Peregrine

Charlotte and I have wonderful news. We are expecting our first child.

As this is her first pregnancy, Charlotte wanted to keep it under our hats until we were through the first trimester. You just never know, especially with the first one, as I’m sure those of you with children understand.

The baby was due on November 17th, but when Charlotte had an amniocentesis about two weeks ago, they revised that to November11th, based on the size of the skull and such.

This afternoon, I drove my wife to her third doctor’s visit. Well, technically, she’s a Midwife, not a doctor. Anyhow, it was a quick routine check-up. The Midwife found the baby’s heartbeat, which I got to hear for the first time. She also reviewed the results of the amniocentesis, which are perfectly normal. Although we are not certain, due to the way in which that report was laid out on the page, if appears that they may have determined the sex of the baby. There are several other indicators (heartrate, position & orientation of the fetus, etc.) that seem to correlate the apparent determination from the amniocentesis. However, it’s not certain, yet.

Although the doctor who performed the amniocentesis used a very low powered ultrasound in order to guide the needle, and he was able to get some picture of our baby, the first complete ultrasound will be on July 3rd. At that time, it may be possible to determine the sex of the baby with greater confidence.

In case you didn’t pick up on it, yet, I am very excited and looking forward to becoming a Daddy for the first time.

For a little over three years, my wife and I have maintained a 10×15 foot storage unit a couple of miles from our house. We were storing our washer & dryer, a very nice microwave oven, a complete set of kitchen wares plus some spare bits, 10 boxes of dry food storage items, 15 boxes & plastic crates of holiday decorations & crafts, two queen sized beds, two dining tables with 10 chairs between them, a few other miscellaneous furniture items, a few boxes with childhood keepsakes and about a dozen boxes of general stuff.

As you can see from that list, we didn’t have much extra stuff in there that didn’t make sense to keep.

Well, the situation with our house has recently allowed us to clear out a whole area of the basement. Because of that, we could now perform the juggling act needed to rearrange other rooms in the house and empty the storage unit. There are a couple of items that we will be storing at the house (beds, washer/dryer, etc.) but the rest will actually be put to use. In addition, the $70/month that we were spending on the storage unit is now staying in our pockets.

Of course, there is a downside to all of this. We ended up having to do almost all the work of hauling that stuff from the storage unit to our house, in the last two days of May (boy are we tired now). Also, it looks like the cardboard boxes have been replicating all over the house.

Still, it’s good that we’ll be getting all our stuff out. We anticipate that there will be several boxes of stuff we will take to Deseret Industries. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, we took 4 car loads of stuff (and we have a Saab 9000, so a car load is as big or bigger than many small pick-up trucks can carry) to DI. Yesterday, we took another 2 car loads worth to DI when we finished emptying the storage unit.

Now, for the next couple of weeks, we’re going to be very busy emptying boxes. Let the good times roll! eh?

But, for tonight, we’re going to make dinner, watch a movie and head to bed. After the last two days, we’re quite tired.

Last week, I found out I would be spending this week in San Francisco, California. I’ve never been here, before. I came home and asked Charlotte if she wanted to go with me. That put a really big smile on her face.

We had to go to Idaho for my youngest brother’s wedding over the weekend, so I asked Guru Labs to book my flight from Boise instead of Salk Lake City. No problem, but I’m flying on Alaska (they’re the ones who decided to loose my “checked plane-side” bag the last time I flew with them).

While driving to my folks house in Weiser, Idaho, I got Delta on the phone and reserved a seat for Charlotte using some of my 100,000+ miles (just a hint, I’ve spent 145,000 miles on tickets in the past 20 months). It wasn’t until Saturday night that I had an opportunity to pay the fees for the ticket, but I took care of it. We left my folks house at 9am to head to BOI, about an 80 mile drive.

My flight left first, so Charlotte saw me off at my gate. I actually flew on a turboprop aircraft! I haven’t been on one of these since October, 1997. I tried to call Charlotte’s cell phone when I reached Portland (to change planes) but she had it off. I had a 2+ hour layover (+20 they had added on since printing my boarding pass).

Later, Charlotte called and told me that she was sitting on the plane at BOI, still on the ground; there was a mechanical issue. Her flight out of Boise ended up delayed about 90 minutes. That meant that she had to be re-booked to another flight from SLC to SFO (San Fransisco). Since this is Delta, I knew there would be no problem; they have billboards that advertise around SLC that they have no less than 17 flights a day from SLC to SFO, and back.

So, I finally left PDX (Portland, Oregon), this time on a CRJ700. Those are very nice 70-seat “regional” jets. Once I got in to SFO, I found the baggage carousel that Charlotte’s bag would be coming out of (I never check, unless I have no choice). I sat around for 2.5 hours until she got there.

We took a cab to our hotel, which is right in the heart of the Financial District of San Fransisco; nice! it was about 7pm by then, so we got dinner at the Elephant & Castle Restaurant & Pub, attached to our hotel. It was very good food and a fun, English Pub atmosphere. Oh, and it’s smoke free, which is always a big plus.

Since Charlotte has been to San Fransisco many times, she’s just loving it. I have walked from my hotel to the training center where I’m teaching this week, each day. It’s a nice 7-8 blocks walk (for those of you who think that blocks come 6-to-a-mile, that’s only in Utah; these are about 10-12/mile). But, there’s going to be very heavy rain overnight and tomorrow, so I might take a cab instead.

I think we’re going to see Alcatraz Friday evening. If I want to do that, I had better get tickets tonight. Charlotte says we have to go to Fisherman’s Wharf and my students have told me about an excellent little pizza place called North Beach Pizza in Little Italy, which will be about a 7 minute walk from our hotel; I think we’ll go there tomorrow night.

On Wednesday, March 29th, 2006, while I was teaching a class in Phoenix, Arizona, I received a phone call from my Mother. She knows not to call during the day when I am traveling unless there is something very important. I got a strange, somewhat unsettled feeling when the phone started ringing.

She told me that my Grandmother had been found on the floor of her home earlier in the day. She had suffered a stroke, though we did not know (at this point) what the extent of it might be.

The next evening (2006/03/30), Mom told me that it had been determined that her stroke had been massive. She was completely unresponsive and there were no indications that she would make any kind of recovery. My parents planned to depart the following morning (Friday, March 31st) to drive down the hospital in Richfield, Utah where she was being monitored. All of my Dad’s siblings were already there.

I flew home from Phoenix Friday afternoon and my wife and I left about 45 minutes later to drive to St. George, Utah. We had already planned this trip so that our niece could dye Charlotte’s hair. Saturday, April 1st was the only opportunity to do so before my youngest brother’s wedding, scheduled for April 8th.

Saturday morning, while my wife’s hair was being done, I finally got in touch with my parents again. My Grandmother had always made it clear (and had her living will in writing) that she did not want to be kept alive by “extraordinary” means in such a situation. Respecting her wishes, the I.V. and breather were removed on Friday evening. She was still alive, but there was no telling how long it would be before nature took it’s course and she would be gone. It could be minutes or a few days, at most.

We decided to head to the hospital as soon as Charlotte’s hair was done. Unfortunately, I had been running like crazy and had slept only quite poorly all week long in Phoenix; I was exhausted and Charlotte can not drive my car (it’s a stick). So we decided to go back to the house in St. George and take a short nap before setting out. Better safe than sorry, we figured.

We left St. George just before 6pm. About an hour later, Mom phoned to tell us that Grandma had passed away.

We were too late. I did not get to say goodbye before she was gone. It’s OK, though … you see, I know that even if nothing bad happened in the process of getting there earlier in the day, Grandma would not have been happy if I had pushed myself when I was so tired. I knew it was OK with her that we were on our way, even we missed her departure.

When we reached the hospital at 8:24pm, we hugged my parents & siblings and 8-10 minutes later, we were all driving back to Loa for the night.

The next day, Sunday, April 2, 2006, the family got together in Grandma’s home in the afternoon. There was way more food than we needed, but the neighbors, family and friends in the church had provided it for us. We went through some photo albums that Grandma had. It was a nice, sunny day, though there was a slightly chilly breeze coming through the little valley all day.

When evening came, my parents and most of my siblings and I started to head back to our respective homes. We caravaned all the way to my sister’s apartment in Salt Lake City, where they all spent the night except for Charlotte & I. We arrived at home a little after 12am.

Charlotte was planning on driving down on Thursday, April 6th to pick Grandma up and bring her back to our house. We were then going to bring her with us to my brother’s wedding in Idaho this weekend. Charlotte had been looking forward to spending a little alone with Grandma and getting to know her better. She has not had many opportunities to spend time with my Grandmother. We will certainly miss her, especially this weekend.

We love you Grandma Peterson and we are happy that you did not suffer any in passing. Now that you are reunited with your husband, we look forward to the day, many, many years from now, when we, too, shall be reunited.

Delia Peterson, born Delia Oyler, April 24th, 1919 in Loa, Utah, died peacefully April 1st, 2006. She is survived by all four of her children, their spouses and almost all of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Goodbye.

My little sister said this in an email, today:
–
I would make some suggestions but seeing as how my brain is fried at the moment I will enlighten you all later.

Yesterday, in Loa, Utah, the Oyler family reunion took place. Unfortunately, I was unable to make it in time.

This past week was spent on a business trip in Seattle, Washington. I was unable to make a flight home on Friday evening. I tried to change from the 9:41am to the 6:00am (PDT) flight, which would have allowed my wife and I to reach Loa just a few minutes past 12:00pm, which is when the reunion started.

As it turned out, we could not get to Loa until about 4pm, by which time, the reunion had already ended. The good news, is that we were able to spend some time with my parents & siblings, as well as my Grandmother.

Today, we went to church at Fish Lake, which was an interesting experience, and then drove home. My youngest sister and her fiance rode with my wife and I up to my sister’s new place in Salt Lake City (she rode with Mom & Dad). From there, my youngest sister rode with our parents back home to Weiser, Idaho., and my wife and I went home, alone.

It was a very nice visit, but entirely too short. We will be heading up to Weiser, shortly after Labor Day, for my sister’s wedding. We are looking forward to this opportunity to visit with more of my family.