Temple Trips

One of Dave's and my Church callings is to help a single mother in our ward, Susan, and her two children, Catherine and Michael, get to Church.  We come to their house half an hour before Church starts to help the children get ready, and then we sit with them, armed with iPhones and coloring books, during Sacrament Meeting.  On Sunday, March 20, 2016, we tended Catherine and Michael while Susan attended the broadcast of the Provo City Center dedication. We took the children to visit Temple Square and then home to our house eat peanut butter and jam sandwiches and roast marshmallows over our fire pit.  I love this photograph.  It symbolizes, for me, that Jesus loves and protects even the most vulnerable of Heavenly Father's children.

 On Saturday, March 19, Paul and Julie Emmer joined us to attend an endowment session at the Manti Temple.  We found peace in this lovely pioneer temple, with its rose-colored walls, murals by Minerva Teichert, and tasty pork chops and pie in the temple cafeteria.

 I attended the 9 a.m. session of the Provo City Center Temple dedication, before Dave and I picked up Catherine and Michael on Sunday morning.  I was touched by the story the temple president told about his deaf father, who faithfully attended temple ceremonies even though he couldn't hear them. When he finally received a transcript of the temple ceremony, tears rolled down his cheeks as he read the promises made to him.

Catherine and Michael are best friends...sometimes.  Michael wanted to see the garden on top of the Conference Center, so we took him there.  Catherine showed us the eight pink items she wore and carried, from a pink sequined cap to raspberry-scented pink hand sanitizer.  "I like pink," she explained.

 Our guide at the Temple Square Visitors Center comes from the vineyard country surrounding Zurich, Switzerland, which was home to my great-grandmother, Mary Bomelli Eyring.  When I spelled "Bomelli," the guide said, "Yes, that's a typical name from my part of Switzerland.  Lots of words have 'i' at the end."  She said that Bomelli should be pronounced "Boomli," with the accent on the first syllable, rather than "Bawmelli," with the accent on the second syllable, as I had assumed.

Aunt Jen

 I attended Aunt Jen's funeral on March 12, 2016.  She was my mother's last remaining sibling, out of 17 children born to Edward Eyring by his two wives, Caroline (my grandmother) and Emma.  The 15 children who grew to adulthood are pictured above, in order of their birth, left to right, with Aunt Camilla Kimball (Caroline's oldest) at the far left and Uncle Roy Eyring (Emma's baby) at the far right. Mother is fourth from the right, in the blue dress, and Aunt Jen is next to her, in the red and blue print.  Mother was the baby of Grandmother's family, but she had three younger siblings, on Aunt Emma's side.  I believe this photo was taken at our house in Holladay in 1970, the summer Dave and I were married.   I remember being there, helping Mom, but not realizing what a historic family occasion it was.

 Aunt Jen lived to be 98, the mother of nine children and a gracious, stylish, lovely lady.  She wanted to be a fashion designer when she was young, until Grandpa told her, "Our family are teachers." She changed her plans and graduated in home economics, as a teacher.  Jen was more obedient than her sister, Rose.  When Grandpa told Mom, at the outbreak of WWII, that he'd rather see her in a coffin than in a Navy uniform, she joined the Navy, anyway. 

 As a little girl, Mom played in the wash (dried creek bed) behind her home with her sisters and friends.  She remembered climbing out of the wash to see what was happening when the Church bells began to ring.  WWI had ended.  I think that's Mom on the top right.

 Mom skipped three grades and graduated from BYU as one of the top students in her class. 

 Mom's parents, Caroline and Ed, grew old in Pima, Arizona.  Grandpa was rich and dashing as a rancher in Mexico, but he lost his land and his verve in the Mexican Civil War of 1912, when the Mormon colonists were forced out of Mexico. 

"Our little Henry boy" visited Gotha, the German town where the Eyrings emigrated from, as a missionary in 1930.  He went on to develop the rate theory, which predicts the speed of chemical reactions, as a professor at Princeton.  My father met Uncle Henry there during WWII, when Dad taught naval ordinance (how to fire the big guns on ships) at a naval officers training school.  Aunt Camilla ate dinner at Uncle Henry's house in Princeton while Uncle Spencer was touring the missions.  Dad was also a dinner guest and Aunt Camilla asked the pivotal question, "Mr. Calder, where's your wife?"  When Dad responded that he didn't have one, Aunt Camilla said, "Then here's a husband for Rose."  The rest is history.

St. Patty's Day

Saturday, March 12, 2016 was a day of celebration and remembrance.  While I attended the funeral of my Aunt Jen, my mother's last surviving sibling (next posting), Dave took Sophia, Ezra, and Mia to the St. Patrick's Day parade in downtown Salt Lake City.  It was a spectacle.  Dave and the kids left after an hour, and the parade wasn't yet half over.  I take great pride in my Scot-Irish heritage, and I was sorry to miss the fun.

 

Green was everywhere, as were kilts, bagpipes, and drums.  Basset hounds were rarer (and, admittedly, less Irish).

 Celtic dancers and Great Danes were other highlights of the parade.

 Dave then took the kids to This is the Place Heritage Park, where they visited the petting zoo, took the train, and wandered among pioneer buildings.

 We finished the morning at Clark Planetarium.  There was a new IMAX movie about the national parks, and Dave and I were as anxious to see it (or more) than the kids were.

 On Sunday, I cooked corned beef and cabbage and soda bread for Dave, Mike, and Heidi, as we celebrated the food of Ireland.  Alas, I didn't have my assistant photographers with me, Annelise Ebert and Michael Flindt, and I forgot to ask the master photographer, Michael Spendlove, to take a few shots while I cooked.  When it was all over, I was shocked to find I had no photos for my blog!  I took a picture of the flower arrangements (in the Belleek vases decorated with shamrocks that I bought at the factory in Northern Ireland, near where my ancestors lived).  I took a picture of the leftovers (including the remains of the corned beef and cabbage, the horseradish sauce, the fruit plate, and the chocolate mousse cake).  And I copied a picture of our guests, Mike and Heidi, from another celebration.  Sorry, folks.  It was the best I could do. 

Oh, and thanks to everyone who called or wrote on March 17, the actual St. Patty's Day, to wish me happy birthday.  Jonny's first words, when he called, were, "Am I number 13?"  It is a family joke.  When I called my mother one year to wish her happy birthday, she answered, with a hint of criticism, "You're number 13 to call."  I appreciated every scrap of remembrance, from number 1 to number gazillion...

Miami V: Flamingos and Cuban Ice Cream

"We should have rented a boat and sailed around Miami," Jonny lamented, after we finished our two weekends with Jenny and him.  That's one treat saved for next time, but there were many, many more we tasted this time. After Church on Sunday, March 6, 2016, Jonny took Dave and me on a tour of the luxurious Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables.  We also filled waffle cones at the best ice cream shop in Little Havana.  Before flying out of Ft. Lauderdale on Monday afternoon, we spent several hours at Flamingo Gardens with Jenny, Sam, and Henry.  

The Biltmore was built in the 1920s in Spanish Colonial style, just before the big shift in Florida to Art Deco.  During WWII, it was a Navy hospital, with its swimming pool cemented over to hold more beds and wheelchairs.  The city of Coral Gables bought the rundown Biltmore in the 1950s and restored it to luxury.

There are Grecian statues by the pool, Renaissance ceilings over the ballrooms, and Corinthian columns lining the portico and the lobby.

 Our guide was nearly as stylish as the building.  I want to look like her.

 Next stop was Domino Square in Little Havana, where dominos games continue all day.

 Across the street is the best Cuban ice cream store in the city.  Its specialty is Abuela Maria, with guava paste, Cuban cookie crumbs, and cream cheese.

We drove to Miami's port district, where we could see the city's skyscrapers in one direction and cruise ships leaving the harbor in the other.  Jonny and Dave relaxed on the porch while I made a quick run-through of the Perez Museum, with Miami's best collection of modern art.  A display by a Dominican Republic feminist artist, superimposing drawings of sensual Latinas on symbols of male power (gavels, newspapers, stock market print-outs) brought out the feminist in me, as well.

 The Perez Museum is an architectural gem, with unique hanging gardens.

 Dave always has a few calls to the kids to fit in.

Miami's Design District, down the road, had a different feel from anywhere else we visited.  It is an ultra high end art, entertainment, and shopping area, with huge street sculptures and stores like Bulgari, Louis Vuitton, and Lladro.

We paused to watch a young woman pose among the bright orange pillars, as her friend took photos on a cell phone.

 Jonny and Dave relaxed on ultra-stylish wire swings.

On Monday morning, we hugged Jonny goodbye as he left for work.  We then followed Jenny to Flamingo Gardens, which is near the Ft. Lauderdale Airport where we flew out on Monday afternoon.  We felt deja vu at the lovely Flamingo Gardens, since we had enjoyed them with Lisa and her children when she lived in Ft. Lauderdale in 2003 and 2004.

I thought about Jonny's comment that Sam's favorite things about zoos are not the animals, as I watched him enjoy a popsicle and pose inside a fake gorilla.

Flamingo Gardens is lower key than Zoo Miami, with fewer animals and a relaxed, old time Florida feel.  Peacocks and ibises roam freely through the gardens, and rangers take guests on a tram tour through forests and farmland filled with tropical plants--bananas, "tourist tree" (with flaking red bark), oranges and limes.

 There are ponds with flamingos, with the water piped in from the Everglades to avoid the chemicals in city water.

 There are turtles and tortoises and a walk-in aviary with pelicans relaxing by the pond.

 There are also huge banyan trees.  Sam crawled into, onto, and over the roots.

 We ate lunch and a popsicle before saying goodbye.  Jonny and Jenny will be back in SLC for two weeks in May, so we will not have to pine away for them for too long.