The happy couple . . .

Here we are--Mr. and Mrs. Retirement--looking too young to be retired. Right? :-) This was taken at Pioche, NV.

What they're up to.

Someone is having a big day tomorrow! We'll celebrate later in the week and that is the big topic of conversation here at our house now. He's finished his Faith in God (he was very self-motivated with that). He'll be ordained a deacon on Sunday during the third hour of church and he's disappointed that he can't pass the sacrament until the 4th Sunday because the 3rd Sunday is stake conference. Our ward really needs deacons (we have one deacon) so J will get LOTS of practice. He is also starting soccer this week.

Just last week, L finished playing church YW basketball and the end-of-the-season party is Wednesday. She's hoping the next YW sport that we do will be futsal (sp?) instead of dodgeball. If they play dodge ball, and a ward shows up with just three players, then only three players from the opposing team can play and there are no substitutions so you might show up but not get to play. I hope the stake takes that into consideration. She is the only active Mia Maid for just two more days! She's been on a reading streak lately.

T has had a few fun events lately. Last Thursday, T and a girl in his band class played a duet for a judge (T is shown here submitting his music to the judge). Last Sunday, he was ordained a priest by his dad and he went out to the shut-ins in our ward with other priests and, according to T, blessed the sacrament at least five times in a row. This Sunday, he helped with the sacrament during sacrament meeting (and you could only see his eyes and hair over the top of the sacrament table and he was sandwiched between two taller priests!) and he taught the priesthood lesson to the priests. Sounds like baptism by fire. He got his learner's permit today. If I'd really pondered the reality of what that will do to our insurance, I think I might have waited until summer! :-)

A generation

There are several definitions for the word "generation." However, I'm thinking of a time period of about twenty years. That is the length of time it takes for one person to become an adult and have a child (well, other than the people pictured above [my parents] including yours truly [the baby]).

At the recent funerals, I've thought how it takes about one generation for people who are related to one another to become relative strangers and, in the same breath, for their children to be complete strangers. Distance also helps that equasion but it just takes one generation. A person can see that this is the course of life by looking backward at generations in the past who surely knew one another but whose posterity is completely unknown to one another today. I guess that is why we have genealogy!