Total graduated 130
Already passed 22
At the reunion 76
That means that that over 75% of those who could be there were there. I’m not sure what those people who didn’t make it onto the float did.
I threw all my candy one piece at a time, and I focused on those who may not get as much candy as the others. If I saw a kid standing by himself and not running for the candy, I would throw to him. I threw it into every baby stroller I could find. An old man had his hat sitting in his lap and I threw one into the hat. A truck was parked on the side of the road, and a dad had his daughter sitting on his lap. I threw one into the truck window. Some Hutterites were in the back of a pickup and I threw several into the back of the truck. If I caught someone’s eye, I would throw to them and more often than not, they caught it. I threw some at the Mounties, but they didn’t seem impressed. I did this the entire parade route. It was fun.
At the end of the parade, they decided to drive the float back to the starting line because most of the people had left their vehicles there. They gave everyone plenty of warning, but when the trailer started moving, Ricky Williams wasn’t on the trailer. He ran and tried to jump onto the trailer, but it was high and we were going uphill and we were moving just a bit too fast so he could never make it on. A couple of people were trying to help him, but it wasn’t working out. Darlyn Boyson was in a chair, and she was reaching down to give him a hand when all the sudden she toppled off the back of the trailer, chair and all. Rick, Darlyn and the chair were all rolling down the road.
I thought she had grabbed Ricky’s hand and he pulled her over, but she said she didn’t have his hand. Rick finally confessed and apologized because he grabbed the leg of her chair and he pulled her over. Thankfully Darlyn had the presence of mind to duck and not land on her head. She had a bit of road rash on her upper arm, but she was OK. The float took us back to where the parade started, which was close to where Lisa was watching the parade. She wouldn’t answer her phone, so I used GPS to find her location and walked to where she was.
I wasn’t surprised to find her chatting it up with her newfound cousin Bodie Smith. This is where I need to give you the back story.
She checked out the notification and found that a woman named Lisa Smith had added a record to her Aunt Jenny or Aunt Jenny’s husband. Aunt Jenny is her great grandfather’s sister. The two Lisa’s exchanged a few emails but then life got in the way and they lost contact.
After Lisa received this prompting to call Lisa Smith, she went through her emails and found that the last time they emailed was in 2014. Lisa fired off a message but never got a response so she started sleuthing. In one of her emails, Lisa Smith told Lisa Leavitt all about her family. She mentioned that she had a son named Bodie on a mission in England.
Lisa tried to find Lisa Smith on Facebook but there were far too many Lisa Smiths, but she did find Bodie Smith and she confirmed it was the right Bodie Smith from some of his mission pictures. They made contact and he gave Lisa his mother’s contact information. When she was talking to Bodie, she learned that he was going to be at the Cardston Parade. That is how they hooked up after the parade. It was cool.
We visited for quite a while and then we made our way up to Atwood Park for a picnic. The picnic was a potluck and there was a lot of amazing food. We visited for a long time and then headed to Lethbridge to visit Fara and her girls.
At one point during the picnic this guy came up to me and said, “Fred, it is good to see you”. He didn’t have a name tag on, so my standard response was, “Hi, you look familiar but you’re going to have to help me out with your name”. He said his name was Joe Paulson.
The name was familiar but, in my mind, I was trying to remember another student. Finally, someone said, “Fred, he was our physics teacher”. It all came back to me then. Physics was my absolute favorite subject in school. His class cemented in my mind my desire to become an engineer. I told him all that and tried to impress on him what an impact he had on my life. I told him that he was my favorite teacher ever, I told him that because of him I became an engineer, I got a graduate degree from UCSD, and I had done projects for NASA, JPL, DOE, NSF and a dozen other government agencies. I would never say that to other students, but I wanted him to understand the impact he had on my life. It was so good to see him.
It was good to see Fara, her girls came over and we visited for quite a while.
Fara’s new apartment is quite nice and many of the tenants in her apartment block have formed a nice group that meets often and has parties. She has a good group of friends.
Her girls are currently all living in one house. Tina’s house has two rooms downstairs that she rents out so Karla lives in one of them and Barbie-Joe and her youngest live in the other one. I would love to have all my kids in one place. Oh well.
As they were driving home, they were quite confused and Todd said to Loni, “did we just receive a call or not?” Several months later they received the call. What happened was that they were creating a new ward and when they sent the paperwork to Salt Lake for approval, they had to have a bishop’s name on the paperwork.
Their ward is for all young adults from 26 years old to 35 years old. I could be wrong on those ages, but you get the idea. Their ward boundaries go from the US border up to Nanton and from the BC border almost to Saskatchewan. They have 600 members and perhaps 150 are active but due to work commitments and other conflicts, they don’t all attend at the same time. Their attendance averages just over 100. They have their work cut out for them.
Sunday morning we attended Sacrament Meeting with Pat & Gary and then ate lunch with them and headed out. Our first stop was Lisa’s mother’s grave site. Lisa put a QR code on her grave marker like we did my parents and then we stopped at the Lethbridge temple site on our way out of town.
They live on a farm closer to Raymond than to Welling but I guess they have a Welling address. We visited with them for over an hour and shared memories of the people they knew in common. I think I shared this before, but let me do it again quickly.
We then headed to Great Falls to return our car and catch our flight back to Mesa. The Great Falls airport has this amazing display (if that is what you call it) with a cougar in the middle of a stream cascading down a hill. The whole thing is positioned between the up and down escalators. It was quite amazing.
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When growth hormone production decreases as we enter our twenties, thirst perception also decreases.
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