Dad, Tell Me About the Time (47)

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

What is the hardest thing?

The weird thing about having a child is that you feel what they feel and with pretty much the same intensity. If your child is happy, or experiences something wonderful, then you feel it with them. If they are in pain, then so are you. The problem is that sometimes that pain is of their own doing and you need to let them suffer the consequences of their bad decisions even if you are hurting along with them.

What may be worse, is when their pain is caused by someone else or just bad luck. There is nothing you can do about it. That is tough.

Dad, Tell Me About the Time (46)

 Monday, November 18, 2024

Can you draw or just doodle? Use these pages to sketch something you’ve learned to draw.

I love to doodle and to draw. I’m not very good but I enjoy it. I used to do it much more often than I do now but that is probably because I have very little spare time anymore. Rather than doodle something here I will just share a couple of paintings I did not long after we were married.

                                  

I know my life is crazy busy but I need to just make some time to start painting again. I know it isn’t that great but I enjoy it and my kids will have to tell me they like it. Maybe they will even put some on their walls. 

Together we make a FAMILY.

A Family of my own

Kira Anne Leavitt               September 2, 1982  Edmonton, AB

Brandon James Leavitt       June 2, 1984            Brooks, AB

Benjamin Scott Leavitt       February 25, 1986   Brooks, AB

Alycia Grayce Leavitt         February 3, 1989     Brooks, AB

Alexander Thomas Leavitt March 12, 1991       Brooks, AB

Sarah Christine Leavitt       August 24, 1993      Poway, CA

What is the best thing about raising a child?

The best thing about raising a child is that you always have an automatic friend. I know parents aren’t supposed to be “friends” with their kids and that is true when it comes to discipline etc. but you can still have rules and obedience with your kids as well as be their friends.

For me, I love little babies and because they are so sweet and loving, it is easy to over look the diapers and crying etc.

When they get to about two years old, they are old enough to get into everything but they are too young for you to really communicate rules etc. I would be happy to give me kids away when they turn two and take them back when they are four.

From four on every year older they get the more fun they are. Once they get to eight or nine you can start having philosophical discussions with them and as teenagers you can solve the worlds problems. I love my kids and I especially loved them as teenagers right up until they left for college.

Sending your kids off into the world to fend for themselves may be the hardest part of having children. Driving away from their apartments after having helped them get all setup is a bag of very mixed emotions. After all, this is what you raised them for. We had done all we could to prepare them for the world and while it is enormously exciting (and fulfilling) to see them spread their wings and fly, it is so sad to know that from now on they will not be a daily part of your life.

Dad, Tell Me About the Time (45)

Thursday, November 14, 2024

Anything special or unique about your spouse or being married that you want to share?

I was going to just answer that there is nothing unique about our marriage but I noticed that they give two full pages for an answer so I guess I’d better say something.

I still don’t think there is anything unique about us, we argue as much or more than most marriages, we certainly don’t agree on everything but I guess there are a few things that in my mind keep Lisa and I close?

If we are angry with each other we always resolve it. Early in our marriage someone told us that we should never to go bed angry. Well, if we did that, then we would both be much more sleep deprived than we are now. We may not resolve our issues right away, but we almost always resolve them. We don’t just pretend that nothing happened.

We also do things together. We don’t always get a date night in every week, but we usually do something together several times a week. It can range from watching a show together, go to a high school football game, a school play or just a walk on the beach. Lately we’ve been going on a walk together almost every morning but we certainly couldn’t have done that when the kids were little. One time Lisa even took me to a Star Trek Concert. Every once in a while Lisa and I will meet up for lunch.

Dad, Tell Me About the Time (44)

Friday, October 11, 2024

What qualities are most valuable when looking for a life partner?

I am no expert in this kind of stuff but having compared my life to others, I think the first thing I’d watch for are some red flags. I know it seems unfair and unromantic but the first thing I’d look for are signs of depression. I’d also look for signs of a sociopath, physcopath and narcisists. Sociopaths and physcopaths are probably pretty rare but depression and narcisists are for more common than I would have thought. If your potential partner doesn’t suffer from any of those problems then you can probably make anything work.

The problem is that people can hide those traights for a long time when they are trying to impress you. That is why I would go for a long courtship and short engagement. I figure that if you’re looking for signs of a problem they will probably show up within six months. Certainly within a year.

So, to answer the question of what are valuable qualities, I would watch for kindness, patience and someone who has similar views on parenting and budgeting as you do.

How do you keep a marriage relationship happy and healthy with a house full of kids?

As much as I love my kids, sometimes you just need to be alone with your spouse. While it isn’t always possible, your goal should be to have a date night once a week and do something you both enjoy. That means that until your oldest child is around twelve, you need to find a good babysitter in your neighborhood.

Have you been married more than once? If so, list each of your spouses’ full names.

Just once, thank goodness.

Have you been divorced? What did you learn from that experience?

I’ve never been divorce but from watching others go through divorces I’ve learned that you better put a lot of thought and prayer into picking your partner. To be fair, people do change and the person you marry can become someone completely different. As long as people have their free agency there will be divorces. While divorce is awful, it is often the best option for your own well being and for that of your children. You should do all you can be keep it civil.

Have your ever been widowed? What advice would you give to others who are going through the same experience?

Thankfully I have never been widowed and I have little advice to give others. When I go to funerals, I never know what to say to the loved ones at the funeral. When my mother died, I paid attention to what people said to me and perhaps the most meaningful thing people said was, “I’m sorry about your mother”.

In the moment, I don’t think it is helpful to remind people that their loved ones are in a better place and that you will see them again. The pain can be so great that knowing that the separation is only temporary doesn’t help much but, what a comfort it is for us to know that the separation is only temporary.

Dad, Tell Me About the Time (43)

Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Do you have a special song? What is it?

While I love good music, I have never sat and just listened to music. I prefer silence and I contemplate things in my mind. I love to invent things. If there is a long period of silence, I would prefer to listen to talk radio over music and now days I will listen to a book on tape.

When Lisa and I started dating, we would just talk, and since I knew nothing about music, we never talked about music. For this reason, we really don’t have a song. The closest thing we have to a “special” song is the song we danced our first dance to at our wedding. That will now be our official special song. The only problem is that neither one of us can remember what it was. Lisa assures me that it will come to her.

What activity is your favorite activity you do together?

Lisa and I love to do a lot of things together but perhaps one of our favorites is to go for walks on the beach. We don’t get out and do it often enough but we have walked at least twenty different beaches in San Diego, many of them we have walked several times.

In addition we have walked beaches in Hawaii, British Columbia, Florida, Oregan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, Grand Caymans, France, Belgium and probably others that aren’t coming to my mind right now.

When you wake up each morning, what is the first thing you notice about your spouse?

The first thing I notice when Lisa and I get up in the morning is how she is just as beautiful now as she was the day we got married. I am actually quite amazing at how well she has aged. On Sundays, as I look out at the congregation I can’t help but compare Lisa to all the other women out there. Of people her age, no other woman in the ard comes close to matching her beautfy.  She is the prettiest woman in the building. She is more beautiful than women much younger than her.

That of course is the first thing I notice. She has a lot more beauty that is more than skin deep. 

Elder Bednar

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

A couple of months ago we learned that an apostle was coing to visit San Diego and that of the fifteen or so Stakes in our area, he had chosen to visit our Stake. Last Sunday we had a special Stake Conference. Sadly mom and I had already bought tickest to St Louis for Charlottes baptism and were scheduled to land Sunday afternoon but we changed our tickets to take a late flight home on Saturday. Actually, it was cheaper to buy two new one way tickets than to modify the cheep tickets we had.

Stake Conference started at 9:00 and we were worried that everyone from the other fourteen stakes would try and get in, so we decided to be there when the doors opened at 7:00. We got there at 6:00 and we were the first ones there. By 6:30 there were already so many people in line that just the people in the line would fill the chapel so we weren’t sad that we got there when we did. Have you ever seen a line of people outside the church waiting to get in?

The conference was amazing. Let me give you a quick summary.

President Gosch called four people out of the audience with no warning. The first was Van Sharp, one of our young men. He did great and he talked about how the spirit is guiding him as he plans for the next four years of his life (mission, college, marriage etc). Then there was a young woman that I don’t know who talked about how God loves us and will be there for us when we need him. The next was Eva Navaro originally from PQ3. She fell off the deep end as a teenager and after hitting rock bottom she is putting her life back together. She did a great job. The last speaker was a little older (our kids generation) who basically said that Christ will never give up on you.

We then heard very short testimonies from Pres Mauseth and Pres Isaccs. I think they were given no notice either.

President Gosch then spoke and gave great messages about remembering who we are and using our time better.

Elder Bednar then got up and spent a few minutes reminding us that President Gosch has the keys for leading our stake and what he says over the pulpit is for our benefit. He emphasised that Pres Gosch wasn’t just filling time while we wait for an Apostle to speak to us but that his message is just as important as any message that Elder Bednar gives us.

He then proceeded to talk for an hour about those two messages shared by Pres Gosch. He mostly talked about remembering who we are and he gave examples out of the scriptures about people who failed because they forgot who they are and people who succeeded because they remembered.

He even pointed out that there is really only one sin, forgetting who you are. If you remember who you are then you will always make the right choice. Satan does everything he can to make us forget who we are.

In the interest of time I won’t repeat all the examples but here are the scriptures he referred to.

2 Samuel 11: 1 – 3 King David should have been with his armies and not hanging out in his apartment watching women bath.

Matt 4: 2 – 11 Satan tempting Christ. The three sins are physical apatites, fame and stuff. Satan tried to make Christ forget who he was by implying, “if you be the Son of God”.

Moses 1: 1 – 16 Satan calls Moses the son of man rather than the son of God.

We can live in a world that is getting increasingly screwy and be of good cheer.

--------------------trivia--------------------

Temple Square is that 15th most popular tourist attraction in America drawing five million tourist every year.

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Missouri - part 3

Monday, October 283, 2024

On Friday we got up early, dropped Charlotte off at school and then headed to the temple to do a session. It was wonderful to see a new temple and I’m really enjoying the new endowment.

After the temple, Ally gave us a tour of St Charles, the place that has been her home for the last couple of decades. I don’t know how long she has lived there, but its been a while.

Downtown St Charles was fascinating and it has a lot of history. It has cobbleston streets and many of the shops are original from when the town was founded over 200 years ago. Lewis and Clark started their expedition from St Charles.

We ate a wonderful lunch, enjoyed the shops and parks, bought a delicous cookie, and then we picked up Charlotte from school and got ready to go to “Boo at the Zoo”. St Louis has an amazing zoo that is free to attend. That is a bit deceitful, because they do charge for parking, but it is an amazing zoo. I think Ally may have been a bit dissappointed because while they had the place decked out with Halloween themed exhibits, most of the animal exhibits were closed. It would have been nice to see the animals but the theme was wonderful and some of the animals were still on display.

We then went back to our two hundred year old Air B&B, had a good rest, and then got ready for Charlottes baptism. I was very interested in meeting Josh who has been the source of so much pain in Ally’s life.

The baptism was both wonderful and strange. It was strange because Josh had nothing to do with the entire baptism. He performed the baptism itself, but chose to not get involved in anything else. He left everything else up to Ally. It was truly the Leavitt show. Ally Leavitt gave the opening prayer, Brandon Leavitt gave the talk on Baptism, Ally Leavitt and Lisa Leavitt were the witnesses, Fred Leavitt gave the talk on the Holy Ghost and Brandon Leavitt performed the confirmation.

At the baptism Josh was on his very best behavior and said all the right words, but I received no vibes from him. He didn’t give off bad vibes but he never gave off good ones either. As he was performing the baptism, I didn’t feel the Holy Ghost at all. I got nothing. I admit that it might be on me, and that I was obviously prejudiced because I know everything he has done to Ally, but I got nothing.

At the same time, I felt the Holy Ghost strongly through out the rest of the service. Brandon gave a powerful talk, I felt guided by the spirit as I gave my talk and the spirit was powerful as Brandon confirmed Charlotte. It was a great baptism.

After the baptism we headed to a place called “Heavy Smoke BBQ”. Apparantly St Louis is famous for ribs, and Heavy Smoke is the ultimate place for ribs in St Louis. It was amazing. By far the best ribs I’ve ever had. It was one of those cases where I was upset that I got full because I just wanted to keep eating.

We all sat at the same table and at one point Ally asked Josh about letting Charlotte come to San Diego with the rest of the family at Christmas time. That is when we saw the real Josh. The vibes coming off of him now were pure evil. He almost started becoming incoherent. To be fair, it is his year to have Charlotte, but all he wanted to talk about was last Christmas. I didn’t catch all of his arguments, but this is the gist of what I got.

Last year he had to have three Christmas’s, one for his family, Christmas day and one for Charlotte after Christmas. While that is unfortunate, it isn’t the case this year. He is by himself and while he has the legal right to keep Charlotte, it will only be him and Charlotte and for them, Christmas could be easily moved to a different day. He wouldn’t hear any of it, but kept going back to last Christmas. The only reason for not letting Charlotte go would be to hurt Ally.

In any case, he wasn’t budging, and Ally let it drop before she broke down. It put a bit of a downer on a wonderful day and a wonderful lunch.

It was also very strange when we left. Charlotte was going back to Texas for a week and all of Josh’s family came and said goodbye and to hug Charlotte but Josh didn’t say anything. No hugs, no goodbye’s, nothing.

From “Heavy Smoke” we headed to the airport, hugged and kissed Brandon, Ally and Charlotte goodbye and we flew west and they drove south.

It was an amazing week.

--------------------trivia--------------------

Blue eyes and red hair are both recessive genes so blue eyed red heads are very rare.

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Missouri - part 2

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

On Thursday morning (Oct 17) I thought it would be a good use of our time to look for the properties where our ancestors lived. It was off season so none of the sites opened until 10:00.

I figured that I would have a ton of ancestors who had lived in Nauvoo but I was wrong. I did find twenty people but they were all from two families, the Leavitts and the Davenports (Thomas Rowells second wife). There was no information on where the Davenports lived but the Leavitts lived in two areas. They had a farm outside of Nauvoo and thy rented a place in town.

The visitors center gave us a map that showed where the farmland was but it showed no roads. To find the property I started at the mississippi river and clocked eight miles east down Young street. Eight miles took us onto a gravel road and then we were supposed to go north for a mile. The problem was, that where we were to go north, there was no road. There was a bit of a trail and we were in a rental so off we went.

The trail eventually turned into a gravel road and then into a paved road and then after one mile it joined a main road. After a mile we were looking at a bunch of fields and we would have had no clue exactly where the Leavitt farm was, but Brandon had menioned a book he bought for Ally called “Glorious Truths About Women of the Restoratoin”. In this book they use several quotes from “Sarah Leavitt Autobiographical Sketch.” As it turns out, I have read this autobiographical sketch but I totally missed this paragraph.

“We swapped farms with a man, got one by the big mound, seven miles from the city, it was a fine pleasant place.”

Remembering “the big mound” we looked around and there was a big mound right in front of us. As I remember, the Leavitts never did get a house build on it. They had a bunch of bricks stored on the property but before they could make it into a house, the Saints were driven out of Nauvoo.

At some point, someone built a house because right on top of the “big mound” is a nice house. It doesn’t look like much of a mound in these pictures but it is very obvious in real life. Just so no one else has to go through what I did, here are the coordinates for the “big mound”.

40.568684, -91.266141

The trip back into Nauvoo was much less exciting than our trip out of town had been. We then looked for Frederick Keslers addresses in town. We found the addresses but none of the houses remain. One was an empty lot and the other was a new modern house. We then looked for the address of where the Leavitts rented a place. The entire neighborhood was gone. The house would have been a block or two from here.

Next on the agenda was what they call the “Temple City” tour. Basically you visit the house of an architect, a Bishop and a farmer. The architect was the home of William & Caroline Weeks. That is a cool story, you should read about it here. The Bishop was at the Edward and Ann Hunter home. The farmer was William and Esther Gheen. The tour talks about how each of these people contributed to the building of the Nauvoo temple. Along the tour was a stone carver. They had a pavillion along the path that talked all about the shaping of the stones.

From here we headed to Parley street to check out the Sarah Leavitt quote. As we were driving we got a call from the Littles offering to take us for lunch.

James Little was our temple president as we served in the temple before it shut down for renovations. They decided to serve a temple mission in Nauvoo. Their mission was scheduled to end the week after we were there so we were excited to see them. We briefly saw them in the temple on Wednesday night but we were glad to go do lunch with them and while we were pressed for time, we do need to eat. While we knew we would see the Littles, I still include them in our list of random meetings of people with connections to us.

After lunch we headed back to Parley street and the trail of hope. The trail of hope has been known as “The Trail of Tears” for most of the history of Nauvoo because this is the road taken by the saints as they were driven out of Nauvoo in February by mobs. The road leads right to the banks of the Mississippi where they crossed the frozen river. Our kids refer to it as the trail of sweat because when were there last time it was 90° with 90% humidity. It was a perfect day this time.

We then checked out the little gazebo with the names of all the people who died on the trail between Nauvoo and the Salt Lake Valley. I saw Jeremiah Leavitt but Lisa was quite dissappointed because one of her ancestors is not listed.

We then spent the rest of the day at the Family Search Center until it was time for our sealing appointment in the temple. After the tempe we were treated to this beautiful sunset and then we headed back to St Louis. For the first twenty minutes we drove along the mississippi river. It was quite beautiful.

--------------------trivia--------------------

A typical fair weather cumulous cloud weighs about 1.4 billion pounds.

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Missouri

 Monday, October 21, 2024

Saturday evening we returned from a five day trip to Missouri. The purpose of the trip was to be at Charlottes baptism but since we were going, we decided to take a couple of extra days and spend them in Nauvoo. We had a lot of very cool experiences.

To give you an overview, we landed in St Louis late on Tuesday, rented a car and then drove to the Air BnB where Brandon, Ally and Charlotte were staying. Wednesday we drove to Nauvoo and spent the night in an Air BnB and then Wednesday we spent the day in Nauvoo and drove back to St Louis. We dropped the car off at the airport and Brandon picked us up. Thursday we checked out St Charles where Ally has lived for the last twenty years or so.

Friday was the same but in the evening we went to Boo at the Zoo at the famous St Louis zoo and then Saturday was Charlottes baptism. We flew hom Saturday evening. It was a whirl wind trip but very eventful.

Now for the details.

We met a lot of people on this trip with wild connections. The first one was in the San Diego airport. We were eating lunch enjoying a pulled pork sandwich when this couple comes up to us and says, “Are you Kira Palmers parents?” We said we were and it turns out that they were in Kira’s ward in Calgary and very good friends with them. Unfortunately I forgot their names but here is a picture of them. They had been in San Diego visiting family or friends or someone.

Other than Kira’s friends in San Diego, nothing interesting happened on Tuesday. We landed late in the evening and thankfully the Air BnB was only twenty minutes from the airport. Brandon and Ally waited up for us but we all went to bed shortly after we got there.

Wednesday we drove straight to Carthage. We were there nineteen years ago right after Brandon got home from his mission. Ben was on his mission and Kira was married so we only had the four kids with us. Carthage jail was the unchanged, but they’ve built a nice visitors center there. The tour of the jail was very solemn. It was well done.

We stopped at a small but rather amazing museum across the street from the jail. It would have been nice to spend more time there but our time was limited and we had to choose between the museum or Nauvoo. Nauvoo won.

I did take this picture for Kira though. Kira is a firm believer in “cupping” and I was quite amazed to see that they were “cupping” more than 150 years ago. Yes, I know it was used for boils but it was still cupping, exactly what Kira does to herself.

From Carthage we headed straight to the vistors center in Nauvoo, learned everything we could about our ancestors and then took a wagon ride tour. We then took a tour of Joseph & Emma Smiths first home and the Mansion House. These were just recently purchased from the Community of Christ (formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints).

When we finished that tour, we saw a missionary couple named Elder & Sister Sommerfeldt. This couple was not only on this tour with us but they were also on the wagon tour. They were always with friends and we didn’t want to interrupt them but since they were now alone we asked them where they were from. They were from some town in Utah. We asked if they had any family in Alberta. Fara’s first husband was a Sommerfeldt and Alma Sommerfeldt was quite possibly my favorite teacher in high school. He taught me math.

He said he grew up in Lethbridge and Alma was his uncle but as we got talking we could tell that we connected on the Lybbert side as well. His grandmothers name was Ella Dora Lybbert. It was a different Ella Dora than my ancestor but with that name we had to be related.

We pulled out our “Relatives Around Me” app and we are second cousins. My Grandpa Lybbert (Lester) had a sister named Ella Dora and she was his Grandma. Elder & Sister Lybbert weren’t just missionaries, they were Mission Leaders (the new name for Mission President) of the Independence Missouri mission. There was a big Mission Leader Training session going on and they were in town for that.

After chatting with the Sommerfeldts, we checked out the Nauvoo House. This building was also aquired from the Community of Christ but it is not safe for tours and no work has been done on it yet. Frederick Kesler was there when Joseph Smith buried the orginal hand written manuscript in the South East corner stone in 1841 and then he was also there forty one years later when Lewis Bidamon opened the corner stone. Unfortunately, much of the manuscript was damaged by water. Bidamon was handing out the pages to anyone who wanted one. Frederick Kesler asked for a page and some guy ripped his page in half and gave Kesler half of a page. It is kind of sad but nearly ¾ of the manuscript has been not been recovered. This is Lisa chilling by where the cornerstone would have been.

We then attended an endowment session in the temple. There was a full moon which made the temple look very cool but this picture doesn’t look nearly as cool as it did in real life.

We then headed for our Air BnB and met the third person with connections.

Rachel has a cool story about how her and her husband ended up in Nauvoo. While the story is cool it turns out that Rachel grew up in Northern Alberta. When I say north, this is even quite a bit North of Edmonton. I don’t think we are related in any but we know people in common and she is from Alberta.