Little Wendy is our guest writer today.  Like me, she grew up on Apache Avenue.  And as a bonus to joining the blogging world, I've been able to keep tabs on her once again.  Wendy was the only girl in her family amidst an army of boys.  And somehow, she was neither a tomboy or a princess.  She's cool like that.

Like me, Wendy grew up in a disturbingly normal family.  What we lacked in sibling rivalry and family dysfunction, we made up in neighborly trauma.

Before I was Mrs. Olsen, Memorial Day was mostly about camping trips, parties, or pre-season fun in the metropolitan state of Utah and their homegrown amusement park, Lagoon.  Blame it on my good genes, all my contributing DNA we're alive and kicking 2 and 3 generations back throughout my Apache Avenue childhood.  Who's graves were there to visit?   Memorial Day was my teaser for summer fun just around the corner.  

It was okay.  For a season.

But now I live in a valley that was settled by my and The Mister's ancestors back in the day.  The day meaning those white folks that built permanent structures in the earth, and feared the natives, and sought religion, and worked their asses off for food.  The whole bit.  So for good or bad, they came and threw down roots.   Here in my little valley we visit their pioneer graves at an old country cemetery just a few miles from my home. 



This was back in 2005 when I was growing Vanilla Wafer in my gut. Check out Rainbow Girl in her little rain jacket. 

Look at the rolling hills! 

The settlers named this valley, Avon. They said it looked like Stratford-on-Avon, that beautiful Shakespeare country someone left in pursuit of property, religious fervor, or the American Dream. I'm sure that no matter what they were fleeing, or seeking, they missed their native home a little and welcomed these smiling hills.

It's pretty rare to get The Mister of the House to smile in a photo. Somehow, it works here.   But don't for one minute think our Memorial Day festivities are all somber.  We like to bring some life among the tombstones, and this guy (father of The Mister) usually brings a frisbee. 

 Throwing frisbees is our way of coming to the fence of those that have passed to the other side, and saying We remember!  Look how we move!  Do you miss it? Can you fly?

Tonight after visiting graves, picnics, frisbee, and sun we were chilling at home and watching a movie.  After playing in the backyard, Rainbow Girl rushed in, heart-a-fluttering, to tell us that the neighbor's horse had just escaped from his pen.  Here's the guy right here.  He shares a wall with our feathered ladies of Bok Bok Cottage.

He's probably looking off to our (other) neighbor's pasture. He's been looking over there for a month. Ever since the empty meadow became home for 3 horses, all running together and eating grass. I've been listening to them neigh and whine at each other ever since.

And then....pop!  rush!  he was free!  He bolted to the front of his property, then turned fierce and majestic, tail pitched like a flag, horse on a mission.  Our movie paused and the neighborhood froze.  Folks gathered on their porches.  

With a jolt, the horse cut through a newly seeded yard, then galloped through a vibrant barrier-free yard, turned a corner and trotted in front of our house, and then a rush to the fence along the pasture of the tri-posse that's been egging him on for a month.  Here I am!  And the 3 stooges rushed to the edge and leaned their long necks across and nuzzled.  In their excitement, they all galloped from one edge of the pasture to the other, for one moment pretending that they were a fearsome four-some. Then they softly returned to the edge of the pasture and leaned across the fence and nuzzled some more. 

And then it was over.  Back to reality, there came the bridle and orders for home.  Triumphant, the horse was led back to his lonely pasture and his side of the fence.  

And I treasure this knowledge: that on this Memorial Day in 2009 we came to the fence, and those on the other side understood and leapt for joy.

It's been almost a year since we moved to our new life on a bigger lot with some chickens. The weeding I need to be doing is....amazing. overwhelming.

Now if you want some better simple advice, then read what The Flourishing Mother said here.

For this week, I don't have a guest post.  I am also hoping some of you will take the quick survey on the sidebar about Testimony Tuesdays.  Please enjoy this clip from a powerful talk given by Joseph B. Wirthlin, just months before he passed away.  

It might as well be February with all the pondering and celebrations of love recently. We finally married off little brother video buff of The Mister of the House. When the happy couple finally emerged from the stony temple that looks like a castle on a hill...well, it was like paparazzi scrambling to get a shot of Brangelina. Check it out.



Since both my Grandpas passed away before I was married, I got to adopt The Misters Grandpa and Grandma.  Grandpa married the happy couple (like he did for The Mister & Mrs. Olsen nearly ten years ago). Among the many words of wisdom he shared was this: 

Your love is strong right now, but it is not perfect.

He then pointed to the parents and grandparents, and talked about how love becomes more beautiful with age.

 


What a lovely, happy, and as far as I can tell, perfectly loving couple.

Now let's get down to bid-ness.


Come on, let us have it...

Yippee.  Another picture for my kissing wall.  Is passion love? Are kisses more passionate when love ages?  

Of course, first comes love, then comes marriage.  Nothing like a picture with all the nieces and nephews to prep you for what's to come.

Run now while you have a chance. Take a long, quiet, diaper-free honeymoon immediately before it's too late!

Who's talking?

That was uncalled for. Heck, there's nothing like children to bring you closer together.

Right? Right? Okay, that was formerly a crook for my offspring.  Take a joke why dontchya?  

btw, there's my long and apparently invisible layers of my first ever haircut in 5 years.  We're calling that phase 1 (of 2) in my hair makeover.  Besides we've got to keep it long enough to have the quintessential romantic hairdo of the century.

Modeled by the latest Mrs. Olsen, formerly known as Jen Adair.  Simple, classy, and gorgeous. What a perty bride.

Speaking of love manifest through hair, check out my daddio.

Poor guy's been without his bride for the past 3 weeks.  So here's love in action.  My folks can't seem to survive being apart from each other.  In order to prove his total dependence on my mom, my dad decided to grow a beard, be a hermit, and live on Cheetos the entire time she's been gone.  Sorry to break it to ya dad, but you failed the Louis L'Amour Cowboy Course: your beard really stinks.  But I think you made up for it with your sweet hairy eyebrows.  Thanks for riding your horse down my way to pay me a visit.

Maybe romantic love gets stronger the second generation down.  

When you start out young, bright-eyed and in love, do you really see this coming down the road?

Grandpa Love sure seems to be running strong around here.  Before he even pulled his loveboat of a car out of my driveway, Rainbow Girl turned to me all sad and said: "I miss him already".

I miss him too!  Of course, there's one thing me and my dad will always share: a crooked back.  Which is why I have been basking in this phase of my love life because I seriously got a 2 hour shoulder rub, back massage last night from The Mister of the House.   He insisted I watch Star Trek: Wrath of Khan so I could be properly prepared to see the new Star Trek movie in the theatre.  But it's more than just a nerdy sci-fi movie people that's motivating us here people!  Only true love could keep that shoulder burn going the entire time....

Aaaahhh..

is anyone still reading this?

With Patty's contribution a while back, she pointed out something about the mixing of academia and faith. A lot of times these two don't get along very well. I suppose I speak as somewhat of an outsider. I am not intellectually specialized by a PhD, have never published research or forums, and sometimes don't shower for three days. But I did spend a good 5 years getting a four-year degree, still live in a University town, and took an educational hiatus to serve a mission where, ironically, five (out of 18) months were stationed at the LDS Institute at the University of Florida in Gainesville (go Gators!).

EXHIBIT A:

This is the President of the LDS church during the span of my mission service, marriage, and birth of my 3 kids. I kindof like him. He strongly encouraged members throughout the world to get more education: "Education is the key to opportunity" is what he always said.

EXHIBIT B:

With all the rubbing of shoulders of friends, peers, and faculty, I have found that a popular catch-phrase for the intellectually stimulated becomes "I don't believe in organized religion". Does that make them bad? No! Maybe it's learning about those Crusades for the first time, or thinking about all the college keggers your religion wants you to miss out on. Perhaps it's that new sense of freedom we all feel when we leave home. At any rate, college life becomes the first place you begin to define your own religion. Some people grow into their parents testimonies of religion, others say God is more powerful in nature [while smoking a hookah pipe and snowboarding on the Sabbath ;)].

This growing period is necessary, and sometimes risky. The major risk being that you forget your true identity as a child of a loving, patient, kind, and concerned Heavenly Father.

EXHIBIT C:

And here is the key. C.S. Lewis said it best.

"Education, without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil"

Or as Mrs. Olsen says, education without the spirit, makes people lose their true identity...and sometimes become buttheads. Intellectual pursuits expand our minds and our opportunities, but it's important to keep working at your relationship with Deity. Prayer and scripture study are key.

EXHIBIT D:

*John (name changed) is a univeristy professor. He is well beyond the freedom college days, and is well-worn in his intellectual pursuits as a professor. He talks about balancing faith and academia this way:

Life in academia is intellectually stimulating and invigorating. Sometimes, however, people of faith in academia fall trap to their intellect, so much so that they either lose faith in God or shift their faith away from God toward rational humanism or some other philosophical bent. Empiricism becomes their religion and religion itself is dismissed as “the opiate of the masses,” like Karl Marx suggested. I should hasten to add that overzealous faith can also lead to apostasy. Maintaining a balance is key.

I am not sure that there is a secret formula to prevent loss of faith, but I have a few “tools” that I use in an effort to keep things in balance. Studying history, especially LDS history, can lead people down controversial paths, some of which lead some scholars out of the Church. I was given my most useful “tool” for dealing with controversial issues by a counselor in a BYU student ward bishopric during a temple recommend interview. I was just beginning my forays into LDS history and finding inconsistencies, fallibility, and far too much humanness for my liking at the time (I now thrill in the humanness of it all. It gives me hope in overcoming my own humanness). I trusted this counselor with my feelings and have been grateful ever since. He drew a circle on a piece of paper and then several larger concentric circles around it. In the middle of the innermost circle he wrote Jesus Christ. At various layers outside the center he put the Mountain Meadows Massacre, blacks and the priesthood, post manifesto polygamy, and other such topics. He asked what my testimony was centered upon? I of course responded, “Jesus Christ.” He then suggested that that was all that really mattered. If I ever moved the center of my circle to one of the other topics on the page and made one of them my focus, my eye was no longer single to the glory of God (and could thereby place my testimony in jeopardy). All of the controversial topics are peripheral to what is crucial: Jesus Christ.

My second tool is a verse from Isaiah (5:21): “Wo unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight.” If I ever think I have it all figured out, Isaiah keeps me in check as he does my view of those who claim to have THE answer on a given topic. Religion for me is ultimately about faith. Sometimes God simply asks me to bow my head and say yes.

My third and most important tool is my testimony. When I start to question too much the foundation of my faith, the Lord’s answer to Oliver Cowdry grounds me: “Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God?” (D&C 6: 23). I believe in an otherly-world way of “knowing.” Some academics dismiss this way of knowing as irrational, emotional, anti-empirical. I reject their claims. I cannot turn away from the day God spoke peace to my mind, heart, and soul. In response to my simple inquiry for wisdom, He reached down from heaven and enveloped me in His love. What greater witness do I need?