Star of the "Today Show"

Aunt Karalie was the star of this morning's "Today Show" feature about Betty Ford's funeral! You can see the segment by clicking here. She did such a great job! I think it's more than a coincidence that out of all of those people, they picked Aunt Karalie, who had not only the breast cancer connection to Mrs. Ford, but was also her former neighbor. It's pretty cool how they start out the segment by saying that the public came to the funeral to feel close to Mrs. Ford, and then they go right in to the interview with Aunt Karalie--she's the introduction to the whole segment! I think she did a great job. Way to go, Aunt Karalie!

Eventful Week

A lot has happened this week--some good things and some sad things! Last Saturday I worked for 14 hours--but it was okay because I was having fun. I never would have survived a 14-hour day at the Lincoln Home. My day began bright and early at the museum with a group of War of 1812 re-enactors who were having a conference there. As you can see, these guys were super hardcore. I love this picture of them in front of the tank. Things would have been different back then if they'd had tanks! They were really nice guys, and I learned a lot by listening to their various presentations. Later in the day we had a farewell BBQ at the museum for the director, Mark, who has accepted a job in Washington, D.C. I didn't get to work with him for very long, but he is a really nice guy and I enjoyed my time with him at the museum. The BBQ was a lot of fun, and Greg got to meet all of "the guys."

Unfortunately a couple of great people passed away this week. First of all, former First Lady Betty Ford died on Friday. Our family has always felt a special connection to her because when my mom was in high school and her family moved to Alexandria, Virginia, they lived across the street from Gerald and Betty Ford, and Mom would babysit their kids! She certainly has some good stories. One of my favorite stories about Betty Ford is from when she helped Mom get ready for the Junior Prom. Grandma had been out of town and was delayed in getting back home, and Mom had been babysitting some other kids whose parents had gotten home late, so she was running late. She needed to pick up her shoes, have her slip hemmed up, and her hair done, but Grandma was stuck on the road! So, she called Mrs. Ford who dropped what she was doing and came to Mom's aid. She hemmed Mom's slip, sewed an elastic into it, and helped Mom with her hair. She told Mom to bring her date by their house before the dance, and Mom remembers that both Mr. and Mrs. Ford made a big fuss over them. Mom says that the thing she remembers most about Mrs. Ford is that she was first and foremost a mother--which definitely shows in how she helped my mom get ready for the prom. Today my Aunt Karalie went to Mrs. Ford's funeral in Palm Desert, California, and she even ended up getting interviewed by the Today Show! So maybe you'll see her on TV tomorrow! Aunt Karalie was best friends with the Ford's youngest daughter Susan in Alexandria. And, Aunt Karalie, a four-time breast cancer survivor, always felt a special connection with Mrs. Ford, also a breast cancer survivor and awareness advocate. Gerald Ford was a great man and President, and Betty was a great woman. I love that I have grown up hearing stories about things that happened in their family life. Back in 2007 I had the opportunity to visit the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan with my graduate school classmates. This is where Mrs. Ford will be buried, next to President Ford. The words above their names at the gravesite are very appropriate: "Lives Committed to God, Country and Love."

And yesterday I found out that my very good friend, Harvey Black, passed away. He was married to Susan Easton Black, a Church History professor at BYU. I worked as Sister Black's research assistant for two years while I was at BYU, and since Harvey was a big part of everything she did, I was able to work with him a lot as well. Harvey was always interested in new technology, and one of the fun things I remember doing was setting up his new MP3 player for him to use when he was exercising. One of my very favorite memories is from the time that Mom and I spent with Susan and Harvey in Nauvoo in 2005. Sister Black needed some help with some research she was doing, and so Mom and I got to spend a few days with them. Part of our research took us through the rural Iowa countryside where we were looking for obscure little Mormon settlement sites. Mom took this picture of the Blacks and me at the Skunk River in Iowa where Harvey's ancestors had once settled. We had such a great time with them! Greg and I are grateful that we got to see Harvey one last time just a few weeks ago when we went to visit the Blacks in Nauvoo. We were only able to spend a few minutes with them, but now that he is gone, those few minutes are especially special to us. Unfortunately Harvey had been battling cancer for quite a while now, but he had been fighting hard. I suppose that in some ways it is good that he can now have a break from all of that. He will be greatly missed, and I am grateful for the opportunity I had to know and work with him!

In other news, today I went running and in the process of jumping over a ditch, I messed up my ankle/foot. I landed wrong on it, and the pain got worse all day. Greg and I went to the doctor to have it x-rayed this afternoon, and thankfully he doesn't think it is broken. However, he said that a break wouldn't show up for a few days, so in the meantime, I need to treat it like a broken foot. So I get to walk around in a giant, stylish boot for a few days. It is really painful when I walk! But after icing it (actually I used frozen corn, but it seems to work just as well) this evening, it is feeling a little better.

4th of July Fun

We hope that everyone had a wonderful 4th of July! We certainly did here. Our festivities began on Friday when our friends Crystal and John came over for a BBQ. We had a great time catching up on things, and the Cardonis told us about their amazing trip to England in June. Greg and I are sad because Crystal and John will be moving to Nashville next month, but we are also excited for the new opportunities they will have (and it will give us an excuse to visit Nashville). We had a really fun evening, and it was a great way to start the 4th of July weekend.

Saturday, of course, was the parade, and then on Sunday we just went to church and relaxed around here. Then yesterday the Andreasens (their dad is the bishop of our ward) invited us over for a fun evening. We swam in their pool, had a BBQ, played croquet (the croquet course ended up being pretty extreme and even involved hitting the ball through a tree house), and set off some fireworks. One of my favorite parts of the evening was when Sister Andreasen, Greg, and I climbed into their little row boat and headed out on the lake behind their house to look for blackberries. My job was to bail water out of the boat since it sometimes leaks--but only a little bit of water came in. Unfortunately the blackberries weren't quite ripe, but it was still fun to go hunting for them. So, we had a fun evening with the Andreasens and the missionaries (who came over for dinner), and then on our way home we got to see the fireworks being set off in Springfield. It was a great day, and I am grateful to live in this country!

4th of July Parade

Yesterday was the annual 4th of July parade in the Village of Jerome (part of Springfield), and the museum got to participate in the parade. It was so much fun! I can't figure out why Springfield itself doesn't have a 4th of July parade downtown--they have parades for everything else, but at least someone around here has a parade celebrating Independence Day. We all got to the museum bright and early where all of the historic Jeeps and other military vehicles were lined up and ready to go.

Here I am in my woodland camo outfit that "the guys" put together for me. And, there is the awesome Jeep I got to ride in--with the HUGE gun! The man driving the Jeep I was in was one of our volunteers, Glen. He is a really neat man and a WWII veteran, so he has a lot of good stories. We sure turned quite a few heads driving over to Jerome with our line of about three Jeeps, a troop transport truck, and a Humvee.

Here we are getting ready for the parade to start. We had people dressed as soldiers from all different eras--French and Indian War, Civil War, World War II, Vietnam, and present-day. It was really cool! The parade was about two miles long and went through the neighborhoods of Jerome. It was so neat--people were lined up along the streets or sitting on their porches. It was all very patriotic and a great way to begin the 4th of July weekend. Happy 4th of July tomorrow!

27 in 2011

It's not every day that you get to turn 27 in 20-11, so when it happens you might as well celebrate! Although yesterday I was pretty worried all day because poor dad had to have his gallbladder removed. He has been in a lot of pain lately (really on-and-off since his surgery last fall), and he ended up in the ER last weekend. The doctors found some gallstones, so they decided to operate. Hopefully having the gallbladder removed will do the trick. Thankfully the surgery went well, and by yesterday evening I was able to talk with Dad on the phone. He sounded pretty happy to be having some dinner, after not being able to eat anything since Friday or drink anything since Sunday. So the best birthday present of the day was that Dad pulled through and the surgery was a success. Now we just need him to get feeling better!

I had a really nice day yesterday. It all started at work when "the guys"--I work with mostly men, but at least they're nice--took me to lunch. It's so nice to work at a place where the people are not lunch nazis (like Jason Boyd at the Lincoln Home). In the afternoon, we had a group called the "Buick Club" show up at the museum. They are on a Route 66 tour and all drive really cool cars. Here are some of the cars parked in front of the museum. By the end of the day, we'd had 78 visitors in the museum--that has to be some kind of record! It was nice though because it wasn't crazy busy like the Lincoln Home, but it was busy enough that the afternoon went by quickly.

After work, Greg and I went out for a nice dinner at Dublin Pub where we ate our favorite Irish beer battered mushrooms--they are SO good!! We also had some yummy sandwiches for dinner. Then it was miniature golf time. It was the perfect evening outside for some mini golf. Here is Greg taking a big swing :-) It was a pretty tricky mini golf course--one of the holes even had a little pond on it, which of course I hit the ball into. But we had a great time.

After mini golf we headed home to open presents and have ice cream cake and birthday cake ice cream! Greg gave me some cool baseball cards for my birthday--I even pulled a card with a Ryne Sandberg autograph on it from one of the card packs! Doesn't this ice cream cake look delicious? Our only dilemma is, how are we going to eat it all? Luckily we have some friends coming over for a BBQ tomorrow, so maybe they will help us eat it :-) It turned out to be larger than Greg had expected. All-in-all it was a good birthday.

In other news, you may remember our recent adventures with our raccoon-killing neighbor, Dick. Because of the e-mail Dick sent to Greg threatening to come to the funeral home to confront him, and just because Dick was acting so strange (putting his fists in Greg's face in front of the police officers, etc.), Greg filed a temporary "no contact" order against Dick which ended today. Greg and Dick were both asked to show up at court this morning where a judge would decide what the next step should be. Since we hadn't had any problems with Dick since the order was filed a couple of weeks ago, Greg had planned to just drop everything and not ask the judge for an extension of the no contact order (we figured that everything had just kind of blown over). However, Dick's attitude and that of his lawyer prompted the judge to slap a two-year extension onto the no contact order without Greg even asking for it. Dick was really belligerent and told the judge several lies, which didn't help his case. The judge had a copy of the police report in front of him, so when Dick said that Greg was the one who had told him to put out the raccoon poison, the judge didn't buy it. Dick's lawyer claimed that Dick hadn't sent Greg any e-mails, so when Greg produced the threatening e-mail, that didn't look good for Dick either. It was just a bizarre situation, and when all was said and done Dick once again threatened Greg--so now another police report is being filed, and it is just a big mess. The moral of the story is: don't poison raccoons and act all crazy about it.