A few weeks ago our good friends James and Erica Peterson came down to Utah for their nephew’s baby blessing. We were able to meet up with them at Iggy’s in SLC for dinner. Our waiter was really slow and overwhelmed, but it wan’t a problem for us. It gave us lots of time to chat and catch up. And since he felt bad about the slow service, gave us all free dessert. It was great to be able to see them.
Happy March 23rd to our Lovely Blog Readers! Kathryn here, coming out of Blogging MIA to update you all on our hillarious weekend. First, a background story: I love the website Pinterest. 2 Christmases ago, my sisters-in-law Marta & Emily explained that there was most likely a gap in my soul because I hadn’t discovered Pinterest Feaver. Later that night, I signed up for an account and have been hooked ever since! For those of you who don’t know about all things Pinteresting, the website is basically a digital photo album where the photos are links to websites that teach you how to make that DIY (Do It Yourself) craft or make that copycat recipe from your favorite restaurant. In addition to having your own ideas saved, Pinterest allows you to share ideas with your friends. That is where todays blog post originates: from a funny idea Larry and I saw on my darling sis-in-law’s profile board “For Husband”. Emily and Ben are Californians and rightly categorized Utah’s weather with the following pie chart: (be sure to notice the smallest sliver)
When I saw that a few weeks ago Larry and I couldn’t stop laughing! We hoped that this year, that pie chart would be more of a joke than reality…. well keep dreaming! Because we couldn’t have said it better than the chart when we woke up this morning (MARCH 23rd) to THIS…
Booo! So much for our t-shirts and blooming tulips. Crazy weather, but at least we had the warning from the Bemilys. Thanks guys! At least hot chocolate is in-season again. Toodles!
Say what!? Yep, Kathryn and I adopted 9 teenage kids for the weekend for our Stake Youth Conference. The Youth Conference this year was located at the Heber Valley girls camp. Here is our family:
Back row: Larry, Brandon, Chris, Sam, Camille, Kathryn Front row: Rex, Michael, Tieja, Amanda, Griffin
(Sorry the picture is a little blurry. The hand taking the picture wasn’t the steadiest it seems.)
The theme was SMILE: spiritually-minded is life eternal from 2 Nephi 9:39. We had some great firesides and morning-sides. One of the things I shared with our kids that I felt tied in well with the SMILE theme was the quote
Thoughts lead to feelings
Feelings lead to actions
Actions lead to habits
Habits determine character
Character determines eternal life
Like it says in Proverbs 23:7 “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he…” Who you are really does all start with your thoughts, so smile!
Another highlight as far as the instructional part of Youth Conference goes came from Rachael Tomco, an anatomy professor at BYU who is in our stake. She gave an incredible lesson on how our bodies are temples and one of God’s most wonderful creations. Nothing that man makes can even compare with the wonder and splendor of the body. She had some really cool visual aids too, including
An artificial hip joint
A pacemaker
A lung from a 103 year old lady and one from a smoker who died at 40 some years old
A heart that had undergone double bypass surgery
A brain
A spinal cord
It was so cool to see all these amazing parts of our body. Just a really cool experience.
A large part of the youth conference was activity based. Being winter up in the mountains a lot of it involved playing in the snow naturally. The weather has been quite warm lately, but there was still a good amount of snow up there. In the day when the sun was out, it was warm enough to be in short sleeves. When the sun was not shining brightly, it could be quite chilly.
One of the activities was to make snow forts. This one was from our group as was by far the best.
We also worked on a humanitarian aid project making hats. It was a lot of fun to do. Maybe Kathryn and I will start making these while watching tv. Who knows.
We also had a lot of fun during family time. I took this cool panorama shot of the inside of our Yurt while we were playing the game “Signs.” The Yurt is a circular cabin with bunk beds around the wall. When you where “it” during the game, it felt like you where on trial being judged the way the people where sitting up high above you on all sides. Kathryn and I made a quadruple batch of muddy buddies that where a huge hit too.
The Yurt
All too soon, Saturday afternoon came and it was time to go home. We had an amazing time at Youth Conference and loved our family. They were fantastic. We look forward to seeing them around at other stake activities in the future.
Back row: Sam, Michael, Larry, Kathryn, Amanda, Brandon, Chris. Front row: Rex, Tieja, Camille. Not pictured: Griffin
Hello family and friends. This is our first post on our new site hosted by us, on our Raspberry Pi computer. Why host our own site? There are several reasons, some of them are listed below.
It’s a fun and challenging project.
I’ve learned a ton about Linux and the web
Google has nothing to do with this site
We can control who has access to what
It’s cool
So, those are just some of the few reasons why. We’ll see how this goes. Hopefully it’s not too slow load and can work well. Time will tell.
This is the little computer the site is running on.