Lauren's Tree

I made the mistake of setting my camera to use RAW for some images that needed for my photography class--and then not re-setting it to a realistic file size. As a result, this beautiful example of Lauren's work (Pandagoldfish@etsy.com) took an agonizing amount of time to load. I'm glad that I finally got a good image of it--I have such a hard time getting photos of glass-faced pictures. I usually end up with a reflection of the camera super-imposed on the front--so I can't see what it is that I took a picture of.

I got this from Lauren quite a few months ago and only just finished getting it framed right. Brent saw the artwork in a pile of papers (important! papers, of course) in our bedroom and he asked me if (when I got it framed) he could take it to hang up in his office. I like being able to have the artwork of Meg and Lauren hung on the walls of our home. It reminds me of them and the things that they are doing. The majority of the stuff is from the past few years, though. Right now Lauren is managing a doberman training/breeder kennel. So, even when she isn't waiting for her mangled hand (dog fight she tried to stop by putting her hand in front of one of the dogs) to heal--she has very little time for the intricate cut-work in the piece above. Megan is also busy--too busy really--to use up time doing her sculpting/painting/carving/etc. She has one child--18-month-old Jonathan. She just told me a week or so ago that she is now pregnant with my second grandchild!!! So soon she will have no sleep, an infant, and energy-explosive Jonathan--not really conducive to the completive quiet that she needs for her to do her artwork.

Because I know that both of them will be getting busier rather than busy-less (?), I really treasure the pieces of art that I get from both of them now.

Nathan is done with midterms. He is also doing an index of all the stuff that the Family History Center has. Hundreds of files and tapes and CDs--he got a code scanner to help with the work. Now he will be practicing what grocery clerks do all day--rather than sitting and going through each item by hand and listing what is on it. He's also gotten Brent and me to use our evening time better. I don't know what was said during the Priesthood Conference broadcast two weeks ago, but Nate came home from that and told me that we needed to watch fewer movies and listen to more music--return to nightly scripture reading and family prayer. He is changing so quickly now. I'm not in any of his classes right now and when he doesn't understand something in Algebra, he makes an appointment with the Math Lab. I still get to help him with Spanish--and with deciphering weird handwriting when he does name extraction work on-line. Actually, he gets both Brent and me to help and sometimes we all just throw our hands up and he guesses--putting a "?" after the city or surname or family status.

Brent is gone most of the time now. He was at a legal conference two weeks ago and one of the people in a presentation (Q & A thing) had to bow out and they asked Brent if he could fill in! It was a big thing--I'm so incredibly impressed. FPL said that there wasn't time to get clearance from the company president's office, so he didn't appear on the panel for the discussion-thing--but I think he was pleased that the legal hierarchy would turn to him when they needed someone.

I am glad that he is regarded so highly that those who found they needed someone at the last minute felt that they could depend upon him. My mom used to get upset when a Church meeting would need a musical number because the people who were suppose to do it had failed to prepare anything; and they would call us to fill in at the last minute. "Why don't they ask you to do it in the first place?" Funny question coming from a woman who had taught us, though, that we were given the talent that we had in order to be of use to others. Once when she was to have accompanied a musical number she couldn't "play all the notes" in the score and so she got someone else to do it for her--and then her replacement didn't play all of the notes, either! Grandma Burton told her that she had been given an opportunity to develop her skills as a pianist so that she could help others--it didn't matter if it was note-perfect. The Lord wasn't listening to be sure that the music was performed perfectly--so Mom shouldn't be worried about it either--just to do the best that she could.

Which was pretty much perfect anyway.