Rasmania 101: October 2020

Both Roy and Elise had surgery on the 22nd of September. Elise needed my help a little more than Roy did, since she has four kids and Andy is semi-unavailable with his residency. Roy was willing to let Caitlyn be his care giver so I could go to Georgia. He has had floaters in his eyes ever since he can remember, but recently it was getting so bad his vision started to be blurry. He had a fairly new surgery where the doctor goes in and sucks out all the vitreous, then replaces it with a clear substitute fluid. If he is happy with the results in this eye, he may get the other eye done as well.

He says he looks like a Cyborg

Beverly scares me to death. It's good she has a helmet. She'd ride
her little scooter at full speed down the hill. She always seemed to stop
when necessary, but she was usually far enough ahead of me that I couldn't
stop her myself.

Harvey loved his grandma. He liked his tummy tickled with my head.
I could get him to laugh by just laughing at him. He's a happy baby.

Roy came to Georgia a couple of days after his own surgery.
The kids were happy to see him!

We took the three kiddos on a Sunday walk. We saw a squirrel, but other than
that we didn't spot much wild life. Except spiders!

Following our walk, Bev had a nap on the chair. Bad idea.
She does not wake up well from late afternoon naps.

It was good I was there to help Elise as Andy has had some crazy shifts--He was just finishing up a rotation that consisted of 13 hour night shifts. He only had four nights off throughout the rotation.

I stayed in Georgia about 12 days. The day we left, Andy and Elise let the kids stay home to see us off. It was a Wednesday, but the kids told me they were having an "off weekend." That's what Andy calls it when he doesn't have to work on the weekend. I loved forming a relationship with baby Harvey. He is a sweet smiley baby and was so happy with his grandma. I got closer to the other three kids as well. Beverly came with us to the airport and when she saw we were leaving, she started to cry. It was sad but gratifying at the same time.

Bev, Andy and Max, and Harvey

We have a lot of October birthdays. We had delicious cake at Adrienne's for Oli's 8th birthday. He'll be baptized in November. They were going to do it this month, but they had so many final sports games they decided to delay it a month. AJ and Dan also turned one year older. Doyeon's birthday is still coming up this month.

I had to tickle Oli to get a smile out of him.

Soon after returning home we got to enjoy General Conference. It was wonderful, as usual. There were some talks that really hit the mark with everything that has been going on in the world.

Hyeji informed me that one of the apostles has the middle name of Gunnar. I thought it could only be Dale G. Renlund, and sure enough, that is his middle name.

President Oaks always takes the hard subjects and does an amazing job. I also loved listening to the prophet. One of my thoughts during his talk is that I needed to reread my dad's book "The time of Jacob's trouble." My dad also loved studying about The Gathering. He knew a lot and has shared that knowledge with us and we should take advantage of it. One of the things I have been working for is more unity in our family. I'd love more unity in the country, but that seems mostly out of my control. I can focus on the needs in our family, though. It was remarkable how many talks were about unity. When you listen to conference with a goal or a question is mind, the Lord can guide you to those quotes and thoughts that are for you. I'll share a couple:

"Unity is enhanced when people are treated with dignity and respect, even though they are different in outward characteristics." (Quentin L. Cook)

and "A sense of unity despite differences comes first by having mercy, not judging each other or letting “our words bite." (Sharon Eubank) and "By union of feeling we obtain power with God... How can I understand people around me better? How will I create that “union of feeling” when all are so different? What power from God might I access if I am just a little bit more unified with others? (Also Sister Eubank). She then goes on to give us some ideas of how to achieve unity.

I am still finding quotes that focus on unity and I'm looking forward to continued study of all the conference talks from this session.

The day before General Conference, Roy, Dan and Nick left early in the morning to go hunting. They scouted around the entire day without seeing much wildlife at all--and especially no elk. They soon discovered why they were so scarce. There was a fire nearby-- a lot closer than they had originally thought. They were told by some other hunters that they had been told to evacuate, so they packed up their gear and came home that same night. Because of their lack of success, Dan and Roy determined to try again one more weekend. They left at a reasonable time the next Friday morning. They started the day at the shooting range to practice, then headed to the West desert. Again, their scouting attempts produced no results, but they loved the hike and being outside together.

Dan and Nick

Here you can see the fire that ended their excursion early

I also had a doctor's visit this week--a previously scheduled allergy appointment. They tested me for 40 allergens, and lucky me...I was allergic to 38 of them. I don't grow the mold in my body that causes ringworm, and I'm not allergic to decaying fruits and vegetables. My worst enemies are pine and dust mites. I had a severe reaction to about 75% of the allergens, but was told by the specialist not to discount the less severe allergies as all of them put together can cause me quite a few problems. I'm hoping this is the answer to my fatigue--I know it's the answer to my chronic cough and congestion. It'll take a while for the treatment (shots) to start helping me, though. Also, I am allergic to a series of molds that grow in our bodies from certain foods (yogurt, vinegar, dried fruit, smoked fish and other things you would think would be good for me), so that's another way I can start to see results. However, I just bought four large containers of Fage yogurt, so I won't start watching those foods until I work through the yogurt.

Nan, Christine and I had an enjoyable lunch together for the first time in what seems like forever. We celebrated Nan's birthday, even though we were a bit late. It was fun to catch up.

The Green boys had an exciting couple of weeks. Oli's team in football won the championship. AJ and Adrienne didn't think their baseball team had much of a chance to do the same because they'd had a rough season. They started off having to combine 5 and 6 year-olds with 7 and 8 year-olds because they didn't have enough of the younger group for form a league. Because there were so many of the boys that were friends with Finn, their team had more of the younger boys than most. They lost every game during the season but one. By the time the championship started, though, all the boys could hit the ball with the bat--they'd all improved so much. So the final games began. They had to win every team to get a chance against the prevailing team (a team that won every game in the season). Each game they got better and better and ended up playing this winning team. Winning them once, however, wasn't enough, as it was double elimination. After playing three games on Saturday, they went home with the championship. It was pretty amazing.

Finn

Oli

One of the teams they played were unhappy that our infield players (Oli included) were so talented. They wanted them rotated more often. I guess the best thing about having the two ages mixed together was Adrienne and AJ could kill two birds with one stone.

Gunnar also had a game (soccer) on Saturday morning. I went to watch that game since Adrienne and AJ were both tied up with the baseball game. Gunnar played well. He nearly made a goal, and tried to make contact with the ball at least a few times.

I caught Gunnar here taking a short running break.

Since Gunnar played at the elementary school
the Rasband girls (above) go to, they all came
over and watched the game with me. After the game
all the kids came home with me and played together. It
was fun cousin time.

I love this picture of these two cousins walking
to my home together, after the soccer game.

We are still excited about the upcoming wedding between Caitlyn and Dallin Anderson, our next door neighbor. Christy Cunningham took her engagement and her bridal pictures. She's retired from receptions, which works fine as we are not having one. Caitlyn and Dallin want just a small (if you can call it small when we're talking about 50 people between the two families) dinner with the immediate families I told her it's a good time to get away with that as there are still so many cases of Covid.19.

I took a couple of photos with my camera. Christy's pictures are much better. I didn't know what I thought of Caitlyn posting pictures of her as a bride before the wedding until she reminded me that there won't be a reception, so she might as well show it off.

These engagement phots are by Christy

Bountiful Blvd.

Bridget eating her blueberries.

Mav, Bev and Max sent pictures of their dessert on October 11 (AJ's actual birthday). He told everyone to go ahead and use his birthday as an excuse to celebrate, so they made these ice cream cookie sandwiches.

Greta informed grandpa Roy, "You have a lot of candy on that counter." Roy: "Yes I do, do you like candy?" Greta: "Yes." Roy: "You're awful because you like candy." Greta: "You like candy, too!"

I had to add these cute pictures of Dojin at the zoo. I wasn't there, but Jieun sent them to me.

Grandma and Beverly getting some much needed exercise.
I tried some yoga, too, but she had to be either on top of me, or
under me, or pushing my legs down, so it didn't work very well.

Effie in full concentration using her birthday paints. Sara says she
wants to paint every day.

Sunday night we had most of the family over. Sara wasn't feeling well, so she didn't come, and of course, the Jacksons couldn't make it. Adrienne and AJ had dinner at home for AJ's birthday but came over later to roast marshmallows. It was so nice to have everyone together again. I did feel that unity that I have been missing since Covid.19 happened. The kids were especially happy to be together. The noise level towards the end of the evening was up there pretty high but it was worth it to see how happy the kids were. We had everyone make their own tin foil dinner and we cooked them in the fire. We also had the Traeger going. The meals were delicious. We added lots of veggies to hamburger meat--spiralized sweet potatoes and zucchini; sweet onions, carrots and hash-browns. They turned out so well I think we'll have to do this again. We had s'mores for dessert. It was a beautiful 55 degrees for most of the evening--just cool enough for sweaters and a fire.