Ann's Words

We enjoyed a real treat today!  Our friends from Switzerland, who have a home in Heber, invited us to join them and another couple to visit and tour Greg Olson’s art studio.  Greg was serving in the BYU Stake when John was a counselor to Gerrit Gong, so they are good friends.  It was wonderful to see them again.  Greg and Sid are warm, kind and welcoming. We had such a lovely time with them today.

They welcomed us in and showed us their beautiful home (built about 7 years ago) and then we went to his art studio which is built over their garage.  It was wonderful.  Lots of windows and light and all of his art stuff.  He let us take photos.  I was intrigued by all his paint brushes, 100s of them.  All in jars and containers by his easel.

He’s working on a painting now that he’s calling “The Golden Hours” and he listened to the book, Theo of Golden” while painting it, a portrait of an old wizened man reading a book with stacks of other books around him.  It’s beautiful.

While sorting through my mother, Grace Smuin Laemmlen’s papers, I found these 2 pages of notes about her mother, Ruby.   Ruby was born  6 January 1898 and she died on 19 February 1959, a few weeks after I was born.  She and her husband, Franklin, lived in San Gabriel, Los Angeles County, California.  From all I know about my Grandmother, she was a lovely lady.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM MY MOTHER (RUBY SMUIN)

Always sweep the outside clean before guests arrive.

Be ready to serve guests a drink. Say “would you like lemonade or grape juice?” (Not just “would you like a drink?” Make it “fancy,” with a mint leaf or twist of lemon or cherry.

Always have plenty of food! Serve hot things HOT. Serve cold things COLD.

Use cloth napkins for holidays or special parties.

Have fresh flowers (from own garden).

Fresh towels in the bathroom (“company ones”).

Table set and beautiful before guests arrive. Appropriate centerpiece, place cards (name cards), homemade.

Have homemade bread or rolls in the oven when guests arrive (house should smell wonderful).

Be dressed and ready for company–be relaxed.

Have time to be with your guests.

Nuts and candies available.

Special treats for young children.

Have something to send home with guests (part of dinner or dessert).

Use best dinner wear.

Canning

Garden

Here are a few childhood treasures I’ve happened upon as I am cleaning out my spaces.  These odd little bits and pieces bring back floods of memories of things I loved when I was a little girl.

This little burro named Pedro was my favorite friend.  I tucked him under my arm and carried him with me.  I loved fingering his soft velvety ears and hoofs and the hair of his mane.  I remember the feel of his button eyes on my little fingers, and Pedro’s little tail.  He was magnificent to me, a constant companion.

Here is another of my favorite things to play with–felt pieces and scraps.  Funny Felts were cut pieces you could arrange on a flannel board to make pictures of things.  I played with these felt pieces for hours and hours.  As I got older, I added to my felt collection and I started making things from felt–Christmas ornaments, an art piece of a tree covered with small felt flowers, and even some book marks (my own design–crocodiles and mittens).

This was my beloved sewing box where I kept my little projects.

Here are some of the treasures I found today, still in my sewing box.

When I look back now on what made me so very happy then, I see it was a very different world than we live in today.  We made things and we played without screens or movies or TV.  We made our own fun.  I’m grateful I grew up in that world.

I remember the day long ago in my single life when I bought this large filing cabinet.  I think I paid more than $400 for it and had it delivered to my apartment in Old Farm, Salt Lake City.  I felt like I had arrived.  I was living in a world of paper and publishing.  I’d purchased my first PC computer in 1987 after returning from living in Nigeria.  I had a dot matrix printer, and now I had a place to store the things I saved and printed.

Each of the 4 drawers in this file cabinet had 3 banks of hanging files, which became home to the important things in my life.  I’d kept notes from every BYU class and every MTC training.  I had all of my important documents and the original drafts of my Article of Faith Books.  I had copies of lessons taught and talks given.  Later the drawers filled with my family history projects from BYU classes–census surveys, location research, pages and pages of pedigree charts and family group sheets.  In those days, we kept paper records and I filed them faithfully.

I found every ward newsletter I created for the Millcreek 2nd Ward where I lived before getting married in 1990.  I had folders filled with clip art, headings and borders.  In those days, I typed columns, then cut and taped them to a master sheet, adding clipped images and seasonal decorations.  It was all manually literally cut and pasted.   Then I took my master pages to a copy center for printing.

In my file purging, it was hard to part with these newsletters that I had so painstakingly created more than 38 years ago.  Today I bid them all farewell.

I also purged the drawers I filled with the kids’ school papers, keeping only the most important.  I worked all day, living in the past with this evidence of a life lived long ago.

I also sorted through the 3 drawers I’ve kept of the kids’ school papers and programs and grades and treasures.  I thinned them down about half for now.  I couldn’t part with everything.  I don’t need multiple copies of the basketball programs we created for Adam, or every letter from the school.  I’ll save the best, scan what I can, and then purge again some day.

I am carefully packing away things that need to be kept or digitized before parting with them.  The file cabinet is being emptied of more than half of its contents.  My life is passing before my eyes.  I just can’t keep it all anymore.

John is doing the same in his office.  Purging.  Purging.  Purging.  Old documents and statements and records.  Wow, we have a lot of paper.

We’ve also gone through all of the framed things in our home to thin them out.  We are taking loads to Deseret Industries every week.

We have filled our recycle bin 3 times in the last few weeks.  It has been a big job.  We are determined not to leave this job for those who follow us.  We’ve got to thin things out!

The historian in me is not happy, but reality is yelling in my face.  No one else will care about my treasures and things I’ve saved through the years.  I am keeping some important things to digitize so I can share what’s important in places like my Family Search Memories, where it can be found. That will be another big job to tackle in my retirement years.  For now, it’s FAREWELL to the rest.