Nina and I went to Soda Springs yesterday to visit with dad and mother. The weather was pretty miserable with high winds, snow, and cold temperatures. A couple of times on the drive over the wind was blowing so hard that it was impossible to see to drive. However, the trip went well. Dad is showing some improvement although his short-term memory is quite impaired. He was supposed to get up and walk the corridor twice a day on Saturday and Sunday as part of his therapy. The rooms in the Caribou Memoria Hospital are arranged in a triangle. There are about twelve rooms in the hospital, each capable of one or two beds. So the walk goes out the hospital room door and a left turn. Three right turns later and then left back into the room. It takes three people to assist in this walk. One person walking on the right side holds a belt strapped around dad’s waist to hold him up if he looses his balance. A second person pulls the oxygen tank and helps on the left side. The third person brings up the rear pushing a wheel chair so that when dad gets tired he can sit down. He usually pauses for a rest twice on the walk. The entire procedure takes about twenty minutes. There were only three of us there … Nina, mother, and me. It would have been fun to have taken some video of this parade! Alas, there were no photographers available.

I took a couple of other short video clips with my little Sony point-and-shoot digital camera. Then when I took mother home, we stopped at the post office so she could check the mail. I inadvertently took another short video clip at the post office (I had forgotten to switch the camera from video mode back to picture mode). This morning I recorded four more short clips of explanation and have put it all together into one file. The file is now being compressed and the program says it’ll be another 50 minutes before it’s done. This isn’t a fast process!! I’ve got some other pictures, so I’ll put this all on the Picture Album sometime today. I think I’ll put the video out at two compression levels because that really affects how large the file is and how long it takes to download.

Last night Nina and I attended a special Stake meeting where the Stake Presidency outlined the new ward boundaries in the Pocatello Stake. Before yesterday evening there were seven wards and two branches in the stake. Now there are nine wards and two branches. It’s a pretty exciting change brought about by the growth of the Church in Pocatello. There are several other stakes in the city and over the next year all of them will be adjusting ward boundaries. We’re still in the same ward: Juniper Hills. Our meeting time for the coming year will start at 1 p.m. That’s also nice because I can use the mornings to do things like writing the blog and putting together video clips!

Finally, I bought mother and dad a digital picture frame from eStarling. The device works pretty well. One of the features is that people can email pictures to the digital picture frame! There is a special email address. I’m sending the email address out to the family. Anyone can send me an email and I’ll send along the email address. Mother is quite excited about it and watches often to see if any new picures have arrived. The system has a pretty large capacity. When the memory gets full, then the oldest picture is deleted to make room for the newest picture.