Ty's Patriarchal Blessing

Tyler got his Patriarchal Blessing tonight, as we prepare for him to receive his mission call, hopefully in the next week or two. Our Patriarch here in the Ephraim stake is Brother LeMar Hansen, and he is just an amazing man. 

I love that Ty got his blessing on Easter Sunday, and that all of us (me, Ken, Kurt, and Tracy) were here to participate in this experience with him. Kurt and I were the only ones back in the room with Ty and the Patriarch, but Ken and Tracy were in the front room with Sister Hansen, and it was just a beautiful experience for all of us. I can't remember every amazing thing Brother Hansen said, but here are some of the highlights. 

He told him more than once that Heavenly Father wanted him to know that He loves him. He said those were the most important words he would say throughout the blessing. 

He told Ty that he was placed in a situation in which he would be surrounded by good people to help him. He told him that people would hold his name in high esteem, that he would be confident and do great things to make the world a better place. 

He told him that history would not repeat itself. 

He said Ty would be a great husband and father. 

It was a really powerful blessing. Of course I cried through the whole thing. 

Like I'll cry when his mission call comes, and when he gets married, and blesses his first child, and all of the other times I'm going to weep with sheer love for this boy. 

BUSY-NESS

SUPER DUPER busy around here, which is GGGGRRREEAATTT!!! I used to brag to my kids that "I am the BUSIEST person ALIVE!" but then I heard President Uchtdorf's talk in general conference about not wearing our busy-ness as a badge of honor, so I had to lay off on saying that. lol. 

http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/10/of-regrets-and-resolutions

It is nice to be busy, though. I love it. 

Let's see. where to start? 

 Riken's Blessing was AMAZING! Tyler blessed him in the Moroni 3rd Ward on April 10, 2013, and he did a beautiful job:) I'm so proud of him. 

 We finally got to meet Zack's girlfried McKenna the weekend of the blessing. She's adorable. Super quiet, which is hard to get used to, but we adore her:) 

 Of course there's THIS guy:) LOVE HIM!!!!! 

I had NO idea my Grandma was coming to Riken's blessing, and I was SO excited to see her walk into the chapel. We couldn't do a 5 generation picture, per se, because my Mom passed away in 1987,but my Dad stepped up to stand in her spot for our photo. 

GREAT-GREAT GRANDMA Wilma Rebecca Abrams Freston Swenson Hunsaker 

GREAT-GRANDPA Thomas Jefferies Callister (wife was Rebecca Freston Swenson Callister) 

GRANDMA Tina Rebecca Callister Allred Carlson

MOM Ashli Rebecca Allred Brown

BABY Riken J. Brown  

Super awesome, yeah? 

Last Saturday we had a great Relief Society women's conference here in the Ephraim stake, and I was surprised to see Corinne Jenkins, who had been my visiting teacher for 10 years or so when I lived in Nephi. I went over to say hi to her after the meeting, and she, being 88 years old, had no idea who I was. Kind of broke my heart a little tiny bit. Getting old isn't fun. I'm ALREADY forgetting things and I'm only.... well, you know, only 29 and 15 or so. 

One of Ken's friends passed away this past week, and the funeral was yesterday. His daughter is one of the girls in our Sunday School class, and she gave a beautiful tribute to her Dad at the funeral. Things like this really make me appreciate the ones I love and how fragile life is. Kevin was one of the people who was immediately warm and loving to me when I moved to Ephraim, just because I was Ken's. They love Ken, so they love me. It's a wonderful feeling and part of the reason Ephraim feels like home to me. Kevin will be missed. There wasn't room to hold all of the people who attended his funeral. Chairs were set up clear to the back wall of the cultural hall, then they started lining up chairs in the hallways outside the chapels, the relief society room filled up, and people were standing anywhere in the building where they could hear the speakers from the chapel. It was a beautiful tribute to a great man. 

Then my final thought for this week. Kurt and I have been sending emails back and forth lately. It's easier than texting when we have more than a couple sentences to say,  and a phone call doesn't always come at exactly the right time. Emails can be opened, pondered and answered at the reader's convenience. It works for us. Well, in this one email, I was thinking a lot about how I used to treat people when I was married to Kurt. He is a huge flirt, he knows it, and I don't think it would bother him to know that I said it here. But I didn't know how to handle it, so I ended up just giving people (particularly beautiful young women) the cold shoulder when I knew he was friends with them. We'd be out in public and I'd completely ignore these people. I didn't realize at the time just how poorly I was handling the situation. Recently I've been going through something where someone is doing the same thing to Ashli and I can see how hurtful it is. I hate that I used to act like that, and I'm really embarrassed now that I did it. So if any of you beautiful women from Nephi read this, and I was rude to you because my ex-husband was your friend, I'm sorry!!!! Well, I wanted to tell Kurt I was sorry, too. So I told him in an email, and he responded saying that it was time for us to quit apologizing for the past. He said if he had to apologize for every time he'd hurt me, he'd be very unproductive because he wouldn't have time for anything else. lol. He said he was sorry for all of the hurt he caused me and he hoped we could just move on now and be friends, not just the kids' parents.  I wanted to hear that for a long time. He did hurt me. But I hurt him too. And it truly doesn't even matter anymore. I absolutely ADORE Ken, and he is the perfect man for me. I'm also really grateful that Kurt and I had our kids together, because I think we had the same ideas about parenting, and we did a pretty good job at raising kids. So all of the other stuff needs to finally just be put away. The hurt is gone. I don't like hug him when I see him or anything, but yeah, I think we can be friends. It feels a whole lot better than carrying around all the hatred and bitterness that I had for so long. 

The Men in My New Family

I found this old post in my drafts. I'm not sure what I wanted to say when I put the pictures up, but I'll go ahead and publish it now. 

Ken's Dad, Ralph Lee Carlson, is the same age as my Grandma. He just turned 87 and she'll be 87 in September. We won't have either of them for much longer in the big scheme of things. even if we get another decade, which would be AWESOME!!!! Ken's Dad had a stroke before Christmas, but didn't really know what was going on and didn't tell anyone. Ken's brother Gary noticed that his handwriting was a little shakier than usual on his Christmas card, and that's when it was figured out. Ralph is very independent. He has a car and does his own thing.  Ken's brother Steven does live with him, so that's good. Well, anyway, he was out shoveling snow one day after the holidays, and had another stroke. He fell and had to crawl up to the back porch to get Steven. He ended up in the VA hospital for a couple weeks, where some of his paralysis did resolve and he was able to go home with a walker and the promise of help from Steven. These are photos from the time we spent in the hospital visiting Ralph. 

My baby. I love him:) 

I had met all of the brothers at our wedding, but it was a crazy day and I didn't really get to know any of them. I hadn't seen any of them since, until we met up with Gary and Donald at the hospital, now 16 months after our wedding. They're intimidating. They have very strong opinions and we don't see eye to eye on everything, but I love them, and I feel safe when I'm in a room with the Carlson men. It's amazing to me how much alike they all are, even though they live scattered across the state and don't see each other that often. If  I closed my eyes, I wouldn't really know who was speaking at any one time, they sound so much alike and use the same phrases. 

It had been a really busy  weekend. I hadn't even had time to do my nails. lol. So Ken took care of my pedicure for me. I'm spoiled. I know. :) 

We got a late start Friday because every time Ken wants to leave town, some cable TV problem comes up and he gets stuck at work. Yup, that's the life of being married to the cable guy. So we finally got to Salt Lake to see Ralph for a little while, then headed to Bountiful where we got a room for the night because we were going to the temple the following morning with Dave and Tami. My Uncle Buzz and Aunt Dorothy work in the Bountiful temple on Saturdays, and we go to have the AMAZING experience of having Buzz being a veil worker on our session. This has only happened once before for me, when my Uncle Matt was working at the veil in Salt Lake, and this time was just as awesome as that one. LOVED IT:) 

After the temple, it was back to Salt Lake to visit some more with Ralph, Donald and Gary at the hospital, then back to Bountiful to have lunch with Ken's daughter, Mallory. It was crazy, but super great. I love having a great big family!!!! 

Going Public

I just came across this amazing blog

http://stodandlittlev.blogspot.com/

 

and decided that if she can be brave enough to make her blog public,

I can too.

So we're public again.

I've been working on family history lately, so I was already thinking about

making the blog public. I would LOVE to read things about our ancestors, so hopefully

my grandkids and great grandkids will want access to this someday, too.