A Father's Day Birthday

Mark, the father of my 3 children, was born on June 21, 1968. Every so many years his birthday happens to fall on Father's Day.

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This is one of those years. Mark is 41 today.

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Combining a birthday and Father's Day can be tricky. Do we buy 2 separate cards or choose one over the other? Do we get him two different gifts? Two different cakes? Two different favorite meals? Open the gifts at the same time?

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His favorite cake was an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen, like the one at left. That was in 1995, when Father's Day was 3 days before his 27th birthday.

Although we are no longer married, I wish Mark well. He loves our children and they adore him. I hope he'll always have a meaningful relationship with them.

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Despite the addictions that came between us, I'm deeply grateful that together we were blessed with three amazing children.

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Thanksgiving 1989. Sarah was 3 weeks old, Mark was 21, I was 35.

Mark was an attentive, doting dad. Sarah was a ray of sunlight in our lives and Mark was very proud of her. (She's 5 months old in this picture.)

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Sarah was born in the middle of my final semester of college classes. She was delivered 3 weeks early by emergency c-section and we both spent a week in the hospital, but I only missed one week of my classes.

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I couldn't have done it without Mark. I took Sarah to all my classes, but at home when I had to focus on my studies, Mark made dinner, fed and bathed Sarah, and got up with her in the middle of the night. When she was colicky, he patiently rocked her for hours so I could rest.

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He was just as attentive and proud when Jacob came along. (Here, Sarah is 20 months old and Jacob is 1 day old, June 1991.)

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By then we had moved here and I was teaching. The economy was sluggish and Mark couldn't find a job, so he was Mr. Mom for 2 years. He took good care of our apartment and even better care of our children. They were very attached to him.

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Mark was a very hands-on dad. He enjoyed getting down on the floor and playing with the kids, and they could always count on him for hugs. He wasn't even squeamish about sharing cups and ice cream cones with his drooly toddlers!

By the time Dylan came along 6 years later, Mark was really struggling with his addictions, but he still adored his youngest child. I remember how proud he was to hold him and show him off to everyone he met.

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Here he is communicating with 3-month-old Dylan in October 1997.

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Father's Day is hard for our kids. They miss their dad, especially on the day they want to honor and spoil him. They each took a turn talking to him on the phone tonight. I can tell Mark misses them, too.

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We pray for him every day.

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So happy birthday, Mark, and happy Father's Day, too!

The Out-of-Towners

My nephew Jeremy, his wife Cami, and their two children spent the past week here in the White Mountains. It was fun to visit with them.
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Cami's family had their family reunion at the nearby Roundhouse Resort. They came up on Friday the 12th and stayed for 6 days.

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This is Jeremy, Cami, Jaren (11 months old), and Analyce (age 3) with bunny Cocoa.

When they first arrived, they stopped by our house to drop off their dog, Jack. Jack happens to be the brother of our dog, Diego, both born in the same litter.

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That's Jack on the left, with the tan muzzle. Jack and Diego got along very well.

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We took care of Jack while they attended their reunion. My kids, the animal lovers, were in heaven!

Both times that their family was at our home, Analyce spent most of the visit cuddling Sarah's rabbit Cocoa Puff. On that first day, she didn't even want to leave. She made it clear that she would gladly trade in Jack for the bunny!

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When Sarah allowed Analyce to settle Cocoa back into her hutch, the crisis passed. We promised to let her hold Cocoa again when they returned.
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On their final day here, even Jaren overcame his shyness to try to pet the rabbit.

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Jaren has taken his first shaky steps, so he'll be walking very soon. Heck, he may already be walking in the 2 days since he returned home!

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On Thursday, we all got together with my dad and step-mom Kathy to have lunch at El Cupido's, my dad's favorite Mexican restaurant. He's on a first-name basis with all the employees there!

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We had an enjoyable visit and a very late lunch. It was 5 pm by the time Jeremy and Cami loaded up Jack and started on the 4-hour drive home.

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And poor Jeremy had to be at work by 5:00 the following morning! He's a helicopter pilot for their local hospital, evacuating patients by air in emergencies.

This clip is a 3-minute conversation with Analyce. I'm sorry the camera didn't pick her up well. I love listening to preschoolers trying to talk like little adults.

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She tells us of Jaren's experience in the pool and announces whether Mommy is having a baby boy or girl. Toward the end, Jaren joins the discussion!

Come on in!

This week has been filled with appointments, visits, and activities, so we put deep-cleaning on hold until next week. However, last week we did get the living room and kitchen finished.

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I'm pleased to say the kids have done a great job keeping the cleaned rooms clean these past 2 weeks.

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Maybe there's hope for them yet!

In the photo above, Jacob and Sarah are hard at work. It took a day and a half to do the job.

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At right is the finished product. That's the living room as seen from the kitchen.

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Now, you just come on in, have a seat, and make yourself comfortable!

Our house is tiny, just 1200 square feet. It seems to shrink as my kids grow. There are many things I'd love to improve: a bigger kitchen, a full-size laundry room, showers in both bathrooms, more storage space.

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Even so, it is our home. Small is cozy when you enjoy each others' company. Old, worn out furniture is undeniably comfortable. We are surrounded by shared memories.

Our favorite books and collections rest on the shelves. I no longer collect anything, but for a while I collected ceramic cats, castles, and Japanese art.

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I worked in a Japanese factory in Anaheim from May 1978 to March 1980. We manufactured heat-shrink labels, like the ones on the necks of the old Kraft salad dressing bottles. You broke open the label at the perforation.

My co-workers were fresh from Japan and spoke only a little English. They gave themselves American names like John Wayne or Kirk Douglas.

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This fan collection is on the wall of my home office. Each was a gift from a co-worker. They went home to Japan and returned with gifts, including Japanese candies and a raw silk scarf.

This is the side of the room with a view, but it's sure hard to get a clear picture with sunlight pouring in the window in the background!

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How do those home and garden magazines do it?

On the opposite side of the room is the entertainment center. Dylan spends more time here than anyone, playing Wii and GameCube with his friends.

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My favorite souvenirs are also on this side of the room.

We always come home with tee-shirts proclaiming our vacation destinations, but my favorite souvenirs are the ones that show our family together.
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This portrait was done at Disneyland in July 2007. Everyone who sees it agrees that the artist drew us all well, but that she captured my likeness especially well. I'm not too sure I like that!
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Our photographs were etched by laser into this big crystal cube when we went to Las Vegas in 2003, creating a 3-dimensional portrait. It is hands down the most money I ever spent on a souvenir, but I just love it. (The cost: $220)

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It was hard to get a decent shot of it, but if you click on this picture I think you'll be able to see all of our 3-D faces pretty well.

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This is my roll-top desk on a little wall between the kitchen and the hall.

And here we have our short little hall. There isn't much wall space in my house, but I've filled nearly every inch with family portraits.
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I truly appreciate art. I like to look at the gorgeous art that beautifies the homes of the rich and famous in magazines.

But to me, nothing is more beautiful to hang on my walls than my family. Except paintings of our Savior, of course! I have a few of those, too.

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Thanks so much for coming. I really enjoyed our little visit. Please come back to see us any time!

Long Time, No See

I spent a few hours with an old friend today.

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Debbie was an instructional aide in our program when I first came here to teach at Blue Ridge High School in 1990. Soon after, she began working on her own education degree, and in 1996 she left the mountain to take a job as a teacher at a Mesa high school.

Now we get together every summer when she and her husband come to their summer home to escape the Valley heat!

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Today we had lunch at El Rancho before doing some browsing at one of our town's quaint little novelty shops. Debbie was in search of a Father's Day gift, and I just love to look at the products of other peoples' amazing creativity.

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This shop is called The Burly Bear and, as you can imagine, it is stuffed to the rafters with likenesses of bears, moose, and other woodland critters, as well as many other rustic crafts both large and small.

There are so many art objects for sale, they begin out at the curb and grace the grounds long before you even enter the building.

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Life-size carvings of wildlife have become very popular over the past several years. You can find them in front of many people's homes, and it seems like half the businesses have at least one statue out front, and usually more than one.
This was my personal favorite of the outdoor, life-size carvings. I love the mountain lion creeping down the rocks and the deer almost hidden in the shadows at the bottom.

This one is cute, too. Are those bears wearing sunglasses?

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The large bear statues like this are the most commonly seen carvings in town.

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Now wouldn't this be a conversation piece for your lawn?

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"Mogollon Monster" is carved at the bottom. I've never heard of him, but I have heard people talk about our very own local Bigfoot. That must be who this represents.

Inside the store, the items for sale are so densely packed, it's almost overwhelming to take it all in!

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You can't tell in the photos, but the pictures hung above the beds are actually 3-dimensional carvings, with multi-layered pictures chiseled into the wood and then painted. They are awesome!

The small table at the foot of this bed was the one I most wanted to take home with me.

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The glass top is like the surface of a clear stream. Below the glass is carved a 3-D underwater scene, including swaying plants, pebbles, and two brown trout scouting the bottom of the creek for food.

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I just love creativity. And I love enjoying it with a great friend.

Thanks, Debbie!

Ups and Downs

Sarah and I continue in the Battle of the Bulge. It has been a frustrating week, as our weight fluctuates up and down no matter what we do. Yet the progress continues.

As of Friday, Sarah was down another 4.4 lbs, for a total loss of 11.4 lbs. Go Sarah! I lost 1.4 lbs more, for a total of 21.7 lbs.

Tonight we had our friend Gwen over for dinner and family home evening. Gwen is always fun to be around, and she's like a second mother to my adoring kids.

We enjoyed tacos for dinner (make that taco salad for Sarah and me) and watched a DVD, Evan Almighty. Then we ended the night with sinfully rich homemade strawberry ice cream--mmmmm!

The ice cream was low-carb, but I definitely ate more than I should have. I hope I don't get a nasty surprise when I step on the scales tomorrow morning...

Iowa 1995: The Road Home

We left Davenport, Iowa on the morning of Sunday, July 2.

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We planned to make the return trip in 2 days, spending one night in Oklahoma City and sleeping in our own beds on Monday night.

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From Iowa we drove into Missouri. See the big tents in the background, set up to sell fireworks for Independence Day?

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I wouldn't let Mark stop to buy some. They are illegal in Arizona!

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(I can't believe we'll soon be in Missouri again, less than 5 weeks from now! Our vacation is coming up so fast!)

Once we'd passed through Missouri, we drove across Kansas, and finally we crossed the Oklahoma State Line.

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I was excited to be in Oklahoma. It's one of the states of my family history, and I'd never been there prior to this vacation.

As we entered Oklahoma City, I thought of my grandparents, Loyd Haley and Alta Beierschmitt, who grew up there, met and fell in love, married, and started a family. 3 of their 5 children were born in Oklahoma City.
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They moved their family to California in 1929, looking for work as itinerant laborers. Their 2 youngest, including my mom, were born there.

You can just see the skyline of downtown Oklahoma City, 4 miles from our motel, where a federal building had been bombed only 2 months before, on April 19, 1995.

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The motel employees told us that even from this distance, the windows on the front of the motel buckled from the tremendous concussion of the explosion.

We left Oklahoma City Monday morning. Just before we reached the Texas State Line, Mark noticed a small paper bag on the freeway and thought it would be fun to swerve and run over it.

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He paid for his stupidity!

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I don't know what was in the bag, but it caused a blow-out. I admit I chuckled a lot and mumbled things like, "We get what we ask for..."

The kids enjoyed a short break from the car. I made them sit way, way back from the road while we waited.

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Traveling with small children isn't so hard if you plan ahead. We kept a bag of cheap, small wrapped gifts in the front seat. When they became restless, we'd pass one back. They'd unwrap it and entertain themselves for an hour or two!

We made it across into Texas and through the entire northern half of the state without further catastrophe.
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Then we continued on into New Mexico. When we reached Albuquerque, we were only 5 hours from home, but I just couldn't take another moment of sitting in the car!

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We found a Howard Johnson motel and settled in for the night.

The next morning was the 4th of July!

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We had breakfast at the Owl Cafe. I love the facade of this building. The inside was fun, too, with a '50s theme and a tiny jukebox at each table.

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Then we got back on the road for the final leg of our journey.

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We didn't even drive straight to our house. Instead, we went to my parents' house in Show Low to celebrate Independence Day with family. My extended family were all there waiting for us, and we were soon surrounded by nieces and nephews to enjoy homemade ice cream and fireworks.

I can tell you that I was very happy to see this sign announcing our return to our adopted home state!

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It's fun to travel, but it's even nicer to come home at the end of the journey.

Iowa 1995

Mark's grandma, Helen, really wanted us to join her annual summer trip to her hometown of Davenport, Iowa.

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We left early on Saturday, June 24. We took 2 cars, since Helen planned to stay 2 months, but we could only stay 10 days.

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Here is Helen (age 68) with Sarah (age 5) and Jacob (almost 4) at a rest stop in New Mexico.

It's a very long drive, but we made the trip in just 2 days. We spent the night at this motel in Liberty, Kansas.

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Jill, I checked on the hotel/motel thing. Motels can be 1-3 stories, but the room doors open on the exterior and are located near the parking lot. Hotels open into the interior of the building. Now we know!
We arrived in Davenport on Sunday. We were delayed an hour in Des Moines when Helen locked her keys in the car and we had to wait for AAA to rescue us!

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We stayed in the home Helen still owned in Davenport, where Mark's dad Tim and his wife Mary were living.

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Mary was quite sick at this time and passed away only 5 weeks later. We were very grateful we made the trip to see her one last time.

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This is Tim (age 47), Mark (age 27), Sarah (age 5) and Jacob (age 4).
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Jacob's 4th birthday was on Monday, June 26, so he got to celebrate with family in Iowa!

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We spent the next few days seeing the area with Helen, who showed me all the places that were important to her: the factory where she worked for decades; the graves of her parents and husband Lyle (and her own headstone, ready for when she joins Lyle); the house in Bettendorf where Mark spent his first 4 months of life.

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We visited her younger sister, Kathryn, and drove across the Mississippi River into Illinois and back again. She told me stories about her youth, her days as a young bride and mother, and Mark's childhood.

Mark himself has many fond memories of fishing on the Mississippi as a boy.

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This is a view of the Mississippi River where it flows past Davenport. The paddle wheel boats are actually floating casinos.

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Doesn't it look picturesque?

On Wednesday, Mark and I loaded up the kids and drove to a nice hotel in Glenview, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago where the Chicago Temple is located.

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Early Thursday morning I attended a session at the temple while Mark took Sarah and Jacob to Kohl's Children's Museum in Wilmette, 3 miles away.

We have lots of video of the kids at the museum, but no photos!

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Until I scanned in these pictures, I never realized this is the one and only picture from this trip with ME in it!

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It's a beautiful temple. I especially love the texture of the granite bricks. It was the first of the new small temples I had seen.

After I changed clothes, we drove to Gilson Park in Wilmette to see Lake Michigan. I was amazed how much it felt like being at a beach on the Pacific Ocean! I'd never seen a lake that's so big you can't see the other shore.

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To this day, Lake Michigan is the farthest East I have ever been.

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We didn't stay long. Jacob fell asleep in the car and was quite grumpy.

From there we drove to the Brookfield Zoo, in another suburb of Chicago.

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Looking back, I cannot imagine how we managed to fit so much into just one day! We were a lot younger then...

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Sarah and Jacob had a great time checking out the animals. We all bought new Brookfield Zoo hats to keep the sun out of our eyes.

It was just a year later, in August 1996, that a 3-year-old boy climbed over the side of this enclosure and fell into the gorilla pit. A female ape--with a baby of her own clinging to her back--picked up the child and protected him from the other gorillas, cradling him in her arms and eventually taking him to her trainers who were waiting at the side door.

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It was surreal when I saw it on the news, to realize it was the same Chicago zoo, the same gorillas, the same enclosure that my children stood at in this picture!

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Some say she was guided by training, but I say this gorilla is a heroine who was operating on pure maternal instinct!

At the end of a long, exhausting day, we made the drive back to Davenport, arriving late.

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While in Iowa, Mark hoped to locate some of his family. His mother left him and his dad when he was 4 months old, and Mark was raised by his paternal grandparents. He never knew his mother's side of the family.

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His birth mother, also named Mary (do we sense something Freudian here?), went on to have 3 more children, John, Don, and Becky, but Mark did not grow up with them.

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Helen made some calls and located a phone number for Mark's mom. He was able to call and speak with her, but she wouldn't meet him.

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However, she did give him a number for his sister Becky, age 20, whom he had never met.

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Mark called her and she nervously agreed to meet us at this McDonalds on Friday. She wanted to be sure this was legitimate.

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We waited while Sarah and Jacob enjoyed the little Ronald McDonald show on this little stage. We checked out every girl who walked in, wondering which would turn out to be his sister.

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When she finally arrived with a friend, we knew her immediately. She looks just like their mom, whose photos we had seen.

Becky agreed to meet us the next day at a nearby park. She brought her little boy, 3-year-old Patrick, so Sarah and Jacob got to meet a cousin they'd never known.

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We had a long, pleasant visit, which was a great way to end our stay in Iowa. The following day we were back on the road headed toward Arizona, but the rest of that story will have to be shared in another post tomorrow.

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And as for the tale of Mark's family, well, that is an entire unfolding saga all its own. We'll save that post for another day...