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