At the end of a long week...

Wow. It has been a tiring week. Full of hard things and easy things; sad things and happy things.

Margaret's funeral took up part of three days, and was mostly hard for requiring a lot of driving. I was very glad that my sister Arlene came. And very glad that my brother decided to come to the viewing with us, so that we could spend some time together. Bruce our brother (and uncle and great uncle) treated us all to dinner at Apollo Burger near his and Sara's former home in Salt Lake City. On our drive, we ran into some truly horrible traffic that turned out to be a man hunt with lots of police vehicles, armed policemen and police dogs along the freeway, and clearly trying to surround as much as possible the space between I-15 and the Legacy highway. I think this is the why of that. (Armed robbers who crashed their car and made a get-away on foot.)

Here is a selection of photos from the viewing:

Arlene, Marie, Ruth and I

Me, Marie, Ruth, Perry, Bruce and Arlene

Same people, only with Rosa and Steve jumping in

Rosa, Josie with Miss Z, Karen (Perry's daughter) and Nancy with Mr. A

cousins Caleb Conrad, Michael and Jeffrey Kemp

The funeral itself was on Wednesday, and we dropped Josie off at the airport on our way there and Arlene off at the airport on our way back. That was a sad day, but really good. We enjoyed spending the day with our cousins Ruth, Perry and Marie. Select photos from that day:

Ruth was excited to show me her thumb piano that Ellen surprised her with at Christmas. She loves playing it!

Cousins: Arlene, Perry, Marie, Ruth and I

Arlene forgot to get a picture with Josie before she flew away, so she wanted to be sure to get one with Nancy.

Thursday started off with a misunderstanding. I was supposed to go to the Utah Library Association conference in Sandy, but also it was Margaret's burial. I wanted to go to both. But I was wretchedly needing a break from driving! I could go with Janet in the early morning and borrow her car to run to the burial. Or I could ride to the burial with my brother if he didn't mind dropping me off at the convention center on my way back. I decided on the latter. And I thought I had clearly communicated, but I had not, so I was mystified when my brother was preparing to drop me off at the conference before he went to the burial!! We had a good laugh over that. He had thought it was sad that I was not going to the burial with him--when that was exactly what I was hoping to do! I appreciate his generosity in dropping me off after.

Select pictures from Margaret's burial:

Everyone who was there, except for one Kemp cousin who came just soon after we took this photo. The bishop took the photo of all of us. Caleb, Kemp cousin, Michael, Jeff, Ruth, Becky and her fiance Roger, Marie, Steve, Me, Bruce, Mary, Andrew, Karen and Perry

Margaret's four children and her one grandchild

All of the cousins of that generation who were there: Karen, Mary, Michael, Becky and Roger, Caleb, Jeff and the two Kemp cousins

Our Conrad men: Steve (Macy), Caleb, Bruce and Perry

Perry, Marie and Ruth

When I got to ULA, one of my colleagues waved me over to an open spot at their table--they had just started lunch. I sat by one of our "bosses" and he leaned over and said a bit pompously, "Well, Myrna, what is causing you to arrive late?" (Sort of with a what's your excuse attitude.) I said, "I am just coming from a burial." Woosh--I saw all snideness drain from him immediately. ULA was good, but too much food was offered in that afternoon, and sad to say, I was a little piggy just digging into the trough. I need to not do that.

Because we had an MPMLA dinner that night, and even though I only ordered two what I hoped were small appetizers, I just ate too much. I spent a miserable night in our hotel room. I was as quietly miserable as possible, because I was sharing with my friends Anita, Janet and Janice. I wanted them to sleep well. Finally, about at 3 AM, I got up and spilled my guts into the toilet. After that, I could actually sleep some before the alarm went off at 6:30 AM. We needed to be there at 7:45.

The conference was good. My presentation--which was of a logic game and "escape reality" puzzle--kind of based on escape room theory, but without the room--went well. I ate very little of all the tempting food. When we went for dinner that night, I only ate a small side salad and a side order of mashed potatoes. I had a good sleep that night, and the Saturday morning part of the conference went well. Then I was driven home by Janet, was there for about 25 minutes and then drove back (actually, was driven by Andrew & Nancy) up to Bountiful for Aunt Joyce (Duggar Porter)'s 90th birthday party. I like her so much! She and her children and grandchildren are my favorite relatives on the Layton side of the family.

I will end on a happy note with a picture of the dance from MPMLA. That was a lot of fun! I was not super good at it, but I gave it a good, hard try!

I am at the very edge--you can see my white top, black pants, and bare feet.

Eat Your Food

For junior Primary singing time today, I had the kids sing "If you really love your mom..." which is just "If you're happy and you know it" only with activities you might do to show love to your mom instead of clapping your hands or whatever.

I had nine posters that the children could turn over, and then we would sing and act out whatever was on the poster. There were lots of children away today, so at first there were nine children, exactly the perfect amount to sing through the whole thing. But then one little girl came in late, so there were ten children--not quite so perfect.

Most of the posters said things like "give her a hug" or "do the dishes" or clean up your toys" or "blow her a kiss"--but one said "eat your food." The kids were all unfazed by that, but some of the teachers looked confused--teachers who have no children; teachers whose kids grew up a long time ago.  So I explained a bit, about how your mom makes you this food and then you are all "I don't like that!" The kids were totally on board--they could see how just eating their food might make their moms happy.

As I was choosing children, and thinking about how to handle the one extra child--if there had been more than one extra child, it would have been easy enough to just do something else and use the leftover children, but with one, I wanted to include that child in the same activity--so I decided that I would ask the leftover child to choose their favorite gifts for mom of all the ones we had sung about. He was delighted to have that opportunity.

And he immediately chose "eat your food." I was totally vindicated! Yes, you non-parents in the crowd, one day, you too, may learn for yourself that if your picky child will just eat his/her food, then it will be a very good day indeed!