Early in December, I flew up to Utah to meet with some of my favorite people, my folk dance peeps! Ed and Vickie Austin, my artistic director and his wife, Jeanette Geslison (current director) and my good friend who performed/toured with me back in the day (we also went to graduate school together) and her husband Mark, then Brent and Maria Lewis (the past alumni president). Ed offered me the position of alumni president and I gladly accepted. Even though I am Relief Society President, and was nervous about taking on such a huge responsibility, I called my mom and she gave me the great advice to accept the position because if I wait too much longer, the people I danced with may be retired and new folks may come in who don't know me at all. It was great advice, because little did my mother know that in just a few months I would be released from being RS President due to a ward boundary change and this new position would fill that void for me.
That week I also got together with my friend from my childhood, Cinda Callister Taylor. It was so much fun to connect with her and catch up on our kids. She has a son serving a mission in Bolivia and I have a son serving a mission in Argentina. She is so sweet and it was a lot of fun for me to have lunch and talk about our families together.
After lunch, I headed over to my brother's house to pick up my books that were shipped there. It was the first time I was able to see the book in its final form and boy, was I SO happy! This is a book that took me over 8 years to write and publish. Now to have it in my hands was pure joy!
Tom flew up a few days later with the kids and we were able to go see our house that was being built in Draper. It had windows which was awesome!! We played the "elimination game" to see which carpet we would decide on. We wanted something that would wear well and not show a lot of dirt.
As a family, we wanted to write on the "bones" of the house, the framing, and leave our testimony, happy thoughts, anything we wanted to write on the very core of the home, hoping that this place will be a source of great joy to our family for many years to come.
After, we headed down to California Pizza Kitchen to meet my brother Steve and his cute family for dinner. It was so fun for us to see their little girls!
After dinner we headed over to the Marriott Center to meet Ann Christensen and her husband, Eric. Ann is my dear friend and illustrator of the book and as soon as I saw her we just burst into tears and hugged each other!!
We couldn't stop staring at the book and how pretty it was! It was like magic how it all came together. It all started in 2013 with me finding her book "When I Serve a Mission, Where in the World Will I Go?" at Sam's Club. I bought it for $10.00 because I liked the title and the illustrations were really cute. When I came home, I googled her name and found her greeting card business online with a contact email. I had the great idea to ask her if she would be willing to illustrate my children's book. When I got her enthusiastic response back with a request to call her I couldn't believe it! I immediately phoned her and we talked for over 1 hour! She then told me that she was a folk dancer herself about 8 years before me! She had worn most of the costumes I had written about in my book and knew many of the dance steps and movements. Her knowledge and experience on the team became absolutely invaluable! We had so many things in common and we both knew that Heavenly Father had led us to each other.
My kids were SO supportive of me! They would walk up and down the concourse reading the book and saying, "Wow, this is such a great book" out loud for others to hear. We sold 130 books that weekend!
It was such a cool experience to be able to sign books for people. They were all very kind and had nice things to say about the book---many bought multiple books for their grandkids!
This guy was my very first folk dance partner in 10RB. His name is Ken Richardson and it was SO fun to see him there at the alumni reunion!
Of course, Mary Bee Jensen came and Ann and I were thrilled we were able to show her the book. She especially loved the American page with her portrayed as the square dance caller, red boots and ALL!
Mary Bee is turning 99 years old this May and what a treat it was for us to present a book to her!
(Here is my pallet of books that we get to store in our garage . . . somewhere?!)
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