Cheers to Shauna and Alan Dale!

 Success!  During his year-long search for a new wife, Dave's brother Alan often said, "I just want to find someone to love."  He found Shauna Hollingwood, and on November 4, 2017, they were married in the cultural hall of Alan's ward.  Shauna has been living in Alan's house for several months, and she has made friends with ward members.  "We're delighted to have Alan and Shauna in our ward," the ladies who helped in the kitchen told us.

 One of Shauna's friends was an event planner, who decorated the hall in fall colors.

 Alan hung out in the kitchen with the cooks, while he waited for Shauna to arrive.

 Dave and I were in charge of the food, although Dave's sister, Janice, and Camille helped by bringing fruit and green salad.  We added croissants stuffed with chicken salad, two types of meatballs, mint chocolate brownies, and lemon bars.  It was a tasty buffet.

 The bishop (right) married Alan and Shauna, and several of Shauna's children (including her daughter, left) attended the wedding.

 Shauna's son gave the bride away.

 Alan and Shauna promised to love each other "till death do you part."

 It was then time to eat.

 Janice and her son, Ben, with his new wife, Brittany, attended the wedding and reception.

 Shauna bought a fancy wedding cake--poppy seed with raspberry filling.

Shauna greeted guests at each table, as Alan talked with Janice, David, and old friends.

San Diego with the Ladies

My friend Tracey Cannon owns a condo in LaJolla, an upscale suburb of San Diego.  Every year she invites a few friends to join her for a "girls weekend."  I spent from Thursday through Monday, October 27-30, 2017, sightseeing, eating, and talking, talking, talking with neighborhood pals (left to right) Pam Cole, Robyn Petty, Bobby Casper, Pam Johnson, Robin Kimball, and Tracey.

 The early birds took a walk to LaJolla Beach on Friday morning.

 Surfers were out with their wet suits, as we strolled along the sand.

"I want to just soak myself in views of the ocean," I said.  Utah has stunning mountains, deserts, and Alpine lakes, but nothing can substitute for the ocean.

On our walk back to the condo, we checked out the stores on our way, including this shop filled with English candy bars.  Cadbury fruit and nut, anyone?

We spent several hours shopping at Seaport Village, near the harbor.  One adventure was testing the spa treatments for hands and feet.  "Our hands have never felt this smooth," Pam, Robin, and I agreed, after scrubbing them with a rough, grapefruit-scented paste, washing them, and them spraying them with scented oil.

We finished the day at the pier in LaJolla Cove, watching the sun set and searching in vain for the hordes of seals that used to hang out there.

We finally found three seals, basking on a rock.

 It was then home for dinner, made stylish and delicious by seven good cooks (and the staff at Costco).  After dinner, we watched the first of the weekend's three chick flicks, "Made of Honor," "No Reservations", and "Beauty and the Beast."  We lounged in Tracey's leather, home theater chairs with raised foot rests!

Saturday was a great day for a session at the elegant San Diego Temple.  We took time to explore the two-story Celestial Room, including peaking up through the atrium at the statue of Angel Moroni on the very top spire.

We spent the afternoon at the San Diego Botanical Garden.  A juried cactus and succulent show was in progress, and we voted for our favorites.  Robin Kimball is getting a hip replacement soon, and she hobbled a bit, but she was a great sport.

 This was my vote for most interesting plant in show.

We rode about the grounds in our own shuttle, with a guide who told us about the huge agaves, like this one, and the other plants from around the world.

We finished Saturday with some great shopping in the Cedros Avenue Design District of Solano Beach, with both funky and exclusive shops. We have a favorite consignment store there.  Last year we posed in furry animal masks, and this year in flamboyant hair bows.

On Sunday morning we attended Church in a  combination resident ward and deaf branch.  The songs and talks were signed, as well as sung.  We then broke into groups.  Tracey, Pam Cole, and I had never visited the USS Midway Museum, so we spent several hours there, as the rest of the group toured Old Town.  The USS Midway is an aircraft carrier which was commissioned in 1945, right after WWII, was named for the WWII Pacific battle which turned the tide of the war, and was finally decommissioned in 1992.

We watched a film about the WWII Battle of Midway, traipsed through the enlisted men's and officers' bunk rooms, checked out the control room and pilots' lounges, and then spent most of our time on the top deck, studying the thirty airplanes and helicopters from America's many wars.

A saxophonist played jazz as the sun set over the harbor.  We hurried back to Tracey's condo for supper, a last movie, and cleaning the condo before heading for home Monday morning.  A perfect weekend!

On the Town with Mia and Ezra

I'm trying to catch up on my debts.  I promise my descendants birthday money and gifts, but it takes a while to get it to them.  When Ezra Ebert told Annelise I was taking him shopping for his birthday, Annelise said, "That's too early.  Your birthday isn't until February."  Actually, the shopping was for last February.  Regardless, we had lots of fun together, and finished it off with "concretes" at Nielson's Frozen Custard.  Cherry almond was my favorite.

Mia and Ezra are modern kids.  They both chose smart watches that they could text on to their friends.  Ezra also bought "reality" glasses, which he could attach to his mom's iPhone and see 3D videos, with images floating around himself.

I picked Mia and Ezra up in my "garden car," filled with shovels and huge bags of dirt.  When I told the kids we are landscaping our back yard, Ezra said, "Grandma, it's too small.  There's no room for landscaping there."  Actually, there is room for a bulldozer and a constant crew of landscapers, yanking out those ugly phitzers that Dave loved so well.  The digging revealed just how bad our soil is.  "It looks like roadbed," the landscaper commented.

 We are putting in retaining walls and even a "pergola" to serve appetizers and desserts in.

We are also doubling the size of our lawn, so as to be able to have even larger garden parties than the 50 people who attended Michael K's wedding dinner last summer.  Kristin and Grant Flindt, we're ready for you!

At Home with Michael and Rebekah

We drove to Rexburg, Idaho, on Saturday, October 21, 2017, to check out Michael and Rebekah Flindt's new home, as well as to share a temple session and lunch.

Michael and Rebekah have a living room, den, big kitchen, master suite, and even a garden!  They rented a whole house, with another couple, for the price they previously paid for a tiny apartment.  These kids are very entrepreneurial.  Michael K upgrades the BYU-Idaho website as his part-time job, making it more responsive to blind and other developmentally challenged students.  Rebekah has three jobs--lunch lady at an elementary school and home health aid to an elderly man and a disabled child.  They will spend another two years at BYU-Idaho, getting Michael's degree in computer science and Rebekah's degree in finance.  They have fun as they go--parties with friends and a trip to San Francisco this fall.  Michael and Rebekah are also saving for a trip to Hawaii.

Dave and I had never visited the Rexburg temple, so we did an endowment session with Michael and Rebekah and appreciated the beauty of this holy place.  The temple was filled with students, serving as temple workers instead of the oldsters who run the Salt Lake Temple.  Rebekah's mother is getting a college degree in family history, so Rebekah had her smart phone filled with Jenkins names, as I spread the names of my Scottish ancestors among the rest of us.

We ate lunch at Fresco, a new restaurant in Rexburg.  Michael loves burgers, but the rest of us tried steaks and pasta.  All too soon, it was time to say goodbye.  Michael and Rebekah are coming to SLC for Thanksgiving, and it will be a delight to see them again.

Topaz, Temples, and Theater

We love spending a weekend at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in the fall, seeing the last of the nine plays offered during the season.  October 13-15, 2017 was our Shakespeare getaway to St. George and Cedar City.  There were lots of "finds" on the way south and back, including a new Peruvian restaurant in Cedar City (above).

 We can never get enough of the Utah desert.  I remember being surprised, as I looked at the desert painting in Dave's mother's living room, that the colors the artist chose were blues, greens, and yellows.  As I looked again at the deserts of northern and central Utah during this trip, I agreed that the blue/green/yellow palette reflects the desert well.

We stopped at the new Topaz Museum in Delta, Utah, and were moved by the grace with which Japanese families interned at the Topaz relocation camp near Delta survived their four years there.  The museum curator enthusiastically showed us a movie about Topaz and told us about the former internees who serve on the Board of the museum.

Japanese families were given two weeks, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, to sell their belongings and move off the West Coast, or be forcibly relocated to camps.  Many of their neighbors were hostile.

Japanese families at Topaz quickly formed a community, including churches, jobs, schools, and even a baseball team.  A number of the Topaz young men were sent to fight for the US in Europe, even as their parent languished behind barbed wire.  The internment was designed to prevent sabotage, but there were no instances of sabotage either in the camps or other areas where Japanese voluntarily moved.

There were a number of artists among the internees, including the man who sent out this painting of the camp, including the guard tower, as his 1943 Christmas card.

Other internees gathered shells from the shores of ancient Lake Bonneville and turned them into flowers.

 In remembrance of the Japanese interned at Topaz, one elementary school made a paper crane for each internee.  We were invited to take a few home with us.

On Saturday morning, before leaving for the Shakespeare Festival, David and I did baptisms and initiatory ordinances at the St. George Temple for 20 of the Scottish individuals whose names I discovered.  David was not thrilled with the experience.  "I'll do that once every two years," he told me.

 More to David's taste was the new Italian restaurant in Cedar City, with its linguine frutti di mare.

We saw two plays, "How to Fight Loneliness", about assisted suicide, and "The Tavern", a witty farce.

Before leaving for home, we drove past the new Cedar City temple, which will be dedicated in November.  We signed up for a tour there when we return to Southern Utah next month.