Musings and more musings

Plenty of memories to muse about

It has been a while. I have been thinking about this blog and how to proceed now that our lives are not focused on Mongolia.

I will be starting a new blog, Musings in Missouri beginning mid-September. I will leave Musings in Mongolia posted on the Internet permanently.

Musings in Mongolia. This will enable those viewers whose interest is primarily all things Mongolian and help new viewers who are interested in the church in Mongolia to have access to the cultural/historical information available from our blog. Despite being home four months, the blog continues to attract 2,000 page views monthly from around the world.

From time-to-time we get news and information from Mongolia that we can update on the blog. For example, during our upcoming visit to Utah we will have opportunities to meet former missionaries and friends that served in Mongolia or who have children who are serving there. Also we also receive emails from Mongolia with news and information of interest about events in Mongolia and also church news in Mongolia.

I will be putting together a book about our mission to Mongolia and will announce its availability on Musings in Mongolia. Part of the book will be about the customs, culture and landscape of Mongolia that hopefully will have coffee table quality.

Part of this book and/or perhaps a second book will document the history of our mission to Mongolia and elaborate more on the spiritual aspects of our journey there.



Home Sweet Home

Our plans. It looks like we will be staying put for a couple of years before making ourselves available for another mission. We want a positive experience with our children and grandchildren and to build bonds before embarking on a new mission.

We find opportunities to be helpful and serve our children and their families. We continue to grow our relationships in the process.



What have we created? It can be a bit overwhelming at times.

We will be celebrating our 50^th wedding anniversary in 2016.




Going down life's path together

This is once in a lifetime chance to have this very meaningful time with friends and family.



Skyping with Tyler and April in Okinawa - four daughters and 2 granddaughters in the photo

Also our son Tyler and his family will be moving to Australia next May and naturally we want to go there and visit their family. That is a powerful incentive to travel to Australia and see another part of this world that is off the beaten path – for North-Americans that is.

We want to serve again. I will be making a concerted effort to learn Russian so I can be useful in relating to Russian speakers a gospel context. Darlene is already there.

Musings in Missouri. This blog will be about aspects of our lives that are not related to Mongolia. This will be a communication link for our family and friends.

I was also an advice columnist for the general public for 28 years.  My audience was primarily Midwestern and rural.

I am not going to restart that weekly obligation of writing for the public (heavens no! – I enjoy my freedom from stress too much) but I will occasionally use the blog to make observations on relationships, culture, politics, trends, and concerns as I see changes in our world today. 

We are unsettled by the rapid social changes that threaten the viability of marriage, family life and the coarseness of our culture and media making raising of children with values and character more difficult.

I will provide a link to my past writings archived at www.valfarmer.com and make available books I written to the public. I will be  making major changes to my website during our visit to Utah.

I will continue to focus on my goals and define what I will do with Musings in Missouri during the next month.

In writing a blog, I discovered the power of photography in telling a story. I love photography but I am an amateur who was fortunate to have Mongolia for subject matter. Now the challenge is greater. Where do the stories and photography come from in our somewhat ordinary lives? 




How about being a storm chaser?

 

 I don’t want to be boring so who knows where this will go.  

Landscaping in front of barrier on our hillside



Current living.  Moving and settling in took more than a month but it is satisfying to have our routine and comfortable surroundings back. We aren't comfortable with a vagabond lifestyle. We are rooted here in Missouri once and for all.

We also like travel and adventure (in moderation). We like service. (I have been called as a marriage and family relations teacher in our local congregation 

My new calling

- Darlene as a substitute organist and as a Family History Consultant). 

We like learning. We both like landscaping and gardening.



Our landscaping in the middle of our Cul-de-Sac 



We like to be productive with our time – Darlene continually and myself most of the time. How we use our time will be the next big challenge we face.

Is this what we want to do with our time?

That is probably enough musings for one day.



  

  

The reunion

Stained glass window at  the Abbey

It has been a while since we’ve updated this blog. Too busy. Too many things to do. Here is a small glimpse of how the last two weeks have gone.

Two families showed up and overlapped in their visits to Missouri. Our oldest daughter, Tara, brought her five children from North Carolina (her husband Eric had to work).

Our second oldest daughter, Trista, her husband Darin and their family arrived from Utah bringing four children and leaving two behind – (other obligations).  So far that makes a total of twelve (9 grandchildren).

In St. Louis we have ourselves, our third daughter Tassa, her husband Geoff and five children and our fifth daughter Tawny and Brian and their five children. If you are adding up, that makes three homes in St. Louis, nine adults and 19 grandchildren out of a possible 14 adults and 27 grandchildren.

It was fun. It was work. It was more than a little chaotic. We survived! We sent our visitors off yesterday and we are finally alone in our peaceful house. We created a whole lot of treasured memories.

Mother/Daughters luncheon at a Thai restaurant 

Despite the distances, we manage to develop lifelong, loving and supportive relationships – in-laws, grandparents with grandchildren, cousins with cousins, aunts and uncles with nieces and nephews. 

It was well worth the effort and time we spent.  -- some of which involved logistics like herding cats (figuratively speaking) and supplying a hungry army of 28 on the move and with minds and wills of their own.

Wacky,Tacky

Besides the food, family dinners, accommodations, birthday parties, children’s baseball games, church meetings, we managed to do the following activities: Six Flags, the St. Louis Zoo, the Arch, the City Museum (absolute craziness), nature hikes, 

Our hike on the Rockwood Reservations Kiln trail

the Missouri Botanical Gardens, Elephant Rocks, Johnson’s Shut-ins, an overnight stay at a delightful bed and breakfast – The Abbey, and a visit to Geoff’s new employment, the Missouri School for the Blind.

We also sandwiched in multiple visits to our swimming pool, visits to Tassa and Geoff’s home they are refurbishing for sale, ferrying children to band camps and practices, dog sitting and finally a bonfire in our commons area burning the natural wood refuse and honeysuckle bushes I had collected from the hillsides surrounding our home.

I am probably forgetting (repressing) something important but you get the idea.

Here are some pictures from our time together.

Missouri Botanical Gardens

This is one of our favorite spots in St. Louis

Feeding the Japanese Koi fish

Calvin and Mitchell sit in awe of the botanical gardens

Missouri School for the Blind
Geoff is the new superentendent of the Missouri School for the Blind located near the Botanical Gardens. He took us on a tour of the school. 

One playground is equipped with instruments to make sound.

The School for the Blind is a colorful place. Mariah fits right in. 

Evidently class change is a traumatic event

Elephant Rocks or is it Elephants Rock?

Just kdding! This is not Elephants Rock.

How many people people does it take to get an Elephant Rock to move?

Johnson's Shut-ins

Look up "Shut-ins" in the dictionary. It will describe something like this.

Nonny with Aubree and Annalisa

The Abbey. 

Our good friends, Darwin and Katherine Rouse have restored the Abbey, a former Catholic girl's boarding school in Arcadia, Missouri into a Bed and Breakfast, a bakery, an ice creamery and a number of other businesses. Their location is convenient to Elephant Rocks and Johnson's Shut-Ins.

We rented five rooms and had an absolutely marvelous time.

Tassa, Tara and Tawny with Annalisa, Calvin and Aubree on their laps

The grandchildren - front and center stage

We bid farewell to the Abbey and to our reunion. 

We are home! Finally!

Our home is on a hillside. We love being at home again. 

 We are home! We returned Tuesday evening July 1^st and started moving in the next day. Moving in isn’t the right term. Our belongings were already stored within the home – attic, garage, a basement storage room and basement crawl space under stairs.

Nevertheless it was a lot of work to find everything and put it all in its place. Twelve days later we feel we are 95 % moved in. We still have books to unpack but other than that we are good to go.

We need to be. We have company coming next week and the week after that – more company.

Fortunately we have three households here in St. Louis to spread the wealth (of grandchildren) around. We will have a mini-reunion with four of our seven children and their families together in St. Louis.

No Internet, no way! One of the hardest parts of moving in was going without the Internet for 12 days. We just had our cable TV, Internet and telephone installed so we are up and running. We can blog again. We can feel connected with the outside world, the news of the day (such as it is) and our source of instant information.

Sorry! No blog for two weeks. We are OK now. I will be redefining the blog away from our Mongolian experiences soon but not yet. Still too busy.

Who knew how dependent we would become on technology we didn’t know even existed 35 years ago?! Such hardships have to be endured. During our vagabond travels the past few months we had Wi-Fi and Internet access in each of our children’s homes.

Now we have smart phones and smart TV’s that are smarter than we are. We are on a learning curve to catch up with where the world went while we were in Mongolia.

Pretty nice! Pretty fancy! Wow! 

Picture taken from TV screen

World class entertainment and information, social and family connection all right at our finger tips. What a world we live in!

The Fourth of July. We celebrated the Fourth of July (Independence Day) by a great meal and by going to a fireworks show that evening.

Mariah and Eliza celebrated with us

Other than that, it has been mostly work, work, work.

On the other hand, it's not all work.

"Our" swimming pool. We belong to a neighborhood association that sponsors a community swimming pool. Our home is the closest one to the pool - just down the hillside.

Alec is about to drag his friend Gabe back into the pool. Gabe doesn't look like a happy camper at the moment.

Besides being a wonderful resource for us, it makes visits to Nonnie and Granddads quite an attraction during the summer. We have lots of fun visits from Tawny's and Tassa's families.  "It's summertime and the 'livin' is easy."

3 year old Mitchell is learning the rules of the pool

We’ve enjoyed a lot of family togetherness as our two families here in St. Louis have taken us under their collective wings and have pitched in to help us get settled in again.

The Harringtons visit. One special treat was a visit from Tom and Garnalee Harrington who also finished their mission to Hong Kong in March. We have some special times with them when they came to Mongolia toward the beginning of our mission and we kept that bond going as our missions coincided with each other.

Our mission friends

They shared how, while on their mission, Tom was contacted by cousins, aunts and uncles he hadn’t seen in over sixty years and with whom he had no contact or knowledge. Part of their time since arriving home has been traveling, meeting, and reuniting with family in Michigan and Florida.

What a remarkable blessing they are enjoying. While they served a Family History mission in Hong Kong, their family finds them.  

We have been blessed in other ways. Our mission was a remarkable experience and a cause for much positive reflection. The details will be forthcoming in the future. This is all for right now.

It is great to be back in the loop again. We are feeling contentment about our lives like at no other time we had together. Now if our health holds up, the future looks bright indeed.

Full moon over Rio as seen from our HDTV screen

Mitchell trusts his Mom