Dorothy

May 8, 2010
Dear Family,
Happy Birthday this past week to Steve and Emily. It was nice to visit with Steve and Jennifer yesterday at Mom’s while they were down during their “short vacation.” It was also good to finally meet my new nephew, Garrett, and visit with the family at the little Lindgren family reunion held at Mom’s when the Yorgasons were here in Salt Lake the end of April. The day we were celebrating with them, my oldest granddaughter, Katherine, was celebrating her 6th birthday in Hyde Park at her first big birthday party with her friends.

The end of March when Ariane had a day off school, she had her own “friend party” that she planned and prepared to celebrate her birthday. We were lucky to squeeze in a little family celebration of her birthday the day of, so she planned this 2nd celebration at a more convenient time two weeks later. She had her friends dress up for an old fashioned “tea party” that included cucumber sandwiches, tea cakes, and spearmint herbal tea.

Also during the month of March, Alan started his duties as a temple worker at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple, we attended our community caucus meeting, went to a play at Desert Star theater with friends that we knew from Altamont, and started the passport process for Marcus. We attended various church functions like Lynnette’s and our ward Relief Society commemorations, a stake High Council social, and the General YW broadcast. During April we continued mission preparations for Marcus including his institute missionary preparation class, shopping for suits and other items, a visit to the dentist and eye doctor, immunizations, etc. The highlight of the month’s preparations was Marcus’ endowment day at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. The family celebrated the occasion with dinner at Kneaders Restaurant afterwards. Since then we have been attending a different temple every week just like we did with Penny. We want to see how many different temples he can visit before he leaves July 8th. The night before General Conference, Alan and I went to Alan’s mission reunion. It has been several years since we went to one of these reunions, but because his mission president (who lives in Milwaukee) was going to be there, it was very well attended. His mission president must be in his 90’s since it was over 40 years ago that Alan began his mission in Germany. Even though none of his companions were there, it was still a very enjoyable evening.

Other things that went on during April were: Ariane took her ACT test; Alan & I served half a day at the Church Dairy on Welfare Square; I held a piano recital for my students at the recital hall at Riverton Music; we went to Daniel’s final choir concert of the year at UVU and celebrated Marcus’ 20th birthday the same night; Alan went as a delegate to the Republican Convention; we looked at Heather’s new house in Pleasant Grove that she closed on the first week of May; John Anderson cut down two large trees for us in our backyard (a spruce and a maple); Alan’s Aunt Reva passed away (she was the last living sibling of Alan’s father); and Heather and I spent the two days at BYU Womens Conference together. It was a great month.

Lately I have been spending a lot of time with either planning our family vacation to the Grand Canyon & Snowflake, or organizing our ward cookbook. Four years ago our ward Relief Society made a professional recipe book of which I was the chairman. Once again, I am chairman over this second edition. Even though it is done online now, it still takes a lot of time to type in each recipe and get them all organized. But the end product and great price is rewarding. (If any one is interested in purchasing one of our books, it will be sold at cost and delivered by the end of the summer… just let me know).

Penny was transferred to Tuscany in Calgary and is now the “trainer” companion to her “greenie” companion who is from San Diego, California. Her companion is musically talented and so they sing a hymn at each of their teaching appointments.

We are looking forward to our phone visit her tomorrow, on Mother’s Day. So what have you all been up to? We’re looking forward to reading your news. Love, Dorothy