Southern California

I spent the last few days in Carlsbad (just north of San Diego) in Southern California (about 450 miles from my home) visiting three of my siblings and their families. It was wonderful!

My brother Brion and his wife Carol and my sister Irene.
It was very warm and the cool ocean felt great. My other sister, Elaine, lives across the street from the beach so we can hear the waves, especially nice when it is quieter at night. 

Irene walks her dogs around the big lagoon with egrets and other water/shore birds. It's also a great place for kayaking and paddle boarding. There are a lot of eucalyptus trees (with shallow roots and lots of oil) and dry grass (a fire danger farther inland where there have been many lightning storms).

We gave a bridal shower for my sister Irene's daughter Lisa, whose fiance is a fire captain and was on duty ready to fight any fires in the more rural area where he works. His crew are mostly convicts, who earn early release points for working as fire fighters! Megan (below), Lisa's friend since childhood, gave the shower.

After the shower we had a family barbecue.
(from the left: my nephew Kevin, my youngest brother Roy's (he stayed at home in n. CA) wife Julie, brother Brion and wife Carol, Sister Irene, her son Brion (Kevin's twin), her husband Mike, Julie's daughter Olivia, and my niece Lisa, the soon-to-be bride. My sister Elaine and son Wayne were sick, so didn't come. 

We are sad to say good-bye to the wonderful large Sweat family who are moving to Pocatello, Idaho, this week, after 7 years in Palo Alto. We will miss them so much. They spoke in church today. Becca told some favorite stories about choosing your own adventure (making important decisions only once, sticking to them, so that when temptations arise, the right decision has already been made). Terrell spoke on strengthening marriage and family, choosing to be happy. For us, the temple is the symbol of those covenants with family and God. I passed the beautiful San Diego Temple on the freeway three times in the past few days, but didn't have the opportunity to go inside.



The Thomanders hosted a fun evening at their home to wish the Sweats well. Below, a few of the guests: Ella, Gordon and Suzy Jackson, Markus Covert (our new ward bishop), Julia and Erik Jacobsen (our Relief Society president; past bishop), Becca Johnson, Miriam. It is such a blessing to be surrounded by great friends and to know that I have special friends around the world.

Happy Pioneer Day

 How good it is to be with friends, including Russ and Marguerite!
To work in my garden.
To have time to read good books
To live in a friendly, safe, quiet         neighborhood
To smell the dry summer grass
To attend beautiful concerts
To share my home with five     wonderful young women (2 of them are pictured below: Yeram is Korean American and served a mission in Zimbabwe, Rachel served in Texas, Spanish-speaking).
It's good to attend the Oakland Temple, though I miss living next door to the Santiago Temple..
I treasure memories of my mission and special friends in Chile and elsewhere.

The Aldouses both speak Spanish, but I am helping her learn some French and he is studying Italian on his own for their trip next week to Rome and Paris.

I've reported to the High Council on my mission, given my homecoming talk, had a small open house, mostly put my house back in order, attended my family reunion, spent time with family and friends here and there, and am about to visit my siblings in southern California. Life is good, the summer weather is perfect, I've gone back to swimming almost every day, and have lots of fun plans for the rest of the summer. How blessed I am. 

Allied Arts is a lovely old Spanish hacienda where artists have workshops and where I had lunch with a friend.

I framed my Nieto watercolors bought in Santiago's Plaza de Armas. They represent several of Chile's beautiful regions: Andes northeast of Santiago, volcanoes and araucaria trees of the south, Santiago's old San Francisco Church, the River region and Chiloe Island...all near and dear to my heart!

Pioneer Day!
We owe a deep debt of gratitude to the many pioneers who forged our country, and are especially mindful of their sacrifice, as we as members of the Church of Jesus Christ commemorate each July 24th, the arrival of early pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, where they could finally be safer from persecution. The last painting is of the Pilgrims (my ancestors) who also escaped persecution, finding a new life in Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1623.
(These are some of the paintings I enjoyed in the BYU Art Museum)

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Even when challenges arise, I know I am very fortunate, a daughter of a loving heavenly father. My young friend Jameson Welch included a wonderful quote in his weekly missionary report from London which I share with you and hope to remember always on darker days as we journey through life:
"The grace of Christ is not the light at the end of the tunnel, it is the light guiding you through the tunnel." As we work our hardest and access the Atonement, our lives will be significantly blessed. 

I love living close to the wetlands by the San Francisco Bay. It's a great walk! There are always snowy egrets, but not always a snake (which scared me a little as I had to pass close by, but I guess he slithered out of my photo)... and never so many huge white pelicans spreading their wings...



The American white pelican, second largest bird in North America, is readily distinguished from its smaller brown cousin, the only other American representative of the eight species of pelican worldwide. Brown pelicans are easy to spot along the coast, fishing by diving into the surf, gliding in small groups just above the water. American white pelicans don't dive for their fish, and seeing them is a less common experience in most places along the coast. When white pelicans move from one place to another, they generally do so at a considerable altitude rather than their cousins' four or five feet above sea level. Also, tellingly, brown pelicans are brown, at least on their top halves. White pelicans aren't. They're mainly white, with bold black markings on the undersides of their wings (which can reach 9 feet)- which color scheme explains the flock changing from white to black, as the birds pivot and turn more or less in unison, flashing first top side and them underside.

de Schweinitz family reunion, McCall, Idaho

What a joy to gather with family once again. We rented a large house on Cascade Lake near McCall, Idaho, 2+ hours from Boise. The four families drove 7-8 hours from Utah. 26 of us spent 5 days playing, talking, hiking, boating, eating, etc. Since it was July 4th, we wore red, white and blue for our family photo.

Carlstons: Julie, Phoebe,Peter, John, Luke, Stephanie and Elise

de Schweinitzes: Ben, Ming Lu, Cordelia, Rebecca,Peter, Miriam

Taylors: Kelly, Lucie, George, Andrew, Aaron, Emily, Ken

de Schweinitzes: Simon, Hannah, Marc, Evie, Fernanda, Nick

(we missed Anne de Schweinitz and Neil Chandler)

I flew to Boise and stayed overnight with dear friends Alec and Linda Andrus, former Palo Altans, who helped me shop for all the food and then generously drove me beside rushing rivers, on winding roads through beautiful landscape to the Tamarack house in Donnolly. We passed the new Meridian Idaho Temple.

At Cascade Lake we hiked, (Emily, Lucie and Kelly, below) went kayaking, paddle-boarding, and swimming, and rented a motor boat for water-skiing, tubing, wake-boarding for the brave and athletic!

 Aaron caught a large toad!

Kelly, Nick and Ming wearing the shirts I bought on Easter Island

 Fernanda on the knee board, Ben driving the boat. Luke raising the flag when someone was in the water

Boys in the boat; little girls ("the cupcakes") dance for us while we sang, directed by Peter); Rebecca celebrated her 50th birthday

 
Grammy with all but one of her grandchildren; with all but one of her children and their spouses above Cascade Lake on the Tamarack ski slope

Watching deer

Rebecca and I had dinner in McCall where we watched fireworks the next night and played at the Payette Lake beach the last day.

July Fourth we watched the Cascade Parade, filled with tractors, a log truck, veterans, firemen, horses, queens, vehicles of all kinds...not quite like any parade I've seen before...very rural! We got showered with water and candy!

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 And Marc found a beautiful skate park in McCall before the gorgeous fireworks and largest ice cream cones at Ice Cream Alley

I brought Andean ocarinas from Chile and was thrilled that Peter, Andrew and John were especially interested in actually playing beautiful tunes. The younger kids just liked to blow on them!

Our last evening the kids had a water balloon battle and then we had a talent show around the campfire...

and a skit narrated by the amazing storyteller Lucie, acted out by Taffy, Evie and Coco (the little girls also slept in the "theater")

What a great wild time we had. Family time is wonderful! 
Most of us stopped on the way back to Utah at Shoshone Falls near Twin Falls, Idaho, where we also watched lightning and some spectacular fires caused where it struck dry hills. Idaho is a beautiful state.

Back in Utah, we celebrated Evie's 6th birthday, I attended the gorgeous Payson Temple, where I did some ordinances for ancestors




had dinner with friends overlooking the Salt Lake Temple, visited the beautiful, historic Utah State capitol, with a great docent


watched Luke's team win a baseball game, visited the quarry where enormously heavy blocks of quartz monzonite were cut and transported to build the Salt Lake Temple. (and later the capitol, conference center and many other important buildings), What a remarkable feat!





On a very hot day we hiked to a lovely waterfall and then stopped twice at 7-11 mini-marts for free slurpies on 7/11 (July 11)!!


The only negatives of my trip were saying good-bye and losing my new phone with photos, contacts and new apps. Pray it will be found! Now I am home in Palo Alto, California, trying to recover from a great two weeks and plan the rest of my summer and plan for the future whatever that may bring.
I am truly blessed to have a loving, strong and fun family, to live in a beautiful free country (not perfect, but maybe we all need to work harder to make it so, to contribute our time, means and talents to preserve the principles upon which it was founded).