It was great to see our backyard used for cartwheels, summersaults, skipping with joy and long talks!  (Thanks to Eli who helped me figure out how to insert videos. Not easy! Thanks Eli!)

cartwheels!

We enjoyed sunshine and rain and coolness (after the hottest summer ever at Bear Lake). And even double rainbows!

We went shopping for food and even some school clothes one day. The kids weeded the graveled path around the property that leads to creek and the horse barn.

Grace and Claire worked on their own music video which they didn’t finish but you get the idea of these cute drama queens!

 

We met the Looslis down at City Creek one of the nights and we had a swimming party with that mob! They seem to have quite a lot of fun together! Here we are getting off the elevator. Forgot to get pictures at the pool. I’m not sure the other patrons of the pool loved this party! (Funny Granfather taking the picture in the mirror.)

But afterward we went to the Food Court where the adults had some mighty fine sandwiches and the kids enjoyed Chick Fil-A, right on the very day of the biggest controversy! A walk through the mall afterward was a real experience. The kids started a flash mob by dancing in H&M and had fun taking pictures with the sales assistants and people who were watching them walk by. I think the twins touched every single rock along the way either with their feet or hands…or both!  These cousins are pretty well bonded!

One evening when I was cooking dinner, I looked up and was excited to see a beautiful moose walking across our road. When the girls went to the barn, they saw him again as well as his brother. We’ve been seeing them since they were babies. Last winter they looked like teenagers. Now they look like young adults! The girls saw them again prowling around a tree house below the barn where two little girls were perched…terrified. They are truly beautiful creatures!

One of the favorite things for this cute little gaggle of girls was going to the barn to see the horses. The last two days Grandfather even rigged up a swing in the barn that they thought was AWESOME! They can’t wait to share it with the other cousins!

Shawni arrived at the airport from India on Saturday morning and were those girls ever glad to see her!  I’m not sure who was happiest though Shawni or Grace, Claire and Lucy.

Shawnii, Dave, Max and Elle flew to LA together. then Max and Elle caught a plane back to AZ, Shawni came to SLC and Dave took off for business in China. Josh picked up Max and Elle at the airport and we were excited to get there and join them.

 

We got in the car and drove straight back to AZ after a stop at Discount Tires where they found a screw in one of the tires that was about half flat when we walked out that morning to Shawni’s car which had been sitting there for two week without being driven! We were so grateful that they fixed the tire without charge. We were as happy as chipmunks with a fresh supply of water until Shawni turned the key for our long trip ahead and the car was totally dead! Luckily we were at a place full of men who knew how to jump a car that was dead and we started on our merry way!

We stopped only for a little lunch, a little dinner and one potty stop. After we arrived safely at home by  11 p.m. to we realized how lucky we were that the car started each time we turned it off along the way because it stopped again….twice the next day. A nice new battery installed amidst school shopping on Monday was just the right thing to fix things up.

Upon arrival and after the Pothiers being gone from their home for 5 weeks and another happy reunion with Max and Elle who were waiting for us, we unpacked the car and dropped in bed by about 1 a.m. Somehow everyone was up and ready for church by 8 a.m. the next morning! Plus Shawni somehow pulled together a lovely dinner when we got home without even going to the grocery store. That woman is amazing!

It was fun to watch everyone try to get ready for the new school year in 48 hours since school started on Wednesday but they all started….ready or not. I got to be there long enough to see Elle’s new look when she got her braces off on Monday (just as she was about to start high school). That girl is knock-dead gorgeous and the best part is that she’s even more beautiful on the inside!

I left on Monday night and arrived home just in time to greet my darling high school friends who were coming for our “almost annual” slumber party. We were so busy talking and catching up that we totally forgot to take pictures. One friend was in the midst of moving another’s father had recently passed away and another was unable to make it because she was at the hospital preparing for knee surgery. She had just found out that her older sister had brain cancer and wasn’t expected to live long. Life is real and gets even more real as we get older!

It was a lovely time to talk and deal with the bad news as well as the good. Good friends are such treasures!