Such a lovely time

I didn't take one picture!  Luckily people I love and who love me enough to let me steal their pictures did take pictures.

We had a wonderful weekend in Nevada.

Friday we went to Hyrum's graduation.  It was one of those unique Covid 19 kinds of graduations.  Desi was describing it to her roommate and her roommate was shocked that 1) everyone in the class had a truck and 2) they would then all fit on the football field.

It's Wells, Nevada so of course they all had trucks and I think the baby boomers were the only ones who had classes bigger than twenty something.

The graduates' parents were in the trucks and the seniors were in the truck beds.  They drove around the track and stopped off at a platform to be handed a diploma.  Then they parked on the football field. We stood with the Hyrum fan club outside the fence and I can tell you we were an effective cheering section.

Hyrum's sisters were responsible for decorating the truck 

The handsome graduate!  We are super excited to have him at BYU.  Emma made him a membership card to the Davis Dining Club.  It was pretty fancy.

There was a parade through town after the graduation and the best part of that was Olivia throwing smarties candy at the graduates and missing about 3/4 of the time.

The plan had been to go to a restaurant and celebrate after but I had this terrible allergy attack and we were all pretty tired so we went to Elko to our hotel room and spent a really horrible night.  Sometimes we struggle in hotels.  Mark had the best night and he slept on the sofa bed.

Saturday we went to visit with my parents.  We tried our best to keep our distance.  It was hard to remember to stay away from my mom.  I kept ending up right next to her and would back away.  My mom has been going through bins of pictures and mementos and she gave me some things including some silhouette drawings from when I was in primary, a 16 x 20 inch photo of me as a bald smiley baby and my tithing notebook.  When we were little we had these little spiral tithing notebooks to keep track of how much we owed.  It delights me.  I loved seeing the entries for $.10 here and $.07 there.  I told my dad that I demanded higher wages when I saw that he'd paid me $.70 for hauling wood.  He said he doubted I was worth that much.  I did have a record of my mom paying me $5 for finding some medicine so she was clearly the better one to work for.

In the afternoon we went to Olivia's for a potato salad making party.  I think I've made potato salad in my own home maybe once and I've made it with my mom and sisters many many times.  I love the process of making it.  And with our daughters helping it was speedy quick.  My mom made the dressing and I remembered when I was a little girl and my great grandma Jaynes was the one who made the dressing.  There's no measuring involved.  The matriarchs just intuitively know.

Later, my sisters and Adam and Robert and some of our kids were sitting around talking and it got a little heated as we turned to politics and the state of things.  Our kids were uncomfortable but my sisters and I have been arguing for four decades so we were fine.

At least no one pulled anyone's hair.

Earlier I had had a similarly intense conversation with my parents and I'd cried (because I'd started talking about my students).

I was talking about it with our kids later and I said that I was glad that I'd been raised in a family where we could disagree and express ourselves.  That is a blessing.

That evening we had a dinner to celebrate Hyrum.  Braeden and Anna came in time for those festivities and I loved having them there as well.  Marianne had my parents get their food first.  Then she had the "lucky men who were married to Dahl women" go next.  Robert and Edgar and Adam are a happy (and I should add lucky) trio.  They enjoy being around each other.  I ate dinner with them.  When I sat down, Adam and Robert were talking about the length they liked to mow their lawns.  I almost rethought my decision to join them, but the conversation shifted and I'm glad I stayed.  We stayed into the evening, visiting and enjoying being together.

Sunday was an even better day.  It was the day that Omar was baptized.  He was going to be baptized in Boulder Creek which was a fabulous idea and then the weather didn't agree.

It was cold.  So unseasonably cold.  It had been in the upper 80s on Friday and the high was in the 40s on Sunday.

It was snowing a little that morning and Olivia and her family prayed that it would be sunny for the baptism.

Tabor and Katie, who have moved to Lund, Nevada arrived and we were a happy group.  We gathered in Olivia and Edgar's living room with Robert presiding and my mom on the piano and Marianne leading the singing.  It did not take long until I was in tears.  It was just so nice to all be together and I felt the Spirit strongly as we sang together and some of those kids can sing!

Mark and Hyrum blessed the sacrament and Morgan and Marcos passed it.  There was a wonderful feeling in the room and I felt the purest kind of joy.

Lili gave a sweet talk on baptism and then Olivia and her kids sang a song.  Wow, I'm proud of my sisters.  They are such terrific mothers and women and I'm sorry I used to pull their hair (but they sort of deserved it).

I told Braeden I wanted him to be close and be ready during the baptism.  Boulder was running pretty high and Omar is just a little guy.  Clarissa's husband, Timeon is from Kiribati and since he grew up on an island, he basically grew up in the water.  Clarissa said he would be ready too.  And he was.  He wore a sulu and flip flops and white shirt and tie.  Kiribati is on the equator so you would think Timeon would be too cold for the high desert melted snow rushing past but as all his admiring cousins-in-law decided, he is a beast.

Also, the wind stopped and the sun started shining.

Brave Ruben baptized his little brother.  You can see Timeon downstream behind the bushes being a baptism lifeguard.  It was wonderful and very memorable.  The minute Omar came out of the water, Olivia scooped him up in a blanket and carried him up to Edgar who took him to their warm and waiting car. Ruben wrapped up in a towel and followed and once Edgar was driving away, it started snowing again.

So the takeaway is if you really need something, have the Cobians pray for it.  They got their sunshine.

Here's my sunshine:

Emma snapped this picture of my parents walking to the baptism.  I love it.  The winter parkas look out of place on a June day but I promise they weren't.

We all went back to Olivia's for Omar's confirmation and then a dinner.  Edgar cooked hot dogs and hamburgers outside in the falling snow and Adam joined him in solidarity (and because he likes hanging out with Edgar).

These cousins recreated a picture.  Here is the original:

Ruben, Liliana, Mark and Hyrum--they were all practically doing the splits on that huge horse.

Here they are now (different horse):

Cuties.

The snow kept coming and we decided we should probably hit the road.  Not too far on the other side of Wells, the snow stopped though.

It was 20 degrees warmer in Pleasant Grove than it had been in Starr Valley, but still cold.  Adam wondered if we should turn on our heat.  I said that on principle, we can not turn the heat on in June.

I'm very grateful we got to spend the weekend with our family.  It's been a long time since we've been together and I also loved worshiping with them and being together to celebrate big milestones in their lives.

Families are where it's at.