Getting Ready for Conference

We are excited for Conference at our house. We cleaned up to make a nice environment, and I just printed activity pages for the kids. We look forward to a wonderful 2 days. We love at our house participating Saturday and Sunday and enjoying the spiritual feast. My brother always teases me that the messages are printed in the Ensign (pretending like I don't know that.) Still, there is nothing quite like watching all 8 (or 10, depending on gender) hours in one weekend. (Speaking of which, I LOVED the broadcast last week. It was a great experience for me to be reminded of many wonderful and important things.)

For more information, see http://lds.org/church/events/all-members-invited-to-participate-in-october-general-conference?lang=eng

I hope you all love conference! I look forward to the "post-game show" of reading everyone's favorite parts on blogs. That's always fun.

She Found It!

Simon Says

I'm in the office right now while Amy is leading a game of Simon Says. After a few simple commands, this is what I heard:
Amy: Simon saaays... do a somersault
Bonnie: Oh boy, I better take the iPod off!
(Bonnie did the somersault)

Amy: Simon saaaays... stand on one foot... Whoa, Simon fell down.

This may be one of those moments where your own kids are cuter to you than is naturally reasonable, but I was amused. Amy's delightful to me.

Family Vacation

We decided to go on a quick family vacation this last weekend. We left Thursday night and headed out toward Roosevelt. We stayed that night at this B&B that Bonnie found. It turned out much more homey than we expected. It is simply a home to empty-nesters who converted a once downstairs garage converted into a nice Bed/Bath room. It was a delightful experience. The wife has a huge garden, various animals from sheep to lizards to a peacock, a jovial spirit, and yummy breakfast skills.

Then off to the Vernal Temple. Grammy and Bonnie took turns participating in Initiatories while Papa and I went through an Endowment session.

From there we drove down to our Motel in Blanding. The girls were AMAZING on this whole trip. They were so good in the car! No movies, just family time. It was great. And of course, we played 'skunk'* (which I sheepishly learned was a family road trip tradition - who knew?!) During this leg of the trip we drove through a decent thunderstorm.

(We went through Colorado a bit heading South)

When we got to the motel, sleeping was in high order. In the middle of the night, Amy threw up. We were able to get things cleaned up pretty fast and she seemed fine. We were grateful when she woke up the next day as happy as could be. (No pictures of that event, sorry to disappoint.)

Once we got going the next morning, we headed to the Monticello Temple. To our surprise, there was snow on the road! This time Papa and I took turns participating in Initiatories while Grammy and Bonnie went through an Endowment session.

Shortly after we started home. On the way we stopped at Wilson's Arch. I was so impressed with Amy. She was saying how scared she was a lot of the time, yet she still continued on. I held her sometimes, but she really did a great job at conquering her fear.

(This Lizard let me get pretty close. I was surprised.)

We got home, got stuff in the house, and went straight to bed... except for Bonnie who decided she just wanted to put everything away! So she completely unpacked us from our trip before going to bed. What an incredible woman! I love you Bont! Thanks for planning a great, fun family road trip!


* Skunk is evidently also called Pig. We play it with two dice and slightly different rules. We also use Skittles. If you are interested in more info, let us know, but I won't belabor the point here.

Dinosaur Names

  We went on a road trip this weekend (we'll blog about that soon), but before I forget, I wanted to share one anecdote from the trip. Grammy bought two little stuffed dinosaurs from the dollar store, one for Amy and one for Noel. Bonnie asked Amy what her dino's name was.
Amy: "Ummmm, Kinky!"
Bonnie: "Oh, well that's a little awkward." (or something like that)

  Amy has come up with a lot of random names for things, but usually they aren't actual words, let alone risque words! We'll hope she just forgets that name and makes up a new one, which is also pretty common practice.

Calling Change

So much has happened in the last while that we've missed blogging about. At the moment, I'm not going to try to catch up on things. That would be fun for me to do some other time.

Quickly though, I wanted to mention that on September 4th, I was released from having the best calling in the church. Yes, I'm sad about it... but at the same time I never thought I'd get to do it, so I'm very grateful for the 6 months I got. My new calling? Sr. Primary Chorister! So now instead of playing the Piano, I'm leading the kids in the music! My chorister was called to be in a BYU stake R.S. Presidency and I was called to fill her place. Wow. I'm a bit stunned.

I've done it twice now (the last two Sundays) and it's fun, but boy do I feel like I have a lot to learn. I'm interacting with 8-11 year olds. Everything about me from the age of 5 to 19 (at least) can be summed up in one word: awkward. I was very good at being and creating awkward all around me. Now I get to teach music to these great kids. I certainly feel a bit humbled, yet I like it too. I enjoy being in front of people teaching and, since it's kids, they tend to be a little more forgiving (and sometimes even like... I hope) some of my antics.

Here's for an exciting future!