Birthday Tea Party; Earl Mecham's Passing; Caroline's Play

I have the sweetest friends! We rotate celebrating each others' birthdays and this time it was my birthday. Diane invited us all to a tea party at her home. I was sad Colleen was out of town that day.

(Me, Jane Crandall, Debi Winder, LaVona Lewis, Jan Evans and Diane Stewart)

We all brought finger foods to eat with our tea (hot chocolate). I love that Diane had made cucumber sandwiches at her husband's suggestion. 

The tea party table was set. Diane had just gotten home from visiting one of her daughters and said she spent so much time having tea parties and playing Barbies with her little granddaughter, so she decided she needed to come home and plan a tea party with her real Barbie friends. CUTE!!

It was shocking news to read this post on my birthday about a death of one of our friends from Georgia.

I loved Earl's first wife Karyn who passed away from ovarian cancer. That was a sad time for everyone.

Then, it was so fun to watch the budding romance of Earl and Lynne. I worked with Lynne in our stake primary presidency calling and really love her as well. 

She was so thankful to have Earl as her husband. It was a blessing for Earl to not have to be alone for all these years. This news has just broken my heart as I think about Lynne being alone again.

We had literacy training zoom meetings every day for a week in preparation for teaching literacy at the prison. Prior to that we were supposed to be spending hours and hours on the computer going through the program as if we were learning to read. 

It uses a lot of symbols and markings that we never used when I was growing up, so it's like learning to read all over again. 

I never knew there are 5 decoding skills that need to be memorized.

We are going to have another meeting to discuss how specifically to implement this literary program within the prison system where we have to be extra careful with what we do.

We had dinner at Twigs with Brigham and Kyllie Wade. They are both our missionaries and they now have a baby boy. 

We got together with my parents and Nani after our Mexico trip so we could share with them all about our adventures and hear all about the family Halloween party held at our house that we missed.

We had a third dinner date with Glen's childhood friend Randy Bambrough and his wife Susan. We met in Provo before a basketball game and ate at La Jolla Groves. I usually love that place and was disappointed my dinner wasn't up to par. 

Haley asked if I could watch her little boys while she had a full day of photography. She was breaking up the baby tending between three of us that day, so my shift was just a few hours.

Kade and Levi looked so adorable dressed in their matching clothes. Kade is so sweet with Levi. 

Kade looks like such a big boy on his first day of school.

We had been invited to attend Caroline's junior high school play, "The Little Mermaid," which was held at the high school auditorium. Glen surprised me when he suggested we go eat at Black Bear Diner before the play. 

It was so wonderful watching the play in such a nice auditorium. Madison was attached to me like glue that night. 

When she noticed the big man sitting in front of her blocking her view, she asked to sit on my lap through the whole play.

Haley had brought Kade, but they ended up going home at intermission.

Caroline is the one on the left. She was part of the "waves," the ones who held up blue material and moved it around to look like the sea.

Sebastian the crab was a cute actor who was expressive and put character into the crab costume.

The actress who played Ursula was also a very good and entertaining character as well.

It was a very fun performance. Madison helped me pick out Caroline in every scene she was in.

Caroline's big scene was when she was one of the chefs.

As enjoyable as it was to be with the Golden family watching the play, there was another thing I really enjoyed. It was seeing how Woods Cross High School has gotten a face lift, both on the outside and on the inside.

You now walk in and see brightness and color. Before it was all drab brown bricks and felt closed in. 

This is the hallway leading to the auditorium. All those bricks used to be brown. And the carpet was brown. DARK!! There were no brightly-colored chairs. I love this new, happier look and feel of the place.

Rebecca and Caroline stopped by our home the next day after Caroline had just gotten her braces put on. 

She said Brooke stopped by after she had gotten her braces on and she wanted the same thing to happen on the day she got her braces on.