The Oman Family Christmas Letter 2013

When one sits down to write something like this the first thing to do is decide what font to use.  I am kind of partial to Bookman Old Style so that is what you are going to get.

2013?  Hmm.  What does one say really?  It is about over that is one thing.  We know another thing, 2013 is not a prime number so maybe that is the reason the year has been a little iffy for many.  We have enjoyed it though.  

Joyce and I made one of our pilgrimages to Central America, to El Salvador to be exact and did some dental stuff for a week or so.  It was great being with so many of our wonderful “brigada” friends that we have made over the years.  The Salvadorans we met are a lovely people.

We have really enjoyed Becki and Kyle, Ben and Melissa and their crew, Weston, Elijah, Adelaide and Miles.  We smile a lot while with them.  They just keep growing up, the grandchildren that is.

We did make an interesting journey to Croatia in September.  Our dear friends Richard and Carrie Westergard were serving a religious mission there and they took the leap of faith of having us come over and spend some days with them.  They took us to some beautiful places, especially Rovinj and then into Slovenia and the Lake Bled area.  We made some nice acquaintances while there and have a few more Facebook friends.  While in the area, we drove up to Budapest and then over to Vienna for a few days to see what those places were like.  It was a wonderful adventure for us. Go see omansalmanac.blogspot.com for pictures and stuff. No less adventuresome was spending a few days in San Francisco.  We enjoy going there, but admit that many things about it suggest it is a foreign country all its own.  I had some dental meetings there and the California Dental Association was a great host.

Greg mowed the lawn a lot during the summer.  That’s something to report I suppose.  Some occasional weeding too.  But summer got us out on the golf course and Joyce hits a mean tee shot.  We have had a lot of fun together.  We even had some golf action up at Bear Lake with our friends Niles and Janet Herrod.  So, see, life isn’t totally sweat running off our brow.

Speaking of Bear Lake.  We had the family up there for a week as we usually do and it was a great time.  Weston, the 8 year old and I, did a 30 minute ride on a tube.  I was pretty well hammered.  I much prefer the waverunners.  Oh, and the Pickleville Playhouse is something we hit for sure.  If you have not done that you might put that quietly in your bucket list.

One tough thing to deal with is I think I have lost a step or something in my barbecuing ability.  I had a few steaks come in off of the grill that were not cooked well enough for Joycie.  That really hasn’t happened before.  Maybe it is a loss of patience, I don’t know but I am really going to concentrate next year.

Our kids are doing pretty well.  Kyle and Becki have a little crew that seems to give them something to do.  Kyle is a Family Practice Physician.  Becki is a mother, who teaches aerobics and does a little speech pathology on the side, among other things that seem to fill their days up.  Weston is almost a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.  Elijah is quite a little ball player and Addie, well, Addie does other stuff like dance, play, sing and generally delight everyone she is around. Ben is working hard developing a business called Citigro.  Melissa has worked at a nearby school, but really she and Miles do their thing.  She is trying to develop character in the young lad of 1 year.  We think he will be walking soon.     

So there you have a brief synopsis of our year.  We hope yours has been a great one and that 2014 will be even better.  Most of all we wish you a Merry, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Mom and Dad at a 60th Anniversary Dinner.  (F)

Joyce, Glen Oman, Elaine Oman, Merri Jo Oman.(B)

Greg, Tiffany & Jay Burton, Kirk & Mike Oman

Elijah, Miles, Weston and Addie

Years Gone By

This past September our high school class had its 40 year reunion.  Not everybody came of course.  That isn't unusual, time and distance being factors for most.  One who didn't attended was a big part of the high school fun.  Richard Westergard and his wife Carrie are on a mission for our Church.  They will be coming home a week after Halloween.  We would have loved to have had them at the reunion.  I was digging through some older pictures and found the following.

These are old photos.  This one has me on the left edge with Dick (yes I know his name is Richard, but we called him Dick) right in the middle.  To his left is Pete Ipson.  The young girl is my sister Tiffany at aged 10 and my younger brother Kirk.  This was June 22, 1976.  A couple of weeks later he and I drove up to Rexburg to scout out an apartment for school in the fall.  He somehow talked me into going up there and playing football with him.  He was a Cornerback on defense and I was a Quarterback on offense.  I was 4th on the depth chart as practice began 7 weeks after this photo was taken, but I ended up starting the first 5 games until I had a hand injury that kept me out the rest of the season.

Here we are later than night in the basement of my home in Centerville.  I was excited to see him and he evidently was excited to have me home.  We worked out a little over the weeks, but mostly worked and tried to save some money for school.  The real reason is he had just returned home from his mission in France about 6 weeks before me, he didn't have a girl friend and didn't have anything better to do than wait for me to come home.

This is in the Spring of 1977.  It is graduation at Ricks College.  He was engaged to Carrie and so this is kind of our last hurrah as roommates, but not as friends.  We ended up at Utah State University and then at The Dental School at Northwestern University in Chicago.  I was figuring that Dick and I have been friends for about 54 years or so.  Not too bad as far as friendships go.

A Vehicular Physics Lesson

I was walking out of my gym in Farmington at about 5:50 PM this evening.  I heard a horn blasting steadily.  I didn't notice anything right off the bat.  I got in my car, started it up and backed out and headed south out of this large parking lot.  I still heard the horn.  I rolled down the window and immediately looked to my left and noticed a young woman walking away from me and away from a vehicle.  As I pulled closer I noticed the entire front end of the car was smashed and the vehicle was stopped behind a cement pillar that at one time was the support for a large light that lit up that section of the parking lot.

I stopped and addressed her.  She was shaking uncontrollably.  I asked her age.  17.  She was trying to call her mother and wasn't getting an answer.  I asked her if I could use her phone and call the police which I did.  As she continued to shake she kept saying how much trouble she was going to be in and how her mother and step father were going to be so upset with her.  I noticed an abrasion on her right forearm from the airbags going off.  She wasn't bleeding much but it needed to be cleaned and bandaged.  I keep asking if she was alright and I could tell she was shellshocked.  So I hugged her and held her for 10 or 15 seconds.

She calmed down a little big and I had her sit in my car.  She contacted her mother finally and she showed up about 5 minutes later.

What happened was apparently, as she described it to me, she left the gym, started up her car and started driving in a westerly direction.  The sun was low and it was blinding and glaring in the windshield.  She didn't see the cement pillar in front of her.  It was less than 3 feet tall and she rammed right into it, denting the front end, through the radiator, setting off the airbags and the horn alarm.  I raised the hood and pulled the negative battery cable off of the battery and the horn stopped.  Needless to say, I felt bad for this young girl.  Her mom hugged her and told her the car can be fixed and a real tragedy would have been if she would have been hurt or killed.  You never know what you'll see coming out of the gym so be ready, I guess.  Of course the physics lesson is Newton's first law which suggests an object that is in motion will not change it's velocity unless an external force acts upon it.  So   a car increasing velocity gets stopped by the cement pillar, an external force on the object.  That's all for today.

Back to Zagreb.

On Saturday morning we arose early and left Vienna heading back to Zagreb.  We were on our last full day of our Fantastic European Experience before heading home the next day.  The goal was to get back to Zagreb as quickly as possible to spend more time with Carrie and Richard.  So here aresome pictures  of that day, in no particular order.

How can one resist a picture with 3 blonds in it.  Here we have Joyce, Matea and Carrie.  Matea is a dear friend of the Westergard's and we were honored and pleased to meet this energetic, talented young woman.

 The Austrian countryside was beautiful on our drive from Vienna back to Zagreb.  It was a cloudy, rainy day though which prevented us from seeing the Alps.

 Along the Autobahn.

 Bread stores are incredible.  This shop in Zagreb had on display their wares.  Some of the breads were absolutely gigantic.  I couldn't get enough of the stuff.

 Here is a view of Joyce and me above the market area in Zagreb.  It was a hazy, lazy day but it certainly wasn't summer.

 Richard and Carrie from the same spot.  Both pictures look good in my opinion.

 This old Church was right around the corner from the previous pictures.  No one is allowed in there to see it.  We didn't get an explanation but I think it is some kind of memorial or something now and the public is not admitted.

 On our last night I had high hopes of taking Richard and Carrie out to dinner.  No such luck though, Carrie insisted on cooking and it was great.  You can see the edge of the apple pie in the bottom of the picture.  I had three pieces before we left.

 Here we are the last afternoon getting ready for lunch at a little, quaint restaurant that serves soup with some bread and a few drinks.  It is a simple menu, but a successful business model.  The owners are goers and they work at it every day.

 In the market area I found this high tech scale used to weigh the produce.  It is probably the easiest and best way to do it because there isn't a lot of power available.

 You can imagine the extent of this market area.  Fresh produce everywhere, some booths sold clothing and souvenirs and the like.

 Here is Matea with us on our last night.

 Richard getting raspberries.  They are pretty good size too.

 Joyce and Carrie in the street.  The rail trams are everywhere and you have to watch where you are going either on foot or in the car so you don't get whacked by one of the trains.

 During dinner that night in Carrie and Richards apartment, their friend Matea was invited and we went to pick her up.  Sitting down she was telling me how much she loved Country music and Westerns.  I grabbed the iPad as you can see and starting playing some of the old time Country I had on it from the 50's, 60's and 70's.  She knew most of the songs.  Here you see her with a fake microphone (highlight marker) and just singing away.  It was a great time.   She said she wants to marry a cowboy in the US.  I have emailed her my favorite John Wayne movie titles and she said she is going to watch them.

That's it.  That is just a taste of our trip.  The next day we were on the plane-forever it seemed.  We arrived back in SLC at 1:30 AM and I was in the office at 8 AM going at it, in spit and blood again.

On To Vienna

With a trip as quick as the one we took we just got a full day and a half in most cities.  Vienna was not an exception.  I really liked Vienna, but I think I want to go see the western Austria towns some day.  Nevertheless, what history!  Vienna or Wien as it is called was a mystery that soon opened up and we were able to get around quite nicely.  Once again the Hop On Hop Off bus was indispensable in getting  places and they had 3 routes you could jump on and off of whenever it was needed.

This is the Belvedere Palace.  It has huge grounds and is a beautiful building.  It used to be in the country, but now it is in the city.  It didn't move, the city did.

Walking around Vienna, about every 50 feet or so it seemed you would come upon one of these things.  It is for the cigarette butts and trash.  I sensed that there were more smokers in Austria than we experience in the United States.  This was really apparent when we had lunch the first afternoon in Vienna at the Gasthaus Montroy.  Joyce doesn't handle smoke too well and I am not really fond of it either, but a voracious chain smoker set down roots about 10 feet from us and put away about 7 smokes in 25 minutes.  To me that would be hard to do.

 Here we are on the Karntner Strasse, which is a large shopping and commercial area.  We sat down at an outdoor restaurant, the Venezia, and Joyce said her lasagna was the best she had ever eaten.

 Karntner Strasse at noon.  It was cool, so everyone had jackets.

This is the Mozart House, at least Wolfgang lived up in the room on the right for a few years.  It was there that he composed Figaro.  He moved around a lot I assume because he didn't pay his rent very well.

 Schonbrunn Palace is huge and amazing.  This was just a quaint little country Schloss for the Royal Family of Austria.  I imagine they had a lot of hired help to maintain it.

Joyce took this photo with me on her iPhone in the panoramic mode.  I think it turned out pretty well.

St Stephens Cathedral right in the center of town.  It is a large, fantastically imposing edifice.  The architecture and the craftsmanship of this large European churches is something I never tire of seeing.

Swarovski's is located on the Kartner Strasse.  They have some pretty incredible displays of their quartz.  This figure of a woman swinging in a feathered type chair is all glass.  The picture cannot do it justice.

And these shoes in Swarovski's will not get you back to Kansas.

The morning we were going to really have time to explore Vienna, we had to walk from our hotel to the Schwedenplatz to catch the Hop On bus.  As we walked we passed a little shop with these beautiful painted wooden signs in the front window.  Late in the afternoon as we were returning to our hotel we passed it again, but it appeared it was closed.  I tried the door.  They were open.  This big wooden disc was painted by the owner of the store and it is in the Guinness Book of World Records according to him as the largest painting of its type in the world.

This young man  and his mother are running the shop.  There are all kinds of templates and paints in there and they insisted we look in on their little working area where all the signs are produced.

All in all the Viennese people were kind and very thoughtful in helping us enjoy their old, venerated city.  We had a great time there.  And the Apple Strudel!  There is a shop chain called Aida and they serve pastries, gelato and the like.  I had to have their Apple Strudel each night.  It was huge, light crust and I am sure low cal.

Hungary

Three days into our European adventure we took off from Zagreb, Croatia and headed to Budapest, Hungary.  It was a lot of fun driving the 5 speed diesel Citroen automobile we rented.  I hate to admit it for fear some will judge me harshly, but on those European autobahns one doesn't go under 90 mph very often.  It was a blast.  The first adventure was crossing the border from Croatia to Hungary.  The typical passport check happened, but then I had to pull over 100 yards down the road, cross on foot four lanes of traffic (Not very heavy at the time) and go into a white shack and purchase a vignette to allow me to drive on the autobahn road for the two days were were going to be in Hungary.  It was rustic.

Here is a nice view of the church up on the Castle District Hill on the Buda side of the river.  I really enjoyed the colors that are in the roofs of the churches and houses in this part of the world.  The orange colors are deep and when you see a whole village with the orange roofs it is an awesome sight.  The Buda side is totally different than the Pest side.  It is hilly while the Pest side is flat.

Here we are at the Citadel on the Buda side of the river.  The picture looks great with Joycie in it.

Here is another view of the Pest side from the Citadel.

We have a neighbor who recently started serving a mission for our Church in Budapest.  We hunted down the offices of the mission, thanks to the Garmin, but it was still quite a hunt.  We actually made a lucky turn and found it.  We wanted to leave him a note and the folks working in the office promised they would get it to him.

Here is the Opera House on Andrassy Utca right around the corner from our hotel the K+K Opera House Hotel.

Joyce working the souvenir vendors at the Citadel.

I really like this shot of the St. Stephens Basilica down the street from our hotel.  It is fascinating to negotiate the narrow streets, many times with cars parked on both sides, having only a few inches on either side of the car to maneuver.  I didn't drive fast down these roads.

Here is an interior shot of Joyce as we rode on the Hop On Hop Off Bus.  When time is limited it is the only way to go to get around and see a lot of stuff.  In Budapest they had just one route, but it covered a lot of ground on both sides of the river.  The Danube is not Blue, at least not there.

Driving to Vienna, leaving Budapest we found these incredibly large fields of sunflowers.  The yellow petals were gone so I imagine they are going to harvest the seeds.  I am accustomed to only seeing an occasional sunflower around here, so these large fields were something new.

In Slovenia

The second part of our European adventure took us to Slovenia.  Richard and Carrie wanted to take us to a place called Lake Bled.  It was gorgeous.  There was a stop before that at a castle called Predjama. Here are a view shots of our time in Slovenia.

This is a view out of the window of our room at this quaint, clean Bed and Breakfast near Lake Bled.  Richard and Carrie have stayed here a few times.

 Here are Richard, Joyce and Carrie visiting with Katja, the owner of the Inn.  They have a wonderful friendship with her.  Katja's English is strong and we had a great visit with her.  She is a tremendously hard worker and has developed a nice business.

 Dinner.  It was great.

 The Slovenian countryside is beautiful.  There are many fields that are being farmed.  It is really green and looks neat and tidy.

 This is the castle Predjama.  It is built into the rock of a huge, sheer cliff.  It is amazing to look at.  When you look at the walls they are incredibly straight and vertical.  It seems like it is impregnable but there are escape tunnels that go through the mountain.  I think this was built in 1593.

 Two blonds by a lake.  This is Lake Bled.  It is an idyllic lake with a castle in the middle of it.  It is beautiful and we are there just as the sun is starting to set behind the surrounding mountains.  It is a breathtaking view.

 A different view of the castle on Lake Bled.  It is a convent now.

 In front of our Inn, Torok Pension.  Richard, Carrie, Joyce and me.  A rather quaint group if I say so myself.  What a great time we had spending a day in Slovenia.

Croatia

Joyce and I spent a week in Eastern Europe and Austria.  We have dear friends, Richard and Carrie Westergard, in Zagreb, Croatia serving a mission for the LDS Church.  The following pictures are an indication of some of the experiences we had.  I have known Richard almost my entire life.  We were next door neighbors as little boys in Woods Cross, Utah.  We moved away from there in 1963, but returned in 1967 to Centerville, Utah.  Richard and I were teammates in high school, we played football together and were roommates in jr. college, we were at Utah State together and ended up in the same dental school together.  So it is has been about a 55 year friendship.  It was great to see them and they were fantastic guides and hosts in Croatia.  Here you can see Richard and me in front of the Roman Coliseum in Pula, Croatia.

 Her are Carrie Westergard and Joyce in the back seat.  (So they could chat with one another easier)  The boys stayed in the front seat for navigational purposes.

 Joyce and Carrie are doing their thing here in Rovinj.  Rovinj is a beautiful sea side town on the Adriatic across from Venice.  My friend Richard and I soon learned that it is quite an education watching these two go at it in the stores in the area.

 Here we had to stop to check out a missionary.  He had a tender tooth and wondered if he was going to have problems.  Richard is a dentist and kind of handles these types of questions.

 Here is a morning shot from our room on the bay near Rijeka, Croatia.  This sea side town is Opatija.  It was beautiful.

 This is a shot from the Citadel down on the little seaside village of Piran.

 Rovinj was one of our favorite places and here are Richard and Carrie spicing up the pictures.

 Still gracing the streets of Rovinj.

 Beautiful old town.  Rovinj at sunset.