Baby sis birthday

It's Angela's big day and Liz and I took her to lunch to celebrate turning 51!  Angela is amazing-- she works hard as an elementary school counselor, takes care of Guy and Preston, and does a couple of plays a year-- currently she's Eulalie McKecknie Shinn in The Music Man at CenterPoint Theatre. 
She's a beauty and a blessing.

Wanee is 84

frontrow: Sandy, Wendi, Wanee, Holly, Jane.  backrow: Clark, Melinda, Wayne, Jill, Mark, Tami, Rob, Steve

 Wanee is such a wonderful woman, and we are blessed and grateful to celebrate her 84th birthday with her.  She is getting to the point where she is sad that her siblings are in heaven and many of her friends, but she carries on bravely.   We gathered at Sandy's home for dinner and games.  I asked Wanee in advance some answers to her favorites and memories etc..-- then we guessed and played boys against girls.  Boys won. 

 Favorite current jazz players:  Mitchell and Gober

Favorite breakfast food:  McDonalds Mcmuffin

Favorite color:  purple

Usual lunch food:  yogurt

Name of grade school:  North Logan elementary

Year graduated from college: 1958

What major in:  Elementary Ed and Child Development

Current BFF’s: Kathy, RoseMarie, Nancy, Lynn

Favorite store:  Smith’s marketplace

Favorite activity: Watching the Jazz play

Favorite brother when she was a child:  Lyle

Who has the longest nose in the Welch family?  Wanee, Terry

Favorite candy:   She doesn’t like candy

Favorite flower:  Roses

Favorite animal:  elephant

Name two of her talents:  Sewing, Piano

Favorite book:  Book of Mormon

Favorite Vacation spot:  Hawaii

What say to describe Mark?   Good Looking, funny,  always happy

What say to describe Wayne?   happy, dignified, Helper

What say to describe Sandy?  Talented, busy,  party thrower

What say to describe Jane?  Service oriented, traveler, organized

What say to describe Terry?  Scattered, spiritual, serious

What say to describe Tami?  Fun, adventurous, Rescuer

What say to describe Dale?  Gentle, Right hand man, grandpa

What say to describe Wendi:  Hard worker, gatherer, sweet

What say to describe Holly:   facebooker, letterwriter, favorite

BONUS:

What time born?  3:42 am

HOw much longer after Wanda?  12 minutes

Beloved animal when she was a child:  Dixie the pinto pony

In other news... This is a picture of Wayne watching Frozen 2 with Lady and Poppy climbing all over him.  He LOVES it!

Valentines

Valentines week was LOVEly.

We had Laila's Valentine concert on Tuesday.  Laila sang with her Xela group some really fun 50's and 60's songs.  She also had an act with David Richter.  They sang a duet of Frank Sinatra's L.O.V.E.  Because David is so tall  ( 6'5")and Laila is so small (5'1") we played off this fact with the choreography.  The audience loved it.  During the interlude in the middle, Laila said, "let's dance" which looked crazy because of their height difference, so she then ran off stage and got a step stool, and then they danced.  It was a hoot.  They brought the house down and had the most applause of all of the songs. It was fun to hear Laila's classmates supporting her.  I was really proud of her.

I had my online school Valentine skate party at Layton skate with 25 people.  My school class is shrinking because I only have K-5 this year, but it's still good to get together with oldfashioned decorated boxes and valentines passed out.

Valentine's brought red roses from my love and a fun couples party that night at the Newman's home.  We had us, Kathleen and Tom Newman, Eric and Laura Belnap and Kimi and Bob Farley in attendance. We all brought food to share and then played the Oldlywed game-- Wayne and I won but just barely.

AND...this is our littlest Valentine, Elsie Adele

Sweethearts dance- opposites

 Laila got asked to Sweethearts dance by 6'7" Max Curry.  They went as athletes and nerds...they could have just gone as tall and short and fit in just fine.   They were in the basketball team group-- an the boys didn't have time to ask a date..or so they said, so only two had dates and the other 4 went stag.  Too funny.  Thy went to Olive Garden, the dance and then played games.  Laila was the only girl at the after party which is actually just like she likes it. 

Sun Valley

Sun Valley with the BSB’s was fun.  (BSB= best skiing buddies. In the summer they are BBB’s- best biking buddies). We drove up after church last Sunday with the Belnaps and hit only a little bit of bad weather. We had two condos that slept 6.

In attendance were us and the Belnaps, the Stayners, the Packers, the Urionas and the Wades.  All of these couple ski-- the Welches don’t. But we did have a good time snowshoeing and cross country skiing, plus playing games, eating out and chatting.  It was great to go. Snowshoeing was good. We got on a mountain trail with drifted snow, so it wasn’t packed down and some points we would sink up to our hips, even with snowshoes on.  It was quite a sight to see us all like turtles on our backs trying to right ourselves and get standing up again.  At one point when Wayne was sunk and struggling he called out, "Go on without me. Save yourselves." We laughed a lot. When trying something new it's good not to take yourself too seriously and to remember it's called play.

We had Lunch every day with Laura.  She dug out from her computer work and we ate and chatted.  

 Wayne, Eric Belnap  ( who is a great downhill skier)  and I tried cross-county skiing for the first time..and I really liked it, and I wasn’t sore the next day whereas Wayne and Eric were walking around like old men. I’m sure it’s because I’ve ellipticaled at the gym for years which uses the same muscles. Wayne was the winner for fall downs. Because of his “dizzy” when he starts to tip over he can’t right himself..so down he goes.  They had groomed different levels of trails all around the Sun Valley golf course to ski on. It was Gorgeous! Blue sky and Freezing! 6 degrees!  

Lunch with Elder Gong

Elder Gong keeps coming back into Laila's life and we are loving it.
He invited her  to lunch at the Church office building.  She went along with some others involved in the Face to Face program from last November.   back then he promised her the jewelry that went along with the new youth program.  Laila was sad she had aged out and would never receive it and Elder Gong made sure she got it.  Now the General YW leaders and Laila are the only ones who have this.  So cool.

Laila loves Elder Gong.  While at the cafeteria he introduced her to Elder Eyring, Elder Christofferson and Elder Bednar.

I hope she someday realizes what an amazing opportunity this is and how God is watching out for her.

Elsie is 2 months

DO-NUT GROW UP!   Love watching this little Elsie.  She is one of my darling grands and being the third child in her household is a challenge.  So much love from Lady and Tayla which equates germs and sickness.  They are all surviving.

The Cole homestead has changed

I drove by my parent’s old house coming home from a funeral.  The funeral was for a family who lost their 38-year-old momma unexpectedly due to complications from surgery.  Their lives will never be the same.  As I drove past the home I grew up in and was in our family for over 44 years I realized that my life is not the same as it was either. 

The one constant is change.

Change can be so uncomfortable and sad and disconcerting and hard and feel terrible.

This homestead doesn’t even look like it did when Lyle and Sheri Cole lived here.

The front yard was a forest of trees back then, with a big front deck hooked onto the front porch that pushed into the trees.  It was like living in a treehouse and my momma loved it. My parents put up the deck in celebration of their 25th anniversary instead of going to Hawaii.  We spent many a summer Sunday evening talking out on the deck while sprinklers misted in the trees.  We saw many sunsets, had Italian food which my mom called a Cole-erelli dinner, and celebrated from Easter to my Dad’s September birthday out on the deck.  It was fondly named, “Deck Heaven.” 

Now the deck and the trees no longer exist...and my parents are in heaven.

It looks so different.

The one constant is change.

Change can be so gratifying and good and full of growth and possibility and feel like a fresh start.

People die.

Life goes on.

We mourn and we celebrate.

Life is 50/50.

I preach this.  I teach this.  We ALL live this whether we recognize it or not.