Willem.
I think I will make an update about Willem.
He is the most amazing person. He is always helpful. He doesn’t mind doing the tasks. I ask him to do.
He loves attending the temple. He enjoys staying for as many sessions as possible.
He spends a lot of time on his computer working on genealogy. He doesn’t like to use the sources that have already been indexed, but he likes to go to the original documents and read them for himself and make sure that he has the accurate information, just in case it was not legible enough, and someone misspelled it in indexing it. Paragraph he doesn’t mind the cost of frequently travelling to the temple. He agrees that it is the best use of our money.
He loves music, especially classical music. I don’t think he has much use for the rest of it. He was pleased to discover that he will be able to play music in the millennium. That we will still be able to work on our talent and that there will be many church meetings and gatherings where music would be important.
He has arthritis in a few fingers. It hurts when he plays for very long. While he used to practice every night after work for hours, which filled the home with music in the rafters, he can no longer do that.
I have filmed him practising the piano many times. I had to do a lot of it when he didn’t know, because he wouldn’t like it. So I always titled it practicing, to make allowance for any mistakes he made.
I also filmed performances. He did in front of friends in our home gatherings. And once when he performed in Arden and again in Ottawa.
Those are all on YouTube and tagged with Willem piano or in a playlist called Willem piano. Paragraph
In his lifetime he has composed several pieces. He composed a group of 10 waltzes. I think it was 10 I really like them.
When he was married to Francis he composed his variations. It’s a group of 16 pieces preceded by a work by Robert Burns. I think. William William Byrne
He also composed his valentines when he was married to me and which he dedicated to me. What a compliment. Like his variations, it’s about 20 minutes long. There are many pieces in it some of which were so difficult that he had to practice and practice Each each part before he could record it and then put them together.
He had an MP4 file on his computer which he sent to another great pianist in Ottawa.
He is now working on a coral arrangement. He does all this on the computer. It’s wonderful for him because in spite of not being able to use his fingers as much, he can still compose and hear it. It contains an orchestra of instruments and words based on scriptures in several languages.
Although he doesn’t have perfect pitch, he has perfect relative pitch. So he can tell if a violin or guitar is tuned properly and can tune it. He can also pick up an instrument and play it.
He has an autoharp called a Q cord. It is very simple for him to play, as you push a button to press all of one cord strings.
It’s battery powered so he is able to take it to the Tipi and play it.
He loves games he is a Mensa candidate or member or type of mind.
He loves chess. When he was young, he would play chess against the locals in Holland. He once heard someone say they should play against that little boy if they thought they were good enough.
He also loves bridge. Whenever he would find a newspaper, he would always locate the bridge game and cover up the other hands and play.
Now he plays on the computer, mostly watching the chest Masters as they play and stop the video to decide his next note I mean his next play. He loves doing that.
He also plays solitaire, but not as often
Because of the amount of Spanish-speaking people that attended the Toronto Temple temple, he decided he wanted to learn Spanish. Paragraph so for the past five years he has spent an hour a day Learning Spanish on the computer. He has several favourite videos that he watches. They expound the uses of many different parts of the language. Comparing when to use this or that.
He is simultaneously keeping a dictionary that he is continually adding to on his computer. Paragraph he is able to understand Spanish quite well and likely able to read it. But he does not get practice speaking it except on the computer a bit. So he is not able to carry on a conversation, although he would be able to know what to say, but does not have the proper accent yet.
When he was working, he learned French for work. He never learned it to the extent that he is learning Spanish.
He has played the piano in church almost since he was baptized in 1976. He has played the organ in Ottawa, but always had trouble with the pedals, although he didn’t make mistakes.
For many years, he played the piano in primary. All the time while our children were growing up and attending primary which span many years.
He only plays in sacrament now. But they really have a hard time when he’s not there. The church has found new music and is adding it to the Kim book. Instead of adding the numbers in order they have started at 1000 and are adding them in that way.
He learns them quickly and plays them as well. Our music director is very good at keeping up with the new music and adding it to the new book that she has compiled. I try a number of those books on the right edge of the page whenever possible.
Over the years, Willem has learned a lot about nature. He enjoys going for walks. He doesn’t have the same interest as I do, and doesn’t want to stay there Excessively long, but he is happy to go for a walk. Even long walks.
I used to tell him the names of all the flowers and plants and then quiz him. His responses were yellow flower number one yellow flower number two yellow flower, number three, purple flower number one, etc.
He gives me the appropriate amount of admiration for my ability to build Grass Hut out of the natural materials. He enjoys sitting in the Tipi‘s for short amounts of time.
He is interested in the wildlife, as well. He doesn’t, however encourage the deer. I do.
Over the past 10 or more years ever since I built with a lot of help from him, the raised garden beds. They are Hugo culture beds so made of layers of sticks and logs, leaves, manure, cardboard, and repeated, except for the sticks.
While I would go buy a load of manure as often as the trailer was empty, which sometimes was every day, he would spend hours and hours unloading the trailer into wheelbarrows, and then into the beds.
Whether it was leaves, manure, sticks, and logs, or whatever I had found, he would always help cut it around and unload it for me.
In the later years, he has had to use energy drinks to have the energy to do this.
When Scarlet and Beau came back to Canada 10 years ago or 11, She built garden beds with Hugo culture on the other side of the valley. I had just have the try with Trail and milk created, and had garden beds along it, so I didn’t see the value in the Hugo culture beds.
Now, however, I see great value in them. Willem has taken over the ones on the other side of the valley and has put up netting above them Using 2 x 4 structures, quite a lot of effort and energy to do all of this.
He successfully grows artichokes and potatoes and many other kinds of vegetables. This year we gave the garden to Anna, so she has all 50 garden beds and has added maybe 15 more.
Daniel made more beds all along the side of the hill in the valley. He also lined it with a row of patio stones, so there’s a pathway.
With such a lot of produce coming in, Willem has taken to dehydrating paragraph
Our wetland produces an inordinate amount of fiddleheads from the ostrich ferns. In spite of their appearance at the beginning and all through Black fly season, he diligently goes down and harvest, the fiddle heads. He’s very careful to always leave three uncut fiddle heads to grow into the tall ferns to maintain the plants.
When our fiddlehead pond was done, they altered the Area enough that the fiddle heads disappeared for a few years. However, they came up through the new soil that was on top of them.
There are also a lot of fiddle heads in the alders along the stream. They are harder to harvest.
So while I would freeze any produce, whether it be peas or beans or fiddle heads, Willem dehydrates them. He is often watching YouTube videos about how to dehydrate artichokes or potatoes or any number of other vegetables.
In the fortress, there were too long, long raised beds, built by the neighbours years ago for the former owners.
Overtime, they have become quite useless. They were full of sand and didn’t produce much. But Willem has rebuilt them and added lots of manure so they are now quite productive.
He has also discovered Scarlett runner beans with the red flowers. They are a great harvest crop in those beds now.
He tries to save seeds to replant them the next year. We have only two pods from last year, however.
Willis’s diet is different than mine. He eats yoghurt with granola in it often harvest crunch cereal in it.
He also likes bread. He usually has peanut butter on bread with coconut oil. It used to be margarine, but we found a really good source of coconut oil at FreshCo where a tin is Usually about three or four dollars.
He read the China years ago and became a vegetarian. I always bought frozen vegetables so we would have a stirfry of frozen vegetables. When Ben married task from Pakistan, actually from Saudi Arabia, but with Pakistani heritage, I started cooking with Coriander, cumin, and hot red pepper flakes.
He has enjoyed those.
His mom who is Dutch, but from Indonesia, and quite an Indonesian cook, uses sand ball, which is a small jar of extremely hot sauce. He will use that sometimes, but doesn’t like quite as much heat as she does.
Willem tried to make an underground cold storage container. He used a tub surround in the hillside under which were two barrels. It covered them with sand and dug the barrels into the ground. I think the system leaked and the potatoes froze in there.
He would love to make another cold storage. We have talked about making one in the tall hill. I suggested having a backhoe hammer a culvert into the side of the hill and then dig it out.
He has always loved Caves. He has said he would love to live in a cave. I don’t think he’s really serious about full-time living in the cave just like I’m not serious about full-time living in a Grass Hut, but he really is intrigued by Caves.
Willem has a different circadian rhythm than me. He loves being up late at night, till 130. He also sleeps until 10. I have never tried to change that routine of his. It was difficult for him when he went to work and had to be out of the house at 7:30 for his long commute to Ottawa and back. He was generally gone 12 hours a day.
Whenever possible, he would have a nap in the middle of the day. When he can’t nap, he sometimes falls asleep sitting up.
Whenever we go to the temple, I drive in the morning so that he can sleep since he is not yet had his eight hours if we get up and leave Early. 6 o’clock up time and 630 leaving time seems to work pretty well for us.
We heat with wood so Willem has always had. Gerry Blair delivered 10 cords of wood. Face cords we didn’t use all 10 cords. Seven cards is probably enough. Especially now that we have electric heaters to complement the wood stove.
We have the wood delivered in the late summer and Willem spends every moment that he’s not doing his other things stacking wood. It puts my back out if I do wood, so Willem has always done it. For years, he would have the boys out there helping.
He always make sure to stack it with the bark side up. For years there were rows of stack wood in the driveway. But when we had the decks added 10 years ago, he also asked for a woodshed. So there is now a long woodshed divided in half on the deck outside of the living room. A few years ago, we had a roof put on between the house and over the woodshed. This allows him to go out and get wood without getting into the snow.
I am not able to bring in wood very often. But if the wood is high up, and not too big, I am able to move it.
We use a mixture of green and dry wood. Of course, not too green, but wood that’s over a year old and wood that isn’t. It seems to burn the best.
When I came home from my mother’s with a lot of very tall storage bins worth of books, Ben gave me Garbage storage bins to keep the books in outside. I brought the books inside instead, and we use those tall bins for bark. Whenever the wood is stacked and moved from the driveway, lots of bark remains on the ground. So some of it goes to the Tipi in the teacup trail garden, And the rest goes into those great big bins on the deck for lighting the fire.
Willem has always had a bit of trouble with my ideas of things I would like to do. One day as we were driving I suggested I would like to build an outhouse on the other side of the valley. He didn’t answer. So I asked him. What are your reactions when I come up with a new idea. It took him no time to respond, “I figure I have several choices. One. Space space, express general interest, but remain noncommittal
Two. Space space go along with it until major expenditures are required.
Three developmentally protest. I think there’s a fourth one which I forget, but I noticed that in none of his list was agree with it.
One idea that he definitely does not agree with is the idea of a bridge to the top of deer Meadow. It would be about 50 feet long And the highest part would be 14 feet high. Developmentally protest to that idea.
If I pursue one of these ideas, his mood changes and he closes down and doesn’t wanna talk and doesn’t want to think about it. You care about he doesn’t want to think about it.
He has always protested to the idea of cats or dogs. We did have a dog named Chucky, which was given to us from a friend of Peter Morgan, a fellow composer friend of Willem. He took to Chucky. He was a grown dog and easy enough to Let outside for walks. I never walked them except when I would go for a walk on the property he would always come along. Our next dog was Jesse at Bernie’s Mountain dog. He was an incredibly loving big dog. If I had to have a dog, that’s the kind I would like. I always wanted big dogs because you could pet them without bending down.
Jesse had been changed trained before we got him and we were still in Smith Falls for a month before we moved while we have the dog, so I took him for walks around the block and he would untangle himself when he went around In Tree. Paragraph paragraph
When Daniel befriended Mongo and miaow kiss, Willem didn’t like it. He also didn’t like it that I would lean out the door laying on the deck and in the house trying to be able to pet the new cats. He still doesn’t like them specially because there are four of them in the house, but he is kind to them.
He renamed Scarlett‘s cat when she moved to Germany she left four cats with us. Neither of us wanted them, but somehow we had them. A renamed one for Cote according to its potential. He also renamed the second one eggroll according to its potential.
Willem is always had a lot of fun with the English language. He uses contractions all by themselves. When I would say is that you? He would respond. It’s paragraph a bookmark has always been called a page. Remember paper. I can’t remember the others. What are the other words you’ve made up from? He can’t remember either.
Willem has always been in great health. He wrote a bicycle while he was growing up and living in Holland. When we lived in Ottawa, he would ride his bike to work and back every day. Sometimes he would even walk to work.
When we finally moved and he had to commute, he would park a good distance away from work and have to walk 15 minutes from his car and then go move it every two hours or three hours whatever it was allowed in Ottawa. So we always walked for about 45 minutes a day no that’s wrong about an hour.
When we move to the country, he would go for long walks with me every day or as long as every time I asked.
He has had high blood blood pressure for many years. He’s on medication and so it’s fine.
Possibly because of his love of chocolate bars, he has always been played with gout. He used to use gout medication and still does if he ever has that problem. It turned out the side effect of one of his pills was gout. I think concentrate is the Medication. He takes for gout when he has a flareup. He has always had itchy skin. It only itches when he goes to bed. But it has plugged him for years. He has many different medical products he uses for that.
He also had that jumpy leg syndrome, which would also bother him when he tried to sleep. If I have my leg against his, he will get it again. So I’m trying to be very careful not to touch him when he’s asleep. Paragraph
I have often called Will in my hot and cold man. He is quite content to walk to the car barefoot. In the snow. In least later years, he has needed a hat and scarf and mitt much more often. He still drives barefoot and puts his socks and shoes on when he arrives at the destination.
At one time Willem had a beard. That was for many many years. It was much easier than shaving and in the winter being outside shovelling the snow and going for walks, his face was warm. Of course, he would come in with ice on his beard sometimes and definitely on his moustache when we would go for walks in the cold.
Years ago, Willem had car trouble and had to walk a very long way to get home. I’m not sure why we didn’t call someone to give them a ride. I think there must’ve been a reason that I couldn’t come and get them. We may have had only one car and it may not have worked. I don’t remember.
During that long walk, his hip started to hurt. His hip has given him a bit of trouble ever since, but only after a long time of sitting in the car or lots of walking. Now, and then he would have that trouble sitting in his chair.
But he has never had that problems since you gave up sugar. He doesn’t have any trouble with his knees or the rest of his body.
In spite of having very few medical problems, he takes a lot of medication. He’s on cholesterol medication and high blood pressure pills, but I don’t remember what else.
Luanne loves his four children dearly. Those are the children that he had with Francis. Because he is so reticent to reach out and talk to people, always having to figure out what he wants to say in depth before he says it, he doesn’t own them or contact them nearly as much as I think he would like to.
He loves visiting with them. He has been to Holland with Erin to visit his mom in Flagan Holland
He is also been with Nick to go visit Oma Lily. He really enjoyed those visits. And the time he could spend with his kids.
He loves visiting with Tisch and her husband Graham.
We drive past on the way to church and back so whenever we have seen them it is because we have stopped by on a Sunday. Tisch doesn’t really like socializing too much and Kayla is quite an agoraphobic. We drive past on the way to church and back so whenever we have seen them it is because we have stopped by on a Sunday. Tisch doesn’t really like socializing too much and Kayla is quite an agoraphobic, so we only drop in a few times a year now if that. All four children are very good at calling him for Father’s Day, his birthday and Christmas.
Willem and I served a mission at the Thomases Monson young women’s camp north of Peterborough Ontario. He was very happy to go and sir. It was quite a lot of manual labor. As we were the maintenance people. He was exhausted by the end of the day and often had to use energy drinks, but he worked alongside the senior brother and did whatever was required. Our mission was cut short by family problems so we only stayed four or five months.
He was willing to go home and babysit grandchildren and let me stay at the camp. Sometimes I stayed home and he stayed at the camp. We had a a mobile home there that we stayed in.
We didn’t go on a full-time mission because Abraham was sick for many years. But that was a short mission and it was close to home so we were able to do that. Paragraph he loved being a temple worker. We had to wait until we didn’t have children at home but then we were temple workers in Palmyra New York at the Palmyra Temple. We served their faithfully every two weeks for three years. Because we were cross boundary, and out of our own temple district, the time came when 17 couples were released from working in Palmyra. After that we served in Toronto For many years until Covid when we were still active as temple workers, but the temple was closed. When the temple reopened, they selectively called back, temp workers a few at a time. We were never called back. When we were on our mission, there was an opening where we could’ve served on Fridays, But we didn’t feel we should while we were on our mission since we also attended the temple every Thursday.
When we were married in the Washington DC temple, we spent our honeymoon attending the temple every day, sitting beside each other in the centre of the endowment room, and Spending all the days doing many kinds of temple work. There was a waterfall that landed in the basement of the temple. We would often sit at the bottom of the waterfall together. It was a perfect honeymoon.
We attended Washington every month as we could until I started having children and being pregnant or nursing. Lori Nichols Davies would babysit for us while we would go down for the week. It was a wonderful blessing to us.
Willem is a scientist. He received a PhD in inorganic chemistry. Physical chemistry. Period.
That has been a handy bit of information that he has had all of our lives. We could always ask him what chemical to use for some result. Whether it was unclogging a drain or removing something a stain of some sort, he has always been able to tell us what would be the best Chemical solution.
My mother gave me a little plastic box with balls and sticks. They were very small. Some of the balls were black and some were white. The black represented carbon and the black and the white was something else. Maybe there were other things as well.
So Willem would put together molecules and show the children. The children soon learn to put together their own molecules. They would come up with some configuration and show it to their dad and ask what it was and he would say oh that’s formaldehyde or something else. They had a great time with that. Because of Willem Alida put the periodic table of elements to music and they would sit in the back of the car and sing the periodic table. Abraham received a cup with the periodic table of elements on it at some point.
Willem has a wonderful sense of humor. Some of his jokes were corny, of course. Dad jokes, but many were very intelligent. Especially the play on words and the use of new made up words.
As most men, his main indoor chore has always been to take the garbage to the dump. So very faithfully every Thursday and Saturday he would gather up the garbage from its many locations and take it to the dump.
Meanwhile, I would go to the dump reuse centre and bring home lots of stuff most of which was quite handy and some of which went back.
Willem never cared much about appearances. He didn’t mind if they were rips in his clothes or paint on it if it was working about the house and going to town. He would always wear a suit to church and the temple.
A tie was never a welcome article of clothing to him. He would not always button the top button, but put the tie up to cover it.
Williams, observance of the Commandments of God has been amazing. Every night he would by his bed to pray and every morning. And every day he would open the scriptures and read a chapter. When the children were young, that didn’t go over so well with the kids and he wouldn’t be very patient about it, but since he stopped going to work, he has always read his scriptures every day on his computer.
He is also a man of incredible integrity. He would never allow any copyright infringement. He would never allow any salt hoods. He would never cheat on anything no matter what the cost was, he always paid an honest full tithing. He also would double his fast offering from time to time and pay a generous fast offering. Blessings always followed. He has had many callings at church, the most common of which has been clerk. Because of his integrity, he would never breathe the word of anything he knows about other people‘s timing. He would never reveal a secret. Paragraph
Alida has learned integrity from him. She would never lie or do anything that would cause any problem to other people. She is always told the truth.
Willem is a good driver. I trust his driving completely. He pays good attention to the road and obey the signs. I feel comfortable sleeping when he’s driving.
However, I am still a backseat driver, which of course I call a parallel driver since I’m not in the backseat.
When music is on the radio whether it is in the house or the car, it commands all of his attention. So then it is not a great time to be driving. But he listens to classical music on his way when he drives alone and his driving is very good. He doesn’t have accidents. The only accident he ever had was when I was making him frazzled by having him turn and go down every little street to George and Bay in Wasaga Beach. A black truck that was pretty well invisible T-bones us.
He did hear the deer ones. He thought they had stopped moving and we’re not going to move, but when he started up again, they started up and he hit the deer. Both of those instances meant we had to get a new car.
I of course, also had an accident in Napoleon Ohio when I was bringing a huge carload of furniture back from my parents house. Someone changed lanes into me and I didn’t react.
Willem has always been a perfect husband. I decided when I married him that in order to have a perfect marriage, I would not be able to find Fall with him. So I decided that he was perfect in any information of the contrary must be false. I’m sorry to have to admit that I was not faithful to that. Many times when we would be working together outside is analytical mind and my mechanical mind did not gel.
I could see what was the next item need needed for any job whether it be a hammer or screwdriver or whatever and be ready to hand it to him. He however, was not able to see those things. He has been a more studious person where if he wanted to know how to do something, he would look it up and study it well and learn it and then he would do it. But he wouldn’t be able to deviate from that.
It’s wonderful to be able to pray with him. We are in sync spiritually. It’s nice to be able to discuss the gospel together because he understands it the way I do.
He has had a few favourite spiritual books. One was life everlasting. In it are many accounts of the afterlife from profits who have died and come back And been able to share their stories. When I am uncertain about something like whether or not we should drive to the temple in whatever weather we’re having, we have always been able to receive the same answers from heavenly father. He thinks I am more spiritual than him, but he’s more spiritual than me.
He is always willing to give a blessing. He holds the milk has decreased, which is the same priesthood as Mount hell and Jesus Christ Town. He has given me many blessings in my life to help me with pain or to comfort me in times of emotional struggle. Paragraph Willem is quite a scripture. He has titles for chapters of the book of Mormon according to the contents of the book. Paragraph Willem grew up playing scrabble with his mother and father. Whenever he goes to Holland, they use the Dutch dictionary and play Scrabble in Dutch. Even though English is his second language. Parenthesis, he learned Latin Greek Dutch English and German and French in high school.) Paragraph new paragraph
He plays quite the game of Scrabble. He is a master of putting down one block one letter and getting 30 points. He leaves me in the clouds of dust.
He also plays chess. He plays it with the children as they grew up and now with the grandchildren.
When the children were little when his four children would come over every second weekend, they would play a lot of Parchisi Every weekend
Willem is a great swimmer. He swam in the north Sea. I should say the cold north sea when he grew up. They were never far from the ocean in Holland. We used to have a swimming pool at the apartment in Ottawa. We love that pool and would go down there frequently. It was great to have a swim. The children learned to swim quickly, too. Willem would always come and swim laps. He’s never been much on just treading water in one place. He would much rather swim long laps. We would swim laps in serenity deity Pond, but every year the silk from the stream would fill it up further and the water level above the silk would get lower. So when it was no more than a foot and a half deep, we stopped using that icy Stream.
When Jennifer Ostrander was over one day for a week with her children, she and I looked at the almost unuseable lowland and decided to have a Pond. She helped me map it out and decide where would be the best place. Willem went along with it. We hired Tackaberry for $100 to bring the digger and $100 an hour to dig. It cost us $1000 to have a 35 foot wide pond that was 135 feet long dug. We had him back again to take all of the leftover material and spread it out to be a road. The base of the wetland is pit run gravel, so it made for a great on. Filled up with water by itself and has many springs in the bottom. We see the springs whenever there’s ice on the top andit’s thin enough. The ice melts in those spots and farms lines spanning out from those 15 or more springs underneath.
Willem would swim no matter how cold it was up until October. Eventually, however, he stopped swimming in the cold water. He didn’t wanna have a heart attack.
He is the most amazing person. He is always helpful. He doesn’t mind doing the tasks. I ask him to do.
He loves attending the temple. He enjoys staying for as many sessions as possible.
He spends a lot of time on his computer working on genealogy. He doesn’t like to use the sources that have already been indexed, but he likes to go to the original documents and read them for himself and make sure that he has the accurate information, just in case it was not legible enough, and someone misspelled it in indexing it. Paragraph he doesn’t mind the cost of frequently travelling to the temple. He agrees that it is the best use of our money.
He loves music, especially classical music. I don’t think he has much use for the rest of it. He was pleased to discover that he will be able to play music in the millennium. That we will still be able to work on our talent and that there will be many church meetings and gatherings where music would be important.
He has arthritis in a few fingers. It hurts when he plays for very long. While he used to practice every night after work for hours, which filled the home with music in the rafters, he can no longer do that.
I have filmed him practising the piano many times. I had to do a lot of it when he didn’t know, because he wouldn’t like it. So I always titled it practicing, to make allowance for any mistakes he made.
I also filmed performances. He did in front of friends in our home gatherings. And once when he performed in Arden and again in Ottawa.
Those are all on YouTube and tagged with Willem piano or in a playlist called Willem piano. Paragraph
In his lifetime he has composed several pieces. He composed a group of 10 waltzes. I think it was 10 I really like them.
When he was married to Francis he composed his variations. It’s a group of 16 pieces preceded by a work by Robert Burns. I think. William William Byrne
He also composed his valentines when he was married to me and which he dedicated to me. What a compliment. Like his variations, it’s about 20 minutes long. There are many pieces in it some of which were so difficult that he had to practice and practice Each each part before he could record it and then put them together.
He had an MP4 file on his computer which he sent to another great pianist in Ottawa.
He is now working on a coral arrangement. He does all this on the computer. It’s wonderful for him because in spite of not being able to use his fingers as much, he can still compose and hear it. It contains an orchestra of instruments and words based on scriptures in several languages.
Although he doesn’t have perfect pitch, he has perfect relative pitch. So he can tell if a violin or guitar is tuned properly and can tune it. He can also pick up an instrument and play it.
He has an autoharp called a Q cord. It is very simple for him to play, as you push a button to press all of one cord strings.
It’s battery powered so he is able to take it to the Tipi and play it.
He loves games he is a Mensa candidate or member or type of mind.
He loves chess. When he was young, he would play chess against the locals in Holland. He once heard someone say they should play against that little boy if they thought they were good enough.
He also loves bridge. Whenever he would find a newspaper, he would always locate the bridge game and cover up the other hands and play.
Now he plays on the computer, mostly watching the chest Masters as they play and stop the video to decide his next note I mean his next play. He loves doing that.
He also plays solitaire, but not as often
Because of the amount of Spanish-speaking people that attended the Toronto Temple temple, he decided he wanted to learn Spanish. Paragraph so for the past five years he has spent an hour a day Learning Spanish on the computer. He has several favourite videos that he watches. They expound the uses of many different parts of the language. Comparing when to use this or that.
He is simultaneously keeping a dictionary that he is continually adding to on his computer. Paragraph he is able to understand Spanish quite well and likely able to read it. But he does not get practice speaking it except on the computer a bit. So he is not able to carry on a conversation, although he would be able to know what to say, but does not have the proper accent yet.
When he was working, he learned French for work. He never learned it to the extent that he is learning Spanish.
He has played the piano in church almost since he was baptized in 1976. He has played the organ in Ottawa, but always had trouble with the pedals, although he didn’t make mistakes.
For many years, he played the piano in primary. All the time while our children were growing up and attending primary which span many years.
He only plays in sacrament now. But they really have a hard time when he’s not there. The church has found new music and is adding it to the Kim book. Instead of adding the numbers in order they have started at 1000 and are adding them in that way.
He learns them quickly and plays them as well. Our music director is very good at keeping up with the new music and adding it to the new book that she has compiled. I try a number of those books on the right edge of the page whenever possible.
Over the years, Willem has learned a lot about nature. He enjoys going for walks. He doesn’t have the same interest as I do, and doesn’t want to stay there Excessively long, but he is happy to go for a walk. Even long walks.
I used to tell him the names of all the flowers and plants and then quiz him. His responses were yellow flower number one yellow flower number two yellow flower, number three, purple flower number one, etc.
He gives me the appropriate amount of admiration for my ability to build Grass Hut out of the natural materials. He enjoys sitting in the Tipi‘s for short amounts of time.
He is interested in the wildlife, as well. He doesn’t, however encourage the deer. I do.
Over the past 10 or more years ever since I built with a lot of help from him, the raised garden beds. They are Hugo culture beds so made of layers of sticks and logs, leaves, manure, cardboard, and repeated, except for the sticks.
While I would go buy a load of manure as often as the trailer was empty, which sometimes was every day, he would spend hours and hours unloading the trailer into wheelbarrows, and then into the beds.
Whether it was leaves, manure, sticks, and logs, or whatever I had found, he would always help cut it around and unload it for me.
In the later years, he has had to use energy drinks to have the energy to do this.
When Scarlet and Beau came back to Canada 10 years ago or 11, She built garden beds with Hugo culture on the other side of the valley. I had just have the try with Trail and milk created, and had garden beds along it, so I didn’t see the value in the Hugo culture beds.
Now, however, I see great value in them. Willem has taken over the ones on the other side of the valley and has put up netting above them Using 2 x 4 structures, quite a lot of effort and energy to do all of this.
He successfully grows artichokes and potatoes and many other kinds of vegetables. This year we gave the garden to Anna, so she has all 50 garden beds and has added maybe 15 more.
Daniel made more beds all along the side of the hill in the valley. He also lined it with a row of patio stones, so there’s a pathway.
With such a lot of produce coming in, Willem has taken to dehydrating paragraph
Our wetland produces an inordinate amount of fiddleheads from the ostrich ferns. In spite of their appearance at the beginning and all through Black fly season, he diligently goes down and harvest, the fiddle heads. He’s very careful to always leave three uncut fiddle heads to grow into the tall ferns to maintain the plants.
When our fiddlehead pond was done, they altered the Area enough that the fiddle heads disappeared for a few years. However, they came up through the new soil that was on top of them.
There are also a lot of fiddle heads in the alders along the stream. They are harder to harvest.
So while I would freeze any produce, whether it be peas or beans or fiddle heads, Willem dehydrates them. He is often watching YouTube videos about how to dehydrate artichokes or potatoes or any number of other vegetables.
In the fortress, there were too long, long raised beds, built by the neighbours years ago for the former owners.
Overtime, they have become quite useless. They were full of sand and didn’t produce much. But Willem has rebuilt them and added lots of manure so they are now quite productive.
He has also discovered Scarlett runner beans with the red flowers. They are a great harvest crop in those beds now.
He tries to save seeds to replant them the next year. We have only two pods from last year, however.
Willis’s diet is different than mine. He eats yoghurt with granola in it often harvest crunch cereal in it.
He also likes bread. He usually has peanut butter on bread with coconut oil. It used to be margarine, but we found a really good source of coconut oil at FreshCo where a tin is Usually about three or four dollars.
He read the China years ago and became a vegetarian. I always bought frozen vegetables so we would have a stirfry of frozen vegetables. When Ben married task from Pakistan, actually from Saudi Arabia, but with Pakistani heritage, I started cooking with Coriander, cumin, and hot red pepper flakes.
He has enjoyed those.
His mom who is Dutch, but from Indonesia, and quite an Indonesian cook, uses sand ball, which is a small jar of extremely hot sauce. He will use that sometimes, but doesn’t like quite as much heat as she does.
Willem tried to make an underground cold storage container. He used a tub surround in the hillside under which were two barrels. It covered them with sand and dug the barrels into the ground. I think the system leaked and the potatoes froze in there.
He would love to make another cold storage. We have talked about making one in the tall hill. I suggested having a backhoe hammer a culvert into the side of the hill and then dig it out.
He has always loved Caves. He has said he would love to live in a cave. I don’t think he’s really serious about full-time living in the cave just like I’m not serious about full-time living in a Grass Hut, but he really is intrigued by Caves.
Willem has a different circadian rhythm than me. He loves being up late at night, till 130. He also sleeps until 10. I have never tried to change that routine of his. It was difficult for him when he went to work and had to be out of the house at 7:30 for his long commute to Ottawa and back. He was generally gone 12 hours a day.
Whenever possible, he would have a nap in the middle of the day. When he can’t nap, he sometimes falls asleep sitting up.
Whenever we go to the temple, I drive in the morning so that he can sleep since he is not yet had his eight hours if we get up and leave Early. 6 o’clock up time and 630 leaving time seems to work pretty well for us.
We heat with wood so Willem has always had. Gerry Blair delivered 10 cords of wood. Face cords we didn’t use all 10 cords. Seven cards is probably enough. Especially now that we have electric heaters to complement the wood stove.
We have the wood delivered in the late summer and Willem spends every moment that he’s not doing his other things stacking wood. It puts my back out if I do wood, so Willem has always done it. For years, he would have the boys out there helping.
He always make sure to stack it with the bark side up. For years there were rows of stack wood in the driveway. But when we had the decks added 10 years ago, he also asked for a woodshed. So there is now a long woodshed divided in half on the deck outside of the living room. A few years ago, we had a roof put on between the house and over the woodshed. This allows him to go out and get wood without getting into the snow.
I am not able to bring in wood very often. But if the wood is high up, and not too big, I am able to move it.
We use a mixture of green and dry wood. Of course, not too green, but wood that’s over a year old and wood that isn’t. It seems to burn the best.
When I came home from my mother’s with a lot of very tall storage bins worth of books, Ben gave me Garbage storage bins to keep the books in outside. I brought the books inside instead, and we use those tall bins for bark. Whenever the wood is stacked and moved from the driveway, lots of bark remains on the ground. So some of it goes to the Tipi in the teacup trail garden, And the rest goes into those great big bins on the deck for lighting the fire.
Willem has always had a bit of trouble with my ideas of things I would like to do. One day as we were driving I suggested I would like to build an outhouse on the other side of the valley. He didn’t answer. So I asked him. What are your reactions when I come up with a new idea. It took him no time to respond, “I figure I have several choices. One. Space space, express general interest, but remain noncommittal
Two. Space space go along with it until major expenditures are required.
Three developmentally protest. I think there’s a fourth one which I forget, but I noticed that in none of his list was agree with it.
One idea that he definitely does not agree with is the idea of a bridge to the top of deer Meadow. It would be about 50 feet long And the highest part would be 14 feet high. Developmentally protest to that idea.
If I pursue one of these ideas, his mood changes and he closes down and doesn’t wanna talk and doesn’t want to think about it. You care about he doesn’t want to think about it.
He has always protested to the idea of cats or dogs. We did have a dog named Chucky, which was given to us from a friend of Peter Morgan, a fellow composer friend of Willem. He took to Chucky. He was a grown dog and easy enough to Let outside for walks. I never walked them except when I would go for a walk on the property he would always come along. Our next dog was Jesse at Bernie’s Mountain dog. He was an incredibly loving big dog. If I had to have a dog, that’s the kind I would like. I always wanted big dogs because you could pet them without bending down.
Jesse had been changed trained before we got him and we were still in Smith Falls for a month before we moved while we have the dog, so I took him for walks around the block and he would untangle himself when he went around In Tree. Paragraph paragraph
When Daniel befriended Mongo and miaow kiss, Willem didn’t like it. He also didn’t like it that I would lean out the door laying on the deck and in the house trying to be able to pet the new cats. He still doesn’t like them specially because there are four of them in the house, but he is kind to them.
He renamed Scarlett‘s cat when she moved to Germany she left four cats with us. Neither of us wanted them, but somehow we had them. A renamed one for Cote according to its potential. He also renamed the second one eggroll according to its potential.
Willem is always had a lot of fun with the English language. He uses contractions all by themselves. When I would say is that you? He would respond. It’s paragraph a bookmark has always been called a page. Remember paper. I can’t remember the others. What are the other words you’ve made up from? He can’t remember either.
Willem has always been in great health. He wrote a bicycle while he was growing up and living in Holland. When we lived in Ottawa, he would ride his bike to work and back every day. Sometimes he would even walk to work.
When we finally moved and he had to commute, he would park a good distance away from work and have to walk 15 minutes from his car and then go move it every two hours or three hours whatever it was allowed in Ottawa. So we always walked for about 45 minutes a day no that’s wrong about an hour.
When we move to the country, he would go for long walks with me every day or as long as every time I asked.
He has had high blood blood pressure for many years. He’s on medication and so it’s fine.
Possibly because of his love of chocolate bars, he has always been played with gout. He used to use gout medication and still does if he ever has that problem. It turned out the side effect of one of his pills was gout. I think concentrate is the Medication. He takes for gout when he has a flareup. He has always had itchy skin. It only itches when he goes to bed. But it has plugged him for years. He has many different medical products he uses for that.
He also had that jumpy leg syndrome, which would also bother him when he tried to sleep. If I have my leg against his, he will get it again. So I’m trying to be very careful not to touch him when he’s asleep. Paragraph
I have often called Will in my hot and cold man. He is quite content to walk to the car barefoot. In the snow. In least later years, he has needed a hat and scarf and mitt much more often. He still drives barefoot and puts his socks and shoes on when he arrives at the destination.
At one time Willem had a beard. That was for many many years. It was much easier than shaving and in the winter being outside shovelling the snow and going for walks, his face was warm. Of course, he would come in with ice on his beard sometimes and definitely on his moustache when we would go for walks in the cold.
Years ago, Willem had car trouble and had to walk a very long way to get home. I’m not sure why we didn’t call someone to give them a ride. I think there must’ve been a reason that I couldn’t come and get them. We may have had only one car and it may not have worked. I don’t remember.
During that long walk, his hip started to hurt. His hip has given him a bit of trouble ever since, but only after a long time of sitting in the car or lots of walking. Now, and then he would have that trouble sitting in his chair.
But he has never had that problems since you gave up sugar. He doesn’t have any trouble with his knees or the rest of his body.
In spite of having very few medical problems, he takes a lot of medication. He’s on cholesterol medication and high blood pressure pills, but I don’t remember what else.
Luanne loves his four children dearly. Those are the children that he had with Francis. Because he is so reticent to reach out and talk to people, always having to figure out what he wants to say in depth before he says it, he doesn’t own them or contact them nearly as much as I think he would like to.
He loves visiting with them. He has been to Holland with Erin to visit his mom in Flagan Holland
He is also been with Nick to go visit Oma Lily. He really enjoyed those visits. And the time he could spend with his kids.
He loves visiting with Tisch and her husband Graham.
We drive past on the way to church and back so whenever we have seen them it is because we have stopped by on a Sunday. Tisch doesn’t really like socializing too much and Kayla is quite an agoraphobic. We drive past on the way to church and back so whenever we have seen them it is because we have stopped by on a Sunday. Tisch doesn’t really like socializing too much and Kayla is quite an agoraphobic, so we only drop in a few times a year now if that. All four children are very good at calling him for Father’s Day, his birthday and Christmas.
Willem and I served a mission at the Thomases Monson young women’s camp north of Peterborough Ontario. He was very happy to go and sir. It was quite a lot of manual labor. As we were the maintenance people. He was exhausted by the end of the day and often had to use energy drinks, but he worked alongside the senior brother and did whatever was required. Our mission was cut short by family problems so we only stayed four or five months.
He was willing to go home and babysit grandchildren and let me stay at the camp. Sometimes I stayed home and he stayed at the camp. We had a a mobile home there that we stayed in.
We didn’t go on a full-time mission because Abraham was sick for many years. But that was a short mission and it was close to home so we were able to do that. Paragraph he loved being a temple worker. We had to wait until we didn’t have children at home but then we were temple workers in Palmyra New York at the Palmyra Temple. We served their faithfully every two weeks for three years. Because we were cross boundary, and out of our own temple district, the time came when 17 couples were released from working in Palmyra. After that we served in Toronto For many years until Covid when we were still active as temple workers, but the temple was closed. When the temple reopened, they selectively called back, temp workers a few at a time. We were never called back. When we were on our mission, there was an opening where we could’ve served on Fridays, But we didn’t feel we should while we were on our mission since we also attended the temple every Thursday.
When we were married in the Washington DC temple, we spent our honeymoon attending the temple every day, sitting beside each other in the centre of the endowment room, and Spending all the days doing many kinds of temple work. There was a waterfall that landed in the basement of the temple. We would often sit at the bottom of the waterfall together. It was a perfect honeymoon.
We attended Washington every month as we could until I started having children and being pregnant or nursing. Lori Nichols Davies would babysit for us while we would go down for the week. It was a wonderful blessing to us.
Willem is a scientist. He received a PhD in inorganic chemistry. Physical chemistry. Period.
That has been a handy bit of information that he has had all of our lives. We could always ask him what chemical to use for some result. Whether it was unclogging a drain or removing something a stain of some sort, he has always been able to tell us what would be the best Chemical solution.
My mother gave me a little plastic box with balls and sticks. They were very small. Some of the balls were black and some were white. The black represented carbon and the black and the white was something else. Maybe there were other things as well.
So Willem would put together molecules and show the children. The children soon learn to put together their own molecules. They would come up with some configuration and show it to their dad and ask what it was and he would say oh that’s formaldehyde or something else. They had a great time with that. Because of Willem Alida put the periodic table of elements to music and they would sit in the back of the car and sing the periodic table. Abraham received a cup with the periodic table of elements on it at some point.
Willem has a wonderful sense of humor. Some of his jokes were corny, of course. Dad jokes, but many were very intelligent. Especially the play on words and the use of new made up words.
As most men, his main indoor chore has always been to take the garbage to the dump. So very faithfully every Thursday and Saturday he would gather up the garbage from its many locations and take it to the dump.
Meanwhile, I would go to the dump reuse centre and bring home lots of stuff most of which was quite handy and some of which went back.
Willem never cared much about appearances. He didn’t mind if they were rips in his clothes or paint on it if it was working about the house and going to town. He would always wear a suit to church and the temple.
A tie was never a welcome article of clothing to him. He would not always button the top button, but put the tie up to cover it.
Williams, observance of the Commandments of God has been amazing. Every night he would by his bed to pray and every morning. And every day he would open the scriptures and read a chapter. When the children were young, that didn’t go over so well with the kids and he wouldn’t be very patient about it, but since he stopped going to work, he has always read his scriptures every day on his computer.
He is also a man of incredible integrity. He would never allow any copyright infringement. He would never allow any salt hoods. He would never cheat on anything no matter what the cost was, he always paid an honest full tithing. He also would double his fast offering from time to time and pay a generous fast offering. Blessings always followed. He has had many callings at church, the most common of which has been clerk. Because of his integrity, he would never breathe the word of anything he knows about other people‘s timing. He would never reveal a secret. Paragraph
Alida has learned integrity from him. She would never lie or do anything that would cause any problem to other people. She is always told the truth.
Willem is a good driver. I trust his driving completely. He pays good attention to the road and obey the signs. I feel comfortable sleeping when he’s driving.
However, I am still a backseat driver, which of course I call a parallel driver since I’m not in the backseat.
When music is on the radio whether it is in the house or the car, it commands all of his attention. So then it is not a great time to be driving. But he listens to classical music on his way when he drives alone and his driving is very good. He doesn’t have accidents. The only accident he ever had was when I was making him frazzled by having him turn and go down every little street to George and Bay in Wasaga Beach. A black truck that was pretty well invisible T-bones us.
He did hear the deer ones. He thought they had stopped moving and we’re not going to move, but when he started up again, they started up and he hit the deer. Both of those instances meant we had to get a new car.
I of course, also had an accident in Napoleon Ohio when I was bringing a huge carload of furniture back from my parents house. Someone changed lanes into me and I didn’t react.
Willem has always been a perfect husband. I decided when I married him that in order to have a perfect marriage, I would not be able to find Fall with him. So I decided that he was perfect in any information of the contrary must be false. I’m sorry to have to admit that I was not faithful to that. Many times when we would be working together outside is analytical mind and my mechanical mind did not gel.
I could see what was the next item need needed for any job whether it be a hammer or screwdriver or whatever and be ready to hand it to him. He however, was not able to see those things. He has been a more studious person where if he wanted to know how to do something, he would look it up and study it well and learn it and then he would do it. But he wouldn’t be able to deviate from that.
It’s wonderful to be able to pray with him. We are in sync spiritually. It’s nice to be able to discuss the gospel together because he understands it the way I do.
He has had a few favourite spiritual books. One was life everlasting. In it are many accounts of the afterlife from profits who have died and come back And been able to share their stories. When I am uncertain about something like whether or not we should drive to the temple in whatever weather we’re having, we have always been able to receive the same answers from heavenly father. He thinks I am more spiritual than him, but he’s more spiritual than me.
He is always willing to give a blessing. He holds the milk has decreased, which is the same priesthood as Mount hell and Jesus Christ Town. He has given me many blessings in my life to help me with pain or to comfort me in times of emotional struggle. Paragraph Willem is quite a scripture. He has titles for chapters of the book of Mormon according to the contents of the book. Paragraph Willem grew up playing scrabble with his mother and father. Whenever he goes to Holland, they use the Dutch dictionary and play Scrabble in Dutch. Even though English is his second language. Parenthesis, he learned Latin Greek Dutch English and German and French in high school.) Paragraph new paragraph
He plays quite the game of Scrabble. He is a master of putting down one block one letter and getting 30 points. He leaves me in the clouds of dust.
He also plays chess. He plays it with the children as they grew up and now with the grandchildren.
When the children were little when his four children would come over every second weekend, they would play a lot of Parchisi Every weekend
Willem is a great swimmer. He swam in the north Sea. I should say the cold north sea when he grew up. They were never far from the ocean in Holland. We used to have a swimming pool at the apartment in Ottawa. We love that pool and would go down there frequently. It was great to have a swim. The children learned to swim quickly, too. Willem would always come and swim laps. He’s never been much on just treading water in one place. He would much rather swim long laps. We would swim laps in serenity deity Pond, but every year the silk from the stream would fill it up further and the water level above the silk would get lower. So when it was no more than a foot and a half deep, we stopped using that icy Stream.
When Jennifer Ostrander was over one day for a week with her children, she and I looked at the almost unuseable lowland and decided to have a Pond. She helped me map it out and decide where would be the best place. Willem went along with it. We hired Tackaberry for $100 to bring the digger and $100 an hour to dig. It cost us $1000 to have a 35 foot wide pond that was 135 feet long dug. We had him back again to take all of the leftover material and spread it out to be a road. The base of the wetland is pit run gravel, so it made for a great on. Filled up with water by itself and has many springs in the bottom. We see the springs whenever there’s ice on the top andit’s thin enough. The ice melts in those spots and farms lines spanning out from those 15 or more springs underneath.
Willem would swim no matter how cold it was up until October. Eventually, however, he stopped swimming in the cold water. He didn’t wanna have a heart attack.