November 17, 2020

 I took the bull by the horns this week and suggested we start putting Christmas up. This has been a different kind of year and I just felt that “We need a little ChrIstmas, Right this very minute. Candles in the windows, Carollers at the door”. (from Auntie Mame) We got our outdoor lights up and everything else outside and inside up except for the main tree as we have ordered a new one and it will not arrive until December 1. We gave our old tree to the Hardy family and they are thrilled.

 Last Wednesday was Remembrance Day and we made our traditional pilgrimage to West Vancouver and my parents grave. The Hardy family faithfully join us every year and we have the opportunity to consider and appreciate my parents and their joint wartime sacrifice to bless our lives. Dad was in the airforce and had been a flight instructor here in Canada but, after securing Mom’s hand in marriage, he went overseas to fly bombers for the last two years of the war. Mom was the brave angel on his wing, praying and fasting for him constantly. We take our Remembrance Day wreath and add our current poppies to the numerous ones already on it and we walk around the cemetery.

We had a meeting with Carol Jones on Thursday and took her the sacrament on Sunday. Maxie Wong had passed away the end of October and her Celebration of Life was a zoom meeting Sunday afternoon. It was nice to see the North Shore Ward people and consider dear Maxie and her life. We received word last night that Betty Small had also passed away and she is another dear North Shore Ward friend and good friend to Maxie. They are enjoying one another still. Ron and Jane Komm saw us on the zoom and phoned us afterward and we had a nice catchup with them. They are stuck in Waterton, in their cabin, in the snow because Steven’s family have taken over their house while their place is being renovated. They may not even get back for Christmas.

We have been working on our Ward Christmas devotional and are hoping that the Bishopric allow us to just film and broadcast it to the ward because of the difficulties of coming together and the uncertainty of our lives right now. We have also been hanging sixteen frames up in the front hall to display pictures of the grandchildren. With the measuring and levelling required, it took two sets of hands and Tom was very patient. It is done! We have raked leaves twice now and will probably have one more go at it.

Tom had a phone appointment with the specialist on Friday and they have set up an office visit for him on December 4. We are hoping that he can get in sooner and are praying for that end. Tom will call again to let them know he is willing to take a cancellation if one occurs.

My ministering Sister Connor called today. She has had covid and recently completed her isolation and now she is calling to see how I am doing. She is so sweet.

November 10, 2020

 Our 50th wedding anniversary was August 26th of this year and we had a lovely day but the children gave us not only flowers and a beautiful cake but gift certificates for a photo shoot and a dinner at the Salmon House. Well, we were still enjoying our anniversary this past week as we received the photos from our photographer Debra Moore, which were taken last month, and finally went for our dinner at the Salmon House. We went to the North Shore on Wednesday late afternoon for Karl to cut my hair and then had a lovely meal at the Salmon House. It was our first dinner out since our lunch at the Little White House in Langley on our anniversary and covid regulations still prevail.

Doctor Collingridge phoned with results from Tom’s blood work due to his prostate concerns and they were not good. His cholesterol is up too and so he is on medication now for that problem. He is now to see a urologist regarding his prostate but the appointment they made was for the end of November and the children were concerned about that so Tom called the specialist himself and managed to get it changed to this week. We are all praying for him and anxious for the specialist to determine the cause of the problem.

We have been looking for a new Christmas tree and have brought two options home, returned one and ordered another one online. We have promised Cindy our old tree. We also got the outdoor lights up today before the weather gets worse. We probably won’t turn them on yet. Christmas has begun!

We cleaned up leaves in the yard but will probably have to do it once more. We have gathered pictures of Trevor’s wedding and family and sent them to JayLynn for a Christmas project that she is doing. We have met with Carol on Zoom this week again and took her the sacrament on Sunday. The government has asked that The Lower Mainland take more preventative measures for the next two weeks as covid rates have risen. Gyms and such are closed and we are to have no one in our homes except those who live there. Carol found a loop-hole to the regulations that permitted us to take her the sacrament. We worked on our Ward Christmas musical and are looking into filming and broadcasting it. We zoomed our Ward meetings on Sunday but also watched the Vancouver Stake Conference. Francois Tougas was released from the Stake Presidency as they are moving to the island and Chris Miller put in. We were thrilled. We love them all - Tougas and Millers. We talked to Roger this week, Joanne and Barb. We phone or email our ministering people and are in regular touch with our children, grandchildren and others. We are grateful for each other and for our home which makes up our little world.

November 3, 2020

 October has flown by and we are now into November. We even celebrated Halloween Saturday evening. We were not sure if Halloween would happen this year or, if it did, what it would look like. We bought treats and decided that we would leave them on the front step and allow children to help themselves rather than us hand out at the door as usual. It worked! We think we had about 70 children come. We just restocked our box from time to time and the children were on their own. We are not sure how much each child  took but that is okay. We had more fireworks going off in the neighbourhood than usual, especially in the field behind us.

We have been sorting thru bins again this week and I was thrilled to find the pictures and CDs that have been eluding me. We looked at the CDS and I went thru all the pictures and organized them. I still feel that there is a lot of organizing yet to be done to simplify everything we have. I keep in mind how the children would be dealing with this if we were not here. We want to have things organized for them in the future. 

I had a meeting with George Hara this week for him to introduce me to a new Family Search system. I was his test run. We met with Carol Jones again via zoom on Thursday and took her the sacrament on Sunday. She studies the scriptures and manuals and is thrilled to be a new ministering sister. She is a solid convert. We met Minna Miller at the Temple on Saturday when she was out to attend an endowment for one of their young adults. She brought us some samples of their Nitric Oxide product which is being tested, with positive results, for covid prevention. You spray it into your nose when you have been in public or feel you may have been exposed to the virus. I guess we are now part of the the test group. Chris wrote us a nice letter after we chatted with him on the phone while we were with Minna. We have great people in our lives and we are very blessed.

We have even had some family at our home this week other than just FaceTime contact. Max had his car on our driveway awaiting sale for salvage. The time came this week and he was here and visited with us until the tow truck arrived to tow the car away. Ross and Sarah also came to hand deliver their wedding invitation and we had them step in for short visit. It is nice to see live faces that we love. We do FaceTime the children too. We had a nice visit with Zachary on Sunday discussing scripture. He has been reading the Book of Mormon numerous times and we are very proud of him.

We continue with zoom church meetings. We were invited to the Vancouver Temple Workers’ Devotional on Sunday. The Presidency zoomed from Duncan and they had Michelle Rolfson sing. It was very nice. Frank Deyell was called to be an assistant Temple recorder and he will be great. Brent has been called to the Abbotsford High Council. Tom’s faithful helpers are being used well. We met with the Bishop for Tithing Settlement via zoom on Sunday and the Bishopric approved our Christmas Musical proposal. We now have to decide if it will be live or recorded and broadcast or both.

Tom went to see Doctor Collingridge on Monday to have a check up and discuss somethings that were concerning him. We went to the bank today and shopping at Home Depot for a new Christmas tree. We also stopped at the drug store. 

We have had some beautiful sunny fall days and and now we are into a rainy few ones but we feel blessed to have each other, our home, things to do and wonderful people around us.

October 27, 2020

Our back deck door has needed painting for some time and we finally picked up the paint this week and finished the project. Now we are thinking the basement door needs some love. Always something. We also went to LazyBoy this week to look for an accent chair for the basement but decided against the one we were considering and came home and ordered one online from Wayfair. Tom has been good about my home renovations but I am sure he is hoping it will soon be done. Does that ever happen? I just have too much time at home with opportunity to be looking around the house.

I made bran muffins this week and our bran muffins are Grandma Tanner’s recipe which is a very large recipe. The batter can be kept in the fridge for days but I think a week is long enough. We have been eating muffins and we took a dozen muffins over to Cindy and family. We are eating far too well during this pandemic.

I had a phone appointment with my doctor this week and Tom had an appointment with Glen Collingridge, who is Tom’s doctor. Tom is going to go in to have a checkup. We went for flu shots this week too and that was an adventure because getting in for a flu shot is not too easy right now. Because of the pandemic, the government is encouraging flu shots for everyone to lessen the burden on the health system.

I met with Carol Jones again this week via zoom. We discussed one of the conference talks. We took her the sacrament on Sunday too. She is a wonderful convert and a great person to get to know. She is eager to learn and be involved.

We have been working on our Ward Christmas Musical this week and it seems to be coming together. We have all the performers and we have presented our program to the Bishopric for approval. Now we wait to receive the final go ahead.

We watched the funeral for Josie’s husband Patrick on Saturday. He died suddenly from a heart attack and we are feeling for her and sorry we are not able to be with her during this distancing time. I also checked on Shirlene this week to see how she has been doing since Ross’s passing. Her daughter Nancy has been here with her and Nancy is taking her back with her to Utah for the winter. Our hearts are hurting for both Shirlene and Josie.

We have finished pulling the flowers out of our flower beds. The weather has certainly turned and our kids in Kelowna and Montana have had snow this past week. This change in weather and seasons will offer us some new experiences and challenges for our isolation. We are finding our path each day.

October 20, 2020

 Zooming is the new way of meeting with people for church or for other reasons. We never heard of it before covid restriction were put in place. We zoomed Carol Jones again this week and gave her the last of the ‘new member’ lessons and agreed we would continue to meet with her weekly and discuss other gospel topics. We zoomed sacrament meeting on Sunday and I zoomed a meeting with the Relief Society Presidency to discuss the format for the upcoming lesson this week. Tom and Athol Symonds have been zooming trying to figure out how to incorporate Tabernacle Choir music into the ward zoom only Sacrament meetings. We also zoomed into a ‘viewing’ for Josie McCarthy’s husband who passed away recently. They will also zoom the funeral this coming Saturday. We do a great deal of zooming.

We have been asked to organize the ward Christmas Musical and so we have been working on that this week and calling people to perform. I think we have a simple but beautiful program in place and we have some great people taking part. We have Julie Duerichen and her daughter Holly singing, Rueben Leonard singing as well as Charlotte Law singing and the Tsai brothers singing and /or playing instruments.  Carol Hur is playing the violin and Brian and Brenda Leavitt are our readers. We are calling  it “Silent - Holy Night” and plan on it being about 45 minutes long. We will zoom at least one of the two performances and perhaps record and broadcast a version of it. We still need someone to do decor, handle filming/sound and someone to play accompaniment. It is falling into place,

We also cleaned up the back deck for winter, cut Tom’s hair and took Carol Jones the sacrament on Sunday. We have both made phone appointments with our own doctors this week which is also the new way of doing things. We received an email from our London Temple President this week which included his desires for us to return in the near future. He feels it will be 6-9 months before we are able to go back. We answer emails, phone our family and others and tend to our house and yard. We FaceTime our family and connect with our ministering people by email or phone. Roger Jahn has another aneurism and will have surgery in December. Our world seems small at times but it does go beyond our walls and we are grateful for that. Our family are all busy and we appreciate them and each other.

October 13, 2020

 We were finally able to make arrangements with our friend Debra Moore, who the children had commissioned to take our anniversary pictures. We set Wednesday morning as the date and Derby Reach Historical site by the river in Fort Langley as the location. We got up early that morning and found it to be be a very foggy day but I was actually  thrilled because I think fog adds an interesting dimension to photographs and bright sunny days can prove to be difficult when taking pictures.. We had a fun time with Debra and hope she was able to make something of these old people. She hasn’t sent the finished “shoot” to us as yet.

We celebrated Thanksgiving this weekend and, because our children have been going to school and some back at work, Cindy felt we shouldn’t all be getting together because of virus concerns. We determined if we were not going to have dinner with our family, we would take our meal to people who needed a Thanksgiving dinner. We phoned Gene and Marie next door as Gene is suffering from cancer. She had a turkey and was going to make their own meal.  We phoned Cheyenne across the street who is home alone with her father Wayne while her mother Jean and sister Charmaine are in Austria getting Charmaine settled in a fine arts college. We just told them we were bringing them dinner because we know they need help.  We took the sacrament to Carol Jones on Sunday and discovered that her husband would be in Saskatoon for Thanksgiving and the remainder of the winter and so we told her we would bring her dinner too. We started baking and preparing our regular Thanksgiving meal throughout the week - carrot cake, layered salad, stuffing, rolls, yams, mashed potatoes/gravy, brussel sprouts/carrots/bacon and turkey. Our table seemed empty with just the two of us but we hoped that our food helped some others. We have lots of leftovers and will get some cake to Cindy’s family.

We were very thankful on Thanksgiving Day to receive news that Jean and Charmaine were able to obtain Charmaine’s visa clearance in Austria, as we had been trying to help do it from this end and were running into difficulties. We were saddened though to receive news, that same day, that our good friend Ross Slarks had passed away. He had cancer and had been suffering these past years with multiple complications resulting from the initial surgery. We are grateful his pain is no more but sorrowing for Shirlene and her family. Ross and Shirlene were teenage sweethearts and were always joined at the hip. They are about ten years older than us but they and their family have been part of our lives since we were teenagers ourselves. Ross was Tom’s councillor in the bishopric when Tom was a young Bishop. I had babysat their children and Nancy, their daughter, babysat our children. We had holidayed with them and joyed and sorrowed with them thru the years.

Our sister in law Jeannette called this week and expressed concern for Tom’s sister Carolyn, who is going thru a difficult divorce. Tom called Carolyn and learned that she is still struggling to achieve a settlement with her husband, who is also a Tom. He is extremely successful but states that his money is all tied up and that there is nothing for Carolyn. Our hearts are breaking and we have determined to not only pray for Carolyn but for Tom, that his heart will be softened. He is a lawyer and never wants to feel he has lost a case even against his own wife. They had ten children together, with nine living.

I have been sorting thru more family pictures again this week and proof reading the “StoryWorth” histories of ourselves that the children are having us write. It has been a good project for us to work on durning this time.

We are always working on the music for the ward meetings and we also met with Dave Leavitt, via zoom today, to get going on the ward Christmas Musical that we are in charge of this year. We will have to  follow the covid parameters and probably have 2-3 performances, with one being zoomed into homes. This is something we have never done before but we will pray for help and success.

We have done more yard work this week and got our growing dogwood tree in the backyard trimmed in preparation for fall and winter. We are also trying to prepare for Hallowe’en and determine what that will look like this year. Everything is new or at least different at this unique time.

October 6, 2020

 Our highlight of the week was our two days of October General Conference. Conference each six months has always been a much anticipated event in our lives. Through the years we have listened to it, attended it or watched it and now, with covid concerns, we look forward to that much appreciated connection with our leaders. They said that last April’s conference had more people tuning in than any other conference to date. We have not heard if that trend continued this time. The messages were directive, comforting and encouraging. The overall theme seemed to be “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6 and Elder Holland’s concluding scripture, “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40:31 And so we carry on in faith and wait upon the Lord.

Covid numbers have been on the rise again but have levelled out here in BC a little. Even Donald Trump and his wife have been dealing with covid this week. We have been concerned with the children back in the schools and people all together again that cases might increase but so far, other than in Eastern Canada and places like New York City, the numbers haven’t been too bad. It is still bad in England which breaks our hearts.

We taught Carol Jones another lesson this week via zoom and this time we did it on our own without the Sister Missionaries We have one more lesson to teach her this week as part of her New Member discussions. We really like her and have been enjoying getting to know her. We will be taking her the sacrament each week from now on. We would to get to know her husband Martin but he is not in sight when we spend time with her.

Debra Moore is taking pictures of us for our fiftieth anniversary and both she and Cindy suggested we go to Derby Reach Heritage area near Fort Langley. We drove there on Friday to take a look around and go for our daily walk. It is lovely location near the Fraser River and should work just fine for the photographs we are asking for. The children gave us this as part of our anniversary gift. We will have the Salmon House dinner they gave us too next month after we go to Karl’s for my hair cut on the North Shore. Our anniversary is being celebrated over a few months and that is lovely.

Fall is coming and we are trying to get a few things done in our yard in preparation. We get the odd warm day but things are definitely starting to cool. We carry on with projects at home and have pretty well decided that we will spend Thanksgiving separated from our family as a precaution. It breaks my heart as the children are the ones we are most thankful for and they are what make the holidays special. So our covid time goes. We hope we are making the most of it and being of benefit to others in some ways.