the story behind the picture

Two days ago I spent the day with my mom on her birthday and I was talking to her about the photo below. She told me the story behind it which just made me laugh!

She said that picture was taken in the basement of her parent's home, on the cold concrete floor. My dad, who was not yet her husband, had her lay her coat down on the floor underneath her with the satin side up - he thought it would make a great background. He took several gorgeous black and white photos of my mom and then hand colored them.

Apparently, when my grandma (my mom's mom) saw the picture below she was so angry! She felt it was way too seductive and inappropriate for a young lady to be posing in such a way.

Oh, I love it!

83 years young

I'm not sure how old my mom was when my dad took this picture of her, but I think it was maybe last year.

Perhaps it was the year before....

Wasn't she a bomb-shell?! She still is.

Happy Birthday Mom!

(I sure wish you had the internet so that you could see this!)

Read about the Leprosy Colonies at.....

http://rsoindia2009.blogspot.com/

the gamut

Yesterday:

8:00 a.m. - Help move Brooke into her new apartment at Brigham Young University

11:30 p.m. - Be at the elementary school for Adam's kindergarten assessment.

A college Senior. A kindergartner. And everything in-between.

I have the whole gamut.

And I'm really tired.

Adam playing in the grass today, his first day of kindergarten.

sixty years

That's how long my parents have been married. Sixty years. Today.

I was talking with my dad last week and asked him if he had a recent picture of the two of them for me to submit to the newspaper. He told me that indeed he did have one. But after asking a few details I found out that the most recent photo that he has was taken 14 years ago! He thought that would be fine. To me, that wasn't good enough. So I made them pose for me at my nephew's reception last weekend. I am proud to say....this is how my parents look after 60 years of marriage - happy, content, in love. And don't you think they look young?!

Their marriage has been a good one. I have never once seen nor heard my parents argue, quarrel, or exchange harsh words with each other......"That's because we never, ever have," my mom will tell me. It's true. A match made in heaven. Two peas in a pod. Soul-mates.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, Sam and Maryloo!

slacker

I've slacked horribly on my India blog. It would be really nice if the blogger people would allow us to upload more than 5 pictures at a time (it actually will only let me do 4, and even at that it takes about 10 minutes each upload!). Duh.

So I've finally posted .....
http://rsoindia2009.blogspot.com/

ahhh......summertime!

india blog

Everyone keeps asking me why I set up a separate blog for India. Here is the answer: We needed several thousand dollars to purchase our dental equipment that we were to take with us to Rising Star Outreach. David Archuleta got on board and raised thousands of dollars for this purpose! We were not only able to purchase all the equipment with the money he raised but the thousands of extra dollars left over is going towards the building of a new portion of the school there for the children among other things there at Rising Star. I was asked by several of David's fan sites to set up a blog of our experiences there at RSO so that David's fans, especially those who had donated, could feel a part of the whole experience. I didn't want to post to my personal blog as I didn't really want the entire world of David's fans having access to it so thus I set up a completely separate blog for our Rising Star Outreach experiences.

What is Rising Star Outreach? It is a school, like a boarding school really, that was started by an LDS woman from Atlanta, Georgia named Becky Douglas. The children of RSO have parents who have Leprosy. These types of children in India are denied education because of the horrible social stigma of Leprosy. If a parent has it then the children carry that stigma for the rest of their lives, and they usually end up getting Leprosy as well, leaving them destitute and begging on the streets. So the cycle continues - no education, Leprosy affected, begging, dying. Their lives have no hope. That's where Rising Star comes in. The purpose is to stop the cycle. The children live there at RSO, are cared for, and are given a good education especially in English. If these children know English by the time they enter the work force their earning potential goes up 500%.

The children there had never seen a dentist before, so we went in and spent a week there at RSO doing dentistry on all 160 of them. We saw so many miracles that week. Just the fact we got through every single child was a miracle of it's own! Our hope now is that other dentists will also go in and continue the work. We left our dental equipment there for that purpose.

It was the most amazing life experience that I could never put into words.

I continue to post to my India blog so again here is the link:
http://rsoindia2009.blogspot.com/
(or you can click on the link on the upper right)

privacy, please.

The time has come to make my blog private. If you would like keep following along then please email me or leave your email address in the comments.

Also, it's true...I have finally posted to my India blog! I hope to post daily for the next week or so. It's a daunting task since I took over 1500 photos while I was there!
http://rsoindia2009.blogspot.com/

america the beautiful

About 3 hours ago we were driving down the street in Delhi, India. It happened to be the street on which a lot of the embassies sit. As I watched out the window, looking at each embassy as we passed it, suddenly there it was; the American flag. It sat on top of a big white building, and on the side of the building was the Seal of the United States. As I looked at that flag and that seal, I was filled with emotion, filled with such a great love for my country. My country. The land that I love. I have never in my life felt so much love and appreciation for America as I do right now. That is what two weeks in India has done for me. Words cannot describe how very blessed I feel to live in such a glorious land. My time here in India has been amazing and surreal and I would do it again in a heartbeat, but what an eye-opener it has been. A most humbling experience to say the least.

I sit here now in the Delhi airport, waiting for our 2 a.m. flight. I'm coming home to my beautiful America. I'm coming home!

I can't wait.