Late Mothers Day

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I have the greatest daughters in my family---not just my natural born one but the others that have joined our family along the way. They are smart, savvy, fun, and the most fantastic mothers to MY grandchildren!! They're so much more patient, tolerant, and loving that I ever was with my kids---altho I'm sure my kids never remember how they were cuddled and loved in their early years. They're much more able to remember being whopped on the butt, or kicked up and down the stairs, having their records and tapes destroyed, trying to make us believe they were innocent of climbing out windows at night or telling us where they were going to be and not being there!! But we laugh at those things now, fortunately. But for sure, those girls in our family are awesome and no tribute is great enough for each one of them.
They are raising a generation of children that come to this earth way more intelligent,and eager to learn than the past generations. These moms are training these kids to be the future leaders of our church and nations. They are surely stong spirits.

It's been a fairly quiet couple of weeks. We do have our office hours now and we've had one or two people come each of the mornings but the evenings are quiet--only one has come the 3 evenings. But the word is starting to go around, but very slowly. Our workshops are small--about 6 each time, but that's a good number to work with. We can give them more individual attention with their particular needs. We have a self-employment workshop this Saturday and on the 30th and the 31st we're doing the fifth Sunday presentation in our home ward. The Welfare Area Missionaries were here for a visit last Friday. They are in Steve and Michelle King's mission in Atlanta but they travel from Florida up to Canada. Talk about a huge distance!! The church is trying to split to a northeast and southeast if they can get enough senior missionaries. Two more of our senior couples leave soon and as far as we know they are not being replaced. We "hear" that the economics and the 401 K drop has cut many seniors from putting in their papers. Which is too bad because they really do perform a great service---especially the senior couples assigned to struggling wards. They do a lot of reactivating and become grandparents to the young missionaries, taking a little of the load off the mission president. We get a new mission president in July---he's from North Salt Lake.

Last Saturday was another of our Senior Training/Social and it was lots of fun. Went out to Old Sturbridge Village about an hour west of here on the Connecticut boarder. It's a village established in the 1700-1800 and has been restored. It reminded us a lot of Nauvoo as they had the blacksmith shop, the tin shop, a printing shop, the general store, a Quaker Church and another church, and lots of, homes, and people that run the place in their 1800 clothing, actually planting by hand. There's a sawmill, textile place and a pottery house with an old outdoor kiln that sometimes takes up to 36 hours to get hot enough to bake the pottery. So here's the travel log of pictures. We had breakfast at the Publik House, which is an old tavern but beautiful inside. It's, of course an 1800's place and still has all the old rugs, wallpaper and small rooms. Great place for weddings and big dinners.



Then we headed over to the village. It was really established by a guy names Wight who set up the sawmill for people to gain employment. Then others came and a little village was set up.


You might recognize the faces at each end of this last picture!

With the amount of rain and the high humidity the spring as been absolutely gorgeous here. You can see here how purple these trees and bushes are. You can't imagine the number of shades of green we see. Crayola can't even come close. There's everything from the palest green to the deepest dark green and everything in between, including a flourescent green. The red maples are deep red, and the flowering trees are so bright. In a different way it's just as impressive as the fall colors.


Now, I'll just post the pictures I want to keep.Here's the sawmill. This Wight guy built a dam so he could regulate the water from the Quinebaug River when they needed it and so it wouldn't flood the place!




















Next is the Fitch house. This family had 3 girls and they were not the poorest people in the village. Their house is quite big compared to the second house which is called the "small house"---about 700 square feet and about 12 people lived there!! It was a starter home. Sleeping was in the attic and I can imagine how hot hot hot it was during the summer!!!





One of themost fun things was watching the musket rifle shoot. Those big rifles are sure clumsy things and they never hit on target. But they sure made a lot of noise





Of course I have to include anything I see about babies. Oh how glad I am to be in the age of epidurals......




Covered bridges are always a favorite






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And here are the Higginson's and the Myricks that are going home!! Both of them live in American Fork----right by the Temple.



Here's dad going into the one room school house. Then a couple pictures of the inside. Because we were late the schoolmaster made dad get down on his knees and put his nose on the circle------late boys had to hold that position for 10 minutes!!<




The other fun activity was last Thursday---the volunteer luncheon. It was at the Holiday Inn--and what a beautiful place it is!! Interesting the number of people sipping their drinks from the bar at 1130 in the morning!! The luncheon was yummy and awards were given out for volunteer hours from 100 to 21,000!!!! It's amazing the way these "old" people hang on and volunteer. We have a little ole man that's 89 in our group!!! I guess that's what keeps them alive. We'll be well on our way to 200 hours if we're still here next April.

Are you totally bored??? Sorry, but this is the only way I can remember what we've done. There's some movement to have some of the older grandkids come out this summer and we hope it happens. There's so much we can have them see. Catrina is coming out to Boston for a conference on June 7 and maybe Steve and Jordan will come and hang out with us during the day. MAYBE we can find some Red Sox tickets during that time!!

Just looked out the window and our nice spring day just turned into dark clouds. More rain, I guess......no surprise here!!!