Family Reunion

Friday morning (12/28/12) Alycia, Trevor, Sarah and Sam drove up from Provo and we all piled into our van and pulled out. I had rested up pretty good Thursday and had a decent sleep so even though I was definitely getting sick I felt pretty good. It was already snowing pretty hard and I was getting worried. Sure I grew up driving in blizzards but it has been over twenty years since I've had to. Luckily it quit snowing by the time we got a few miles out of Salt Lake and we had good weather all the way up to Island Park. Even though it never snowed the roads did get progressively worse right up to the cabin. We pulled into the driveway of the property where our cabins were and as luck would have it the cabins were at the top of this little hill. While my tires weren't really bad they could have been a lot better for the snow we were in and I was only a few dozen feet from the top of the hill when my car could go now further. It was just too slippery. After several try's I finally backed down and tried to approach the cabin from another direction.

Our timing was perfect because as I was struggling to get up the first hill Kira and Justin arrived from Calgary. We got there at the exact same time. When I pulled around to get to the cabin from the other direction Kira and Justin were already stuck so I had to wait for them to get pulled out. I knew I had to have good speed to make it up the hill but it is a careful balance between picking up speed and not letting your tires spin too much. When your tires spin you have no control and that is what happened to me. I slid off the road and got stuck real proper. They had to pull me out of the ditch as well. 

I didn't feel too sick as we were driving but as soon as I got out of the car to unpack the chill immediately affected me and I started shivering uncontrollably. Luckily Jackie noticed and when I walked into the cabin she had a nice hot bowl of hot chicken soup waiting for me. It tasted soooooo good. 

It took a long time for the chills to calm down and I kept my coat on long after they had. I felt really sick but I was so happy to see my family and I wanted to visit. I picked out a comfortable chair by the fire place and that is pretty much where I stayed the entire time. I slept a lot but gratefully many people came by to visit with me and I was content. 

The kids all went out side playing on the hill with sleds and tire tubes. I was much too sick to do that and was content to sit by the fire and visit. The plan was to rent snowmobiles Saturday and Monday. I decided that I wasn't going to go out on Saturday and that I would rest up Saturday and Sunday and be ready to play on Monday. I stayed home and asked Justin to go with Ross and get the snowmobiles and from what I can tell the kids had a blast playing all day.

The meals were especially cool. Jackie had planned all of the meals around meals that Mom would cook. Before each meal she would explain how Mom would do it and it brought back so many cool memories. The problem was that I had no appetite. I would take very small portions and only eat half of it. For the most part I could taste it and enjoy it but being sick and all I know it tasted much better than what I was getting out of it. How sad.

I did take advantage of the hot tub before I went to bed. It is a strange experience to sit in a tub of hot water and watch snowflakes falling on your head. You have to dip your head underwater once in a while to keep your head from freezing but it is very nice.

Everyone played games late into the night and normally I would have been right there with them but sadly I went to bed and listened to everyone else having fun.

Sleep was very strange for me. I remember dreaming very bizarre dreams. I remember that I had a new way of looking at the human consciousness. When I woke up I have no idea what it was but in my sleep it was quite revolutionary. I was up several times during the night drinking and blowing my nose but generally I had a good sleep.

Sunday morning I felt much better. Church was early so I didn't get to sleep in as long as I might have but we ate and headed out for church. I was really concerned driving my car out because I wasn't sure I would get it back again but I didn't need to worry. I drove right up the hill.

When we drove into the church parking lot and saw no parking I figure there would be a crowd but imagine my surprise when we found that the chapel was over flowing, the gymn was over flowing, every single classroom (most with TV's) were over flowing, the kitchen was full, the bishops offices were full and every foot of the hallways and foyers were standing room only. There must have been two thousand people at church that day. It took 45 minutes for them to pass the sacrament. They obviously cancelled classes. The talk was a missionary reporting home. He gave a good talk. 

Sunday night I did stay up late and played games with my family. I actually played my Star Trek Catan game. It is just as fun as the original game. Justin also had a Catan game based on settling the United States. It had trains and is kind of a cross between Catan and Ticket to Ride. Very fun.

Monday I was ready to go play. This time I went with Ross and with encouragement I decided to rent the snowmobiles for two days.

I haven't been on a snow mobile since I was a teenager. It is basically just what it looks like but there are three things you need to be aware of that you might not think of at first.

1) In deep snow a snowmobile can easily settle down in the snow and get hopelessly stuck.

2) Going fast over loose snow prevents you from sinking in and getting stuck but you do have to perform a bit of a balancing act because the snow mobile tends to act like you're riding on the ridge of a hill and you don't want to tip over.

3) The  little bumps in the fresh snow can be a bush which is easily ran over and flattened or it can be a tree stump or big rock which is definitely not something you want to hit.

Keeping those things in mind, snowmobiling is a lot of fun.

So that was our reunion. It was so much fun getting to know my nieces and nephews better and also to get to know the grandkids.

Alycia had to be to work on Jan 2 so we had to pull out late on New Years day. It would have been fun to stay longer but alas, it all had to come to an end.

Thank you so much Jackie for planning a wonderful reunion. I had a lot of fun.

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The flu this season (2013) is already three times as bad as what it was last season at this time and much worse than the flu pandemic predicted in 2009/2010. 17% of all deaths in the US right now are from complications related to the flu.

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Because of my weakened state during the reunion I didn't take any pictures. Alycia and Dixie took most of the pictures and while I have most of Dixie's pictures I don't have any of Alycia's. Many of these pictures are stolen from Alycia's blog. You should check her two blog posts out. They give a very good summary of the reunion. She divided her posts up into two. See them here and here. 

Alycia also put together a short video clip which gives a good feel of how much fun we were having. Her video is below.

Me and my Grandson (Landon)

We put my Dad's descendants on the wall and it was at least ten feet tall.

This is a picture of Dixie's Family. There are pictures of the entire group (at least those who would cooperate). As soon as I get it I will post it.

Me and the Mama

We exchanged gifts while we were there. Kira and Justin gave me a Star Trek game (not Catan). Sadly I never got to play it while there and now I really want to play it. I can't wait until we all get together again.

Sarah and Sam gave me a Star Ship Enterprise Pizza Cutter. It is very cool. Now I want to have pizza but I'm scared to use it. I don't want to get it dirty. 

The meals were very good, full of memories and always interesting.

They were also very well organized. 

I got to see my grandson Cameron for the first time. He is a darling child.

Getting ready to head out.

Taking Landon for a spin.

The things you do when you get bored.

This little girls name is Emma. She is Kristen's daughter and she is adorable. Somehow she fell in love with me and I think she built this puzzle on my lap at least twenty times. A very intelligent girl.

We're all here except for Brandon, Serene and family and Ben and Sharley.

It was very beautiful country

All of the photographs that I have can be seen by clicking on the slide show near the top of my blog or by going here.

Christmas

Today I am finally feeling almost normal. I have been very sick for over two weeks and they were the most fantastic two weeks I've had in a long time. What a lousy time to be getting sick. I can't imagine how I could possibly talk about the last two weeks in a single post so I will just dive in and get started. This could take a while to complete.

Jackie planned the A Q Leavitt family reunion this time and it was held in her home state of Idaho. I wasn't exactly thrilled about leaving San Diego and going to Idaho in the middle of the winter but she enticed us with the promise of snow mobiles, sledding and hot tubs. While I'm not a fan of snow, it is really cool to sit in a hot tube with snow falling on your head.

Since Lisa can't possibly relax when there is a big event (like Christmas) coming up she was very stressed worrying about everything leading up to Christmas and sure enough, when the big day arrived she was very sick. It was our families off year meaning that the kids all went to their in-laws for Christmas so with Alex the only unmarried child left in our family Christmas this year was just Lisa, myself and Alex.

With Lisa falling ill Alex and I decided that we'd better step up and with the exception of the Turkey we pretty much took care of Christmas dinner. Christmas was  very quiet. We all slept in, had our presents all open within an hour and were playing with our presents right after that. Let's see if I can remember everything I got. The coolest present was a Star Trek Catan game. How cool is that? One of my favorite games in a Star Trek version. I got a Jack Reacher novel, a new Star Ship tree ornament. a first aid kit, some Star Wars mugs and some genealogy books. A good Christmas.

We did have one dilemma going away for Christmas. Sheba had quit eating and was starting to hide under beds. Our Sheba is eighteen years old and I'm told that in human years she would be in her 90's. When any living creature quits eating that is a pretty sure sign that they are about to die. I told our friend Desire who was feeding our pets that if Sheba died while we were gone to just through her in the garage until we got home. I didn't want her to go into the garbage because she deserves a proper burial but I didn't want the house to stink either. That kind of freaked Desire out. Lisa took a more practical approach and went and bought several cans of soft cat food. We've always fed Sheba dry cat food but Lisa figured maybe that was getting too hard for Sheba to eat and she thought the soft cat food would be easier for her. She was right. Sheba started eating like an animal. I guess she is an animal isn't she? To make a long story short, Sheba is in no immediate danger of dying. She is gaining weight and devours her cat food within a minute.

On Boxing Day I went into work for a few hours in the morning then came home, loaded up the car and headed north. Lisa was still ill so the plan was for Alex and I to drive straight through to his apartment in Salt Lake City. I did fine until St George but by then I was starting to get sick. I turned the wheel over to Alex and he was a trooper and drove the rest of the way. The problem is that I had great weather the whole way but no sooner were we out of St George when it started to snow. The further north we got the worse the weather was. I, of course, was dead to the world just minutes after I closed my door. Alex is a very good driver but he has no experience driving in a blizzard so he was a little bit freaked out. It didn't help either when the tire tracks he was following suddenly formed very chaotic lines all over the road finally ending up at a jack knifed truck with a double trailer in the ditch.

He wanted to stop but the road was so slippery that he was well past the truck by the time he could have stopped and he wasn't up to backing up on the freeway in a blizzard so Lisa called 911 to let them know about the poor trucker. It looked like he had barely wrecked.

Somewhere around the point of the the mountain Alex couldn't take it anymore and turned the wheel over to Lisa and she drove the last 45 minutes to Alex's apartment. We all slept late on the Thursday morning and then Alex and I went and got our hair cut. Lisa then went to the genealogy library, I took Alex's car in to get new tires on it and Alex went on a date. Some how I think I got the short end of that stick.

One of Lisa's life time goals has been to see the Christmas Lights on Temple Square so that evening we saw them. They really were quite spectacular. To make them even more "Christmasy" It started snowing quite heavily while we were there. It was bitterly cold but very beautiful. Lisa loves nativities and even collects them so she was quite excited to learn that they had a nativity section in the church museum. They were pretty nice. I think our favorite was a nativity made in Chile by carving the end of a match stick. It was very impressive.

We then went back to Alex's place and went to bed.

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Pigs injure more humans than any other animal.

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Carolers

Every year at work we have some high school kids from a nearby Christian school come caroling to us. I look forward to it every year but this year I totally forgot until they showed up. It is the same kids every year so I think that they must be college kids by now. I actually think one of them has a grandpa who owns one of the companies in our complex.

Today it was a wonderful surprise when they showed up. Enjoy their beautiful singing. They're really good.

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In a face to face conversation 93% of what we communicate is non verbal.
Only 7% of the meaning comes from the words we use.

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What?

Almost a year ago I was watching something on TV and feeling tired so I laid down on the couch with my left ear on a pillow. I was quite alarmed when everything went silent. Lisa had been telling me for years that I was deaf and I knew that I wasn't hearing everything quite as well as I should but my entire life I've had excessive ear wax and I'm used to going deaf. All I've ever had to do is flush out my ears and everything was back to normal. Well this time when I flushed out my ears it didn't go back to normal. 

I continued ignoring the obvious because I just assumed that I would eventually have to get a hearing aid and I wasn't ready to fork out $2,000 for one of those things but finally Lisa's pestering convinced me to go see a doctor. They confirmed what I already knew. I am deaf in my right ear but what I didn't know was that my left ear is normal and both of my inner ears are normal. That means that my hearing loss is conductive and the good news about that is that it can be fixed with surgery. While they won't know for sure until they cut open my ear drum and go in and look they tell me that I almost certainly have what they call "Otosclerosis". What that means is that over the last several years I've had abnormal boney growth on my stapes (trivia - the stapes is the smallest bone in the human body). It has now gotten to the point that it is impeding the natural vibrations so much that it interferes with my hearing. I don't hear a whole lot out of my right ear.

Apparantly Otosclerosis is genetic but I don't remember anyone in my family being deaf. I think Grandpa Lybbert may have worn a hearing aid when he was much older than I am but that is it. I'm almost the youngest one in my family so if it is genetic it looks like my brothers and sisters dodged the otosclerosis bullet as well as the baldness bullet. They also say that it is more common in women than in men so I don't know what to say. 

The odds of the surgery restoring my hearing to normal is 99% but the odds of it making me completely deaf is 1%. That is a little scary but I guess it isn't doing me a whole lot of good as it is. From what I read, if you have a good doctor the odds are even better and my doctor has done hundreds of these so I guess that should give me some comfort. I need to ask him what his success rate is. 

What they do in the surgery is completely remove the stapes and put in a prosthesis. That seems rather radical to me but hey, if it works. The other thing which they didn't mention (but I read about) is that when they remove the stapes they also rip a hole in the "oval window". The oval window is the membrane that vibrates between the middle ear and the inner ear (cochlea). To plug the hole they take a piece of fat from somewhere else in the ear and stick it in the hole. Weird, I need to ask about that one.

So I haven't completely decided to go ahead with the surgery but it won't cost much more than a good hearing aid and then I won't have to worry about batteries, or getting it wet or all the other hassles that you go through with a hearing aid. Wish me luck. I'm just glad I live today and not a hundred years ago. They figure it was otosclerosis that Beethoven had when he went deaf. Frankie Valli also had otosclerosis and had to sing by memory during the 70's. He later had the same surgery in the 80's that I'm looking at and got his hearing back. I'll bet that was pretty cool for him. 

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 The middle ear amplifies sound 1,000 times.

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It's Beginning to Feel A Lot like Christmas

It is beginning to feel a bit like Christmas. I am almost finished getting the lights up on the house, I'm almost finished getting the tree decorated and Alex is almost ready to come home for the holidays. I'm getting excited. Today was a good Saturday because I was able to spend most of the day getting things done around the house. 

This photo shows most of the light but I have a bunch of snow flakes that float over the front lawn. I also light up our palm trees on the right side of the yard. Maybe I'll take another pictures when it is all done. I ran out of wire so I couldn't finish. I hope to get it done before Alex gets home on Wednesday.

Speaking of Wednesday, I'm so excited. I was invited to take a tour of the Tokamak Reactor at General Atomics. The Tokamak reactor is a nuclear fusion reactor. Thirty years ago I was quite confident that we would be using fusion power by now. Today I think we will have cold fusion before we ever see conventional fusion. In any case, I'm excited to see the reactor. I wonder if it is running?

One of my favorite parts of Christmas is when I get to launch my fleet of Star Ships. I probably have thirty of them now. Lisa is getting upset because I'm starting to take over the Christmas Tree. I love it. In the picture you can see the Enterprise, the Voyager, the Borg Cube and to the right of the picture you can see the nose of the Romulan War Bird. Pretty cool don't you think?

The last picture is of our Primary kids singing at our Ward party. 

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A vaccine for Malaria has demonstrated about 50% effectiveness 

in trials in seven African Countries.

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Thanksgiving

I know it was more than a week ago but better late than never. Thanksgiving was about ten days ago and it was rather different for us in the Leavitt house. It may have been the first thanksgiving where we didn't have any little kids. For a number of reasons we only had half the kids home. Kira and Justin just adopted Cameron and even if he was healthy enough to fly they probably couldn't because until the adoption is finalized it can be tricky taking some elses kid across the border. Brandon and Serene are too far away and Alycia decided that if she's going to miss a week of work she would rather do it after Christmas for our family reunion when more people are going to be there. That left Ben and Sharley, Sam and Sarah and Alex. Alex brought a couple of friends with him from school and we invited the missionaries so we could have more of a crowd. 

Even though there were no little kids and the house didn't vibrate from the constant noise it was still wonderful having the ones we did have and it has been way too long since we saw Alex, Sarah and Sam.

And then there was the food. I literally gained ten pounds in less than a week. I hope I can get rid of it before Christmas so I can do it all over again. It was a bit lonely making the apple pie by myself though. I've always had one of my girls helping me. I made the pie before Sarah got here or I'm sure she would have helped me. 

Sharley had to go to St George for a few days and Ben had some days off so Ben came down the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Sarah and Sam got here just in time to say goodbye to Ben and then Ben went home to work on Wednesday. Alex and two of his friends, Brooke Wolfgram and Sydney Gunther. Ben and Sharley came down Wednesday evening and Thursday morning we got up early to go play in the Turkey Bowl. The Turkey Bowl ended up being the Farnes family and the Leavitt family (Me, Ben, Alex, Sam and Frank) against everyone else. We were actually pretty well matched. It was a ton of fun. 

Since Ben is now in retail he had to be at work for Black Friday. That made us sad but he is an adult now and has a real job. Meanwhile, the rest of us went to Sea World. It was a nice day but it does cool off at nights so we did the wet rides first. Surprisingly there were no lines. We did Atlantis first and I avoided getting too wet but since there were no lines we decided to go again. Big mistake. I got drenched. I never did really dry off and by the time we headed back to the car my teeth were literally chattering. I did have a coat in the car but I didn't want to miss out on any fun so I didn't bother going to get it. 

After Sea World (and after I warmed up in the car with the heat on high) we went to the Mormon Battalion visitors center. Sam and the girls had never been there before and it is a very cool place. 

Saturday we had a big breakfast and then the kids spent most of the day at the beach while Mom and I managed to get caught up on at least some of the back log of work we have here at the house. Sunday morning we kissed everyone good bye and sent them all down the freeway. The only reason I didn't get too sad is because it is only a few weeks until finals are over and then at least Alex is coming home. This year the kids have Christmas at their in-laws but most of them are going to be able to make it to the reunion for New Years. YAY.

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A 2012 dollar would have been worth $0.02 in 1912.

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