Goin' Home

After leaving work today, I learned that my Grandma, Mae Rushton, passed away this morning. As I've been reflecting on my memories of Grandma, and my love and respect for this dear woman, my heart has been comforted by the sweet assurance and reality of the Resurrection.

It's never easy to lose someone (for now) that is as loved and as loving as Grandma. But I am much more thrilled for her than I am saddened for the family. In the last two years, Grandma's dementia has advanced rapidly. It was hard when I needed to introduce myself to her. Even though she couldn't remember my name, she knew I was her grandson and she expressed her love. Surely, she is celebrating in a grand reunion with her parents, siblings (she was the youngest and last living of 8 children), and her Donny Boy, my Uncle Don who drowned in his early twenties and who she has missed so much. I've imagined the welcome home she must have received.

As there are celebrations in heaven, we are celebrating on earth; celebrating the life she lived and the legacy she left. Grandma and Grandpa marked their 64th Wedding Anniversary in February. She was 87 and lived a life full of love and service to her family and many others. Most of my memories of her are of her serving others--she didn't know how to not work hard.

Grandpa has done a wonderful job in taking care of her--with the help of family and the folks at their assisted living center. It hasn't been easy for him, as her dementia had become so severe, but his love for her was always evident.

Despite the recent severity of her dementia, there was not once of visiting Grandma when she didn't bear a powerful witness of the Savior and the truthfulness of the Gospel. About a year ago, I was walking with Grandma. She reached out and held my hand as we walked and then she said, "Isn't it wonderful that Heavenly Father gave us families so that we could understand his love for us?" It is wonderful. I will cherish and honor Grandma's memory until we meet again.

Great Grandma Eleanor Harris Foxall holding Grandma Mae with Evelyn standing.

Mae (on left) with her sister, Evelyn, and cousin Dorothy Horrocks

Some of the Foxall Family around 1932. Mae is the young girl in the center

Ned and Mae on their wedding day--February 12, 1946 in Cardston, Alberta.

They drove from Montana through a blizzard to get to to the Temple to be married.

The Rushton Family in 1963

Great Grandma Mae and Jackson

Mae and Ned at a family event in 2009.

Unemployed World Traveler

It's June again. Towards the end of last summer I quit my job and went back to school. I never anticipated that I would travel more in the almost one year of having no job than at any other time in my life. I love to travel, but I do prefer to do it with my wife. Unfortunately, I left Natalie home for most of my traveling. But she has also traveled without me.

This week, she and Jackson are in Arizona at the Shirts Family Reunion. By the end of this week we will have been apart for a combined month during the past four months. I'm certainly glad I'm not doing a consulting job that would require me to travel five days each week.

Since last June I've been to the following places:

Canada--my first time to the motherland, or mother-in-law land. We plan to return this summer.

Michigan--not impressed, but only drove through the Detroit area.

Montana--MBA rafting trip

Idaho--on the way to Montana

Georgia--twice. For Bently & Bonnie's wedding and for Christmas.

Alabama--visited a Civil War battle site, where this was taken.

California--visiting companies. My first time to San Francisco. Some of the best seafood ever.

North Carolina--flyback to Bank of America in Charlotte. Stayed in the Ritz-Carlton.

China--Thanks Honeywell and BYUs Global Management Center--I paid very little for a week-long trip to China. More on that later.

China--Again. This time I paid, but it was awesome. The only downside was two weeks away from my family.

Hong Kong--on the same trip. Got to spend time with my mission companion, Thomas, and his wife Emi.

Japan--I usually wouldn't count an airport stay, but this one was long enough that it counts. While my flight was delayed, Jordan and Shawn's flight to Thailand was also delayed. I was at gate 22, they were at gate 16...but we didn't know until after the fact.

Our trip to Ohio took us through Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa (it's like Heaven--just ask Shoe-less Joe), Illinois, Indiana. We plan to go to Pennsylvania and New York, and if we make it down to visit DC, we'll go through West Va and Virginia, too.

We'll have to wait and see where we end up during the next year of unemployment :)

A long time ago, in a memory far, far away

My earliest memory is of me being held by someone (I don't know who) while looking out over a large room, possibly an auditorium while Star Wars is showing on a large screen. (Funny, that my memory includes Star Wars, since Natalie has never seen any of the films about the happenings of a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away--no, I'm not kidding). When I described this scene to my mom several years ago, she told me that it took place at Centerville Junior High. Our family, like all the others in the neighborhood, had been evacuated there during the legendary Flood of '83, that took place around May 30 through the first week of June. Although I don't remember water flowing down Pages Lane like a veritable river, I do recall sandbags lining the sidewalks.

There weren't very many pics online regarding the flood of '83. Guess people were thinking more about their lives, families, and property. But somebody had to have taken some shots...

This week marks 27 years since the deluge. While I am one to commemorate things that I deem to be important or memorable, that's not why I'm bringing this up. While playing with Jackson over the past several days--yes, I do get to spend a lot more time with him now that I'm not in school--I realized that he is exactly as old as I was when my first lasting memory was forged at nearly 22 months. I wonder what his earliest memories will include. Will they be the result of some trauma or extraordinary event like being evacuated in the night due to a flood? Or will they be of playing football with Dad or making pancakes with Mom? It's fun to think of what he'll remember and the ordinary things that, although perhaps not memorable, are still serving to build a foundation for his life.

From Jackson's Perspective

I was looking through the pictures on my phone yesterday when I came across one that Jackson must have taken by himself.

So here is the trip across the country from Jackson's perspective:

Loving motherhood?

Let me just start by saying that I really do love being a mother and am so grateful for Jackson and new baby boy.

Last year I decided that I wanted to start the tradition of taking pictures of kids with mom/dad on Mother's/Father's day. Last year's picture turned out pretty cute:

This year's... well... Don't I look like I'm just thrilled to be a mom? We took several, but unfortunately Jackson was not in the mood to cooperate (and by the looks of things, neither was I?) so we really didn't get a great one.

This is the best we could do. Maybe next year will be a little better.

Housing Hunt

I never would have thought it would be so hard to find a place to live for the summer. I started looking online about 2 months ago but didn't really make too much progress aside from ruling out lots of places that didn't do 3-month leases. That was a start though. Jack spent several hours every day for a week before we left looking online, calling listings on craigslist, talking to bishops of wards around Akron, and waiting for people to return calls. Still, we had nothing set for when we arrived, just a list of a few places to go look at and an even longer list of ones that we didn't know if they were options or not. When we arrived on Saturday we went to look at a few of them but most of the offices were closed. I think we actually got to go into only one or two of them. But just driving by was enough to rule out qutie a few. I decided that if I was scared to even get out of the car, I didn't really want to live in the neighborhood.

We picked one of the three or four wards from the Akron & surrounding areas to go to on Sunday. We met several people there who gave us tips on places to look, which was great....but none panned out. We had a couple offers for dinner and really appreciated that. A home-cooked meal after 5 days of eating out sure is nice.

It really got old fast, living in a hotel. We're all looking forward to feeling a little more "permanent" ...as permanent as you can feel for 12 weeks. These were our requirements for a place to live:

-3 month contract

-Available now or within a week

-not nasty or in a scary place

-reasonable price on rent

-a separate room for Jackson...after sharing a room with him in the hotels for more than a week, we decided we really can't sleep well if we're in the same room.

We also wanted to have a playground at the place or at least within walking distance because I'm likely going to be at home with Jackson and without a car a lot...but this was less of a priority than the other things.

I found one that I was strongly considering, but Jack didn't like the idea of our son sleeping in the utility closet for the summer. It was pretty big (intended to be a laundry room too) but Jack didn't think it was the best idea. After calling about 50+ places (not an exageration), driving past a ton, and going to visit lots, we finally found a place. It's far from fancy, it doesn't have a playground, and I think the rent plus the short term monthly fee is more than the place is worth, but it'll work. Jackson will even have a bedroom, not a utility closet. The complex does have a pool, which I kind of have mixed feelings about. It'll be fun and nice when it's so hot out, but first of all, my pregnant belly in a swimsuit is kind of funny looking. And right now, Jackson doesn't even know what a pool is... I know as soon as we take him swimming for the first time, we won't be able to walk past it (which we have to do to get to our apartment) without him wanting to go swimming. I guess I'll have a nice tan by the end of the summer.

But we have a place to live! For right now we are staying at Jack's supervisor's house while they're out of town on vacation. It's a little weird to be living in the house of someone that I don't even know, but it sure is nice to be out of a hotel. It felt great to be able to make dinner last night, even if I couldn't find half the supplies that I needed, like a mixing bowl and aluminum foil. We'll move in to our apartment on Tuesday. Jack's supervisor and co-worker are supplying almost all our furniture, which is great because we didn't bring much and don't want to buy things for 11 weeks' worth of use.

More updates to come when we move in!

The trek across the nation

I've missed a lot of blog posting opportunities lately, and I really need to go back and fill in on some of them, but I'm just going to jump in here and do what I can for now.

I guess I'll start by saying we made it to Ohio... We made it to Ohio. There.

We planned to leave Utah early Monday morning (May 17), drive for two days, spend two days in Nauvoo, and then drive another day to Akron. Well, we didn't quite make it to leaving on Monday. While we had spent the previous week packing and getting ready to leave, we (I) just didn't really do enough of it early enough. The tricky part was that we were not only packing stuff to cram into the car to take with us to Ohio, but we were also packing up everything from our home to store in the garage there so we can move around the block as soon as we get back to Orem in August. We had a lot of help from my mom & grama who were in town and from Jack's parents, but by Sunday evening it was clear that we wouldn't really be getting away too early on Monday. A neighbor was so helpful to take Jackson while finished the last minute stuff...she showed up right as Jackson was waking up at 8 that morning...and then by the time we were getting close to being ready to leave and I went over to get Jackson, it was around 7:30 pm... at that point it would just be silly to leave and we really did have more we needed to do at home (like all the cleaning to move out). So we stayed another night and left Tuesday. Even staying another night, we didn't get all the cleaning done and so Jack's parents came down after we left to finish up. (THANK YOU!)

Jackson did great in the car for the most part. Aside from the POURING rain the entire drive, things went pretty smoothly. Each morning as we'd have breakfast we'd hear about 4 or 5 tornadoes that were about 50 miles from us. The first day, Jackson did just fine, and the only times we stopped were when we needed gas or food. We stopped in ?? for the night. It took way longer than it should to get away from the hotel the next morning. There wasn't a continental breakfast in the hotel, just a restaurant. We should have taken a hint when we were the only ones in the place and had to wait for any worker to see that there was actually someone wanting to eat at the restaurant. 45 minutes later, we got our food. So after getting away an hour later than planned, we hit the road. Another day of rain and storms, and this time a few more bathroom stops, mostly for me. Jackson was getting a little less thrilled about being in the car, but still did ok. We could usually distract him with a new toy or snack when he'd get fussy and we let him run around for a while each time we stopped. We made it to Ft. Madison, just outside of Nauvoo, late that night. We were really looking forward to doing all the Nauvoo things but we had another day full of rain. It stopped raining just as it was getting dark and everything was closing. We were still able to see several of the sites, even though we didn't get to see & do as much as we wanted to. We also got to see April Longhurst, whose house we've been living in for the past 15 months. Friday morning we went to Carthage. That was really neat to see, even if Jackson was a bit too entertaining (and distracting) for the rest of our tour group. (Separate post on Nauvoo to come.) We hoped to make it all the way to Akron that night, but after hitting some bad traffic, more rain, and leaving a little later than planned, we ended up stopping about 2 1/2 hours from Akron around 1:30 am.

Even though the drive was long, it really wasn't too bad. Jackson did very well. His favorite toys in the car were his "beeg choo tain button boook" (big choo choo train button book), cars and trucks, and bear. I, on the other hand, was probably the reason for most of our stops. Yep, frequent bathroom stops. I'm sure it'll be even worse on the way back in August. And my feet were getting swollen from sitting too---also sure to be worse in a few months.

We have gotten quite tired of hotels and eating out. We tried putting Jackson in the pack & play at the first hotel, but it didn't really work very well because we were all in the same room the entire time so he didn't want to just lay down and go to sleep by himself when we were right there within sight. He ended up in bed with us that night. The next night we had two queen beds in our room, so I layed down with him in one bed while he fell asleep and then surrounded him with pillows and switched beds. Well, around 1 am he rolled off the bed, hit his face on the night stand, and landed on the floor. Quite a rude awakening for all of us! Poor boy! So for the rest of our hotel-staying time, he slept with us...which means we didn't sleep very well. We'll be very happy to be in our apartment finally! ...but that's a whole nother story.

Cinco de Mayo in Hong Kong

Three years isn't very long in the grand scheme of things, but it's amazing how the events of such a small period of time can affect the rest of your life.

From a very muggy hotel room in Hong Kong, I'm remembering a very cold, snowy Cinco de Mayo three years ago (the pic above was taken at a later date, not on our actual wedding day). I can't wait to return home to celebrate three years of wedded bliss with Natalie. She's pretty amazing to have supported me in coming on this MBA trip to China for 13 days, especially considering that I'm away today--on our third wedding anniversary.

Most of our readers know this, but here's a friendly reminder:

Natalie is an amazing woman. She is a strong, loving, extremely supportive and capable wife. She's my best friend. She's an exemplary and patient mother. She inspires me to be better. She's my Eternal Companion, and I consider myself to be pretty stinkin' lucky to be hers.

This morning I attended an endowment session in the Hong Kong Temple. As I sat in the Temple, I considered the verse from Genesis 2: "And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make an help meet for him."

We often read that phrase and put the words "help" and "meet" together as one noun phrase, but I like to think of it in terms of adjectival definitions of the word "meet." These definitions include being suitable, fitting, and appropriate. The word can also mean equal, as in, "It meets my expectations."

Eve was surely a suitable, appropriate, and equal help for Adam. I'm grateful that Natalie is for me a suitable and equal partner. We go together even better than a wink and a smile :) She is an help meet for me, and I for her. I love her and miss her much more than I can convey in a single blog post. I'm grateful for the last three years together and the promise of eternity as one.

Happy Anniversary, Love!