Happy Birthday to Me!

Here are some images from 1958, the year of my birth, including me. I'm stealing the idea from Cynthia. I thought it was a great one.

Today is my Dad's birthday

My dad's birthday was always Memorial Day until the government in its infinite wisdom changed a bunch of holidays to Monday. We would always have a cook out and go look at the flowers in the cemeteries.

My dad passed away in January after 11 years without my mom. I'm sure they were very glad to be reunited.

My dad was a good dad. He went with me to all the daddy/daughter dates. He was a "steady ender" when my friend Lois and I wanted to jump rope. We tied one side to the hand rail of the stairs to the house and he turned the other side. He worked hard making a living for our family. He drove my friends and I to a big seminary program in Salt Lake and sat in the parking lot for two hours until it was over. He loved my mom. He was a quiet man. He didn't say much.

I miss him, but I am very happy he is with my mom and my brother Phil. Happy birthday Dad!

Oh Happy Day

Today this was delivered to my house. A GE Profile refrigerator. Yahoo!

My Refrigerator is a LEMON

The Maytag Wide by Side was the new big thing in the year 2000. It was supposed to be a step up from the regular side-by-side.
It was wide at the top of the refrigerator and narrow at the bottom. The freezer was opposite. The ads gushed that the owner could now put wide things like pizza in the refrigerator.

I bought it hook, line and sinker. We purchased one in January of 2001. Since then, it has been fixed at least twice a year. First it was the ice maker. Then it was other things going wrong. Last month I got a recall notice that a part may overheat and cause a fire. At first when it was still under warranty, I wasn't too upset. I wasn't paying for it. After the warranty ran out, I wasn't very happy.

So, it is broken again. Everything in my freezer is now ruined. The refrigerator part is not cold enough. The switch that dispenses the ice and water is broken too. Actually, that is a pretty funny story. One night I was awakened by the sound of ice hitting the floor. I sped into the kitchen and found ice shooting out of the ice dispenser and landing on the kitchen floor. It reminded me of an old LUCY rerun. Things like that were always happening to her. I "speedy quick" (a Junie B. Jones expression) hit the button to stop the ice and it hasn't worked since.

Yesterday the repairman came and replaced the part from the recall. He didn't have the part to fix the other things. Something is wrong with the defroster dohickey.

I AM REALLY, REALLY SICK OF THIS SORRY EXCUSE FOR A REFRIGERATOR. By the way, you can't even buy this refrigerator anymore. Maytag took it off the market! (Big sigh) Oh, another thing, the people at Spencer's told me not to buy it. I have learned a lesson from all this. Listen to the people at Spencer's and never, ever buy anything when it first comes out. Thanks for listening, I feel better now.

The Kirtland Temple--Sacrifice Brings Blessings

Many great sacrifices were made by the saints in Kirtland, Ohio to build their temple. Men worked all day and sometimes slept on site with a loaded gun in case any attempts were made to destroy the temple. Women sewed and cooked for temple builders. They gave their china to mix with the plaster so the temple would have a shiny exterior. Three people, Artimus Millett, John Tanner, and Vienna Jacques, gave all their fortunes in order that the temple might be built. In the midst of the temple building, the saints in Independence were driven from their homes and Joseph Smith had to recruit and outfit men for Zion's Camp.

The cost of building the temple was between $40,000 and $60,000, an enormous amount in the 1830's According to Eliza R. Snow. " At that time, . . .the Saints were few in number, and most of them very poor; and , had it not been for the assurance that God had spoken, and had commanded that a house should be built to his name, of which he not only revealed the form, but also designated the dimensions, an attempt towards building that Temple under the then existing circumstances, would have been, by all concerned, pronounced Preposterous."

Despite all the challenges, the temple was built. It was dedicated on March 27, 1836. What followed was one of the greatest outpourings of spiritual blessings ever recorded--so many that this period in church history is called the Pentecostal Period. The dedicatory prayer was given to Joseph Smith in a revelation. In the dedicatory prayer (Doctrine and Covenants 109) given by the Prophet Joseph Smith, the saints were promised great blessings for their faithfulness.

The next Sunday, which was Easter Sunday, Christ appeared to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in the temple. He accepted the sacrifice of the saints. (Doctrine and Covenants 110:7). Other visions followed. Moses restored the keys of the gathering of Israel, Elias restored the keys of the dispensation of the gospel of Abraham, and Elijah restored the keys of sealing. All of which were essential for the progress of the Lord's kingdom.

"Sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven." The saints in Kirtland received blessings that they could not have comprehended only a few years before.

Power Outage!!!

The power went off at our house. The wind blew really hard and knocked down 8 power poles. Now ordinarily these lines probably wouldn't have blown down, but because they are "fake", they did. The city of Mesa is widening the road and some of these lines had to be moved. Hence, the power lines are only temporary

It began Monday night at 10:00 and continued to Tuesday night at about 7:30 p.m. I am not bitter because some of my neighbors' power came back on WAY before mine did. (Well, maybe a little.) However, since we are supposed to learn something from all our trials (I know this barely qualifies), I have decided to take the high road, and instead of complaining, I would like to list some of the things I have learned from this experience.

1. I am extremely grateful for air conditioning. I don't know how people lived here before it was invented.

2. My hair looks really awful without being blow dried and nobody made fun of me. Who knows, maybe they didn't think it looked any different.

3. Sam and I went to Chris's apartment after school. He had the air cranked down. What a nice son!

4. I remembered not to open the refrigerator and the freezer and most things were okay.

5. I'm grateful for all those SRP workers out there working hard to get the power back on.

6. Did I say I was grateful for air conditioning?

7. Do you know how quiet it is when there is no sound from air conditioners and and pool pumps?

8. We found out April is having a girl. That really doesn't have anything to do with the power going out, but it happened yesterday also.

9. I should have slept in the basement. It was much cooler!

10. I am grateful for air conditioning. Whoever invented it should have gotten the Nobel Prize.

11. I'm really glad I didn't live here 100 years ago.

Sue Chickering Pyper Retires

Long ago, in a galaxy far away it was 1970, I was 12 years old; I was in the 7th grade; I went to Wasatch Junior High School; and I lived in Heber City, Utah. Heber was a great place to grow up. It's located in a mountain valley. There are four beautiful seasons. It is cold in the winter time. The summers weren't too hot. Heber had two movie theaters, the Avon and the Ideal. We shopped at Safeway, managed by my Uncle Harris, and JC Penney, where my Mom’s cousin Ruth Todd worked. We even had two bars--Clyde's Billiards, and The Other End. When we got older, we used to drag main for fun on Friday night. And one other thing, 95 percent of the town were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. There were a few kids who went to the Catholic church, but that was about it. Even the people who visited Clyde's Billiards and The Other End were members, they just didn't go to church. I love my religion and it was the basis for much of our social life, but we rarely came into contact with anyone different from us.

So, here I was in the 7th grade. We had to take P.E. the whole year (yes, you heard me right). We had units in football, volleyball, flag football, basketball, softball, gymnastics, table tennis and track and field. We also had to wear one piece blue gym suits that were UGLY. By the way, I HATED P.E. I was not talented in P.E. in any way, shape or form.

Why am I all of a sudden waxing nostalgic? My brother Kirk sent me an article from THE WASATCH WAVE (the weekly paper). "Mrs. Pyper, the girl's P.E. teacher is retiring this year after 41 years of teaching." I'm thinking to myself that there is no way in the world that it has been that long. . .

Our gym teacher was pregnant, so she had to quit. Yes, you heard me right, she had to quit. Even at 12 I couldn't figure that one out. If someone was pregnant, they couldn't teach. Go figure. The old teacher (whose name I can't remember) introduced our new teacher--Miss Sue Chickering (Pyper) from Iowa. She could have said the new teacher was from outer space, we couldn't have been more shocked. Okay so here's the deal, she's from Iowa, she wore funny shorts, her last name was Chickering, she had little balls on the back of her socks and. . . .she wasn't a member. What were we to make of this situation? We reacted like most 12-year-old girls-we were little brats. Let's see, we made fun of her name, of how she talked, her glasses, and anything else that we could think of. Now this was all done behind her back because, after all, it was the 1970's. We knew we had to be polite to the teacher. I guess we figured she never knew. Why would she come to Heber of all places. I don't remember her answer to that question.

Another quote from the article--"The first years Mrs. Pyper taught, she replaced a very good, well-liked teacher. The students were upset that they had to have a different teacher, and did not treat her kindly." Of course she knew how we felt. I hope the adults were kinder than we were. I don't know if I want to know her opinion of Mormons back then. We surely didn't act how we were taught.

She married another teacher who moved to Heber named Roger Pyper. They have lived in Heber all this time and have many friends. Heber is a much different place from how it was in 1970. It's much bigger and there are lots of different kinds of people living there. I'm glad she didn't judge us on her first couple of years. So congratulations Mrs. Pyper on teaching P.E. for a really long time.

Photos: Sue Chickering Pyper now, Sue Chickering Pyper 1970, my seventh grade picture, Wasatch Junior high.

The Story of Polly Knight

Polly and Joseph Knight and their family lived in Colesville, New York. Joseph Smith met them when he was working in Harmony, Pennsylvania. They listened to him and believed him. It was their carriage that Joseph borrowed so he could pick up the plates from Moroni. They moved from Colesville to Thompson, Ohio when the Lord commanded his people to gather in Ohio. After a short time in Thompson, the Lord told the Colesville saints to move to Jackson County Missouri.

This journey was almost 900 miles and Polly Knight was already in poor health. The company traveled mostly by river. Her family tried to convince her to stop and rest with friends along the way. She was determined to obey the Lord and gather to Zion. She became so ill that along the way her son Newel left the boat to buy wood to build a coffin.

Her son Newel wrote, "Her only, or her greatest desire, was to set her feet upon the land of Zion, and to have her body interred in that land." Polly lived to see Zion. She died within two weeks of her arrival and was the first Latter-Day Saint to be buried in Missouri.

The Lord give these consoling words on the day of her funeral, "Those that live shall inherit the earth, and those that die shall rest from all their labors, and their works shall follow them; and they shall receive a crown in the mansions of my Father, which I have prepared for them."--Doctrine and Covenants 59:2.

I am always amazed and impressed with the faith and determination of the early saints. They determined to obey God at all costs. Their example inspires me to follow the Lord's commandments as they did.

Michelle's shoes

Not only are they expensive, they are UGLY!

The Death of Intervention

It's time to pay the piper, all good things must come to an end, or the chickens have come home to roost.

In case you hadn't heard, the state of Arizona has a HUGE budget deficit. Because of that deficit, Mesa Schools has a BIG deficit. Education has been and is going to take a BIG cut. At my school we are losing teachers, the basic skills person, the reading coach and the last certified interventionist.

I have been working in the intervention program for the last 4 years. Next year it will be gone. "No money," the district says. Now I admit when it first started, I hated the program. I didn't think it would work and it meant a whole lot more work for me. Sometimes I have felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall because nothing seemed to be soaking into kids' heads. Head banging is NOT my idea of a good time.

Other times however, when the light turns on and they start to get it, well that is one of the best feelings ever. At times, it has brought me to tears.

Next year the intervention program will be gone. I'm sad. I'm losing some friends to other schools and I wonder if some of the kids will do as well. Will I even have a job next year? Maybe I will have a job and I'll get to be in the classroom all day which I really enjoy. I really don't know, but I know the end of this school year will be heart rending for me.