Happy 29th Birthday to Grant

It's hard to believe, but my baby boy is 29 today.

Here he is at age 9 years.This is age 19 years, taken before his mission.
I took this picture last night.
He's not that willing to be photographed so I have to sneak up on him.

Anyway, here is a wish for a great birthday for the world's best son.

My trip to see my babies!

Last Friday I flew over to Aurora to see the kids. I returned on Tuesday Feb. 16, so it was a short trip. I didn't get very many pictures because I ended up getting sick with the stomach flu while I was there, so I wasn't feeling too great, to say the least.Basically, the only picture I got of Michelle.

I tried to get a decent picture of me with the kids as I was getting ready to go home, but, as you can see the boys really weren't interested in getting their picture taken with Grammy.

It was great to see everyone, but the kids had colds, and I was sick so it wasn't a very memorable trip other than the fact that I always LOVE to see those darling kids.

Our Wedding Day

We were married on August 1, 1969 in the Los Angeles Temple.That evening we had a lovely reception at our ward building in North Hollywood.
My bridesmaids were: Phyllis (Ken's sister), Wendy Manning, Gloria Rokes,
Robyn Pickett, Barbara Marsh, (all friends from church) and Linda Gattegno, who was my best friend at school from kindergarten until we graduated from high school.

We spent our honemoon at Ken's uncle's cabin in central California.

As I mentioned before, we were apart all of June and July. Ken and his folks drove down from northern California to Burbank a couple of days before the wedding. They arrived pretty late in the evening and Ken and I stayed up all night long talking. Back then, contact lenses were made out of actual glass or some sort of extremely hard plastic. I'd left my contacts in all night while we talked, not even thinking about it being a problem. The next morning July 30th, we went and got our marriage license. Here we are with the license. I don't remember exactly what time that day I began to have pains in my eyes, but by the end of the day I was in extreme pain. A quick trip to the eye doctor told us that I had corneal abrasions. They taped patches on my eyes and for the next 1 1/2 days I was led around by the hand. The next day I went to my appointment to get a manicure and never even saw the girl who did my nails. The following day was my wedding and I was able to take the patches off but I wasn't allowed to wear my contacts for 2 weeks. Yep, I wore my glasses to the temple, and my glasses were super ugly. Then for my luncheon and for my reception, I just went without my glasses. I couldn't see much of anything. My father had to tell me who was coming next in the reception line, or I wouldn't have been able to recognize anyone. It was kind of sad because I couldn't even see how pretty my reception was. Oh well. I lived through it and I even lived through my honeymoon in glasses. Today, I appreciate the comfort of soft lense contacts!

Our engagement

It didn't take long before we considered ourselves engaged. My parents weren't too happy about their 18 year old daughter getting engaged so quickly, but by spring they were on board and had an engagement announcement party during spring break.

When school was out in May, Ken went home to his parent's house in Anderson, California and I went home to my parent's house in Burbank, California, which are at opposite ends of the state. We didn't see each other again until just a couple of days before the wedding.

Over the summer I planned the wedding and was spoiled with nice bridal showers.

A Really Nice Guy

I thought that Ken was really nice and after that first date to the dance, we began seeing each other a lot. He was so much fun to be around and I felt comfortable with him right from the beginning. We were very poor students, so we didn't have money for fancy dates. One of our favorite dates was to get the 25 cent hamburgers at McDonald's and go to the park and sit on the grass to eat them. As I got to know Ken I was impressed with how down-to-earth he was. He had the ugliest car I'd ever seen. He had a yellow Lark, which was the dorkiest car ever made. He wasn't fazed by the fact that his car was completely lacking in class. I was so impressed that he just didn't care what other people thought of his car. He was comfortable driving it and was just glad to have dependable transportation. I had been around lots of guys who were always trying to impress people with how nice a car they had. I knew that Ken had his priorities in the right place, and I loved that about him. We called the Lark the "yellow bird".

Before he went into the Army he sold it for about $50,

I think.

Another thing about him which impressed me was that he stayed home from BYU for one year and worked and gave all of his money to his brother, so that his brother could finish up at BYU.
Again, I thought that was so unselfish and kind and I knew he'd was just a great guy.

We dated steadily all that fall. I was just having a good time. I wasn't thinking about marriage. After all I was only 18 and I had just started at BYU. But the Lord had other plans for me. I won't share the details of this because it is a very sacred experience for me, but I received a very strong spiritual witness that Ken was the man I was to marry. I was very surprised by this experience because I hadn't been asking the Lord if I should marry him. Like I said before, I was just having fun and wasn't too worried about where dating Ken would take me. But, I guess Ken had been praying and that was enough. I shared what had happened with Ken and he was thrilled because he knew that he loved me.

How we met and our first date.

As per Michelle's request I will try to write our love story. I had already decided to post more things like that, so her nudge was just what I needed. This is the first photo of Ken and me together. I don't really like it, but it's all we've got. It was BYU homecoming dance 1968.

I had just arrived at BYU in September 1968. I was rooming with girls I had never met before in Heritage Halls on campus. The first week of school BYU always held orientation dances for the freshmen and anyone else who wanted to attend. I was very enthused about going so I pretty much pushed my roommates to attend them with me. The dances on Tuesday and Wednesday didn't turn out to be all that much fun. The only guys that asked me to dance were guys I knew from my home ward. My roommates had even worse luck and danced with some pretty weird guys. So on Thursday I could only convince one of my roommates to go with me. After all, it hadn't been that great the two previous nights. But, ever the optimist, I felt like it was still worth a try. Some background information is now needed. I had my hair cut really short in a pixie-like haircut. I knew that guys traditionally like long hair on girls, so I decided to go to the dance wearing my fall. ( A fall is like a partial wig that is just hooked in at the top of your head and gave you instant long hair. In the photo above I am wearing it all curled and piled on top of my head .) Not surprisingly, I found that with the long hair I had plenty of dance partners. (Guys are so dumb.) I remember seeing Ken walking across the Wilkinson center ballroom floor, heading strait for me. He was pretty short and quite skinny, so I wasn't that impressed, but he asked me to dance and I said "yes". During that first dance we discovered that I was from the same ward that Ken's mission president was from, so we had plenty to talk about. We danced together the rest of the evening, and after the dance he walked me home. He asked if I would go with him to the dance the following night. So, I was the first girl in my apartment to get a date! I did have a bit of a dilema. Did he like me because I had long hair? Would he not be interested in me if he knew my hair was short? My roommates encouraged me to wear my fall on my date the next night. But, I decided that honesty was the best policy so I wasn't wearing my fall when he came to pick me up. When I came to the door I expected some kind of a reaction, but nothing!! He acted like there was nothing different and we proceeded to walk down the stairs and out the door toward the Wilkinson Center. About halfway there, he very nonchalantly asked me if I'd cut my hair that day. I explained the difference, and he didn't seem to care. We had a great time and he asked me out for a second date. I'll never know if the fall is what got me that first dance and eventually my husband, but at least I found a nice guy who liked me even with short hair.