Exercise

Well, I have managed to keep up my exercise regimen for 2 weeks. I have ridden my bike 4 times a week and done my '8 minutes in the morning' monday to friday and mostly cut out sugar. I get so hooked into the sugar cycle it is hard to break it. But I think I finally have and I am not craving it anymore. Now I just have to not start again...

Today for my bike ride, Drew and I rode all the way to Coldstream to where we are moving and then back into town. A good work out. Now it is time to get a load ready for the dump...

Books

While packing books, I was remembering how when Erin was little and I looked at all the books that Mom and Dad had and I wondered if I would ever amass as many and I worried about having books for her. Now, as I pack my 20'th box of books, I wonder how I got so many. And I still have more to pack. All my counselling/pyschology books and the books from my bedroom (the inner sanctum books, if you will) have yet to be packed. Those little liquor boxes are perfect for books. I'm moving in a week. Sometimes I have little mini heart attacks thinking about everything that I have to do. This morning I went dumpster diving for boxes.

Keep you posted

New House

Well, our move is finalized. We are moving to back to Coldstream. Whew! I am tired of being robbed! We take possession April 1. It is a rural area of Coldstream near where we lived when Dean first became a member of our family. It is an old farm house built in 1898. It has been very well cared for and totally updated - everything from a brand new furnace (2 weeks old) to all new wiring and plumbing. It is the typical old farm house set up - all the bedrooms upstairs around a landing (kind of like 910 Gillette - not that any of you are old enough to remember that house - the house where Laura was born). The bedrooms are all around the same size and with interesting shapes. There is a skylite in one. It has 4 bedrooms - which was a must for us. It has a huge claw foot bathtub yet the bathroom is completely updated with a free standing enclosed shower, as well and lots of room. The biggest bathroom I think I have ever had. Downstairs is a little unusual as it is in houses like this - rooms are funny shapes due to all the updating. The kitchen is gigantic. There are lots of windows. The basement has one useable room in it as well as the laundry facilities but it is rather damp. It has the original rock foundation which looks really cool. The yard is huge, tons of trees, an old orchard with plum and apple trees, walnut trees, rope swing, tree house, basketball hoop. The kids and the animals are going to love it. When we lived in this area before, I hardle had to feed Tigger because of his steady diet of mice in the fields. We are back in the area where Kaetlyn's high school is and just one block away from her best friend. She still takes the bus but it will be a much shorter ride and she could walk if she was feeling athletic. I'll take some pictures of it as soon as I can and post them here for you all to see.

Thursday Morning Pictures

Well, I had to use Kaetlyn's digital camera this morning to take some pictures of Bozenka's art for her. So while I was snapping away, Rhiannon and I decided to take some other pictures. Rhiannon took almost 80 other pictures! She took pictures of her toys, about 10 each of Sheeba and Jodi, of our garden and of our little plants. Me and Dean, too. I've included some of them here. The first one is Rhiannon, of course who loves to actually wear the hoodie of her hoodie.











Next is one shot of our little seedlings. The ones you can see here are mostly zinnias.














Here is one of me that Rhiannon took. I like it.















And here are our little crocuses poking up in the garden that won't be ours any more.

La Salle

Erin got the news today. She was accepted into La Salle College in Montreal for September. She is doing the Fashion Design program there. She got her letter this morning. She came down the Inner World School to tell me. We're going to go out and celebrate a little tonight! Wow! Montreal. That's a long, long ways away. I am excited for her and sad, too, for myself. I love her so much and she is so much a part of me to think of her across the country, by the Atlantic Ocean is hard. At least she is still in the same country! But so exciting for her - making her dreams come true. I am sure the skills that she learns there she will use for the rest of her life. She loves sewing and designing her own clothes.

So that is my big news of the day. I wrote something profound in the homeschooling online village that I am a part of. Maybe I will post it here. Sometimes I am afraid of posting my passionate beliefs for being judged. But then, if I don't, you won't ever really know me. Then I think, maybe you don't want to. But maybe you do.

Anyways, maybe that doesn't even make sense...

Star Search Report

Well, Erin didn't make it to the finals. She did an awesome job of Nut Bush - nailed it. She was way more comfortable on stage, she was dressed better. She was much happier with her performance. The judges only had good things to say about her but... 11 out of 22 were advanced. I gotta say that I don't get their selections. They chose some people who had REAL pitch problems. There were a couple of others that I was really surprised to see didn't make it and I was really surprised about some of the ones that they chose. Don't get it. They picked some old, ugly people who were really schmaltzy. Oh well, it always seems to be this way in these kinds of competitions. And like I said to Erin, there are people who make a career out of winning these competitions who never actually have a music career...

Not feeling so great today, either. I'm dragging my butt around. Still in my pj's.

Okanagan Star Search

Well, today is the semi-finals for the Okanagan Star Search. So I am leaving at 12noon with Erin to Kelowna. She's on at 2pm - that means she's got to be amongst the first. Not such a good spot. It seems like they often forget the first. We noticed last time that only one person advanced from the first set and she was the last one in the first set. But they advance 10 people today out of 20. That seems like pretty good odds to me. This time she only gets to sing one song. She's doing Tina Turner - Nut Bush. She sang it at the family reunion. The judges are all older than me so she thought they would like it. I'm going to enjoy it, that is for sure!

I am still sick. Although mostly better now. It seems like I feel pretty good for one or two days and then I wake up feeling like crap or like I could sleep all day. Today is one of those days. I managed to stay in bed until 8am which is quite a feat with Rhiannon. I miss Dean. He left Thursday morning and won't be back until late, late Sunday night. sigh. I hate being on my own when I feel crappy. I am going to make myself some nice tea and try to perk up for Erin.

The for sale sign went up this week. 4 people came to see the house yesterday. That was a little much. So we had to be gone for 4 hours. I took Jodi with us, too. Drew was in Cherryville (45 min away) so I went grocery shopping and then to pick him up and we stayed to visit for awhile (Drew's friend has a little sister who is 1 year older than Rhi). It was a nice visit. The house could be cleaner. I have been so sick for more than 2 weeks. Although the kids and Dean manage to keep the house 'clean', the tidiness factor really starts to slip....

I gotta go pick up Kaetlyn in 15 minutes so I had better go and get dressed...

Orpha Hatch Morrow Scott

Kaetlyn is doing a project for school where she is supposed to do her family history. So I re-typed this for her from the copy that grandma gave me many years ago. I thought you might enjoy it if you haven't already seen it. I think there is an error where she has her mother marrying her father-in-law...

By Orpha Hatch Morrow Scott (not dated)

My father was a polygamist and due to the pressure put on by the US Marshalls at that time in looking for these polygamists he had to go away and as my mother had a profession as a nurse and was more able to look after her family than his second wife was, he took his second wife and went to Moab Utah. I was seven years old at that time. I can well remember what hardships we went through because of this.

When I was 13 years old I became quite ill with anemia and was not expected to live much longer. When I was 14 years old my sister Olive and her husband, Jack Swain, were going to Burlington, Wyoming where my sister, Etta Dobson, was living. They wanted me to go and my mother decided that if I did go and slept on the ground that it may be the one thing that would save my life so I went with them and sure enough, I began to mend and regained my health.

Wyoming at that time was pretty much a frontier. I became very popular around Burlington as I was a very good dancer and that was about the only amusement there was there (except riding horseback).

I secured a job clerking in a store operated by Jim McKinnie. While there I met Mr. McKinnie’s stepson, David L. Morrow who began dating me and we got married Dec 19, 1901. Our courtship consisted of dancing and horseback riding. David and his brother played for dances all over the country so I used to accompany them to the dance and while he played, I danced. Most people around there were shocked when I married David as he was not a member of the LDS church and I was very religiously a member of that church.

My husband was born Nov 13, 1877 in Talmage Ohio where his mother had gone to visit her mother. He was the fifth child. The two eldest died in infancy. He had a sister Laura May and a brother Joseph Wesley. His father died when my husband was one year old. His mother married James McKinnie who homesteaded near Burlington Wyoming and my husband was raised on the ranges of Wyoming where he became a very good rider and roper. He was working in a small sawmill for L. K. Jonston at the time we got married.

My first baby was born Nov 28, 1902 at the home of my sister, Etta Dobson. I had intended to have my baby in our own home at Otto Wyoming. My sister, Olive, came to take care of me but her two little girls took sick with measles and diphtheria which was sweeping the country at that time. So I had to go to Etta’s. My sister Olive lost both of her girls one dying a few days before my baby was born and the other one two days after. My first baby was a son and we named David Lendrum after his father and grandfather. He grew to maturity and became a member of the LDS church. He married Alta Drollinger in the Cardston Temple and they had 3 sons and twin girls. At the time of this writing he lives in Salt Lake City, Utah and is Sales Manager for the Sugar House Van Lines Inc. and has 10 grandchildren. My second child was a girl, Eltie May born Sept 7, 1904 in Claresholm, Alberta, Canada. She grew to maturity and married but has no children. At the time of writing she lives in Los Angeles where she works for a bank where she has been for many years. She became a good pianist and played on radio in its infancy.

My third baby was a son, Ronald Clive born April 8, 1907 at Roundup, Alberta, Canada. He was born at my mother’s home on Willow Creek. He grew to maturity and joined the LDS church. He married Mable Jones and had two children, a boy and a girl. When the girl Marylin was ten days old, her mother died and 12 days later he buried his son, Ronald Gaylen. He remarried Lucille Severns and moved to California where he is now the Bishop of the South Pasadena Ward. He had a daughter, Gale by his second wife. My fourth, fifth and sixth children were girls. Hilma was born Dec 9, 1910 on our farm, 3 miles south of Granum, Alberta, Canada. My mother was the midwife and it was only through her expert knowledge and care that my life and that of Hilma were spared. Hilma grew to maturity and was baptized a member of the LDS church. She is a graduate nurse graduating from the Holy Cross Hospital in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She married Fred Bullock and has two sons and a daughter. They live in Powell River, BC, Canada. Verna Aleda was born March 2, 1916 in Blackie, Alberta, Canada. She grew to maturity and is a member of the LDS church. She married Clifford Thompson and has two sons and two daughters. They live in North Vancouver, BC, Canada and I make my home with them. Verna is one of the stalwarts in the church and is always doing a good deed. Verna also had a son that died in infancy. So did Hilma.

Laura Madge was born Feb 15, 1919 in Blackie, Alberta Canada. Her father died when she was only 2 years of age. She grew to maturity and is a member of the LDS church. She married Fred Clarke and has at the time of writing seven children, four boys and three girls. They live in Powell River, BC, Canada.

After we were married my husband went back to the sawmill where he was working and I stayed with my sister Olive. About a month later, my husband came back and we rented a small home in Otto, Wyoming where we lived until the next fall except for a few months that we worked for a Mr. Dowse until he sold his farm and went to Canada. The May after my first child was born we left for Alberta Canada. We drove in a covered wagon to the Lewistown, Montana where we stopped to visit my mother who had married Jim McKinnie and stayed there. We remained there for about a month. We left there with our covered wagon and three horses, one of them my saddle horse, Buttons. We crossed the border into Canada the 5th day of July 1903 and proceeded to David’s brother’s place in the foothills west of Granum where they had filed a homestead. Wesley filed on the NW quarter and we filed on the NE quarter of the same section. We built a log cabin and moved into our own home that fall. I knew the greatest joy of my life when we moved into that little log cabin. We sold my saddle horse to buy the lumber for the floor. The cabin was small but oh how much love was crammed into it. I had not had a home since I was a little girl and I was supremely happy there. We traded our home for a wheat farm south of Granum something we always regretted. After several crop failures there we moved to Aldersyde, Alberta where my husband bought grain for the Nation Elevator Co. In 1914 we moved to Blackie Alberta where my husband bought grain for the United Grain Growers. In 1920 we went to Castor Alberta where my husband bought grain for the Alberta Pacific Grain Co. While in this place one of the greatest tragedies of my life occurred. While loading a car of barley, April 29, 1921, my husband was suffocated and taken from me and my family. Thus ended nineteen years of a very happy marriage. We buried my husband in Claresholm, Alberta, Canada. I moved my family to Calgary, Alberta where my eldest son went to work for the company his father had been working for.

In 1925 I married a childless widower, Harry Scott and moved onto his farm west of Gleichen where I worked very hard for several years.

The Joy Luck Club

Well, after what Katie said about the Joy Luck Club book, I decided to read it. (I didn't like the movie because of the drowned baby.) As I am still quite sick, I have had time this week. I really enjoyed the book, as I have all of the other Amy Tan books I have read. And I must point out that in the book, no one drowns a baby. This annoys me! Why would they add something so terrible to the movie? In the book, the woman who is married into the extremely controlling family and is treated with great disrespect, never even sleeps with her husband and she gets them to release her by faking a dream (rather like Fiddler on the Roof). Another woman is married at 16 to a much older man who is extremely unfaithful and eventually abandons her while she is pregnant. She finds out he has moved in with an Opera singer and then forcibly aborts her baby. Not so nice but also not the same thing as drowning a baby. She is certainly haunted by that experience and blames herself when years later she gives birth to a baby boy with a defect who is born dead or dies shortly afterwards. I am angry at the movie!

I am still sick. I haven't been this sick in a long, long time. Dean says he doesn't think he has ever seem me so sick. It has been a week now. It has been 7 days of aching body and stuffed head and tiredness. I am tired of being sick. Last night I slept with a humidifier to help with my coughing in the night. It did help a lot. I haven't used a humidifier since I was a kid - I hated them. I'll feel a bit better one day and then I will feel as bad as the worst day the next.

On a positive note, Rhiannon and I planted seeds to start indoors for our garden and they are almost all up. We have wee zinnias and daisys and tomatoes and cauliflower and wild lupins and brown eyed susans. Still waiting for my cucumbers and zucchinis to come up. It is fun and exciting to watch them sprout.