Monday, April 19, 2021, I received a telephone call from our daughter, Nissa. She is having some surgery and just needed to talk. If feels so good to be 70 years old and your daughter, who just turned 50, still needs and wants to talk with her Mother. Grateful for each of my kids.
The rest of Monday I would spend ordering birthday gifts for our little Emelia, who is to turn two years old the end of April, doing laundry, and crocheting. We did pause to drive to Georgetown to fill the birdfeeder and take Papa a treat.
Tuesday, April 20, 2021, was my day to take Papa for another drive. This time we drove toward Paris, Kentucky on what is labeled as a scenic drive on the maps. It is that indeed. Then we drove from Paris toward Lexington and found Ironworks Pike and followed it all the way past the Kentucky Horse Park and Georgetown to the road to Frankfort. There we turned and drove back to Georgetown with a stop at Burger King for a chocolate shake for Papa to take to the nursing home. Papa loved his drive in the country. He has more periods of time where he is quiet. Very un-Papa-like. I find myself looking to see if he has fallen asleep. But, he is just being quiet. So grateful we have reached a point with the pandemic where I can get him out again. Now, I just need to get into his room and clean up all the reading material he has stacked up from the past year without me sorting and rotating things.
I walked around my home and took some pictures of springtime on our hill in Sadieville.
We had a forecast for snow during the night. We had been having such lovely spring weather. I even wore my capris a few days. It got up to 70 degrees while Papa and I were on our drive. So, having snow forecast for the night time seemed a little weird. Sure enough, Claude and I got up at 3:30am to go to the bathroom. I looked out the window to our deck and it was covered in snow and clearly, even in the dark, more snow was coming down. As Claude came back to bed, I told him he needed to look out the window!
Wednesday, April 21, 2021, I awoke and promptly went to the window to see in the light what came down during the night. We had a most beautiful layer of snow over everything. It was wet, heavy snow and this was proven by the tree in our front yard with branches hanging down toward the ground. Here are a few pictures of the contrast between the pictures the day before at 70 degrees.
At about 8:30pm we were watching television. I was crocheting and Claude was coloring. Then Claude said, "I think there is something going on outside." I got up and looked on the deck. There were little white pellets all over the deck and it was coming down hard. The first two pictures are from the back of our home. It was cloudy and really dropping pellets. The second two pictures are from the front yard. Ironically, the sun was setting and you could see it in the distance trying to make a final show before going down. It didn't last long. We sure had an interesting weather day!
I would spend my afternoon scanning old files from my grandparents on my mother's side. Then crocheting in the evening.
I want to share a couple of the treasures I found. First, a note from my father to my mother. It was dated on the back, June 9, 1980. That is my mother's birthday. I would have been close to 30 years old at this point and living in Denver, Colorado.
We took Papa his treat, got us a biscuit and headed back home. I would again scan and crochet and add a little reading to the rest of my day.
There is a new home being built in Eagle Bend. It will face Edgewater. We are enjoying the progress on it. I will share pictures of that progress because it is fun to watch things being created. This day they put up the framework to pour concrete basement walls.
Saturday, April 24, 2021, we would participate in the Lexington North Stake BillionGraves activity. We have the BillionGraves app is our each of our telephones. You simply set your phone so that locations show up. Then you go to a cemetery and take pictures of the headstones at the cemetery. We have identified cemeteries and where they have headstones that have never been photographed. Our stake had set up with three military cemeteries in the area for pictures be taken in them. We all woke up to a forecast of 100% chance of rain. It wasn't supposed to begin until later so we hurried out at 8:30am.
Our first stop was in Georgetown. We found a cemetery that didn't even show up on the BillionGraves app. The name on the cemetery is the Old Georgetown Cemetery. It is mostly a fenced off grassy area. There are a few rows of visible headstones. Claude went to one side and went to the other and we would meet in the middle. One had to be very careful when walking as there were holes under the grass where headstones had stood. The grass appears even but it is not always so. One of the markers I saw had a death date of 1838. There were several that were clearly military people. These markers had growth and what I will call calcification on the concrete so they were impossible to read. Our instruction is to take the picture anyway. If someone is looking and know their relative is buried there, the location on the picture will confirm it was there. BillionGraves has the ability to clear up some of these pictures and get the data off the headstone. I took this picture of the back fence of the cemetery. There was a big old tree with two markers under it.
Next we drove to Frankfort. The BillionGraves app showed a small cemetery in downtown Frankfort where no pictures had been taken. We thought we might do all of that one. Alas, when we found the location, a parking lot was built where it was previously located. No wonder no pictures were taken!
We drove down to Sunset Memorial Gardens next. This is where my mother is buried and where we will bury my father. We took pictures of their gravesites a year ago. However, none of the other headstones in their section of the cemetery have had pictures taken. We did this entire section. Then the rain started to come. We headed back to Sadieville. This picture is the view from my mothers gravesite. I find cemeteries a pleasant place to be. Quiet and thoughtful.
The Roper's had a early birthday for Emelia. This is a picture of our Emelia on her bean bag chair from Claude and me. It seems Raelyn had a bean bag chair. Emelia wanted to sit on it with her. Raelyn finally went to Katelyn and explained that Sissy had gotten too big to share her bean bag chair. Now they will each have one. I think Emelia is happy with her bean bag chair.
Sunday, April 25, 2021, we enjoyed Sacrament Meeting via Zoom. This Sunday Elizabeth Parret reported on her mission. Elizabeth Parret served her mission in Layton, Utah. She focused her talk on “Let God Prevail”. This is a phrase repeated by Pres. Russell M. Nelson, our Prophet. Liz shared how she had learned the importance of this principle as she served her mission. She shared and example of an investigator who was very excited about her visits with the missionaries. But, when push came to shove, and it was time to decide, she chose to stop seeing the missionaries. Liz said this was an example to her of someone who could have but chose not to “Let God Prevail” in their life. Then Liz shared a story of a young man who did just the opposite and the blessings the Gospel were in his life after joining the Church. I say a prayer to Heavenly Father very evening and I always include a prayer for our missionaries in the field. I ask for three things. First, that they will protected from harm and danger. Second, that they will be healthy, particularly from Covid-19. Third, I ask that their testimonies will be strengthened by their studying and learning the principles and ordinances of the Gospel. That they will learn as the watch the good and the bad in peoples lives as they accept and live or deny the blessings of membership in the Church. Liz sharing her testimony today was like Heavenly Father telling me the things I have quietly prayed for our missionaries was being answered in a very positive way in Liz’s missionary experience. It was a good talk.
Then Claude and I spent about an hour reading and studying Doctrine & Covenants 40-44. We each read 10 verses and we pause and share things we underlined or found interesting for whatever reason. Then we open our Come, Follow Me manual and read and study in it. As Claude was reading, he came to the word ‘prophesy’ twice and read it so the ‘sy’ was pronounced with a long ‘e’ sound. For years I have seen this word spelled ‘prophesy’ or ‘prophecy’. I have surely used them interchangeably. This is wrong. Today, we paused and I looked up their pronunciation and meaning. ‘Prophesy’ is pronounced with a long ‘I’ sound at the end and it means ‘saying that a specified thing will happen in the future’. The word ‘Prophecy’ is pronounced long ‘e’ sound at the end and it means ‘a prediction’. So the word ‘Prophesy’ is to say the thing and the word ‘Prophecy’ is the thing. I felt so enlightened. Such a little thing but I love that we learn no matter how old we are or how long we have studied.
And that is my week in review. Good week.
After an unsuccessful attempt to participate in the Zoom Relief Society meeting, Claude and I drove into Lexington for a burger. They have a new Cook Out Burgers there. We really like that place in Frankfort. We found it. The food was good but the service was not. We learned we like Cook Out but we'll drive to Frankfort when we want it. Claude turned to me after we finished eating in the Jeep and said, "I don't feel satisfied." I said, "Do you need another burger?" He thought he might. He has been doing a test trial on chicken sandwiches. One of the places he needed to try one was Popeye's Chicken. We drove to Popeye's and Claude got a chicken sandwich. I learned they had chocolate Beignet's. They were out of those but I shall store that in my memory bank for another time. I ordered a side order of red beans and rice. Yummy!! We left satisfied with our 'meals'!!
As we entered Eagle Bend, the concrete forms were down and they were leveling out places in the poured concrete on the newest home in Eagle Bend.
Backtracking a bit. I received pictures from Andie that I had a hard time viewing. They were shared with Google Photos but my BellSouth eMail address was used. Google only likes a Gmail address. I did get to them and saved these of our Bailey at her Track Meet. Limited attendees due to Covid-19 prevent us from attending these functions now. Grateful for pictures!! I have these dated April 17th which is the day Andie sent them originally. That is probably the day of the meet.
