[Derrill's narrations are in black, Joy is in blue. This is an excessively long post, sorry.]
Our AirBNB in Provo was an older home owned by a fun host who set up a scavenger hunt for the kids. The electricity did shut off in the middle of the first night, but we were able to fix it in the morning. Nia slept upstairs in an attic room with four beds all to herself.
Joy: It was so nice to have central air. I think it was the coolest place we stayed. There was an AC upstairs that we needed to leave on all the time and the labels on the cupboards were helpful. It had a nice dinning area in the living room and some great toys and books for kids that we used latter.
Since our car’s AC wasn’t working the entire trip, such
considerations were high on our list. Joy: We had our car checked before we
left and the AC in the car had needed to be charged for the second time this
summer in hopes of it working for at least the trip, alas.
Nia: They had a welcome sign that mentioned us by name. The
scavenger hunt told us to find the rest of the letters and leave them a message
in return. Daddy found the letters. I wrote “Thank you for letting us stay” and
then put a smiley face using two 1s for eyes and a parenthesis for the smile.
Fri 25 – Today was devoted to touring BYU. The visitor’s center gave us a tour, then I
showed the family around the student center and library. Joy: We had scheduled
the tour in advance and the cool thing about it was that it was on a golf cart,
not walking.
We got Hyrum his student ID card, then Joy and the kids had lunch at home while Hyrum and I joined the economics faculty for lunch. I really enjoyed getting back together with friends and former teachers. As I gave Hyrum the rundown on the faculty, he was amazed at how many of them had attended Cornell. Joy and co rejoined us to tour the Museum of Art and explore the rest of the campus a bit more.
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| Mary and co. leaving the cross |
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| They of the Last Wagon. I particularly liked this painting, based off the tribute by J. Reuben Clark, Jr., to the forgotten, struggling pioneers in the back of the wagon trains. |
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| A sculpture made of hangers |
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| Delicate rainbows made with very thin strands. Joy: I really loved that. |
I was shocked and grieving to see that they have completely gutted the fine arts center. I kept thinking about the many, many hours I spent there – practicing piano and organ, touring art installations, attending plays and performances with dates. In return, music gets its own building and the pictures of the new building look like it will be very nice too. But it was a more significant shock than any other change on campus. Most of the rest of the differences on campus were landscaping, which made a more tranquil campus and encouraged more reflection. I loved the new art and displays at the Joseph Smith building (the religious studies building).
Joy: We enjoyed touring the underground library and we found Addie from Texas there.
Hy: The library was really cool because there was a whole space down underground that was super big. I envision doing a lot of studying in the library.
Sat 26 – Joy and I did endowments at the Mount Timpanogos temple in the morning. It was nice being back. This was our closest temple when we lived in Pleasant Grove between Nigeria and Texas. On our way back, we visited one Joy’s adopted mothers, Utah Mother of the Year, LaDawn Jacob. Visiting her was wonderful, uplifting, and filled with expressions of love and gratitude. We also brought the kids Crumbl cookies. We devoted much of the day to preparing Hyrum for BYU. We visited several stores to make sure he had everything he needed. He had also packed a suitcase to leave with Joy’s cousin Laurel until he comes back in a few weeks. This makes moving him in a lot easier than trying to fly out with everything, especially since he will attend a leadership conference for several days before he thought he would be able to move into Helaman Halls.
Joy: Saturday was kind of chill otherwise. That was a nice
time to regroup. Seeing LaDawn was a miracle! We had almost left her house,
leaving a note for them when she drove up. I am certain that angels were
speeding her return, allowing me to see her again. She and her sisters have so
much love between them that they share with the people they spend time with,
and we really enjoyed the birthday song they sang us. It was more than a song.
It was a great expression of love in perfect harmony. They sent us home with
zucchini bread muffins. That was sweet.
We returned fire, singing Welcome Home from the new
hymnbook.
Sun 27 – We joined Laurel and Rich’s ward for church, then
had tacos for linner with them. We played several games with them and visited
with the pet snakes. I really wish we had had more time with them.
JT: They had snakes!
Nia: There was a turtle!
Hy: I carried the snakes, both of them.
Joy: I let him…. One snake was so big is wrapped a few times around Riche’s shoulders and then still had enough space on both ends to be longer than his arms on either side. The little snake would wrap around their fingers and arms.
Hy: We played a bunch of board games and ate yummy burritos.
Joy: I particularly enjoyed Sequence.
I played on their piano, as usual, and enjoyed a book of
easy church prelude so much, I put it on my birthday wish list.
Hy: I played some piano there too.
Joy: Our kids had a great time rotating through visiting
with them. I learned some interesting things about Rich that I never knew!
That takes some doing!
Joy: Maybe I’d heard them before, but they hadn’t stuck in
my brain. He was really able to help Nia feel comfortable in her skin. They also
got out a huge tub of delicious ice cream.
28 – Monday was mostly given to resting and recovering,
which was a relief. Joy’s cousin Tammy came over in the afternoon to play games
and chat. We had Cold Stone, where Nia fell in love with marshmallow ice cream.
Joy: She really appreciated JT’s sense of humor. That was
fun. We played the wizard always wins. She was such a good sport, laughing and
having a great time as she learned the new game. I am so glad that she had time
to come and play with us. She asked for the the day off so she could spend time
with us. That evidence of love was so precious to me.
Tue 29 – Hyrum’s math cohort at BYU assumes that students
have finished the second semester of calculus, though you might take it
concurrently, maybe. So Hyrum signed up to take a test to prove he knew the
material without taking the class. He spent much of the summer teaching himself
integral calculus using Khan Academy videos and practice tests from Co-Pilot
and Deep Seek. When touring last week, I took him to meet one of the professors
he’ll have next semester, and he sure made it sound like people should already
have passed Calc 2 to be in the cohort, so his entire semester schedule was
riding on this! I’ll let him tell you how it turned out:
Joy: I was really proud of Hyrum for taking the initiative
to study for and set up the test even while not knowing how the test would go.
Hyrum: I came in for the test, and they situated me in a
room all by myself with no calculator and the directive to do the 18 questions
in 3 hours. That was scary by itself because that means they expect it to take super
long. It really did. On about 5 of the questions, I was convinced I would have
to just guess because I was missing a crucial part of the steps needed to
finish it. Especially the last question was very hard. I paced the room for 30
minutes to figure out what it was because that one question was worth a whole
letter grade. But then I managed to figure them out and I got an A-.
They said it would take a week to grade, but then she called
us that evening with the great news. We celebrated and rejoiced. Hooray for
Hyrum!
In the morning we visited my old mentor, James McDonald.
Joy: Dr. McDonald was really a jolly man that loves the kids
in his neighborhood. Letting us know that since the neighborhood children knew
he had an elevator and let the kids have a ride on the elevator and then
offering them each a popsicle afterward.
Joy spent the afternoon with her cousin Swanny while I took
the kids to the store for supplies.
Joy: Swanny and I played Wingspan together, where she
introduced me to a wooden container organizing system for the game that makes
it easy to just pull out and play. We haven’t played that game physically very
often because it’s not very easy to pull out and play, so I was very excited
about that. We had a really good visit and the kids got to meet her when they
came to pick me up after Hyrum’ test. She was very welcoming, though very distraught
about some things in her life.
That evening we visited my friend from undergraduate days, Russ, and his family for dinner and sharing stories of how each couple met and married. Joy: Visiting with Russ and Marali was a really profound experience for me. Marali was so interested in Hyrum’s life, helping him with study tips for his mission, offering help to finding students to tutor and offering their home as a home away from home for him to come over anytime. We felt very loved.
Joy: I really liked the bracelets that Nia made with Russ’ kids. She still wears them.
Hy: They live right by campus.
Russ was my chief “partner in crime” at the Y. We did a lot of double dates together and I love him.
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| In the Tabernacle |
Wed 30 – One of the fun things about Utah is how many
temples there are.
Nia: There are like, 20, in one state! Oh my goodness! We
had a conversation in Salt Lake and then saw another, and then realized we had
passed one and hadn’t noticed … four temples in less than 20 minutes! It was crazy!!!!
We had planned to spend the day visiting one temple after
another, but the kids voted to tour Temple Square instead. We visited the
Tabernacle and toured the Conference Center, including a few minutes of the
daily organ recital. The kids were really surprised how small it was!
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| Statue of the First Vision Joseph Smith seeing the Father and the Son |
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| Same statue |
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Hy: In the Conference Center is a model of the inside of the Salt Lake temple, and I thought that was pretty cool.
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| Hyrum's favorite apostle, Elder Gong |
The Visitor’s Centers are also under reconstruction, and
that’s where it’s normally housed. Washington, DC temple has one of those also.
The kids were amazed at how small the Tabernacle is, and that was before we saw
the Conference Center!
Joy: It was really a special experience hearing someone play
the organ while we stood in the nearly empty conference center.
JT being silly: Yeah, the Conference Center was just
medium-small size…
Nia: It was so big it felt like a movie projection! My brain
couldn’t fully appreciate sizing because we usually watch conference on the TV.
Like, the organ was so far away it was teeny – it looked like a toy size. And
the pipes!
JT: It was neat that someone was playing the organ then
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| During the organ recital |
We met Doug’s son, Jude, for lunch at Chik-fil-a, then headed home to chill with Swanny’s daughter, Angel, and her family. We played Skull King and Giant Uno. Their little ones played with some of the toys in the house until some got drawn into playing Uno with us.
Joy: Jude thanked us for the lunch and seemed really pleased to be with us. It was really good to see him!
Nia: I got to teach the kids origami! That was so much fun.
Joy: Having Tammy and then Angel’s family over to our
apartment was a happy and fun experience. We felt very comfortable with all of
them. It was really nice to have them over. We got to know Ryan, her husband, and
jokes around a lot. We had lunch late with Jude until almost the time I planned
on us getting together with Angel, so I really appreciated when they waited to
get back to their home in Manti, so that we could spend time together. Centerville
where we had lunch was about an hour away.
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| View of Temple Square construction from the Conference Center |
Thur 31 – We spent the day at Splash Summit, the Provo water
park.
Joy: Eek! The lines were awful!
Nia: I enjoyed the line actually. So the tube slides had
these super long lines that went all the way up, curved, and went back down. I
didn’t do tube slides, so I just walked past all the people, skipped the entire
line, because I didn’t go to those slides. That was so cool!
They were clearly over-capacity that day, with a long line
just to get in the park and not enough tubes to go around.
JT: I liked it. It was awesome. I really liked the slides
and the wave pool.
Hy: I thought the bobsled ride was pretty cool, where you
race down on a mat.
Joy: I enjoyed spending extra time with Hy and then Nia in
line. I particularly like the tub slide that Nia and I went down that had part where
the tube goes around in a circle before it goes down the rest of the slide.
One of my favorite parts was spending time with Joy in the
lazy river. We try to have a weekly talk about our relationship and how the
family is going, and this time we did it floating in the lazy river. That was
fun.
We went to one of my favorite pizza shops, Brick Oven. Then
we prepared to leave Provo for St. George. JT and I got sunburned. I didn’t
realize how badly until a week later….
Joy: Chocolate mousse! Over the moon for chocolate mousse!
And the salad bar.
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