29 May 2016 - Overwhelmed and Overly Blessed

I'm late on this post due to a trip to Utah to help pack up Francene's apartment and move her stuff into a storage unit. We were gone all last week. But it was a great trip. Samuel stayed home with Rebekah watching him most of the time but other's in the ward also helped out.
We left Monday after Seminary. Stephen had to skip his volunteer work at the temple because we needed to make it to Susan & Cory's place for Josiah's 9th birthday - HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! Susan had a "donut cake" already for when we arrived. We gave him some cash since that is what Liz requested for her kids and it will make it easier to keep that up since Stephen is not working for now.

Eyeing the Donut Cake with a special one on
the top just for the Birthday Boy. 

Birthday Boy - Josiah - 9 years old

           After we spent the night in Meridian, we left after the kids went to school. We had to make it to Provo for a Dance Performance of Ben and Carli. It was to be a surprise but I blew it by posting a picture of a fire on the Freeway and where we had to detour. My bad. I forgot that Ben actually checks his FB account and that I'm his "friend".

We made it to Provo in the early Tuesday afternoon and went right to Jessica and Juan's place. It was so fun to see Ms. Hadlie and Master Christian along with their mom and dad. Juan was nice enough to take care of the kids while Jessica, Stephen and I went to the Covey Convention Center in Provo where we were to meet up with Sarah and Michael and watch  Ben and Carli with the BYU Ballroom Dance Team put of their performance that they were taking to England. It was a great show and even though Ben was NOT surprised to see us he did come and get me to check on Carli because she had been hit in the head by one of the dancer during the last performance and she almost passed out. Her eye was definitely getting red and swollen and I told her she would have a black eye by the next day. She still had to do one more performance since we made the 5:00 show and there was a 7:30 show also so she braved on and did it without a hitch. The problem in the second show was in the solo performance by Ben and Kayci, her shoe came undone and she had to quickly strap it back on during the performance. You couldn't really tell unless you had a recording which we did...lol. She did a great job of covering it up during the show.

After the 2nd performance of "Swing & Sway

Between performances.

After watching the show twice we went over to Jessica and Juan's where Sarah and Michael were but the left as soon as we got there and Jessica went to bed so Stephen and I stayed up and waited for Ben and Carli to come by as they mentioned they would. We wanted to wish them well before they left on Friday for tour and competition. They didn't stay very long but it was good to talk with them. We had a few more gifts from people for them and we delivered things to Sarah also, including her prom dresses that she wanted to sell. It was nice to "thin down" a little.
The next morning we left for St. George. It took about 4 hours and we were there in the heat of the afternoon. We went right to the storage unit so Stephen could see what he had to work with in the way of space. It was pretty full. We went to see Francene after that and when Leonard came soon after and the two of them started on the storage unit while I visited with Francene. They did want me to come and see some stuff to make a determination as to the value of things such as material and items that she had in storage. We spent the night in Francene's place. Stephen and I slept on a queen size air mattress that Leonard brought and he had the twin bed in her room.
The next day I wanted to be with Francene for Breakfast. She had an IV running and a foley catheter with dark amber urine which meant she was dehydrated. We were told she had a urinary tract infection that had gone to her kidneys. I had to talk a long time to get her continued therapy and they finally decided to keep the IV going with meds to give her a chance to get over the infection in her body and to start to improve. They said that she had until the 10 day course of antibiotics was finished to improve otherwise she would go to long term care without therapy. It was hard to hear that and I spoke with Francene. She said she felt "trapped" and that she wanted to get better. Unfortunately, she was getting a little better then sliding back to a worse condition than before like she was continuing to have little strokes. Richard and Jolene came that morning later and we had a nice conversation between them and Francene. I asked Francene about remembering their visit the next day and she didn't remember it. She had told Leonard and I with Stephen there that she was OK with telling Mayrene about her condition. She repeated that answer when Richard was there so that he heard it which I was grateful for.

Storage in the beginning

Storage area after Stephen put up shelves and organized the
whole thing....beautifully.

Halfway done.

Livingroom sorting.

We stayed through the week and started back home before all was complete but Leonard and Mike and Cathy were there to finish up and Helena was coming down for the night so we left on Saturday and made it to Meridian and  Susan's house. We spent the morning with Susan, Cory and the kids and left to make church at Pendleton for the 1:00 session. It was a beautiful new building and a nice ward. It made Sunday feel like Sunday.