What we've been up to in June

June was a busy month for us! First was Zach's 16th birthday. A couple weeks ago Troy spoke in church, Zach blessed the sacrament, and Josh passed it. I was a proud mom that day! (I should also mention that Josh turned 13 in May, so we've got two teens in the house.)

Then we had Cub Scout Day Camp. I think the scouts all had a great time, and my family and friends made up 1/2 of the staff, so we had a great time too. My mom came all the way from Utah to help out, which I appreciated so much. She taught a craft class every day, Troy taught Chess and Ping Pong Cannons, and Ian taught the Whittling class. I got to boss everyone around and make sure all the classes were running smoothly.

After camp I started my new job. I'm now the Brand Logistics Expert at Gap Kids & Baby, which basically means I'm one of the managers. I love the job, the people I work with are the best.

Then we had Sophie's school play, The Little Red Hen, and her dance recital, which was adorable. She took both tap and jazz this year, and got to dance in 3 of the recital's numbers. She's growing up so fast! (I'm still waiting for pictures from the recital, I'll post them later.)

Then I got called to be in YW, just in time to go to Girl's Camp. The Girl's Camp was in the same place as the YM's Scout camp the week before, and the girls got to do all the things the boys did, which was pretty cool. We hiked Mt. Yale, one of the 14ers in the Collegiate Peaks, and also went rafting on the Arkansas River. When the Scouts climbed Mt. Yale, Josh was the first one at the summit. Our bishop said that Josh practically ran to the top, they were all amazed. I was very proud of him, especially after climbing it myself. It's a tough hike, very steep, and is a Level 2. About half of the YW made it to the top. The group of YW I was with didn't, but it was close, just 500 feet shy of the summit. There were thunderstorms coming in, and the remaining 500 feet was very steep and you had to climb over boulders, so it was a tough call to turn around but we had to keep the girls safe. It was probably the hardest thing I've ever done, besides giving birth.

Troy came up for the rafting trip, which was on the Arkansas River. We went through Brown's Canyon and about 10 rapids and suck holes. The water was really high from all the snowmelt, but we wore wetsuits so we didn't care. It was so much fun! In most of the pictures I look like a drowned rat, but it's hard to smile and look relaxed as you go through class 4 rapids! I really did have a great time.

Hope you're all enjoying the holiday weekend! Ian's here, we had a BBQ, and we're off to a concert and see the fireworks.

Zach Update

At the risk of alienating Zach, but in the interest of keeping you informed, I'll give you a quick update on Zach's health issues, which is good news. No pictures, though.

After almost a three month wait, we finally got Zach back in with his doctor at the infamous HarborView Medical Center. The doctor apologized (!) for not getting back to us sooner, and also apologized that one of the residents that saw Zach while he was in for his tests didn't call us. I think he also apologized for two or three other things, plus just general apologies as well. That's more apologies from one doctor in one visit than I've heard from all doctorrs in the entire rest of my life, I believe.

Bottom line, he said that Zach was not having epileptic seizures, and the episodes of dizziness, partial loss of sight, etc, probably were related to some anxieties exacerbated by his depression, and that he was often holding his breath, which brought on the heart rate increases. Kate had observed a little of this, but it was a revelation for Zach. Good news, since that day, he has been aware of the breath holding issue, and has controlled it himself, and has not had any episodes for 5 or 6 days now. Needless to say, we are thrilled, and he is too. Driving is going to come back into his immediate future, but he is more excited about that than Kate and I are. He still is in some counseling for the anxieties, but he is happier than he has been for a year, I think.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts and prayers over this last year. He is through with school for the summer, and working at the family business, Sears, in their lawn and garden to earn money for school in the fall. We'll keep you posted.

Kevin

Aunt Retta & Ethelyn

Grandma Doris gave me a book of greeting cards she and Grandpa received the first 7 years or so of their marriage. (I think it's an old greeting card sample book from King's that she pasted their cards in.) I love to look through the old cards, and it's fun to see the little notes Grandma and Grandpa wrote to each other. I recognize some of the names, but most of the people who sent the cards are unknown to me.

After reading Dad's post, I knew I had seen Aunt Retta & Ethelyn's names somewhere. So I got the book out and found this little Christmas card. Thought you'd like to see it. If we get together for a family reunion, I'll bring the book so everyone can enjoy looking through the cards.

Busy Summer Time

Apparently we are all pretty busy these days, as the Blog posts have been few and far between. But I enjoy seeing everything that gets put up. Thanks Linda and Kevin for your recent posts. Today (Friday June 13 -- oops, I hadn't noticed!) I'll be flying to Seattle where I will meet Iantha. She has been in Denver herding 150 Cub Scouts with Mary Anne (and Ian, as well, I hear). Iantha and I will show up at Tom's wedding on Saturday, but we have to return home to Brigham City on Saturday evening.

By the way, Kevin, where did you find that old picture of Dad and us on the Blogsite? I don't remember having ever seen it before you posted it. Would you please send me a scan of it?

Here's a blurry old photo I found recently in a box with a lot of Mom and Dad's letters and birthday and Christmas cards in it. If anyone has time to read through the letters looking for anything of interest, speak up.

This photo shows our great-grandmother, Charlotte Emma Senior King, the elderly lady in the front, and standing behind her over her left shoulder is her daughter, Grandma Kate King Folkman. Next to her, in the hat, is Grandpa Heber Folkman, though you can't see much of his face. Most of the girls in the picture would be various Great Aunts to Kevin, David and I. The youngest girl at the back of the photo is probably Aunt Merlyn, who lived in Sparks, NV, at the same time that Mom and Dad lived in Reno. The big guy on the left is Wilmer Rigby, who married one of Grandma Folkman's sisters, and settled in Idaho where they have a lot of family under the Rigby name.

When I was young, I wasn't very interested in all this, but as time goes on and no one remembers these people any more, I have become more interested in these things. On the Saturday before Memorial Day we put flowers, as we always do, on Grandpa and Grandma Hunter's graves in Logan Cemetery. Next to them is a family that I thought no one would still remember, as they have no descendents, but we knew the mother of the family as Aunt Rhetta. I wonder if David recalls visiting her in Logan when we were very young. Her only child, a son, was killed in WWII, shot down over Holland, and his body not recovered, as far as I know. She gave me a really "neat" hand-tooled leather belt that had belonged to him, during a visit when I was probably about 10 years old. Anyway, while we were there cleaning up the grave sites, an elderly woman came over to us and asked who we were, and I was very surprised to learn that she was a niece of Retta from another side of the family, a different wife of Grandma Mae Smeath Hunter's father, I believe, and we visited for awhile about things. She mentioned names I had long forgotten, such as Aunt Ethelyn, with whom Retta lived in her last years. The woman's married name is Jensen, but we were both surprised to find someone who still remembered those ancient days.

We also took some flowers down to Mom and Dad's graves, as we hadn't been there for quite awhile.

-- Robert

Valentine Family Vacation

Hello, family! Just wanted to say hello, since I haven't for a while. Our family just got back from a trip to California and we had a great time. We drove through Reno on the way west so the kids could see the apartments where Grandma and Grandpa lived, the Federal Building where Grandpa worked, and the famous downtown Reno lights. Then we visited Martinez/Pleasant Hill to show the kids where their mom grew up in California, did all the touristy stuff in San Fransisco, headed south to Disneyland, hung out at the beach, and visited Sea World in San Diego. We decided to go all out and do everything we could in 10 days because this may be the last vacation we take with all seven of us together before kids are in college, starting careers, getting married or going on missions. That thought is very hard to grasp, but is a reality nontheless. Amanda will be a senior in highschool this year, so next summer her schedule may not permit a big family vacation with us if she starts college right away. Anyhow, it was great fun. Love to you all!

P.S. If anyone would like a photo of the building where Grandpa worked in Reno for family history purposes, I have one.

Small World, part 2

I asked a few questions of my brothers, and also of the researcher in Texas who has a copy of Heber Nephi Folkman's missionary journal, and it appears that our cousin Alan's oldest son, Kevin, married an Odom from Texas while he was at BYU. Other members of her family recognized the Folkman name, and Alan apparently provided a copy of HNF's missionary journal to this graduate student who knew the Odom's, which is how he got a copy, and recognized my story about the Galveston hurricane. I still plan on getting a copy of those particular pages to my friend who posts about early Mormons of not such huge importance, but who have fascinating stories anyway. I'll also post those excerpts here for anyone to read. Meanwhile, if you are interested, this is a great book about the whole storm, and how it changed the US Weather Bureau forever.

Small World

From time to time, I read and occasionally comment on a couple of LDS-themed blogs, and have done so for about a year and a half now. It's an interesting diversion during the day, and rarely takes up any time. However, on one of them, there is a woman who has been doing some interesting posts about little known pioneers and others from Mormon History. She's done several at Times and Seasons, and one in particular caught my attention. She was talking about a missionary who went missing in Alabama in 1888. Southern States Mission President William Spry, later governor of Utah, sent a James Tilman to try and find out what had happened to the missionary. Tilman, a southern native, traveled undercover, and was able to eventually find the body, buried in a paupers grave, that could be identified as the missing missionary.

Ardis Parshall, the writer of this post, was trying to find out about Tilman, and said that later in the 1899 to 1900 time frame, he may have been in East Texas with a family by the name of Odom. That made me think about Heber Nephi Folkman, and his mission to Texas, so I was going to offer to search through HNF's missionary journals, of which I think Robert, David, and I all have copies of, to see if there was any mention of James Tilman. However, when I posted that my grandfather had been in Galveston for the great hurricane in 1900, someone piped up that he thought he knew who my grandfather was, and even his birthday. Turns out that Heber Nephi later found the children of the original Odoms, and got them baptized. I'm not sure where, and I'm trying to find out, but apparently Heber Nephi's missionary journals exist in a copy somewhere else that this other person has read, and was very familiar with. He said that in East Texas, Folkman was a name held in much reverence.

At any rate, Ardis wants to post about the missionaries who were in Galveston for the storm, and the records indicate that there may have been three others besides Heber Nephi. I'm going to try and dig out my copy and forward a scan of it to her, but she also thinks that the originals, or at least a copy of them, should be in the church archives. Not a bad thought, but a small world indeed.

Carrie and Shane took Emma to the Seattle Temple the other day to get some pictures, an unusually nice day for this April, so having only one grandchild to brag about, I thought I'd share it with you all.

Kevin

Zach will probably kill me for this, but we haven't much talked about his issues, and I thought you should all know. Zach spent from Thursday morning till Monday evening at HarborView hospital in Seattle (the inspiration for the hospital in Gray's Anatomy, I believe). It's your typical big city hospital, with the major regional trauma center, metal detectors at the doors for after hours visitors, and $4 an hour parking for everybody.

Zach, as most of you know, started having trouble with scleroderma several years back. It's an autoimmune disease closely related to Rheumatoid Arthritis, and in fact was diagnosed as that originally. It's potentially serious, but his case was mild and "superficial", which means that it only affected the bones of his right hand, and some slight discoloration and thinning of the skin on his right arm and shoulder. It took 6 years to get that diagnosis, and then 2 years of medication got it under control and in remission. He should, if the general history of this disease holds up, not have a problem with it ever again. We all hope.

Last spring, Zach started having what he described as "head rushes" or lightheadedness. While we were in Utah last June, he had what Carrie immediately recognized as a short seizure, some slight shaking of his arms and legs, that lasted about 5 seconds. That prompted a quick trip to the emergency room, but a CAT scan and MRI showed nothing wrong, so we started on a long round of diagnostics and tests. We spent a couple of months chasing heart related problems, but nothing showed up, even with wearing a monitor 24 hours a day for 3 weeks. We finally got him into Children's Medical Center's neurology group, as he was already a Children's patient for his scleroderma. They began a series of tests, which ended up with a 24 hour EEG test, that showed he was having mild seizures of an indeterminate nature and cause.

We've tried several different medications since last fall, one of which he was allergic to, and another that aggravated a previously unknown tendency towards depression, and really put him in a tailspin for a couple of weeks. The current situation is that he spent the last three months in Bellingham going to school up there, and continuing to have minor seizures. Since the seizures cause a short loss of vision and balance for maybe 5 seconds, he has been unable to drive, which really sucks for a twenty year old. A lot of his life has been on hold while we deal with this issue.

As he is now twenty, Children's wanted to transition him to an adult program, so that's why we ended up at HarborView. The head of the Neurology department there said he wasn't sure that he was having real seizures, so they brought him back in for an extended test. Now, normally Zach has the seizures while he is doing things, like watching TV, or playing video games, playing scrabble or card games with the family, or other times when he is engaged and active. He never has them at night, and almost never when he is lying down. As you may have guessed, the extended EEG required him to stay in bed, and not move around. As a result, he registered very few episodes while he was in that part of the hospital, so the doctor decided to do the whole cardiac thing again, and moved him to the cardiac care unit. Both wards were filled with interesting people, as you would expect from a large, public hospital. Stories for another day. End result, we know there is nothing wrong with his heart, or the veins and arteries leading to his head, but we know it at a much higher level now. Sigh.

So after finding nothing, he was released last night, and is back at school at BCC here in Bellevue today. Still can't drive, and is looking for part time work. About the only negative involved in all of this is that he can't drive, and he can't (or we can't, and the doctors can't) seem to figure out what is causing this. I suspect there are more tests in his future, but your thoughts and prayers are all welcomed.

So his heart is fine, and we are all trying to figure out what is going on in his brain, but really, how different is that from any other 20 year old?

Zach, just thought we'd share, if you read this. And my apologies for sneaking this picture while you were asleep in the hospital the other afternoon.