MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! and let the COUNTDOWN BEGIN...

We are very happy to report that per Steve's eye exam this past Monday his eye was still looking 'fabulous' and 'clear as crystal' and 'as if he had never had a transplant'! And although there is not yet an actual date for his medical release [that we are allowed to share] we can safely say it will be sooner than later. What an incredible relief and great blessing! A big thanks to all who have prayed for us and the well being of his eye. 
We are grateful.

We will continue to enjoy the remaining time with our family. We will celebrate Christmas here in Everson with our family. There have been cards to send, cookies to bake, a Christmas tree and just spending time. It is just nice to be here.

Yesterday I packed up the binders full of pictures, negatives, and old family letters which I have been sorting out for a few weeks now. I have sent off many pictures and letters to siblings in the process. Can you believe there are 62 binders?!!! Although I am not totally finished with the sorting, since three of the binders have undated pictures, it just felt

Just a little 'show and tell'

great to clear the table and pack them away knowing that I am almost done. If I have time I will tweak things a little more as I begin labelling the pictures. Which begs the question "why did I not label the pictures as they were printed?" If I had written at least the year and who was in the picture this job of organizing would have been so much easier. 

So, those of you who have been slacking as much as me, I hope you take a lesson from my mistakes. Do it now! Don't wait for that someday we all hope will come. How I wish my grandparents had labelled their pictures with who was in the pictures. The years are noted but I do not know the names of many of the people. So many awesome pictures of unknown 'someones' to whom I am related. We think we will never forget but we do; and those who have passed on without leaving their knowledge behind leave us at a great disadvantage when it comes to our photographic heritage.

In a few short days we will celebrate Christmas and the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. What a wonderful time of year! I love to hear the carols of Christmas! I love the message of the Gospel. I love the hope. I love the peace.

"May your days be merry and bright" and may you feel the peace that the Savior can bring to you heart.

🎄🎄🎄🌟Merry Christmas!!!🌟🎄🎄🎄

Freezing in limbo

We woke up to below freezing temperatures with lots of snow and a "snow day" for the grandkids. After debating whether we should try to drive to Steve's 8:00AM eye appointment we finally decided to brave the scary roads and snowy cold weather to get on our way. Unfortunately we chose to go by way of a road which we soon discovered had the traffic totally stopped. Later we learned that the traffic was stopped because there had been an 11 car pile up at an intersection. So glad we were not a part of that disaster!! 

We turned around, retraced our trip and then detoured another way. The further we drove the worse the weather became with huge snowflakes falling and making it generally miserable. It took us 1 1/2 hours to get to the doctor so we were 45 minutes late. Thankfully they could work us in - it seemed other patients also had travel trouble. 

After a quick check the doctor said the eye looked "fabulous!" which is very good news. It has seen improvement each week. His new drop regimen consists of 2 drops per day of the less potent Lotemax for one week. Then, next Monday, if the eye still looks great his dose will decrease to 1 drop per day. 

The not so good news is that the 1 drop per day regime will last about 3 weeks to make sure the eye is stable without flareups before the doctor will give a medical release and we can actually have a leave date to go on our mission. That means we will likely still be living with our daughter's family until at least mid January. The upside is we will get to enjoy Christmas with them. 

In the meantime I am still working hard to complete the organizing project of the family pictures. I am SOOOOO close to being done. With more time I may even get some of them scanned and uploaded.

I don't really do limbo very well. However I have learned through our many life experiences that the Lord always uses great economy with the events of our lives. I know that others will somehow  eventually be affected by our experiences. We acknowledge that the Lord is in charge and will do our best to accept His will and be patience under these peculiar circumstances. Maybe someday we will understand the "why".

Last night we attended our annual Stake Christmas Concert. It was so nice to be there. I look forward to it every year. It just feels like Christmas now. We had an hour of hearing and singing Christmas Carols, so many of them favorites. There is so much talent in our Stake and it was just a delight. The narrator told the history of many of the songs and carols which made it all the more interesting. What a wonderful time of the year when we can celebrate the Savior's birth.

Eye is much better but still in limbo...

Today Steve's eye looked even better than last week. His drop regimen was reduced from 4 drops per day to 3 drops per day. His eye pressure was much better. But a new appointment was still scheduled for next Monday. Even though things look great with the eye it must still be monitored for awhile.

With no departure date in sight I have struggled today. I like to have 'my ducks lined up' and know what is going on in my life. Yes, I like to have things under control.This business of living in limbo is not very comfortable for me. In fact I sort of had a melt down today. I feel the weight of our upcoming responsibilities and yet there is nothing at this point that I can do about fulfilling them.

I guess it is time to bring my faith front and center and remember that the Lord is in charge of everything and that includes when we are leaving for Sydney. I really do know that all is happening as it should but I have always struggled with 'changing horses midstream'. Of course there is always a purpose for whatever happens and maybe I need this experience to learn more than one lesson.

We are grateful that our 'homeless' condition is under such comfortable circumstances. I mean we have our own room in a warm home with plenty of food to eat and the company of our daughter, son-in-law, grandson and granddaughter who love us and seem to enjoy our company. And we will get to spend Christmas in their home. I am not complaining about that at all! But shifting my paradigm is kind of tough.

I hope we actually will find out some day why this delay was necessary.

With the crazy busy days we had before we moved out of our home we did not get to the temple as often as has been our habit. Finally last Friday we took a few hours and drove to the Vancouver Temple. What a wonderful time it was for us to be there again and to feel the Spirit. There is nothing like being in a temple. The peace and joy is indescribable. What a blessing it is for us to live close enough to attend the temple often.

It was our intent to send Christmas Greetings from Australia but not this year. I have spent some time thinking about Christmases past and the many good memories. It was always such a good time preparing Christmas for our children. There is something about the joyful anticipation of children during the Christmas season. I always loved it. There are so many pictures of the Christmas tree surrounded by gifts taken on Christmas Eve after the children were all safely tucked in their beds and we had prepared everything for the next morning. I always loved that time. 

And now we are back to just the two of us with no young children anymore. Even as we spend time with our families and the grandchildren it is not the same. And I have found myself pondering my thoughts of Christmas. Last night we watched the Christmas Broadcast with the First Presidency and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The music was wonderful as always but the talks were especially meaningful to me this year. 

One of the speakers discussed the birth of the Baby Jesus and then went on to discuss His sinless life and His mission for us, the Atonement and the Resurrection and how it all fit together for our good. The comment was that if all of those other parts of His life had not happened that He would have been just another baby who was born under rude circumstances. This is what Christmas is all about when we strip away the lights and tinsel. Our Savior was born so He could live His life and show us the way to live and then make the ultimate sacrifice for us so we can go back and live with our Heavenly Father again.

That is the wonderful reason we can celebrate this Christmas Season.

The eye is improving :)

Well things are better. When he first saw the doctor on November 14, Steve began a regime of one drop of a steroid called Durezol every 2 hours. He saw the doctor 4 out of 5 days the first week and then 2 or 3 visits the second week. With improvement in his eye at the end of a few days his dose was dropped to one drop every 4 hours. Of course there is always an accompanying 2 drops of Combigan every day to reduce the increased eye pressure that was caused by the steroid drops. Last week his steroid dose was dropped to every 6 hours.

Today he saw the doctor again and was given the happy news that his offending left eye is looking as healthy as his right eye. He will continue the drop regime with a weaker steroid, Prednisolone drop every 6 hours. Just to be sure things are OK. Next week another doctor appointment and we hope his eye continues to be healthy with this weaker steroid. In the meantime the doctors will consult with the surgeon who performed the  cornea transplant to get her opinion on his progress and when she feels it would be safe for him to fly to Sydney.

So, prognosis is good but mission departure date is still undetermined.

In the meantime we had a nice relaxed Thanksgiving with our daughter and her family. We are enjoying our time in their home.

Steve keeps busy with various projects and I have been working pretty much every day on the project of sorting family photos, negatives and old family letters. I am almost on a first name basis with the Transparent Office Supply people as I keep ordering more and more archival sleeves. Today's order was for more negative sleeves which I hope will come soon as I hate to lose my momentum. I have filled well over 3 dozen two inch binders.

This has been a mammoth project which has morphed into something far larger than I ever could have imagined. There are negatives from my grandparents dating back to 1926. My mother's negatives begin in the 1940's. My mother's letters to her parents begin on the ship on which our family sailed as we left Denmark way back in 1952. So many great stories and nuggets of information that would otherwise be lost. There are old family photos that begin in the late 1800's. And as the years progressed the sheer volume of negatives and photos increased proportionately.  There are so many pictures and I love to see them. Such grand memories!!! And sometimes very emotionally exhausting.

It has been good to have a project as I am never happy without something going on. But all the same it is still strange to be living in limbo without any real direction or purpose. Our mission seems so far away and almost non-existant. We are "homeless" for all intents and purposes. Someone else is living in our house, our belongings are in storage and we are living out of suitcases. We are definitely being made to feel comfortable in our homeless state but it is surreal.

We are waiting to find out just what the Lord has in mind for us.

When a cornea transplant tries to reject...

What a difference a week makes. We should have been boarding an airplane to travel to Utah this morning. But we aren't. 

Last Monday Steve noticed that his eyesight was kind of milky so while I was in for a final tear test [for dry eye] he asked the doctor to check his eye. Well an hour later it was determined that his eye was not only inflamed but that his cornea transplant was threatening rejection. A regime of steroid drops to control the rejection and other drops to counter increased eye pressure caused by the steroid drops began. By Wednesday it was determined that he needed more care than could be accomplished in a few days. A call to the mission office medical folks and our mission was postponed until he gets medical clearance. 

Wow! It is so weird to be in limbo after working so hard to get ready to go. His eye is improving and was 50% better last Friday. We are hopeful he will have further improvement when he goes back in today. After his eye is back to normal the doctors would like to monitor him for a few weeks to make sure he is stable. And then they will give him medical clearance so we can again get a schedule to report to the Missionary Training Center in Provo and actually fly to Sydney. We are so grateful for good eye care professionals and their competent staff who care about us. His eye surgeon knows the name of a cornea specialist in Sydney so when we arrive there will be someone there as a backup.

So, here we are living out of our mission suitcases in the home of our daughter, her husband and our grandchildren, just waiting to see what unfolds. We spoke in church yesterday which would normally have been our 'goodbye' talk but it was a 'provisional good bye'. It is interesting to me how life works. Often we make plans and then life happens. We know that our Father in Heaven is in charge, even over things like our eyes. 

We have no doubt that there is a reason for this delay. We just do not know what it is. But we accept the Lord's time frame. Experience has taught us that the Lord uses great economy with the events of our lives. What I mean is that this delay in our schedule will impact not only us but will also affect others in necessary ways that we may not understand. I strongly believe that things happen for a reason. We are grateful to know that the Lord knows who we are. We feel confident that all will be well.

In the meantime although we will miss our Thanksgiving gathering with several of our children in Utah, we will enjoy our time with our daughter's family here in Washington. We were able to enjoy watching our grandson perform as Prince Charming in his high school musical of Cinderella and just enjoy spending the time with this special family.

I will also be able to continue organizing our pictures which project has turned out to be a much larger than I first anticipated possibly because I not only had our pictures and negatives but those of my mother's and some of Steve's mother's.  I have even had to order MORE archival sleeves. But I believe I will have enough time to finish the project and preserve those memories. We may or may not leave before Christmas. Only time will tell. But the Lord knows and it will be alright.

In the meantime we live in our interesting state of limbo just waiting to see what the Lord has in mind for us.

Guess we are 'homeless' for awhile

Our 9 year old granddaughter gave us this picture of a koala bear she had colored "because you are going to see koalas". I told her I was sure we would but that they might not be the same color. 

What a week this has been! Lots of last minute packing, despair and tears as I felt overwhelmed, gratitude for the many kindnesses shown, general fatigue, finishing projects and trying to make lists of things yet to be done. 

I have to give a shout out to Rick at Transparent Office Supply who went the extra mile to make sure my order for the needed additional archival photo sleeves was correct and sent asap despite a death in his family. I was so grateful to get my sleeves on time so I could work on the photos. Filing those photos has been a huge undertaking. Not quite done but hope to finish while we are in our daughter's home.

Saturday was the day the rest of our "stuff" was moved out of our house. How does one have so much "stuff"? A special thanks to the many wonderful people who helped get  the rest of the boxes and furniture  onto the trailer and moved into storage. And to all those who have shown us such love and consideration.

Some of the great youth who turned out to help! 

so much help!!

and away it goes!

The threatened rain did come so a tarp was necessary part of the time to protect things from getting too wet. Grateful it was not a total downpour. Now today we just need to make sure the house is clean and ready for our renters.

helping grandpa burn the 'remains'

Even though our house is empty and we have now slept 3 nights at our daughter's house it still does not seem real that we are actually leaving. Two weeks from today we will report to the Mission Training Center. Wow! When we received our mission call in April it seemed like November 28 was far into the future, that we had a long time to prepare and yet we have needed every single day to accomplish what was needed.  This will be a busy week with the final details to finish. But we will make it!








Yesterday we had a very informative Skype session with the folk in Sydney and representatives from BYUI as we all learned more about the Pathways Program. This program is administered through BYUI and provides a wonderful opportunity for  many people to gain a higher level of education who would other wise not have the opportunity. The cost is so much lower and the opportunities which will lead to better employment are incredible. So grateful we will have an opportunity to encourage this program as we work on our Self Reliance Mission.

This Sunday, November 20, 2016 we have been asked to speak in our Church. We would like to invite any of you who live close enough to come to join us. Our chapel is located at 2550 Thornton Road, Ferndale, WA 98248. Our meeting will begin at 1 PM and will be about 1 hour long.

Then there's the time when I get overwhelmed and grumpy...

I really should have known better than to think I would get anything done later in the day if I had an appointment first thing in the morning. 

We went and got our final Hepatitis A shot this morning and requested 2 years of our medical records to bring with us. So, far as we know we now have all of our required immunization shots. One more item checked off our "to do" list.

By the time we made a couple of stops the morning was pretty well gone.  At ATT we discussed how to handle our phones and phone service while we are out of country. We will set up a plan which will allow us to reserve our phone numbers for use when we return. It will be nice to keep our same numbers since they are tied to so many parts of our lives. And we had to get a couple of XLarge boxes at UHaul to pack some of those things that just won't fit into regular boxes.

I had hoped to to do more final packing in the kitchen but I was out of emotional energy. So, as soon as the dryer is finished drying my dish clothes I will put them into the only box I will have packed this day and be able to tape it up. Hopefully tomorrow those XLarge boxes will be filled with some of the odd shaped kitchen stuff.

No, we did not get everything packed last week as I had hoped but we made good progress. I started to worry about all of my 50 years of photos which have not been properly filed; and realized that I could not go off to Australia for 2 years without making sure they were safe and under control. As I put the photos into archival sleeves I soon realized I did not have enough sleeves needed for all my pictures and negatives. I found the company who bought out the company I had dealt with before and ordered what I need. While waiting for the order to come I have been able to successfully organize the pictures in preparation for the arrival of the sleeves.

So, I have enjoyed a trip down memory lane this past week as I have looked through hundreds of photos. I have smiled as I have seen so many wonderful shots of our family and some of our activities. We really did have a lot of fun times! Time has flown. It is crazy to realize that my baby is 33 years old!

And then I found 2 more boxes of pictures and negatives that I had overlooked!!! Oh, I felt very overwhelmed, and a little grumpy. But I am dealing with it.

We continue to learn more about the parameters of our responsibilities on our upcoming mission. I am so amazed at the breadth of the care that is offered to so many people. Our Father in Heaven has such a great love for each of His children as do our Church leaders. It will be our great privilege to play a small part in helping provide the care needed by so many.

Only 24 more days until we report to the Missionary Training Center in Provo; 17 more days until we fly to Utah and see our families the week of Thanksgiving; 8 more days until our house will be emptied and 5 more days until we go over to stay at our daughter's house so our house can be emptied and cleaned.

But tonight we will take a break and go with friends to see Carmen.