Handsome Guests for Thanksgiving

I enjoyed Thanksgiving with a couple of good looking guests.

Johnny and Brock!  Plus that handsome guy who lives here with me!  George!!

We missed Mary & Mark, Matt and Scott but look so forward to Christmas when the WHOLE family will be together for the first time in several years! 

Remember Stan?

Stan was the Guide Dog puppy we fostered for a couple of weeks while he recovered from some shoulder lameness.

 http://bondia2000.blogspot.com/2012_08_01_archive.html

Meet Stan today....

A fully trained Guide Dog who will spend his life as a guide, companion and friend!  George and I are so proud of his success!   And he remembered us with joyful, very un-guide dog like exuberance and kisses!

To quote from the Guide Dogs Website:

We create a truly unique partnership between two beings. A collaboration that enhances the individual potential of each partner, where the dog and the person have better lives together than either would have apart.

You'll never guess where Stan is going to spend his life....Eagle, Idaho!  Small world!

Growing up an only child, my cousins were very important to me.  I looked up to my older cousins as they led the way to high school and into adulthood. I watched them become parents and I loved their children and now their grandchildren. I have two cousins who were in my grade at school and it has been wonderful to travel through life with them. My younger cousins added a new bit of fun to our family! 

 My Boyle cousins live in Utah and it was their influence that led me to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  For that I will be eternally grateful, as I am eternally grateful for each member of my extended family.  I have been blessed with so many 'cousins' that almost seem like siblings.

Last week my cousin Doug Boyle died of a brain tumor just about a month after his diagnosis.  I went to Utah this weekend to celebrate Doug's life with the family.  All his children spoke at his funeral and one definite theme was how much fun Doug was, what a sense of humor he had, and what a joy he was to be around. He saw the positive in everyone and in every situation.  That was certainly true on our 2011 trip to Israel.

 

As we walked around the ruins of the temple, Doug just couldn't resist doing a little 'money changing' in the area of the ancient money changers!

I will miss Doug.  Even though we didn't see each other as often as I would have liked, every time we were together it was easy to just pick up our relationship.  Loosing a cousin is hard.  Somehow it seems normal to loose parents and aunts and uncles but a cousin is a part of my generation!  The reality that now WE are the older generation hit me.

From Traveling with Pomgranates: A Mother and Daugher Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece, Turkey and France  "And why, I asked myself, had I begun to think for the first time about my own mortality?"

Lewis Family

We spent the first weekend in November at the Oregon Coast with George's siblings and spouses. 

George's parents did a super job in raising their children.  Walt and Orpha Lewis' gravestone is inscribed with these words, "Our legacy- four wondrous children".  I have often wondered about the difference between 'wonderful' and 'wondrous' so today I looked ups 'wondrous'.  Let me share some of the synonyms for wondrous that describe George, Karen, John and Tammy rather well....

• marvelous
• amazing
• astonishing
• striking
• fascinating
• wonderful

Yes they have accomplished quite a few astounding things and are really quite extraordinary! I am blessed to be a part of this family!

Election 2012 - Thoughts

 I woke up yesterday morning feeling cautiously optimistic.  I knew that it would take a whole series of things to go exactly right for a Romney win but I thought it was possible.  I didn't watch a lot of TV during the day so when I did tune in, I remained nervous but hopeful.  The moment I knew it wasn't going our way was when I listened to Rob Portman address the Romney crowd in Boston via video link from Ohio.  He didn't sound like a man delivering a state to Romney.  My heart sank and soon all the networks were calling Ohio and the election for Obama.  I cried.  I just couldn't help it.  Last night as sleep eluded me, I tried to figure out why this election touched me so deeply.  I have voted for men who didn't win before....in 1992, 1996, and 2008. What made this one so different and so personal?

I think it is because I felt as if I knew Mitt Romney.  I might have sat beside him in church and attended church socials with him had I lived in Boston.  I have direct experience working  along side professionally successful men like him on leadership counsels in our church.  I have seen their practical solutions to problems.  I have seen them reach out to people who didn't agree with them, to people with vastly different experiences, and to people with totally different financial situations.  I have seen them give amazing amounts of help both financially and with their time to people in a variety of circumstances.  When dealing with a family's financial challenges, I have observed their careful stewardship of the church's money, money voluntarily given by others to help the poor.  The ultimate aim of all church financial help is to assist a person or family temporarily so that they can again be  in a position to help themselves.  Time and time again I have seen men like Mitt Romney help people out of the need for assistance rather than making them dependent on assistance. I could see a Romney Presidency implementing these same principles and changing the direction of our country.  But alas, it was't meant to be and so I cried.

I also came up with a few take-away thoughts from Election 2012

• The polls are accurate.  Realclearpolitics.com got it almost exactly right.  Next time I will trust them.
• While I am sure that there were people who didn't vote for Romney because he is Mormon or Obama because he is black, the vast majority of citizens did not cast their vote based on these criteria.  Our country is NOT racist or anti-Mormon.
• Our country is close to evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats; Liberals and Conservatives.  Our elected officials need to figure out how to reach across the aisle without giving up their core values and principles.  They must come together for the good of our country.
• We will never know the difference the media made in being so behind Obama.  What if 60 minutes had released the tape of President Obama saying the Bengazi attack was not a terrorist attack on the day after the Candy Crowley debate?  What if all the networks had covered the Bengazi attack with the accuracy and thoroughness of Fox?  We'll never know.
• We will never know what affect Hurricane Sandy and Governor Christie's bipartisan dance across New Jersey had.  We will know how accurate he was in praising the President's leadership as things unfold. 
• With the House and the Senate almost identical to the last 4 years, President Obama will not have free rein to just implement any thing he wants.  I'm most nervous about his possible executive orders but hopefully my fears are unfounded.

So what am I going to do now?  Life goes on! I'm going to take a total break from all things political until at least after Christmas.  No talk radio, liberal or conservative, no news shows, no blogs, no political sites on the internet!  I love this quote by James E Faust, one of our church leaders. "Your success as a family, our success as a society depends not on what happens in the White House, but on what happens inside your house."

So in my house I'm going to concentrate on making myself a better person and I'm going to pray for our President Barack Obama and the newly elected House and Senate.  I'm going to concentrate on calming my troubled heart.