Christmas memories, Dec 20-28

Our Stephenville ward Christmas program was held a week earlier than usual, so we got to participate. Nia sang a solo verse of Angels We Have Heard on High in French, and she and Joy were part of a lovely quartet. She and "John-Thomas" were credits to the tenor section, Joy sang soprano, and I accompanied and sang bass. I also had a solo called Joseph's Song, where he reassures Mary that she can rest while he protects and cares for her and Jesus.

Hyrum flew to Pop and Grandma's in California a few days before we did. We drove up Sat evening - an uneventful trip - and the next morning all three children joined the tenor section for my home ward's Christmas program. Hyrum has developed a much stronger voice this year, so his siblings could rely on him for support. Joy was in the soprano section, and I joined Pop in the bass section except to accompany the Hallelujah Chorus.

Pop arranged for 4/5 of us to stay at a hotel, while the last one stayed at their house with my brother and his family. Usually it was Nia there so she could be with her cousins and Hyrum could be with JT, but we sometimes switched it up. Hy and I enjoyed using the hotel weight room together. I've got one buff-looking son!

A few headlines

• My parents' jaccuzzi was just upgraded this year, so the kids enjoyed much soaking in it.
• I tried to fix a problem in the curio cabinet when a glass shelf fell and broke on my head. I did finally get the one problem fixed at least!
• Pop figured L (4) was finally old enough for us to read through the entire Christmas Scroll Grandma caligraphied in college, and she was. Joy: I was glad we could read the whole scroll. I don't think I'd realized we had been shortening it.
• Pop and Grandma also shared some special books they had made to help L be reverent during church and a song to remind all the grandchildren that someone was always thinking about them, loving them, and waiting for their return home.
• We did several buffet style meals. Joy particularly enjoyed the kringla.
• Hyrum would pull L in her little red wagon, while JT shot at him with whatever missile they were playing with that day, like a Paw Patrol pool ball. JT says, "Playing with Hyrum was the big part of that week." 
• Joy: I was most happy to be with everyone, and to see Hyrum again.

Nia and I assembled a new clothes organizer together for Grandma
Joy: I really enjoyed seeing how happy Nia was
with helping Grandma upstairs

Nia: I successfully had a 'terrific' tumble in which I thankfully didn't fracture anything, but I got like at least two different sprains in my foot and ankle. I didn't even know spraining your foot was possible! The doctor said I tore a couple ligaments. I am grateful that my foot no longer wishes quite as much to be a chameleon.

???

Nia: My joke has been that my foot saw a chameleon when it fell, and it decided it wanted to be like, so it changed colors and grew! Playing with L was fun. We made up a new game. Because I couldn't walk around, I was watching A (14) play games and one of the bad guys was a piggy. At one point, the piggy was made of marshmallow, so everytime L said "Piggy marshmallow piggy," I tickled her. And she really liked that! 

Nia: I did not know that Grandma is good at hair cutting, but apparently she's done some before with Aunt Emilee and on her mission. So I got a haircut from my grandma and will be keeping some of my new look!

Christmas Eve night was really special. The fire alarm at the hotel went off at 2am. The hotel evacuated, then we waited in the pouring rain (Santa Barbara had enough rain in 3 days to make up a full year's worth!!) until someone finally announced that it was a false alarm and we could return to bed.

A few favorite pictures of the opening of presents below the fold...

Joy's birthday plus some other photos

The most important thing most every Oct/November in our home is usually Joy's birthday. We also had a surprise visit from Pop and Grandma, who delivered us a replacement for our car Joy had just had an accident in. Not knowing if we'd be able to drive it again, my parents offered to just GIVE us their car. We very thankfully accepted. Among the nice parts is that they drove the exact same make and year we did, just in red instead of black. That made the trade much easier. Once we learned that our black car would live again, we similarly handed it off to another family who had lost theirs.

Joy says:

I have a hard time deciding where to start. Everyone takes such good care of me. This year I feel very successful in not getting stressed for the holiday season. My birthday is so close to the season that I often have a hard time enjoying it. So that is my biggest gift to myself: being relaxed for my birthday. Part of being relaxed is paying for a cake and not making it myself. I got a lovely cake from HEB, the Oreo ice cream cake, yum. At some point Derrill got me some flowers that I am still enjoying. We were at the store and Derrill asked me what kind of flowers I wanted for my birthday. I looked at all of the pretty flowers and wondered if I would finally have the courage to get baby's breath instead of large flowers. As I asked myself that, I started looking at the Baby's Breath and found a nice marroon colored group. I told Derrill I was thinking about getting the little maroon flowers, He seemed ok with it, so I got them. I really enjoyed them and I might get that kind of flower again sometime. 

What makes us who we are

I was reminded today of a traumatic experience from long ago that has been a great blessing to my family, only it took this long to see it.

When I was a teenager, I had a young PhD student for my Sunday School teacher at church. I will spare you the details, but I considered the class an unmitigated disaster. More than half of my youth group stopped attending Sunday School altogether that year, some went largely inactive, and I blamed him. I never once felt the Holy Spirit in his class. I tried to get the adults to intervene, but they would simply excuse him, explaining to me that a PhD program is very difficult and probably took all his time and he meant well. From my position today, I wonder just how much of a terror I must have been to him as well.

I swore to myself that if that was what getting a PhD meant, then I would NEVER get one.

...

I was a missionary in Germany when I realized I loved to teach and that was what I wanted to do for a living. I asked myself who I would teach. I couldn't imagine grade school, teaching that 3+2=5 year in and year out. I didn't want to go back to junior high or high school. That meant I would be a college professor, and that meant I needed a PhD. (I hadn't yet worked out what I would teach, just where.)

That gave me more than a moment of pause. I worried and fretted. I did NOT want to become another Brother Suchandso. So I made a set of promises to myself, about what I would and would not do, and importantly how I would not speak about my field (whatever it was).

...

I started my PhD program, met Joy, and we started dating. One of our early dates was to a church activity in her ward. She sat me down with a group of men and then wandered off to visit with some sisters. I introduced myself and we had a nice time together.

When Joy returned, she asked if I had been regaling them with economics. They said, no. He did tell us he was studying economics, but then we had a pleasant conversation. That was when she said, "That's because he's my well-behaved economist."

To me, the most important word in that sentence was "MY". I smile still to think of it.

...

I told my children this story today after the thing that reminded me of all this. Joy rejoiced at the great benefit that Sunday School teacher was to our family. If I had spoken like many PhD students, or PhD-havers, she would not have been at all interested in me. We never would have dated, let alone got married.

How blessed I am to have had such a terrible experience at church for 10 months! It made me a better teacher, happier in my profession and at church, and brought me Joy. Who knew that's what God was cooking!

July-Oct 2025: praise for Initiative and Sewing

Nia trying on one of my hats
and a new hair style.

JT and me at Six Flags Over Texas

In October, JT was honored for showing a lot of Initiative. His teacher praised him for how he tries to get his work done and to help everyone else in class be happy. He asks a lot of great questions that show his understanding and a creative mind. As far as we are concerned, she really nailed a lot of what makes our youngest great!

 Joy and I enjoyed a date at the cafeteria and another walking along the Bosque River Trail

Nia started attending an online public high school. That's been very useful for her medical visits! They sent her a school shirt, but it was several sizes too small (kids vs. adult!) and they couldn't send us another. So she ripped open the seam and put in a decorative trim. Here she is showing off her new shirt and shiny shoes.

Four religion teachers who meant a lot to me

While attending BYU, I had a great opportunity to attend some outstanding religion courses. Though the details have changed over the years, students at BYU are expected to take a certain number of religion courses in addition to the standard general education requirements of science, math, humanities, and so forth. While we were revisiting my old stomping grounds to prepare Hyrum to join the Y, we found a set of posters recognizing some of the great religion teachers who have worked there.

Jerome Perkins taught me the second half of the Doctrine and Covenants, and I think we had one other course together though it's escaping me just now. I felt that walking into his classroom was walking onto holy ground, and maybe I should remove the shoes from off my feet. I wrote copious notes in my scriptures, which I have copied over into new copies since. I loved how he opened my eyes to the crescendo of Joseph Smith's teachings from the revelation on the three degrees of glory, through the Kirtland Temple and the Missouri and Nauvoo eras.

Alan Parrish was a friend and a great teacher. He was Tall and had Big, Big hands that would engulf you when you shook hands. He invited his classes to his house each semester for a barbecue. I can't remember why he and I decided to call me Orson, after Orson Pratt, but that was my nickname for three delightful semesters: two semesters of Book of Mormon and one on the Pearl of Great Price. His is one of the very few gospel teachers whose voices I can still remember as he taught particular lessons, such as caring for the poor as King Benjamin taught or Alma's warnings of the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth of the wicked. He teased regularly and let me tease him right back. He got people thinking about what the scriptures truly mean.

Victor Ludlow taught me about Isaiah and Judaism. Every four years as we study the Old Testament, I pull the textbook he wrote off the bookshelf to teach my children how to recognize parallelism and chiasmus in the scriptures and appreciate the beauty of Hebrew poetry. He held a Passover seder at BYU, and I think it would be fair to blame him for much of my interest in honoring Passover every Easter. His courses were the most scholarly rigorous religion courses I had.

Gaye Strathearn taught me to love the writing of Paul. I would have a lot more to say about her, but ... there was this girl. It was a crazy summer, taking calculus, New Testament, and something like 5 hours of dance practice a day while falling in love with someone I shared New Testament class with. It was an amazing time, but the fact that I came away with not just a love of a girl, but a love for Paul says something pretty special about her teaching. Like my D&C, my paper New Testament still contains and honors her notes and teaching.

Paintings of Women in the Scriptures by Elspeth Young

We toured the Joseph Smith Building this summer when we dropped off Hyrum at BYU. I appreciated the new art up on the walls and took many pictures. Here are three paintings of women in the scriptures by Elspeth Young. More of her paintings of women in the scriptures can be found here: https://www.alyoung.com/art/collection-women_of_the_bible.html

Treasure the Word (Huldah; 2nd Chronicles 24)

Waiting for the Promise (Rahab; Joshua 2)

The Blessings Afar Off
(one of the women sacrificed to idols; Abr 1:8, 11)

More descriptions of each below the fold:

2025 - other goings on

  This has been a year to punch holes in our walls. I've mentioned the fun with our plumbing. We've also been concerned about a crack from the house resettling (because of the plumbing issues, in part). A friend from church came over to replaster and to fix the worst of it. Another friend from church came over to put the sheetrock in after the plumber made all of his holes.

I did a lot of stagecrafts when I was in high school. So I'm good with wood and paint and such. I understand intellectually that sheetrock is a simple thing, and after watching some more experienced guys go at it, I agree it's something I could probably manage. They sure did it better and faster than I could've!

Jim Gentry has been my good friend and partner in professional development practically since we moved to Tarleton. This year he moved from being in charge of some faculty development to being a department head. This picture wasn't necessarily a going away party - our Scholarship of Teaching and Learning cohort was doing a poster session for their projects - but this would be his last shindig in his old role. Sure have missed working with him!

Family game night and fun at Six Flags. The boys love each other.

Thanksgiving and memories

We felt better prepared for this Thanksgiving than we normally are. Our home was cleaner and we had half the food ready to go before the big day. We even had time to play games while the food cooked! That was special.

We had three missionaries over for dinner. It was a nice conversation. Here's a pic one of the elders snapped of the four of us and one of them.

When we asked the kid what foods we wanted, the first answers were: pie, pie, pie, and ... pie. And after we figured out the non-pie foods, we continued discussing making a few more pies on top of it! So Nia made her three-berry pie, I made pumpkin, JT made the apple pie, and Joy made the chocolate pecan. Nia is hankering to make another berry pie and also a chesecake. Joy is thinking about baking another chocolate pecan (I'm spoiled!). We gave away one of the three pumpkin pies I made, but a FB video has got me considering a no-bake peanut butter pie..... I wonder about us sometimes.

We also had turkey (a la Alton Brown brining), mashed potatoes and my candied yams, corn on the cob, green beans and their casserole, croissants, deviled eggs, and Joy's crab cheeseball. We got the Christmas tree put up, including three trips to WalMart for more new light strands. Restringing the whole tree took up a good portion of my break! Nia had second Thanksgiving at her bestie's house the next day and JT got to spend several hours with friends also. The kids really got along well this week - like, the best they ever have. They've started biking/jogging around the neighborhood together and they are finishing up a chess match just now.

Hyrum enjoyed Thanksgiving with cousin Mike and Genevieve's family in St. George. We were thankful to chat with him during the week and on his drive home.

As he rode back with his cousin, I remembered a similar trip I took. At BYU, I enjoyed Thanksgiving with my Grandma Straw in St. George. Someone she knew was taking his son/grandson back to the Y and I hitched a ride with them. Somehow the conversation turned to the BYU Bookstore, and I started in complaining about it. Prices were so much higher than in the surrounding community but I couldn't go there without wheels, the return prices for textbooks were so low ... the usual stuff. The fellow driving tried to help me understand the economic realities, but I was not overly teachable. 

We finally got back home and I called Grandma to let her know I'd made it home safely. As she and I talked, she let me know the fellow I had been riding with was in charge on the BYU Bookstore. I was so embarrassed I was ready to melt into the floor.

It's so nice to have a few days off before the truly hectic Finals part of the semester begins.

Teaching Award

 Twenty-someodd years ago as a grad student, I had three major career goals. 

• I wanted to earn tenure somewhere. 
• I wanted to write and publish a book in my discipline. 
• I wanted to earn recognition for my teaching.

I was very surprised to publish the book before I even had a fulltime professor gig! Thanks to working as a post-doc with Per Pinstrup-Andersen, our Food Policy for Developing Countries was published in 2011.

I earned tenure at Tarleton in 2019.  I have expressed before how fortunate I have been to work with the wonderful men and women in this department and College of Business.

Somewhere along the line, I added a fourth goal to someday consult for the World Bank or another top international organization. I have indeed consulted for the World Bank at their train-the-teacher program with the Eurasian Food Security Center, as well as for the OECD, the European Parliament, and UNICEF thanks to working with Development International.

Friday, they announced the winners of this year's awards. One of our finance faculty, Nina Rogers, had been very diligent in gathering materials to help folks in the department get recognized, and I knew she had put me forward for the teaching award. When they were announcing the winners, Leah said they had a Lot of applications this time around. After describing some of my accomplishments in the classroom, she invited the winner to do their best Price is Right imitation and COME ON DOWN!

I jumped up. I screamed. I waved my hands in the air and ran down to get my certificate. I was thrilled. This was truly a dream come true!

Reminiscing a little about (not) being DH

During Covid, our department head was called up to become associate dean. I recalled when I was interviewed in 2014, I was asked if I would be willing to be department head. At the time I had said yes, but give me some time please to get to know folks. Well, I'd certainly had some time, so I volunteered and was taken in. That happened about the time I stopped blogging (#not a coincidence?).

I think of being department head much like a calling at church. It's a service. You take it up for a time, do the best you can, then return to normal life when you are released. Folks take turns bearing the weight. Somebody's got to do it, and my (brief, unscientific) observations lead me to believe that I do a passable job with lower mental/emotional costs than it would give many others.

I gotta say, I really enjoyed the first two years or so of my term in office. Dean Shao was an outstanding mentor who gave me some clear expectations early on that happened to fit very well with my predispositions. The other department heads, associate deans, and I got along really well. Several said they had never been in a group as well-functioning and happy as ours. We laughed a lot and we made good progress together. The college became AACSB accredited, for one thing!

The faculty in the Accounting, Finance, and Economics department have all been wonderful to work with. I admire them. I trust them. They, each of them, care about the students, take pride in the work they do, and are reasonable people to work with who rarely let ego get in the way. Both I and the fellow who followed me as interim DH said we were willing to do this because the department really is filled with wonderful people. The three women who worked as administrative assistants for the department were a delight and I appreciated everything they were able to do for the students, the department, and me. Really, a great group of people to work with!

One part of the job I did not expect to love as much as I did was interviewing and hiring new faculty. When they came up for a fly-out interview, I told them that I wanted to conduct things as if they were the one we were going to hire, and it was my job to help them. Taking that attitude made otherwise awkward interactions much more gratifying! I appreciated each of the folks we interviewed and I am so pleased about the folks we did eventually hire. I think they are genuinely great hires and I have every confidence in them.