Adios to another child

Dave and Courtney pulled up stakes and headed out to graduate school this week. Boo hoo hoo is all I can say. It's another one of those happy/sad situations. I'm know I'm being totally selfish, but we've loved having them close by for the last several years and we enjoyed their visits and our joint activities probably more than they will know. We'll really miss that. They've been great friends and I must way that I absolutely love relating to my children and their spouses as adults. Good times, good conversation and a lot of fun.
But, life goes on, and so does theirs - just to another state and another experience. They'll do well. I have no question about that. They'll switch roles with Courtney earning the pay check and Dave putting in the study hours. Hopefully, some day they'll come back. I can dream, can't I? They'll have some family in the area where they are going and it will be fun for them to spend more time together. Our loss is their gain.
Rick helped Dave drive the truck down a few days ago. They will be setting up their first apartment and actually using their wedding gifts. Since they've been tending the home of Courtney's parents these last two years, they'll have a much smaller place to manage and no yard work to worry about. Hooray!
We had a fun "Adios" party and barbecue with some of Dave's good friends that he grew up with along with his good college buddies last weekend. I really like Dave's friends. They're great young men doing good things with their lives. Most of them are married and it was fun to eat and then have a rousing game of volleyball with the huge plastic beach ball out in the park.
Best of luck Dave and Courtney. We love you very much.

the secret's in the sauce

I'm kind of picky about potato salad. I'm not a fan of pickles in a potato salad. I'm also not sure that mustard has any place in a potato salad. But today my friends, I'm going to share a family recipe. The BEST potato salad ever. My mother-in-law makes a killer potato salad and she made up the recipe by accident. She didn't have enough mayonnaise, so she used.........................................................................................................................................................
RANCH DRESSING instead. Who would have thought? The secret is in the dressing.

Pat's potato salad
~take six large potatoes (or more if you're making a large salad) boiled with the skins on until cooked, cooled, peeled and cubed in a large bowl
~cook six hard boiled eggs while the potatoes are cooking. Cool.
~cut up and add one entire bunch of green onion, tops included
~add 1 1/2 to 2 cups Ranch Dressing (I buy the big bottle of Gregg's in the refrigerated section at Costco)
~add 1 T. Lawry's seasoning
~Grate the eggs and add to the salad.
~pepper to taste

Mix the potatoes, eggs, onions, Ranch Dressing and Lawry's. Let it sit for at least a couple of hours to absorb the dressing and for the flavors to mix. Add more Ranch Dressing if needed. Make sure the salad is moist enough (there's nothing worse than a dry potato salad.) It's best if the salad is made the day before and allowed to chill and blend flavors during the night.

That's it. Five ingredients. No pickles. No mustard.
Enjoy!

A worthwhile blog

I've been following this blog for several years now (thanks to a recommendation from Claire.) It inspires me. It sometimes shames me that I don't do more for others, and it always amazes me. It reminds me once again that we are spoiled beyond measure being wealthy Americans. Why do we have so much when so many in the world have so little? Shouldn't we be doing more to help?
The wonderful woman who writes it knows what is really important in life. She puts things into perspective. She looks for the good in bad situations. And she does simple but important things to make a difference. I admire that. I really, really admire that.

We're about to begin a home remodel. Do I really "need it" or do I just "want it?" How do you justify your wants from your needs? We really don't "need" anything but food, shelter, clothes and warmth. What's a person to do when they have so much and there are so many challenges in the world? I'm having a hard time justifying what we're about to begin.

Looking for Good in Lagos. Check it out by clicking here.

Rupert connections

Second row from the bottom - me, some drawing, Brian

Rupert 5th ward girls - bottom row - Lorene, Sue, me, Roxanne, Brenda
Top row - Celia, Carla, Kathy, Rita, Lynn


my 6th birthday party with Joan, me, brother Paul, June, John, Celia, Rulon and Mac Bruce. Four boys and three girls - wow I was progressive!
Freshmen in college at home for Christmas - front - me, Jill, Celia, Shelley
back - Carla, Sheri, Karla, Colleen and Nola.

Good ole Facebook!
Thanks to Facebook, I had the delightful experience yesterday of reconnecting with some of my childhood friends from Rupert. I can't tell you how happy this made me to see these wonderful people again! I even got tears in my eyes.
Here's how the story unfolded. I was just minding my own business when one day I saw that Joan S. was on Facebook. I sent her a friend request and she accepted. We wrote a message or two back and forth and reconnected. We were friends in KINDERGARTEN and her mother was my kindergarten teacher. She was always the most kind and sweet person and I've always though a lot of her. Then I became Facebook friends with her husband Brian Mac. who use to live in the Rupert 5th ward back in the day. His younger sister Sheri Mac. became my friend and through the years back then and I always enjoyed talking to her (plus she and my younger brother Paul had a thing for each other.) Time marched on and we all married other people (except for Brian and Joan who married one another!) and got on with our lives. We lost contact. I did see Brian at our 30 year high school reunion and had a wonderful time talking several years ago. He and Joan live in Missouri and they come to Utah once a year to visit their dad and step mom who live in my town. I do run into Brian's older sister Julie who lives about four blocks away. Crazy. Anyway...back to the story.
Through Joan I become Facebook friends with both Brian and Sheri and last week Sheri wrote that she was in town visiting her dad. Once she got here, she mentioned that she was shopping in a large box department store not far from my house. I told her that I would love to see her if she had time, and low and behold, next thing I knew, we had set a time to get together! I went over to her dad's home and visited with Joan, Brian and Sheri for two solid hours. It was so wonderful!
I was completely and totally struck by one thought...that they haven't changed much in all those years. It's been over 30 years since I've seen Sheri. She was beautiful, kind, sweet, funny, talented and a delight to talk to when we were in our 20s, and guess what? She is exactly the same. Joan too. Brian as well. They are wonderful people, doing wonderful things. They help others, they serve, they do good in their communities and in their families. They've raised some amazing children (Sheri and her husband Bruce have four daughters and two sons, Brian and Joan have five daughters) and it was so fun to show pictures of our families and know that they completely cared about knowing more about me, my family, my mother and my brothers and sisters. They were so interested in catching up and I was interested in their families and their stories. Their dad is in his 80s and he is still the same. It was so wonderful to see him as well. He was my LDS Bishop back when I served my mission. He is a gem of a man and I remember him so kindly.
Relationships are what matter in life. I'm so blessed to have good friends, even those from my past so many years ago. Sheri invited us to visit her in Orlando and Brian and Joan invited us to visit them in St. Louis. We just might!

Family research of interest

I work around this stuff all the time, but these pieces really caught my attention recently:

~Video games linked to poor relationships with friends, family in new study

The research is based on information collected from 813 college students around the country. As the amount of time playing video games went up, the quality of relationships with peers and parents went down.

“It may be that young adults remove themselves from important social settings to play video games, or that people who already struggle with relationships are trying to find other ways to spend their time,” Walker said. “My guess is that it’s some of both and becomes circular.”

BYU home page

~Sisters give siblings better mental health, study shows

Padilla-Walker’s research stems from BYU’s Flourishing Families Project and will appear in the August issue of the Journal of Family Psychology. The study included 395 families with more than one child, at least one of whom was an adolescent between 10 and 14 years old. The researchers gathered a wealth of information about each family’s dynamic, then followed up one year later. Statistical analyses showed that having a sister protected adolescents from feeling lonely, unloved, guilty, self-conscious and fearful. It didn’t matter whether the sister was younger or older, or how far apart the siblings were agewise.

Brothers mattered, too. The study found that having a loving sibling of either gender promoted good deeds, such as helping a neighbor or watching out for other kids at school. In fact, loving siblings fostered charitable attitudes more than loving parents did. The relationship between sibling affection and good deeds was twice as strong as that between parenting and good deeds.

USA Today and BYU home page.

~Child behavior ~ Routine can help kids stave off anxiety ~
Keeping young children on a stable schedule of activities - with consistent wake and sleep times, regular play periods and reliable intervals between meals - can make them less anxious about new situations and environments as they grow older...research finds that babies who had more dependable routines at 1 month were less likely to be anxious at age 10. Time magazine, August 9, 2010.

~Stayin’ alive: That’s what friends are for

Relationships improve your odds of survival by 50 percent

In the journal PLoS Medicine, BYU professors Julianne Holt-Lunstad and Timothy Smith report that social connections – friends, family, neighbors or colleagues – improve our odds of survival by 50 percent. Here is how low social interaction compares to more well-known risk factors:

- Equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day

- Equivalent to being an alcoholic

- More harmful than not exercising

- Twice as harmful as obesity

“The idea that a lack of social relationships is a risk factor for death is still not widely recognized by health organizations and the public,” write the PLoS Medicine editors in a summary of the BYU study and why it was done.

National outlets shown on the BYU homepage.

Does some of this research make you think??? It does for me.