More inter-web blabbing. Today, Courtship & Wedding

Today is our 16th wedding anniversary. Good day to add this topic. I'm going to go ahead and type the questions and then answer them in order so that I don't get off topic like last time.

When and how did you meet your spouse?

I didn't really meet him until we were in our early twenties but I knew of him in high school. The first time I became aware of Owen was senior year. We were in A' Capella choir together. (Honestly to this day I wondered why Owen took that class.) I had this super smart/ genius-type friend Tom whom I was very fond of. He was someone I wanted to be like. Reserved, intelligent and kind. One day I walked into the choir room for class and beheld Tom talking in a very intimate and affectionate way with this tall, blond muscle bound boy with a slight mullet wearing a heavy medal T-Shirt. I was slack-jawed and as soon as I had the chance, I questioned Tom who this mystery friend was. I wondered how on earth Tom was friends with and really liked someone like this. Tom told me that he was Owen, his brother. I was stunned. No way! Really?! Seriously?! Honestly, to me Tom and Owen were polar opposites as far as looks and presentation was concerned and I thought secretly that either Owen or Tom was adopted. I once tried to get to know Owen a little better when I was at Tom’s house hanging out. I suggested that we play D and D because I had heard that Owen would play with Tom and a few other boys. I went along and tried to initiate a friendship but Owen acted as though I didn't exist and it was clear that this one wasn't interested on any level in me. Fine. I had enough male friends to date and hang out with anyway. Once while I was in that choir class, I had the strongest impression that my future husband was sitting behind me. I turned around to look at who was there and realized that there were at least 15 boys sitting behind me. Of course, Owen was the one actually sitting exactly right behind me in the next row up. Something that I realized once we were engaged. That’s as far as our meeting went until after Owen returned home from Romania.

The period of time starting 6 months from Owens return from his mission, our stars were aligning. I had become obsessed with the plight of orphans in Romania. I had convinced a group of my friends with impassioned pleas that we NEEDED to go to Romania and take with us paint, toys, soft blankets and clothes to help at least one orphanage have better conditions for a few children. We had talked to our teacher from High School who had done something earlier who gave us contacts in Romania. Plans were in the works. I was saving everything I earned in order to pay my way and also pay the way for our eventual interpreter. We decided that it would be a good idea to take with us a returned missionary who had served in Romania and was familiar with the language and the culture to serve as part interpreter part priesthood wielding body guard while we were in country. When my friends and I were discussing this, I immediately remembered Tom’s brawny brother who had just returned from his mission to Romania. We pitched the idea to Owen over the phone and promised that we would furnish travel food expenses if he would come with us for the month. He agreed (he said to be exposed to several eligible and lovely young ladies for possible courtship) and came to our next meeting.

He was already at the meeting when I got there. When I first saw him, I knew that eventually we would be married. Of course, I thought it would be several months before we would even get to dating but eventually we'd get there. Owen and I were made a work team for our valley. We were to work together gathering donations of every sort as well as securing financial support from businesses for the trip. Owen and I spent three weeks working side by side doing our best to better lives of Romanian orphans and liking each other more and more every day. One day, Owen gave me a broken watch from Russia. It was a silly gift but I remember feeling really moved that he had given me something from his mission experience. On Valentine’s Day I took him a card and some flowers right before I went on a date with another guy. I spent the evening wishing I was with Owen. The next night, I talked Owen into going to a friend’s wedding. Owen met my grandmother,  my best friend’s family and many of my friends and they all reported to me that they were strongly impressed that they were meeting my future Husband. Owen and I were feeling it too; Even though we had only known each other for three weeks. We had never kissed, or held hands, or even hugged. Yet, on the 17th of February, Owen asked me to marry him as we sat in front of the Provo temple. After I said yes, we shared our first kiss. The whole night, I thought he was going to tell me that we needed to slow things down due to the fact that we were supposed to be traveling together for a whole month. I was learning that my future husband was a doer when he felt something strong. We were engaged for two and a half months in which time I managed to pull together a wedding. We were married on May Day. All of the light posts of downtown Salt Lake City were wrapped in spring colored ribbons. It felt as though the whole world were celebrating our love. We held our reception the next day at the Springville Museum of Art. We had a lovely huge cake, a classical guitarist and beautiful pink roses and calla lilies. It was so beautiful! I loved it. I love Owen more and have done for better and worse these past sixteen years.

Me...Personal History that I'm Blabbing onto the Internet.

I've been feeling really a really strong push to write my personal history.  I consider myself a really poor technical writer but in the end, I decided that it would be best to just do it and not worry about the possible disrespect of others.  SO today I've decided to start with my Early Years.

My most vivid memory is of when my mother was pregnant with my brother Lowell.  I remember pressing my ear up to my mothers warm, firm belly to listen and feel my little brother.  I remember hearing gurgling and feeling his restlessness in the womb as with my cheek and my hand and I sat cradling my mom and brother.

I remember that from the earliest of my memory I loved two things most of all:  the kitchen and music.  I remember always being in the way in the kitchens of my mom, my grandmas and my aunts.  I always wanted to help.  I always had an opinion of what was yucky and what I thought each dish needed. Looking back, I know that I must have  aggravated everyone with this but I'm grateful that they were kind to me. I was SUCH a picky eater!  If something wasn't just right, I would not touch it.  I was so deeply effected by the smells, the colors and the textures of food.  I loved to watch the organoleptic properties of things transform before our eyes into something nourishing and beautiful.

 As I learned to prepare food myself, I remember as I became more experienced, it seemed to me that the food itself had a way of communicating when it was ready.  The smell of tomato when it was just right in a marinara or the right color of a piece of chicken.  The first time I decide to make a tomato sauce from scratch was one of the most exhilarating experiences that I've ever had in the kitchen.  I was ten years old and I had to rely on taste and smell alone to get it right because I had no books or recipes to guide me.  I raided my mothers spice cupboard looking for what smelled like spaghetti sauce.  It turned out pretty tasty and from that moment on, I was a full-on foodie. 

Once, when my mom was sick with the flu, I wanted to make her happy.  It was a Saturday and I had spent the morning watching a PBS show called The Victory Garden.  One of the segments always involved a Chef preparing something delicious.  That morning it was escargot in a garlic butter sauce.  I was impressed and thought that such a glorious dish would please my mother.  I went into the yard and found only 3 snails so I then found 4 slugs to make up the rest. The chef had used fresh garlic sauteed in butter and then the snails lightly tossed in the pan until golden and tender.  My nine year old self ripped the poor snails from their shells (because I thought the shells would be too difficult to chew), heated up my moms skillet over high heat, decimated some margarine, threw the snail/ slug combo into the pan and covered them thoroughly with garlic powder.  I finished the meal with salt which melted the slugs into slimy booger-like piles and slid the whole mess on a plate.  I decide to get a few rose petals onto the plate to make it look pretty and presented it to my mom.  She was so gracious and kind even though I made her vomit with my "meal".  I love her for that.  What a great mom.

Well, I went off on kind of a tangent so next time I will recommence with my early years and try to stay on topic.

He CAN do it!

I have been given a humbling and powerful lesson by my son this weekend.  Yesterday when we were at the store intending to buy groceries for the week, we felt a strong feeling to get Dylan a bike with half of our budgeted food money.  Both O and I were a little tenuous about how long it would take our boy to be able to ride the bike unassisted but we felt such a strong feeling that we got it anyway.  Of course, I tried to buy training wheels but papa said "No!  He can do this and I will help him do this without training wheels."  This made me nervous.  Our boy doesn't have the best balance.  We bought him a bike a few years ago with training wheels already attached and the poor boy fell off of it over and over.  He falls off of his scooter, he falls off of the side walk, he will sometimes randomly fall down for no apparent reason.  I was certain that we would be making a trip to the emergency room.  Yesterday, D was nervous but he had faith in his papa.  They practiced and practiced until O couldn't do it any longer.  This morning before 6am, D was at it again and this time he was able to do it totally unassisted.  I was so impressed!  But it was time and he was ready.  It brought to mind how this applies to parenting in general.  You want your children to succeed and if you're like me, you may even encourage them to try sooner than is right and they will fail.  Miserably. Then you  can't imagine how  your child will ever find success. That's why we must keep ourselves in tune with our Heavenly Father.  He knows the beginning from the end and he will help you know how to help your children at the right time for them.  Today, I am certain that our boy will be successful at everything that is in his best interest.  We will love him and encourage him, and allow him to grow but most of all, we will gift him with faith in his capacity to succeed and listen more closely for the clues that come from him and Heavenly Father for the right time to act.

New Beginnings

So far this blog has been rot.  Mostly because I was unwilling to really share myself.  There are lots of reasons why, but now I'm over it.  Today for school Dylan and I decided to go out and try and catch a tadpole.  Sadly, none were had.  We did find some minnows!  Here is a picture of Dylan with his prize.  How did he catch such a cool thing?  Well first, he gingerly inched his way down to the water surface and cautiously skimmed his minnow catching apparatus across the surface of the water scaring the minnows far away from him.  The mama intervenes at this point and tries to get down the steep and treacherous blown concrete bank with a serious case of sciatica impeding her movement.  "And what happens next?"  You ask with baited breath?  Well, the mama gets her well-treaded running shoes stuck on the concrete, slips and slides down the bank like a block of cheddar on a cheese grater. In the end, the mother is sitting in 2 feet of sludge and slime bruised and bloody but resolved.  This fall has  positioned her in the center of minnow action enabling her to catch the prize quickly for her beloved son.  The son is happy and so the mother is happy. 

 The End 

Boo

I've had blogg block for a long time now.  I've wanted to blog but at times what I've written was used in attack against me by people who I considered family.  I'm over it for what its

Perspective

Mario’s Perspective, that’s what we need to have. Dylan has been playing a game on the Wii called Super Paper Mario lately. Video games have become so complex, so clever, and so capable of stealing hours and hours of time if you let it. But I digress. I’ve never been a fan of video games but my son is. I’m obliged to watch and listen to his beautiful little voice describe what he’s doing as he maneuvers various levels and bad guys and endless chattering dialog. I’m always impressed at how good he is at these sorts of things. On this particular game, the Mario character has the ability to switch between 2D and 3D views of the game like this:

Here is the traditional video game view.

And here is the same view when he changes his perspective.

It’s so amazing to me how changing perspective can sometimes make the game so much easier to play.
All of a sudden obstacles that were impossible become easily avoidable like this:

When viewed from the standard view, these thwomps form an impassable barrier, change perspectives and voila! You can just walk back behind the thin things and you’re past them in a blink.

This has been a rather long way of saying that really, point of view is the difference between a “major and completely impossible” problem and an opportunity to do some creative problem solving. Pretty smart, I like it.

Maybe video games aren’t all that bad… sometimes.

School of Various Sorts

School started for us Arizona folk two and a half weeks ago.  The scheduling here is quite nice because summer breaks aren't too long and there are several other breaks added to the year to break up the monotony of classwork.  Dylan loves his new school so far and we are overjoyed at the great abilities of all of the school faculty!  Dylan declared for the first time ever in his elementary school career that he "loves" school and hopes to be going to this school for a long time thence.  We are thrilled to hear it!

As for me and mine, things are always interesting.  I was somewhat shocked this summer to have received an award letter for a sizable grant from the Career Education Scholarship Fund.  I didn't personally apply for this grant but someone at LCB went out of their way to apply on my behalf.  I wanted to share a portion of the award letter with you...
"The mission of the CESC is to provide scholarships and grants to students who have financial need and are making strong academic process in their chosen field of study.  Your Grant Application was reviewed by the staff at the School and by a committee of the Career Education Scholarship Fund.  You should be very proud of your selection to receive this Grant, as the CESF received several hundred Grant Applications from students across the US and Canada."  Indeed I did feel very blessed and humbled that someone had gone to the effort to extend this opportunity to me and even more blessed that I had received it.   I was just about to abandon my schooling completely but because of this grand vote of confidence (and the money of course), I decided to soldier through and obtain my degree.  I do love what I'm doing and I'm so glad that I will at long last finish a program.  I become almost giddy when I think of doing this work professionally for the rest of my life as well.
Our Owen is receiving a large amount of satisfaction from his new job and is making leaps and bounds in learning all of the little technical business things that goes along with doing his work as a therapist.  He is happy.  We are altogether the most satisfied we've been collectively in some years.  The photo is of Dylan on his first day of school.

Cheers,
Rebecca