We spent the weekend of CoolGuy's birthday in Utah with two of our children and our grandchildren. The only reason I'd venture into the frozen northland in January is to spend time with family--believe me. The baptism event was terrific. The ceremony was bi-lingual because one set of grandparents is much more comfortable speaking and listening in Spanish. In fact, there were only about six of us in attendance who are not fluent in both languages, so much of the translation was for our benefit. Our son baptized his little boyand offered the prayer in each language. Their abuela from Argentina gave a lovely talk about baptism and our daughter translated her words into English. Jacob's confirmation was performed in Spanish by our son's dear friend, also an Argentine native, who then explained the gist of the blessing in English. The other grandfather gave a talk about the Holy Ghost, again professionally translated for the non-Spanish speakers by our daughter. (Good thing she got that second bachelor's degree in Spanish translation, huh?) Tears were shed due to the Spirit of God we all felt.
We reconvened at our son's house for food and conviviality, with all the children playing up a storm in the bedroom and all the adults talking up a storm in the living room. It was all in Span-glish, too. With the exception of CoolGuy and I, everyone else could speak Spanish well. But, the other grandparents have limited English skills. I can follow a conversation in Spanish, but I cannot make any sentences. So, we'd be telling funny stories, and it would get translated whichever way it needed to go, and then the other half of the family would laugh. It was quite a good time.
As all the guests had finally departed, it was pretty sweet to find our grandson busily looking up the scriptures from his "Scripture A Day" calendar in his new Book of Mormon and underlining them. I heard that later, he sat at the kitchen table and sang songs to himself from the pocket-sized, personalized hymn book I'd given him for a gift. He is truly his grandma's and abuela's pride and joy.
The next day, we met at our daughter's house for dinner to honor Grandpa CoolGuy. She made yummy food (including German chocolate cake for dessert) and we ate and laughed and talked and told funny stories again. And the kids played and played and played. Good times.
But Monday morning came and we had to leave. Bah. At least it was a beautiful day (cold, but sunshiney) and the drive home was pleasant. I dashed through a week of fourth grade. I started my new college semester. I was at a school training all day on Saturday and now it's Sunday afternoon and I'm already behind for the weekend on things I wanted to get done. Sheesh....So, I'll just grade some papers, and write some letters and go onto WebCampus and see what else I'm supposed to have ready by Wednesday night for class. It is a hybrid class (which is a problem for me, I'm not good at computer chatting for college) and so some of our meetings are supposed to be on-line. I hope I don't mess it up. One good thing about webclasses is that there will be fewer mad dashes across town to the campus during rush hour this semester.
Here was the best thing about getting home to the desert on Monday evening: (that's the temperature gauge in CoolGuy's truck. It was about 5:00 P.M.)
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