This has been an extremely hard month. After surviving the longest, and most relentless winter of my life, the weather has finally started to clear up! We have started celebrating "no snow" days. A large majority of the snow has melted and I can almost get down the north side of my driveway (it has been a good four months). I am so relieved and grateful that our property has escaped the major flooding that so many people in Northern Utah and Southern Idaho have been dealing with. There has also been major flooding along several of the roads that I drive on. I have had to stop on numerous occasions to drive through water on the road. The road to Downata Hot springs has been so flooded that they have actually closed the road. Even though the excess water has created some major trials, our prayers have been answered and we have received an abundance of much needed water for our area.
This is the Devil Creek road that I drive on to get to Malad.
This is the road that has been closed going into Downata Hot Springs.
All of my adult children have found housing and are now living on their own again. It just feels so quiet around here without Larry and the majority of my children. Now that we are down to only three of us living at home it has really highlighted the reality that Larry is really gone. Coming to stark realities of all of the responsibilities I now have to face on my own is finally starting to hit me. I find myself questioning so many things--Can I maintain this lifestyle we have on my own? Should I maintain the lifestyle we created on my own? Am I going to be able to keep my property? How do I make all of this work?
One of the blessings of staying committed to writing a monthly blog post is that it forces me to review the month and remember the good times even while the emotions of grief and sadness seek to overwhelm me. I have also stayed committed to attending the temple once a week and continue to get a weekly massage. As I have been hit with some pretty strong emotions, I found myself using facebook as a crutch. I didn't like how addicted I was becoming to it and so I have temporarily deactivated my account. I am also working on getting myself and Nate and Rachel into some grief counseling to help process the very heavy emotions that we are all going through.
I spend a lot of time pondering and learning about what it is like on the other side of the veil. To say I am excited for the second coming would be an understatement. This world is such a mess in so many ways and we have a huge hole in our heart and in our lives that will not be filled until we are reunited as a family. These are some of the books that I have studied from:
Spring is Finally Coming!!!
Nate, and his friend Koltrin, spent an afternoon chipping some of the ice out of our shop. Every time I would go down there to feed the horses, I had to be so careful to not trip and fall on the shop floor that had become one big skating ring. I am so grateful that we survived the whole winter without any major falls or injuries.
This is the creek in Malad by where Larry grew up that has not had water in it for years. What a blessing to see these waters flowing.
This is the field above my house. While most of the snow has melted, this patch of snow remains.
I love the following picture so much. Nothing warms my heart more than to see my boys working and having fun together. I am always amazed at how smart they are and I love seeing them carry on Larry's legacy of hard work and problem solving. I am positive that Larry feels great satisfaction in watching the amazing men that they have grown into.
Update on Elder Ben Ward
Trip to Nevada
OFFICIAL SONG OF THE STATE OF NEVADA
Home Means Nevada
Way out in the land of the setting sun,
Where the wind blows wild and free,
There’s a lovely spot, just the only one
That means home sweet home to me.
If you follow the old Kit Carson trail,
Until desert meets the hills,
Oh you certainly will agree with me,
It’s the place of a thousand thrills.
Home means Nevada Home means the hills,
Home means the sage and the pine.
Out by the Truckee, silvery rills,
Out where the sun always shines,
Here is the land which I love the best,
Fairer than all I can see.
Deep in the heart of the golden west
Home means Nevada to me.
Whenever the sun at the close of day,
Colors all the western sky,
Oh my heart returns to the desert grey
And the mountains tow’ring high.
Where the moon beams play in shadowed glen,
With the spotted fawn and doe,
All the live long night until morning light,
Is the loveliest place I know.
Home means Nevada Home means the hills,
Home means the sage and the pines.
Out by the Truckee’s silvery rills,
Out where the sun always shines,
There is the land that I love the best,
Fairer than all I can see.
Right in the heart of the golden west
Home means Nevada to me.
It was very good for me to spend a week in my home state of Nevada over spring break. It was the first major road trip that we have taken with the dogs and I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun it was to have them along and how well they traveled.
It was so great to get to spend time with my sister, Janice, her husband Darrin, and Darrin's mom who is living in the house next to them. Because of health problems, Janice has had to retire early from her career in nursing. Despite her health challenges, she is enjoying herself at home taking care of Darrin and his mom and doing projects in the yard. While visiting them we got to see their German Sheperd puppies that had just been born, we had lunch with some of my old high school friends, took rides out on the side by side, and we played a lot of corn hole.
I was able to meet up with these two beautiful ladies (Gayle in the middle and Kristina on the right) for lunch. These were some of my best friends from high school. We had so much fun catching up and sharing some good laughs. I was especially happy to see that we are all still God fearing women who have done our best to raise good families and be good citizens of our country.
Easter
One of the highlights of my month was listening to our semi-annual general conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. One of my favorite talks from conference was a talk about Easter by Elder Gary Stevensen .
Clifton City continued on with its traditional Easter egg hunt despite the large amounts of snow that were still on the ground.
This year for Easter Sunday we had a ham dinner with Dallin and Alyssa and Larry's sister, Lorraine, and her family at my house. I still have not taken down my Christmas tree in the basement so I decided to light it up for Easter. We ended up doing our Easter egg hunt in the basement rather than outside because it was too wet and cold.
Update on Ace Store
The new ACE store is moving right along, especially now that we have not had to battle the weather as much. One of the big projects this month was running the water line to the store. They had to tear up one of the main roads and divert traffic for several days to complete this project. The store is scheduled to be completed by June 20th and opening around July 20th as it takes about a month to stock the store.
Lila & Smokey Go To A New Home
This was by far one of the hardest things that I have had to do. After surviving the winter with these two I came to the harsh reality that I needed to simplify things and find a new home for our horses. As these were the last of the animals that were connected to Larry, and he loved going down and working with these horses so much, this was a really hard decision, but I knew that it was something I needed to do. It was so stressful having to feed them all winter and I have no time to work with them.
We bought Lila (the older mare) from the Corbridges in Malad 4+ years ago. We later took in a traumatized mustang from the BLM that had came off the of the Nevada desert and we named him "Mustang". Larry worked so hard to gain Mustang's trust and finally had him in a place where he would trust him. In an effort to get him to calm down even more, Larry arranged for the vet to come out to our property and cut Mustang. Right after the surgery he ran out into the muck in the field and got his wound infected. Sadly, he passed away from the infection.
A few months later, Lila gave birth to his son, whom we named "Smokey". They were both good and beautiful horses. Even though this was a very hard thing to do, I am so grateful that we were able to sell them to some good people from Vernal that are very experienced with horses and practice gentle ways in working with them.
Miscellaneous Pictures From The Month
Yes, we went to the play "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" again, but this time it was in Preston. Malad had done such an excellent job with it and I thought that we might be disappointed, but we were pleasantly surprised. I especially liked all of the customized lines that related to the Preston area that they included.
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Happy Birthday Nate!!!
Because Nate's birthday is in July, they celebrated it in his classroom in April. The birthday tradition in Mrs. Greene's classroom is for the birthday child to pick out a pair of her crazy glasses or a hat and wear them while all of the children come up one at a time and write a word that describes the birthday person. They are then given the poster to take home and hang on their wall. As the mom I got to start by writing the first three words. The words I chose to describe Nate are Thoughtful, Fun and Talented.
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