Hernia

When we came home from Hawaii 2 months ago I blew out a hernia in my right groin trying to wrestle laggage off of the cowded carousel. I had hoped to wait till next winter to get it fixed because we have a lot of plans, but it just bothered me too much so I finally decided to get it fixed. I had Craig Cook, Dick Thomas' son in law, do it. He has a laparoscopic procedure that is supposed to have a much faster recovery time and he has had only 2 recurrences in over 1,000 cases. Well now it has been about 24 hours and I can't believe it! I hardly even know I had anything done. Sylvia had to forbid me from mowing the lawn today. So far so good.

We spent this weekend with our friends Paul and Deon Coon at their Daughter's fabulous winter home at Entrada.

Most of the time was cold and rainy but we had some good golf moments and lots of fun. We watched the BYU playoff game, which we almost won, at the Galland's home. I have known for years that they were very rich (like a 38 million dollar private jet etc) but have never really been acquainted with them. They turned out to be very gracious friendly hosts and their home was wow! A 1500 sq foot theater, 8 waterfalls, 2 pools and the most beautiful decorating. One of the pools is for diving, it is 15 feet deep and has a 30 foot cliff overhanging it. The cliff has no steps, only irregular footholds, and the handrails are molded brass tree branches that look like they grew there.

Well I'm still very grateful for the comfortable home that we have, but it is fun to see how some rich folks live.

St. George and Mesquite with Jerry and JJ

After a long cold winter Jerry was ready for a break wo he took us and his family to St. George for the weekend. We played the new Kokopelli course east of Hurricane. It has a spectacular layout but will be better when the grass is more mature.

This is the 15th hole at sand Hollow where Jerry got a hole-in-one a couple of years ago. He wasn't quite as lucky this time, but we had a good time there.

The next day we got back to Wolf Creek which was as tough and beautiful as ever.

Our good friends Dick and Sharlene Thomas invited us to spend a golf week with them in Arizona. They own a home there on the Mesa Country Club. We have gone there with them many times before and it is always fun.
on Sunday we went to visit the family and that was fun too.

After a long cold winter in Utah this kind of scene was a welcome relief.

What a marvelous week we had in Kauai! We went to attend a great medical conference at the Grand Hyatt.

It was right on the beach,

and had some great pools with rivers and falls.

The golf course there was wonderful. It is the "Poipu Bay Golf Club", a world class course that has hosted "The Grand Slam of Golf" a PGA tournament on several occasions.

Sylvia made a true birdie on this hole!

One day we drove up to the north end of the island and played "Princeville", another world class course. With over 200 inches of rain a year, this is one of the wettest places in the world, but on this day it was clear and beautiful.

Every hole at Poipu was beautiful and had a really fun layout.

The greens were immaculate and the views spectacular.


Every day we saw whales in this bay.

This is the closest I have ever been to a hole-in-one; less than 1 inch!

Sylvia is the gold at the end of the rainbow.

It has been really cold and smoggy here this month so when the weather was good down south Sylvia and I took off for a 2-day weekend getaway to St. George and Mesquite.
what a great break from winter! I had debated whether to wear my long underwear but it was so warm and sunny that I ended up regretting wearing a long sleeve shirt!
Wolf Creek in Mesquite is one of our very favorite courses because it is so spectacular, but it's very tough so we usually don't score very well.

We played with some friends that we knew in Canada, Doug and Sheila Fletcher. I had not seen them in over 30 years. He is a retired dentist and they "snowbird" every winter in St. George.

Here is Sylvia sinkng her par put on the 9th hole. She also got a birdie a little later!

The Sylvia Kettle Story

In 1964 Sylvia Low was the vice president of the student association at the LDS Institute at the University of Alberta. Everyone loved her and she had a very active social life. One sunday she had a bunch of boyfriends (not me) over to her house for dinner and her mother had left her in charge of cooking. Well she got distracted with who knows what and the next thing you know there was smoke billowing out of the kitchen. This melted lettle was the result. Some of the guys thought that was kind of funny, so they stole the bottomless kettle and took it home. When word got out about this event, embarrassing as it was for Sylvia, everyone wanted to have the kettle, so several guys started stealing it back and forth and it became a kind of hostage trophy, proudly displayed in various households.

After a year or two of this, it was finally donated to the Institute and it became the annual trophy for "the most phenomenal achievement of the year". Sometimes it has been awarded as a spoof, like the first year it was given to the struggling Institute intramural hockey team who had scored a goal that year (it had been a couple of years since that had happened!). Other times it has been given to serious academic or athletic achievement. As a matter of fact my name got on it about 3 years later for academics. Anyway it has been on display for 55 years now and is still being awarded. I don't necessarily think that this is what Sylvia wants to be remembered for because she has done some truly remarkable things in her life: raising 5 wonderful children, 3 terms as Relief Society president, making quilts that are world class works of art, hiking across England etc., etc., etc..... But I still have fond memories of the kettle story.