Horse Ride, Birthday, Enrichment and Visitors

Two weeks have passed since I wrote, so I need to do a little catch up on what has been happening in our household and in my life.

In my work capacities, it has been a very busy time. This time of year is when the Career Center staff must qualify students who anticipate taking Concurrent Enrollment classes next year. Students who want to take Math 1010, and/or 1050 and/or 1060 and those who want to take English 1010 from Salt Lake Community College must take a College Placement Test (CPT). In order to take the CPT they must be a registered student at Salt Lake Community College. So my colleagues and I have been calling students to the Career Center and giving them instructions on how to register on line and we (actually only I have been doing this part) have been creating a spread sheet with all the pertinent information on it so that we can call students who have Math or English this trimester out of class, and which class, and create assignments for those who will come and test one of three days after school. It has been a long and labored process, and now that I have distributed the assignments to the teachers who will excuse their students out of class to come and test, more students have come in with their completed registrations and so my lists are now inaccurate, hmmm. Testing is what I will be doing Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this coming week: Testing students each period during the day, and after school – an untimed test that may keep me at school until 5:00 p.m. And then I will have to organize the lists so that we will know how many sections of each of the classes we will need to build for next year. Enough of that.

Fortunately my life is made up of other things besides CPT Testing, thank goodness. On March 28, and now that seems like a long time ago, I went with Paul on a day ride with the Back Country Horsemen. We met at mile marker 10 out in the West Desert beyond Cedar Fort, and rode for about 2½ hours to an abandoned cabin in the foothills above the desert floor. We could see part of the Tooele Army Depot or (something like that) from the foothills. In comparison with the ride Paul went on last month, it was much better, there were no “terribly inexperienced” and no “misbehaving” horses and so there were no unplanned rodeos. I am probably the most inexperienced rider among the group, but Indy is the perfect horse for me, he is smart and experienced and accommodating to an “inexperienced” rider like me. When we got to the cabin everyone dismounts and has lunch and visits and then we ride back to the trailers. We got back at about three o’clock and then had to drive back to SLC and drop off the horses and then return home. It is really a full day. We left at about 7:30 in the morning.

Sunday March 29th was Paul’s birthday. Since no children are living at 8786 Oak Valley with us at the moment, there was no one but me to wish Paul a Happy Birthday!, but we had a nice breakfast and went to church. Paul got calls from his siblings and mother and we had a festive occasion at Grannie and Granddad’s on Sunday evening. Mom had organized the regular “birthday” dinner for those celebrating March birthdays, and in addition to the Salt Lake, Utah County contingent, Ben Dailey (recent from his mission) was coming from Rexburg to join the group and reconnect with “Gates” relatives. Because he was coming, Erika joined him. Peter came from Provo, (Philip and Camille were to join us as well, but Philip fell ill on Sunday and they didn’t make it.)So Paul had a nice group of family members to wish him a Happy Birthday. I made birthday cakes to take to the dinner, and Mom served an Italian Dinner with Lasagna, green salad and garlic bread. It was such a large group this time—Grannie and Granddad, Stephen and Steve, Paul and I, Peter and Erika, Emily, Laura, Jon, Gabrielle, and Ben, Merrick, Philip and Landen, and Ted Bushman—that we were divided between two tables. Those born before 1980 were in the kitchen at the kitchen table and those born after 1980 were in the dining room. The “older adults” had a nice visit in the kitchen, while the “young adults” seemed to be enjoying themselves in the dining room. After dinner we all came in the living room where we sang “Happy Birthday”, played by Granddad in F# major complete with glissandos, twice to commemorate both Paul’s and Steve’s birthdays, followed by some gift opening. After some visiting some of the family members departed and Erika, Ben and Peter were left. After some more visiting they left. Erika and Ben had driven nearly four hours to be at dinner for about 2¼ hours and then left to drive home nearly another four hours. It was lovely to have them as part of the events. We gave Erika instructions to call us when she arrived in Rexburg, which she did sometime around 1:00 a.m.

On Tuesday, March 31, I was one of the participants in our Enrichment Evening and annual Relief Society Birthday Party. The Enrichment Leader had organized a “Relief Society Around the World” event. Sisters who had experience with the Relief Society Organization in countries other than the United States were invited to give a five minute presentation about one or more of their experiences. They were also asked to provide a centerpiece on a table for the evening. This meeting was to include dinner and so the organizers had set up eight round tables, each one assigned to one of the participants. Some of the sisters were like me and had lived abroad as adults, others had served missions in foreign countries, and others had ties of one kind or another. The countries represented were: Germany, Belgium/France (that was me), Holland, Saudi Arabia, Peru, Chile, The Philippians, and Micronesia. I told two anecdotes about my experiences in Belgium. The first was about my first homemaking meeting in Belgium, where I learned about spoons. In Europe generally, there are two sizes of spoons, huge and tiny. There are “coffee” spoons, short handled and tiny bowled, designed to stir hot drinks, but not to eat with and “tablespoons” usually bigger than our American soupspoons. I told about how the first meeting, where they were serving macaroni and cheese, I sat my two boys, ages six and three at a table where they were expected to eat with what I thought of as serving spoons. It was a cultural difference, to be sure, and the sisters produced some coffee spoons for the children, but I sat in amazement as I watched refined European sisters eating with huge spoons. Since then I have purchased my own set of silverware from Europe and we have coffee spoons and tablespoons and when friends of my children eat with us, they always comment on what big spoons we have. The other story I told was about the celebration our Liege Ward held in commemoration of the 150 years of Relief Society in 1992. The sister who was president of our Relief Society at the time wanted a deluxe cake decorated in blue and gold for the occasion. She purchased food coloring from England and asked me to come early to help her decorate the cake. I knew that blue food coloring was going to make an obnoxious color dark or light, but she insisted on dark and the bilious blue that was produced was hardly appetizing, but decorating I did, and at the end of the luncheon there were piles of blue frosting on each plate. Some things just don’t work in other cultures. Blue frosting was apparently one of them.

This week produced the delight of having Liza in town from Monday night to Friday morning, and so I got to have a little slice of time with her. We met for lunch on Wednesday and then I went over to Grannie and Granddad’s on Thursday night to visit as well. We had lunch at Paradise Bakery and a nice chat that seemed too short, and so off I went on Thursday evening. Paul and I had planned to go to the cabin for the weekend, and after I arrived at Grannie and Granddad’s house, Paul called from our house saying that there was a huge puddle of something on the floor of the garage where the car had been and that he was coming to get me when I was ready to come home and we were going to take the car directly to the dealership. So I visited with Liza and Grannie and Granddad for a while, we talked about the upcoming Family Reunion among other things and about AP English, and then Paul came and off we went.

With the difficulties with the car and the unsettled weather, we decided to stay home for Conference weekend, and we have watched the sessions in the comfort of our home. Paul went down to Provo on Saturday night, picked up Philip in Eagle Mountain and then met up with Peter at the Marriott Center. He had a nice visit with the boys and I stayed at home and finished up the ironing. We will be going up to the cabin next weekend, probably leaving on Thursday afternoon and coming home on Saturday. We will be bringing Erika home with us. She finishes up school on the 9th and the 10th is her last day of work. She wants to be back home on Saturday evening so that she can see Peter in Humor-U down in Provo. It will be a busy weekend.