In Loving Memory

This post is copied entirely from my sister's blog because, well, she's better with words than I am and I think what she wrote is beautiful and there isn't anything that I can add to it. I will definitely miss being able to attend his memorial service and being with my family as we reminisce about Grandpa.

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When my mom was 19 or 20, her parents went through a nasty divorce. It was tough on their kids, especially when their dad moved back to his native Illinois and they fell out of touch. Not too many years later, however, my grandma remarried a man named Gilbert Nihart who was the principal and 6th grade teacher of the school where she taught 5th grade.

Gilbert was considerably older than she (nearly 15 years, if memory serves me correctly), but he dressed, talked, drove, and acted much younger- a characteristic that would define him for most of his adult life.

He was the first grandpa I have memories of, and he treated my grandma's children and grandchildren as his own. I have many memories of spending time at their house and him winding up the cuckoo clock for us to watch, playing the conch shells like a trumpet, and tending to his beautiful garden. He was always so full of life and vigor and liked to tease my grandmother. I can still hear him calling out to her "Dorothy!" which usually was followed by some silly taunt or joke. His arch nemesis were the deer in their neighborhood of Lake of The Pines that would chew on his vegetable garden and roses. Grandma loves roses so he always made sure to plant plenty for her.

About 7 years ago he began to suffer the effects of old age as he succumbed to the ravages of Alzheimer's disease. Grandma and Grandpa moved to Springville so that they could live near my mom's youngest sister Tammy who would help Grandma care for Grandpa in his declining years. Earlier this year, he had to be moved to a nursing home due to mobility issues.

I remember the last night I spent with them, which ended up being the night before Grandma had to move him into temporary and then permanent care in a rest-home. My mom was visiting with us and we went over to Grandma's house to have dinner and talk. Grandma told us all of the beautiful stories of their courtship and Gil seemed to remember more and more, even contributing his own details a few times. My favorite story was how Grandma had a date with a man before she became serious with Grandpa to go to the symphony. Grandpa somehow had found out about her plans and made arrangements to secretly arrive before her date. She saw him standing there all dressed up for the show, and decided she'd rather be out with Mr. Nihart. She said he looked dashing in his suit and she felt she belonged with him that evening. I guess she was right because they were married for nearly 40 years.

Grandpa had been slipping deeper and deeper into his health problems over the past year, especially since being moved to the care center. Grandma has been visiting him nearly every day, but 98 years is a long time to be alive and he was called home early this morning. No one is quite sure when he passed away, but they are sure that he died peacefully in his sleep.

In his lifetime he survived 2 Great Wars (during World War II he trained Navy Pilots), the Great Depression, and the onset of the Age of Technology. He was a minister, a race car driver, and a teacher. When he retired from teaching in his early 70's the town threw a "Gilbert Nihart Day" with a parade and everything. He lived his entire life with the grace, class, and impecible style of some bygone era.

All in all, I'm not sad about his passing because I can't imagine anyone leading a better or longer life, but I will miss him. I think we all will.

Date Night in the City

On Friday, Brent and I met at a train station in the city and rode together over to the "West End".

We ate at this silly restaurant. The food was actually pretty Americanized (ice water with lemon served in Coca-Cola cups) except that the spices were wrong.

We found the entire concept of the place amusing. I wish I would have taken a pic of the back of the menu telling the story. It included tidbits of knowledge such as:
-Texas used to be its own country
-It had its own embassy in London, only a few blocks from the location of the restaurant
-"Today a lot of Texans consider their state a country" Huh?

Then walking to our destination, we saw this theater. Which is showing this musical whose original production was here.

Across the street was where we were headed.

We went to see this play. Starring these guys. Ahh!!

We saw a poster for the play at the train station a few months ago but had forgotten about it until recently. I tried to buy tickets online but they were "sold out". I called the box office a few days later and found out they had a few "severely restricted view" tickets left. I told the guy I wanted 2 and he said "You'll only be able to see about 1/4 of the stage". Um ok! I'll take them. As long as I could see Ian & Patrick at least walk through my line of vision, my life would be complete, so I bought the tickets.

When we got to our seats, we were pleasantly surprised by our view. Here it is via phone pic. I know it is a huge theater no-no to take a picture of the stage but I couldn't help myself and there was no flash and it wasn't starting for like another 30 minutes.

If you can't tell from the pic, we could see about 75% of the stage. I had been expecting to be sitting behind a pillar or something but we were on the extreme edge of the rounded balcony so we only missed the front left corner of the stage.

The theater is really cool and decorated as it was back it 1820 when it was built. I snuck another picture of the chandelier and the ceiling.

My souvenir was this £4 playbill. It's really shiny. Brent's souvenir was a £3 cup of gourmet ice cream during intermission. Does that sound like us or what?

The play itself was really odd and would have been SO boring had it not been for the subtle comedy of the leading men. I read several reviews online and serious theater snobs had complained about the amount of humor in the show but the reviews by people who went expecting to be entertained (not to have some sort of exestential experience) were very pleased. As were we.

And now, we have seen 2 of our favorite actors in person, doing what they do best, theater!

What? We have a blog?

So, you may think that when we go for long periods of time without blogging it's because we're having so much fun and doing so much. Wrong! Well, at least this time. I feel pretty neglectful for not blogging much lately but honestly, there's not really anything to blog about on its own, so here's a rundown of our summer thus far:

-We went to church and church functions (baptisms, bbq's choir practice, etc)
-Got to work on our new callings (I'm the 2nd counselor in Primary and Brent is the Elder's Quorum President)
-Gave talks in Sacrament meeting (on different Sundays from each other), I taught Sharing Time 5 weeks in a row because our President was working 3 different teaching jobs and well, because I just like to! Brent taught in EQ a few times.
-Had the missionaries over for dinner a few times and went with them on a few teaches
-I sewed. A lot. And don't plan on quitting anytime soon so if anyone has any fun ideas or patterns for things, let me know!

-Brent worked, a lot (he had his quarterly "fast close" where he has to work really late 2 or 3 days, he also had several big meetings and presentations and got assigned to a new special project)
-Brent got to go to the top of the Gherkin to check out the view.

-We planned our next holiday break (a short trip to Northern Ireland in 3 weeks) and made tentative plans/brainstormed for a big long break in November (possibly to Spain and Portugal with our Brasilian friends the Pires' (from Paris)
-I was on an elimination diet for 6 weeks which I will blog about after I get the instructions of how to reintroduce food tomorrow.
-I sat around a lot but still managed to lose about 15 pounds. Ignore the messy hair but you can totally see the weight loss in my face, right? (Brent's lost 15+ pounds too!)

-Brent found out he didn't pass test #7 he took in May (it's just too hard to study AND move halfway across the world) then started studying for test #9 which is in October
-Got the mattress out of our hallway. It was too big to fit upstairs and we had zero takers when we tried to sell it online so we (finally) found a charity that wanted it.

-Attempted to go to Wimbledon but the queue was massively long (due to Andy Murray still being in the running) and it was grotesquely warm so we went home.

-We survived the 2 weeks of hot, muggy weather. No, 85 isn't THAT hot, but combine it with 70% and higher humidity and no rain to cool things off and it is complaint worthy! We though we were in for a nasty summer since we don't have A/C but about a week in, someone told us "it is only like this every 3 or 4 years and it only lasts for 2 weeks". Which was completely true. Now we are back to low-mid 70's and sunny and rainy, sometimes at the same time. Perfect!
-Finally got a glimpse of all the rain people kept warning us about. You know what? It's not so bad! It rains a few times everyday but there is usually sunshine in between. It just means our lawn gets sufficiently watered without the need of sprinklers.

-We went to Kneller Hall to see the Army Big Band concert. A friend from church is in the Band of the Grenadier Guards. It got rained out about halfway through.

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So there you go, nothing major, just life as usual but in a different country. I've been feeling pretty lame that I haven't gotten out and explored more on my own and I have a list of excuses why (just ask if you'd like to hear them). My goal for this week is to start being more active and less lazy. I get to eat real food again (read: no more diet), I'm on some new supplements which are supposed to help with energy levels and I'm starting acupuncture so I'm crossing my fingers that all those combined with my new commitment will make some changes.

On the list for this week:
-sew cute baby things for a friend who just had a baby
-acupuncture appointment
-IKEA shopping (for pictures frames)
-finish hanging pictures on the walls (in said frames from IKEA)
-go on a teach with the missionaries
-not complain about going to ward choir practice. Why does it feel like a chore sometimes? I've always felt that way. Even as a teenager. But yet I've also always felt that I should go. Not that I'm a great singer but I do know how to read music and I can sing and I do mostly enjoy it so I should participate, right?
-get insurance/prescription stuff figured out
-maybe find a nice duvet cover for our bed since I'm just not happy with our bedroom
-be more diligent in our scripture reading
-give Brent more opportunities to study or do church things (like the Home Teaching he has scheduled) and not pressure him to hang out with me because I'm lonely
-do the dishes everyday
-Date night! (We're going to dinner and a play)
-go to the temple on Saturday

Ok, so it's going to be a full week. But, as we read in Doctrine & Covenants last night (section 123 verse 17) "let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power". Cheerfully. I need to work on that one.

Thanks for letting me rabble on about goals and bettering myself and whatnot. I guess that's what blogs are for?

A Must Read

Just a quick plug for the best book I have read in awhile (except for my scriptures of course). And certainly the best thing I have ever read about infertility.

The Infertility Cure, by Randine Lewis.

My N.D. (Naturopathic Doctor) asked me to read it while I am doing my overall wellness treatment so that I am better prepared when we move on to the fertility treatment phase. So, if you are struggling with the same problems we are, READ THIS BOOK! I found it on Amazon for like $15.

It is written by a woman who struggled with infertility while she was an OB/Gyn. She was not finding solutions in western medicine so decided to turn to eastern and natural medicine. She moved to China and became a licensed dr there and went on to have 2 more children. She now runs a very successful clinic in Houston where she uses both eastern and western medicine to help her patients conceive. I really like her approach because although the focus is mainly on alternative medicine, she explains how it relates to traditional medicine and how the 2 can work together. I don't fully understand or relate with all of the concepts she writes about but the underlying theme hits home with both Brent and I. Heal the body and it will function as nature intended. We've already tried the medical route which treats symptoms and overrides the body's natural processes. Now, don't worry, I'm not going all "Crazy Hippie" or anything. It just makes sense. Rather than pump my body full of synthetic hormones and chemicals (which we did for 2+ years) to force it to do something it's not doing on its own, I am making lifestyle changes and taking supplements to help balance my systems so that they can do what they are meant to do.

Having struggled with infertility of her own, Randine really understands the emotions and needs of women in our position. I knew that I would enjoy this book before I even finished reading the introduction because I came across these 2 statements:

"Western medicine had once mislead me into thinking I was infertile or somehow "broken." But I wasn't infertile: I was imbalanced."

And my very favorite quote from the whole book:

"I don't know why we have been chosen to undertake such a painful journey, why we must go through such struggles to bring our children into the world. But I do know that when we look into our babies' faces, they will never have to wonder if they were really wanted. Ours are the children, who no matter how they came to us, will look at their parents and know, from the deepest place in their heart, how much we cherish them, and how we labored to give them life. And in that there is no greater security and no greater gift."

My naturopathic treatments may not help us get pregnant, who knows? But I DO know that it is changing my health and starting to heal parts of my body which have been "broken" for a long time. And that is worth all the nasty tasting supplements and crazy detox diets in the world.