Wife of Craig, mom of Sarah, Jessica, Kyle, Lisa, Curt, and Cole, mom-in-love to Todd, Andrew, Vanessa, and Emily. Called Grammy by JC, Jayci, Trinity, Cambria, Titan, Braden, Adelaide, Cory, Whitney, Melissa, Ian, Mila, Lukas, Julie, Kate, and Susie, and Great Grammy by Elsie Mae. Black Lab Pepper rounds out the family!
Just a final few things from the holidays that I wanted to include on the blog but just didn't fit into other entries.
Every year I look forward to the life sized Nativity that is displayed on the Indianapolis Temple grounds at Christmas.
The temple on a cold December Tuesday night. Always a beacon of love and hope. We serve on Tuesday evenings and usually don't leave until 9:30 or later. I love seeing the temple at night all year long.
My Aunt Sissy sent me a family photo this Christmas.
Back row, left to right: Jennifer Lyons (her husband Pete took the photo), Shannon Weyman, Sissy, Robert Weyman holding his youngest son, Nicholas, and Karen Weyman, Robert's wife. Front row, left to right: Elizabeth Weyman, Ned Weyman, Robert's sons James and Grant, and Jenny's son, Jack. (Named after my dad!)
A tea towel I made for Sissy using the embroidery machine I bought with Uncle George's money. I thought she'd enjoy seeing what some of her brother's money had been used for after he'd passed and given me an inheritance.
Poor JC totaled his car on ice in December. Then, as it was awaiting towing, it was broken into and he lost all his clothes and personal items.
In December, severe storms tore through the Midwest, spawning an historic tornado that plowed through four states (Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky) and killed at least 100 people.
Kyle and his family were on their way home to Florida and driving through Kentucky when the storms came through. They had already driven through multiple tornado warnings and decided to stop and take a break in Paducah, about ten miles north of Mayfield.
Good thing they stopped - while they were there, the monster tornado came through just south of them and leveled Mayfield. (Photo of Mayfield from Google Images.) Needless to say, they (and we) are VERY grateful that they took that break when they did.
Tornadoes are a fact of life when you live in the Midwest.
My father's home in St. Louis, Missouri was hit when he was a little boy. He was upstairs in a bedroom and one of those windows blew in on him when the tornado hit his house.
We have had several close calls, but the closest was the tornado that hit Urbana, Illinois in 1996.
It missed our home by a couple of blocks and touched down on the playground of the school where I taught, plowing through the neighborhoods nearby. One person was killed.
A tornado coming at us over a ridge as we drove through Kansas in 2019.
Another tornado on the ground next to the highway we were driving on. Same storm system as the last but an hour later and further on down the interstate.
Two tornadoes - one fully formed on the right with a second coming down on the left. (We stopped the car for this one - it was moving away from us so we felt it was safe to do so.)
Locally, we get quite a few tornadoes. A few years ago, Ian and Mila's school was hit by a tornado.
Their school closed for a year; the middle school adjacent to theirs had to be closed for two years. Luckily, the tornado hit on a Sunday and only a few people were inside.
The storm system that spawned the terrible Friday night tornadoes also passed through Indiana, but we were lucky in that we just had very high winds and no tornadoes.
I had to step outside early Saturday morning and record that wind - all the sound you hear (aside from a metal sign that is clanking) is wind.
Our son and his family dodged the storm and are home safely in Florida. We, too, were lucky as the storms went south of us. I wish I could say the same for those who were hard-hit by the tornadoes.
Heartfelt prayers for all those who have been impacted by the tragedy.
I'd been to Adam-ondi-Ahman before but it was raining and cold. When we went this past December, the weather was sunny and while not warm, it was not uncomfortably cold, either.
It's not a bad hike from the parking lot to the actual site so I was able to make it.
The valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman.
Whitney and Cory walking on the top of the ridge that overlooks the valley. There's a steep drop-off that that gravel walk borders in front of them.
As I stood there and looked down over that vast valley, I wondered about how so many people could've heard Adam speak. King Benjamin gathered his people and had a tower built so they could see and hear him. Did that happen here?
But as the kids ran down the slope and out into the valley to play, I could actually hear their conversations quite clearly. Perhaps this place was chosen partially for its acoustics.
Regardless, there was a very spiritual, holy feeling there.
(Note: We also saw Far West in the morning and then Haun's Mill at dusk, but I cannot find any photos from those two sites. I will post them if I do.)
While in Independence, I sat down on a bench and found myself suddenly surrounded by unicorns.
They were cute, but still.... unicorns?? I don't like unicorns!
For my part, I was repping horses with my shoes, purse, and necklace, and the unicorns didn't seem to mind, so we sat together for a while. And while we sat, we had a debate.
Were we sitting in a giant horseshoe? Or was it an oversized Christmas ornament?
We all were in agreement - our bench was under a giant horseshoe. (Those sweet unicorns are Whitney and Cory.)
For the past couple of years, Craig and I have gone down to Florida to visit Kyle and have an early Christmas with them. We simply are not up to such a long drive anymore, and instead, met up with them to tour some Church history sites in Missouri.
We started in Independence.
Kyle and Melissa at breakfast in the motel. (She LOVES her Daddy!)
Addie and me.
Cory and me.
Supposed to be Kyle and me but Melissa photobombed us.
Whitney and me.
Braden and me. (Does he ever look like his father!)
Breakfast together; Boompa looking through his notes for the day's activities. A very kind motel attendant took this photo for us.
We traveled throughout the day with two cute unicorns.
I loved visiting the church that Joseph Smith III built and attended. It is a Community of Christ church.
I love old churches and this one was beautifully decorated for Christmas.
A sacrament table down in the basement of the church.
After that, we drove on the Liberty Jail where we toured and then the missionary guide took a family photo of us all.
Both my undergrad and Masters degrees are from the University of Illinois. But since I did two years of undergrad work at Purdue and then earned my post-Masters Gifted and Talented endorsement there, too, I am a Boilermaker as well as an Illini.
And with a basketball team as good as this year's team is, I was glad when I was offered some tickets to go see them play during the holidays. Jenny came up from Indy to go with me. (Craig was still in Nashville for the Music City Bowl.
The enthusiasm was palpable - this team is one of Purdue's best ever.
Eric had given Steve tickets to the game for Christmas and they were seated somewhere down there near the bench, but Jenny and I could never pick them out.
Jaden Ivey with the ball and my favorite Purdue player, Trevion Williams, on the right.
Purdue won with 104 points to 90 over whomever it was they played. (Not a Big Ten team.) I posted that photo of Ivey on social media and it got a lot of attention.
Including a nod from Brayden Painter, Coach Painter's son. He went to Hershey and friended me on Facebook a couple of years ago.
It was really a thrill to watch this team play. It reminded me of the Flying Illini when Dee Williams, Roger Powell, and Deron Williams were playing back in the 2000s.
I'm hopeful that they will make a good showing in the NCAA tournament - they have the potential to be National Champions.
I hadn't opened the box in years and I was curious as to what was still left of the pieces.
The board was in great shape and still had a picture that I had made long ago.
Naturally I had done Samson, the horse!
I found the other horse pieces and considered changing the picture up for a moment, but then I decided to leave it alone - I liked the idea that something I had created during childhood was still intact.
I did sort out the clings and there are some missing. The clinginess is gone, too, but that is due to dust that got on the board and pieces over time. I can easily clean that off with a damp cloth.
As I looked at Samson, the horse from the film, I realized that the Colorform horse was different from the movie horse.
The black mane and tail had been changed to a white one. (Probably to make it more visible against the background.)
Hagen Renaker Disney pieces with Samson in his correct colors. (Photo from Google Images.)
The white horse/black mane and tail was a very popular depiction of horses in the 1950s and 1960s when the film was made.
Hagen Renaker's first circus ponies were produced in the fall of 1955 through the spring of 1956. Both have white bodies with black manes and tails.
Other companies that produced model horses used the same color scheme.
Hartland certainly did,
and perhaps Breyer's alabaster color is a tweak on the color scheme with a grey mane and tail. My old mold Proud Arabian Mare from 1958 - 1959.
Breyer's charcoal color, first seen in 1961, is a reverse of the color.
Perhaps the charcoal color was inspired by the pieces with white bodies and black manes and tails?
A recent Samson, one that was designed to be a cake topper.
White maned or black maned, Samson lives on through Disney+ and other services.I carefully tucked this treasured childhood toy back up on the shelf in my closet with a warm feeling in my heart.
