A Series of books and random thoughts

Here are some more books in my 52 books in 52 weeks:



Too stubborn to die by Cato Jarimillo. This book was given to me to be read as a true story of a holocaust survivor. I remember reading somewhere that someone was trying to debunk it. It is a story of a young girl living in Holland who is turned in by her Nazi sympathizing friends and spends 2 years in a concentration camp. Good story, not very well written. I've heard she tells a very good story when she makes a presentation in public.






The Book Thief by Markus Zusak This is a young adult novel, narrated by death. It is the story of a young girl left by a mother who knows she(the mother) faces a bleak future. This young girl, Liesel, can not read, but steals her first book on her trip to Germany. "the Gravedigger's Handbook". Her foster father teaches her to read and thus begins her life in Nazi Germany. I really enjoyed this book. The language is beautiful.. I fell in love in the first few pages. Just to quote from the first few pages.

"People observe the colors of the day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it's quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment. A single hour can consist of thousands of different colors. Waxy yellows, cloud-spat blues. Murky darknesses. In my line of work, I make it a point to notice them."

After that first stolen book, her foster father teaches her to read. She then begins to steal books whenever she can. She steals from the piles of books at the book burnings, she sneaks into the library of the Mayor's home and steals books. She uses the skill she has learned to keep the children quiet as they hide in the basement of homes during the bombings of Munich. She even reads to a Jewish man who they hide in the basement.

"Summer came.

For the book thief, everything was going nicely,

For me, the sky was the color of Jews.

When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into it by the sheer force
of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into eternity's certain breadth. They just kept feeding me. Minute after Minute. Shower after shower."

Her neighborhood changes as men and boys go to war, as people disappear and as the Jew they have hidden tries to escape but is captured.



This is a riveting book with beautiful language that I would recommend to only those 12 and older. Perhaps even older than twelve. It is a dark book with no lasting happiness but alot of humanity.

It is only in hard copy and I have one and am willing to lend it.


Heartbeat by Sharon Creech.... I really enjoy her books and have read quite q few of them. This was written in a very unusual style, almost like free form narrative poetry. It was a joy to read and a very fast read.

This is the story of Annie. Annie loves to run. She learns that she loves drawing and while in her English class, she learns she loves footnotes(which she begins to use in her writing). She loves her family. Her mother is about to have a baby so she worries about her mother. Her grandfather is living with them and seems to be fading away and suffers from dementia. She has a good friend, Max who is running to escape form his current life situation.

Her grandfather was a champion runner. She loves to run and doesn't want to run with the track team. Max wants to run and "has to win". When he doesn't, he learns a secret from her grandfather, one her grandfather tells her she already knew...run for the love of running.

Doesn't that apply to almost everything that we choose to do. Granted ther are things that we all have to do. Some have to work, we all have to clean, cook, etc.... but what we choose to fill our free time with are those things which we love to do. At least that is what I would like to fill my free time with. I love spending time with people, going to the temple, reading and doing things to improve my home.

I was talking to a sister in my ward today and was reminded of a talk I had with someone when I was going through a very dark time in my life. She said "we must never SHOULD on our selves." in other words, we have a tendency to say ' oh I should do' this or 'I should have' done that. SO I have tried t adopt for myself the phrase " I SHALL NOT SHOULD ON MYSELF TODAY!" We all need to give ourselves a break! Talk about the things you are choosing to do or what you would like to do or what you have to do. Perhaps that is why I am not a good list maker and doer. It is a list of shoulds....

The Lines Are Drawn.......

and we are separated from all the rest of our ward. A familiar feeling as it has happened before. The news came down at stake conference this morning. Larry was released last Sunday and so we knew that we wouldn't be with the east side of our ward anymore( with a lot of confidence). However, we didn't expect to be separated from everyone west of us also. Yup, that's right . Out of all the plans we had thought of that one didn't even enter our radar. So there are 10 homes from our old ward that have been put into this already well established ward. They lost about 30 homes. But still have alot of people. I know that it was inspiration(in fact it was signed off by President Hinckley) and so we will make the best of it, as we will probably be in this ward for many years to come. I hope that we are better about retaining friendships than we were with the last boundary change. It seems that once those lines are drawn, you become so involved in your new ward that you lose the connections that you have. That is something I will have to work on. I think that we are much more open to inviting people over to spend time together now than we were then. And we have some great friends in the neighborhood. So onward and upward!We will grow together.

Book Review 4 These is My Words.....

is a wonderful love story. The voice of this book is amazing. This is the story of a young girl who is raised in the Arizona territories and spends her married life in the area. The hero of this book is wonderful, the romance sweet and the heroine is strong, down to earth and innocent to love. She is very uneducated to start, but loves reading and educates herself with her reading. As she first begins to write(it's written in journal form), her writing and her language are very rough. She finds a library of books(deserted on the side of the trail in a wagon) which become her education and as she reads more, her language and her writing change. She is a very strong woman. This book is based on memoirs and journals of the author's family. As you read the book you realize that this all couldn't have happened to one woman. The details which she writes of every day life are amazing and make you realize how very hard life was in the frontier of our country as people settled where no one had been before and built from nothing. There are some wonderful scenes in the book and some very heartwrenching scenes. This was my choice for our book group, Books Without Borders, for the month of February. An enduring Love Story. We had a wonderful discussion about the indomitable spirit of the woman, Sarah and her struggles in this 20 year period. This is a great read!

2 old posts and one new one.....

I had two drafts listed that I had started and not finished. I decided that it wasn't how wonderful the blog was but that it was done so you all knew what was going on. So there you are!

Christmas and the New Year have to this point flown by with hardly a chance to enjoy them. I took off for Pocatello shortly after Christmas to spend some time with Mom and Dad as Mom recovered from an unexplained(to this point) illness. I had a terrifying adventure on the way home and am not thrilled about going back up until the roads are clear. I think that I knocked my muffler or something loose in my spin and am checking it out tomorrow after going visiting teaching at 7:30 AM!!!! There should be a law against that! But I got a new companion and the sister who used to visit her is who we now visit and they did it at 7:00 or 7:30 in the morning! I am barely functioning to tie Larry's shoes(which I have been doing for the last 6 weeks) at that time of the morning.

Speaking of Larry, he will be having surgery at the end of this month. His back is bad, he's taking Lortab to survive and the doctor has finally decided to do something about it. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that when the nurse called to change his appointment, I let her know not only how miserable he is, but how miserable I AM!!! Lack of sleep, being the main problem. Poor Larry doesn't sleep well and so neither do I. He can not get comfortable and is trying a new combination of blankets, foam pads, golf balls, pillow forms, back stretchers, leg stretchers, etc...each night.

I read on Jeremy's blog the idea of 52 books in 52 weeks. That is a great idea and corresponds with one of my Christmas gifts. Amy gave me a cool journal that I will be using as my book journal for listing the books I read and my reaction to them. It's a beautiful book and I have already made some entries into it. I will be going in a few weeks to my favorite of my three book groups and getting a whole list of books to read. Each year at our after Christmas meeting, we do a gift exchange(of books, of course!). This year three people gave Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. I was one of the three. I LOVED this book. The subtitle is "One Man's Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Tome". From the back of the jacket, a short synopsis..

"In 1993 a mountaineer named Greg Mortenson drifted into an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram mountains after a failed attempt to climb K2. Moved by the inhabitants kindness, he promised to return to build a school. Three Cups of Tea is the story of that promise and its extraordinary outcome. Over the next decade mortenson built not just one but 55 schools- especially for girls- in the forbidding terrain that gave birth to the Taliban. His story is at once a riveting adventure and a testament to the power of the humanitarian spirit."

This was a fascinating book from the historical view and from the informational view of the country and also Mortensons's efforts to build his school. How easy it would have been to give up, but he didn't and his perseverence can teach us all something. Anything worth doing is worth doing well....and something that is very lacking in our society a Promise made is a Promise Kept! I learned more about that as we talked in Sunday School about the Oath made to Zoram by Nephi and the knowledge that they would die before breaking an oath. And yet how easily we see promises, oaths and covenants made and broken.

To go along with this book I read an article from the September 2007 National Geographic on Pakistan. And wasn't it interesting that the week after Bhutto was killed, her struggle was highlighted in Parade Magazine for all to see who don't read a paper on a regular basis.

I worry for my grandchildren.

Our Hawaii Vacation, Part one

Our trip was great. In fact, it was really a vacation. Have you had that discussion before? What constitutes a trip to you and what constitutes a vacation? A trip has a list of things to do and see and if you don't get there the 'trip' is ruined. A vacation has a list of things we would like to see but if we don't get there, it is alright and we don't get out of joint about it. A trip you come back more tired than when you left.Travelling for business is usually a trip, travelling for relaxation is usually a vacation. A vacation finds you relaxed and rejuvenated at the end. Hawaii was beautiful. I saw Larry relax in a way that I have never seen him relax on any other trip while in Maui. But I must say I will probably not return unless it is again paid for by the business. At least , not to Oahu and Honolulu. It was much too crowded and much too commercial. Even the Polynesian Cultural Center was too commercial for us. Wait, am I becoming jaded to my travel experiences? I think not, because I would love to continue to travel with Larry as much as possible. In fact, he is now talking in terms of 'our next trip to Europe will be Eastern Europe' for just the two of us.But let's start at the beginning...

Our first full day there was a Sunday. Our first stop was the Punchbowl National Cemetery. It is a cemetery honoring all those who died in the Pacific Corridor during WWII. However, it was unusual as it had no headstones, but plaques flat in the ground. It is a beautiful setting in the crater of a dead volcano. A very peaceful and respectful place with a great spirit and wonderful place to contemplate our freedoms.
After this nice stop, we went to Sacrament meeting in a chapel in eastern Honolulu. We were sitting in that meeting when we got a call from Heather saying that Camille's body had been found. We immediately left the meeting so we could call Sarah and give her all our love and support as she dealt with the news. She called just as we were leaving the church and was devastated. We talked to her for a few minutes and then I called Denise so that she could tell Jessica and then lend support to Sarah as we were so far away. Thanks Denise and Dave for your love and support!

As Larry and I were both too devastated to continue in our meetings, we decided to drive around the island as far as we could for the day. We saw some wonderful things. the scenery was beautiful, but the traffic was bumper to bumper.

We saw some great shore line and lots of people on the beaches. I also tried, unsuccessfully, to do the 'snap ourselves in the picture' at a place where the waves of a tsunami had broken through the only sandstone formation on the island. Thanks to the other tourists who were there and willing to take a shot for us. The waves were awesome and were breaking behind us as we hiked down to the beach. We just couldn't get a shot of that.

This is a rock where everyone jumps into the ocean( I hope the tide is in!)

We also went to Turtle beach where we saw people swimming with the turtles. We just took pictures of them.

On our way back through the center of the island, we stopped at another cemetery. This one had a Buddhist temple shrine in it that was just beautiful. There were many other shrines in the cemetery also. However we got there just 30 minutes before they closed and so had the opportunity to visit only the largest one at the back of the cemetery. It was very quiet as we got there when no one else was visible and the last of the artists and vendors were walking out as we were walking in.

From there we took the Pali Highway back through the center of the island. We stopped at the overlook to take pictures back the way we had come.

The next day was spent also on the North shore at the Laie Hawaii temple and the Polynesian Cultural Center. The temple was a beautiful site, one that I will always remember. The classical shots of the temple are all taken this way. We also took one from the other view, a straight shot to the ocean. The church maintains the street all the way up to the temple and I wouldn't be surprised if they also care for the small park that leads to the beach.

We then went to the PCC, which we wished we had more time to see. We were told that things really didn't get started until 1:30 so we didn't go until then. We ran out of time before we saw all that we wanted to see. We were really discouraged by the commercialization of it. Upsell when you get your tickets " Oh it is much cheaper to buy a meal now than to just buy snacks inside" If you buy a meal, please go all out and don't be cheap. The cheap meal was awful. As you walk in, cheap shell leis and take your picture( which you can pick up later for $18.00) with the young Hawaiian man and woman. If we sound disillusioned it's because we were. All that aside, the entertainment was awesome! And they supposedly put on the best luau on the island. Some day we will learn that it is worth the money when it is a once in a lifetime experience.

Of course we had to take a picture of DUM-DUM and his siblings for Easton and Taylor(fans of "Night at the Museum").

And we saw our "Hawaii Duck" while we were there. Everywhere we stopped in Europe this summer we saw ducks. The tradition continues. Perhaps Jeff and family will see one at Disneyland this week(besides Donald, of course).

Our last day was spent at the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor- a very moving experience. Before you go out to the memorial( you are shuttled out by small boat 250 people at a time), you see a short film put together with footage from both the American and Japanese governments. It is very moving. They ask you to be respectful of the site as it is the burial grounds for over 2000 men(around 2500, I believe). There were very few words uttered as we contemplated the sight of the gun turrets sticking up out of the sea and the plaque with the names of all those who died there that day. There are also the names of those who have chosen to be interred there after their deaths with their fellow shipmates. These are done as more of the survivors die and elect that option.

It was very interesting to see oil blobs coming up from the engines of the ship after all these years. It tells you just how massive this ship was and what a devastating blow this was to our country and especially to our Navy. I wondered how many more years it would continue as the blobs appeared quite often and were very large. It has been almost 56 years. It is a very sacred place.

Our last evening in Oahu, we had a beautiful sunset. Larry took some great pictures of it. This is one of my favorites. How could we possibly have timed that sailboat better?What a wonderful way to end the first part of our Hawaii vacation. It rally was a vacation, not just a trip!

Four weeks of FRUSTRATION

Well it has been more than four weeks of my "three week kitchen remodel" and I am reaching the frustration saturation point. Here is how it has gone:

Day 1: tear out

Day 2 and 3: electrician and plumber come and do their work.

Day 4 through FOREVER!!!!: sheet rocker comes(usually after 11, works for 1 hour, goes to lunch for 2-3 hours, works for 1 hour leaves for day). Calls contractor(Shawn) on 28th asking for money so he can buy food for scout camp he will be attending starting Monday. He will finish when he returns. Oh boy, did the thunder roll and the lightning strike!!!!!! I hope it rained on him all week!

Day 24: (July 30th)new sheet rocker comes and finishes the job in 2 hours.

Through August 5: New floor is laid in kitchen and I get the painting done.

August 6 through 12: contractor has family reunion planned since January. He will be back Monday to install cabinets. I told him that I will have my granite chosen by then.

So needless to say, I am frustrated! It is a good thing that Larry has been gone the last two weeks as he was looking pretty pathetic when he would say "What's for dinner?" and I would say "well, let's see what's in the freezer that I can microwave." Salads are great, but they get tiring also. I think I have gained 5 pounds because of all the junk I have eaten. I know I am beginning to whine because after church on Sunday I got 2 invitations to dinner this week.

Larry has been to 3 countries and many cities on his trip and is hoping to be able to cut it a few days short if a Monday meeting can be moved to Friday. He spent last weekend in Copenhagen and will be in Barcelona this weekend (or at least on Friday). He asked me on the 21st of July if I wanted to go with him on this trip and we just couldn't justify paying for the airfare at that short of notice. But we did get notice that we are invited to the vision retreat on Sept. 13-16 in Maui! I'm so excited. I have always wanted to go to Hawaii. We are going over early on the 8th to Oahu and got a priceline car and hotel. I guess we will see what they are like when we get there. The flights between islands are only $45.oo and the company pays for the airfare to the islands. So it won't be too expensive!

I promise my next post will contain some photos and thoughts about our recent trip to Europe. Let me say that it was great to have our family all together while we were there, but there were definitely some challenges too!

On a random Hurray note, Sarah will be graduating from BYU on August 16th with a major in French and a minor in English.

My time without a Kitchen

Well, it has begun..the kitchen redo. We have been without a kitchen for just over a week now. And wouldn't you know it, I didn't take any before pictures. but I do have the pictures of the space just after tear out. It looks much bigger without the closets. And I am excited to see the finished project. But we are already behind as we have ahd to wait for the sheetrocker. He should be done by Saturday and then they will have to wait as I won't be able to paint until the first of the week.The living room is a mess as that is our "storage area" and also our 'cooking' area( what cooking I have done). This spring, when I went out to barbecue, there were birds in our 'barby' so we haven't used it. I just checked and the birds have now flown the coop. We will now be able to do some barbecuing for some of our dinners. Our appliances have been here for 2 weeks and the flooring has been here for 3.

I am so excited. I still have some decisions ahead of me....lighting fixtures, sink and faucet, and hardware......I hope I live through it!

As a side note, Today my nephew Scott left for the Leeds England mission and the Preston England MTC. Good luck Scott. We love you!

Not Blog Savvy!

Boy oh boy what a huge mess. We set up this blog, hoping to update at least every few weeks(if not every week) and then couldn't get the access to it. I still am confused. so to play a little catch up...

March was warmer than it should have been and we had the chance to take our cute grandsons out to the 'ranch' and spend the afternoon. They wore us and themselves out. I will try and post some pictures of that. This one is from last year.

Larry had another steroid injection for his back. It never worked and so he has had an uneventful month in terms of progress with his back. His pain is quite severe, insomuch that his scheduled trip to Berlin at the end of March was cancelled. His boss was worried that something might happen while he was overseas. Larry hates driving any distance because the pain is too great.
At the beginning of the month, we helped Jim(Larry's brother) and Liz move to a small town outside of Shelley, Idaho, a small town in and of itself. They have themselves a beautiful home that is only a few years old with a VERY large kitchen that I would give my eye teeth to have. We will miss them and hope to see them soon. But we will for sure see them in July as their son, Scott, received his LDS Mission call to the England, Leeds mission and will be going directly to the Preston England MTC(Mission Training Center) on July 18th. We currently have a Sister from our ward who is serving in that mission and is having great success with immigrants from Zimbabwe. We are excited for him and for his family.
On the 16th of March I had my first NIA(Neighborhood In Action) meeting at my home. I was appointed by the committees and approved by the city council to take the place of the past chair who is fulfilling the seat of a city council member who was elected to the state as a Representative for our area. NIA is a city wide program that is charged with keeping our city's neighborhoods livable, clean, safe and friendly. We are planning our neighborhood service day for June 2nd and started the planning for that activity. Last year we gave over 600 hours of service and served over 400 hot dogs at the barbecue following the service. I'm nervous as I have some very great shoes to fill.
I also had my 6 month dentist check up.......I had a cavity!!! I was so upset...it's been 5 years. I know, it's a small thing, as is the cavity, but I was disappointed.
During March, we also

• Bought our Chunnel Tickets


• bought our train tickets for Rome to Florence


• Reserved our rental car for Florence to Venice to Milan


• Firmed up our hotels for all the places but Berlin


• got Larry a portable bicycle to take in case he can't easily walk


• finally got the last two passports for the group that is travelling with us.

We are becoming more and more excited about this trip! It is going to be so fun to have us all together for what is probably the last time as a family on a great big vacation like this. Jeff and Larry's 'vacation' will both be a week longer as Jeff has a conference for the full week before the trip and , because of the cancelled trip, Larry may extend for a week in Berlin.

So , I think that about covers March. Oh! Except I signed the contract for my kitchen remodel and will be started on that before our trip, I hope!

Introduction

We are Larry and Diane. We are from Utah county, Utah. We are empty nesters but have our children and grandchildren nearby. We are active in our church, active in our neighborhood, and fairly active in our community. Diane loves to travel. Larry travels for work and, therefore, doesn't love to travel. Round Table Ranch is the nickname we have given some recreational property that we have near a reservoir in eastern Utah.