Sunday Thoughts

I LOVE PRIMARY! The doctrine is taught so simply and the songs are so powerful, they make me cry every.single.week. This month the kids are learning the song "He Sent His Son" which is one I learned in primary several years ago and really, really love. As we were singing I realized that this song goes beautifully with this month's visiting teaching message about the Savior. I decided to type of the words to the song to give as part of the message when I go this afternoon. I love it how everything fits so nicely together and how uplifted I feel because of it.

P.S. In Sacrament Meeting today D.H. (a youth who used to be in our ward) played a powerful arrangement of We'll Bring The World His Truth (one of my very favorite primary songs) and As Sisters In Zion; I was a blubbering mess by the end of it.

Sunday Thoughts

I LOVE Primary!!

Apparently primary is the place I need to be at church in order to feel the Spirit most strongly. Even though I like being in Relief Society too, I really love the more active, energetic feeling of being in primary and I especially love the music. Not being able to sing well is one of my greatest sorrows in life, but in primary I belt out the songs and am often moved to tears while doing so (and not just because my voice is cracking and making unexpected changes from alto to soprano). 

We have a fantastic music leader who is able to teach the kids the words to the songs and the meaning behind them. Somehow she is able to hold the attention of a room packed with squirmy kids and adults who end up doing exactly what she wants them to do. We sang so loudly today that I'm sure the sisters in Relief Society could hear us in their room (I always loved it when I could hear the primary kids singing, it was like a soundtrack to the lesson we were having).

I love the truthfulness of the doctrine we sing in primary and feel like it gets to the heart of the gospel. I have many favorite songs but I lose it every time we sing "We'll Bring The World His Truth" especially during the chorus. Our music leader always has the kids stand up as the kids sing...

We are as the army of Helaman.
We have been taught in our youth.
And we will be the Lord’s missionaries
To bring the world his truth.

Seeing the room full of kids standing and singing these words makes me picture them as future missionaries and makes everything we do in primary seem vital. It's the best place to be!

Sunday Thoughts

Remember earlier this year when I was called to be the Advancement Chair for Scouts? I couldn't have been more surprised or clueless about a calling and I haven't had to do much thus far, so it has remained a big question mark in my life.

When I was called Brother Johnston said they wanted a woman because we are more organized and detail oriented than men, and they wanted this woman who had a son in the scouting program so there would be an emotional investment. It didn't take long for me to feel that emotional investment or to see how desperately things needed to be organized. Still, my ignorance of scouting has made me feel disconnected and somewhat panicked about what I am supposed to be doing (there really hasn't been any training thus far). But last month at our 8:00am Key Scouters Meeting (what the?!) I was in a room full of men with only one other woman who is the newly called Committee Chair. She just finished serving as the Young Women's President for the last 6 years and was in the Relief Society Presidency before that, she is the mother of 7 kids and is an inspiration to me. She led this Key Scouters meeting in such an efficient and spiritual way that I ended up being moved to tears twice and actually felt excited about scouting!

Fast forward to this morning for my 2nd ever Key Scouters meeting and 1st ever Board of Review. I was feeling like a fish out of water again and wasn't happy about it, but I felt the Spirit in our meeting and once again saw the importance of what Scouting is about (turning boys into good men through God), so I was grateful. Then an hour and a half later we had our 1st Board of Review (it was her first one too). We met with a 17 year old boy who was up for a rank advancement. We had him talk about the importance of scouting, what he has learned, what he hopes to accomplish and why it is important to him...we were in tears! The spirit was so strong in that room and I felt overwhelmed with gratitude that this boy (and all our boys) get to work with good men to make themselves better and to learn their duty to God and to Country.

I still don't really know what I'm doing, but I'm starting to understand why I'm doing it. It is unexpectedly spiritual and I love that.

Spring Breakalicious--Day 2

We had heard good things about the Coffee Shop at the hotel we were staying at (Little America) so we went there for breakfast. We should have known the prices would be outrageous, yet they still took us by surprise.

Landon suggested we run, but we stuck it out and were very happy with the food. It ended up being $33 for breakfast, which is actually less than IHOP and gave us way more food.

We took advantage of the free Downtown Trax route and caught a train right by our hotel.

This was a fun first-time experience for the kids, and reminded me of riding the Metro in Paris (but different).

We got off at The Temple Square stop so we could go to the Family History Library. I took this picture of Assembly Hall (a building I love) from the corner and was quite pleased. Have I mentioned that I love tulip season?!

We went to the Family History Library for the first time and felt the Spirit immediately. I was choked up before we'd even made it into the 9 minute orientation video room. There are senior missionaries serving all over the place and they are touchingly nice! They gave us pencils and family history sheets.

The kids got right to work on their family trees.

We spent about an hour on the computers looking up various family members and doing some indexing. I still don't understand it very much, but think this outing sparked an interested that needs to be pursued by myself. We also went to the 3rd floor to deliver some candy and socks to a missionary serving from our ward, but he wasn't there. We left the bag with a note on it but were bummed to have missed him.

We walked next door to the Church History Museum and wandered for awhile. There's some amazing stuff in there, but of course it was a touch too warm and the floors seems a little loose to me so I actually felt a little seasick (weird).

By the time we got out of there we were all hungry and at the point of meltdown...Randy accidentally stepped on Whitney's foot as she was pouting herself away from him and ended up falling on her butt. It was quite the seen! As this lovely domestic incident was happening a street person (there are way too many of them downtown) approached me for money for a "bus ticket". I gave him $3 and had him sign a disclosure document about the family issues he'd witnessed, ha.

Of course, we followed up our family friction with a walk around the grounds of the temple. I wasn't feeling very "families can be together forever" but the grounds were beautiful.

Landon was definitely the good child that day!

We finally staggered across the street to Hagermann's for a very tasty lunch and to have our sense of well-being restored.

Of course, Whitney did not like the plain roast beef sandwich she ordered ($6) so she only ate chips, a cookie and soda. Good Hell!

After lunch the sun came out again both literally and figuratively. We went to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to see the movie about Joseph Smith. It was very well done and quite spiritual, so we all came out of there in good form and wandered the temple grounds some more.

Here's my favorite photo of the day!!

Next up was a tour of the Beehive House (can you believe we've never done any of these things before?!).

It was cool to see all that historical furniture and clothing, especially this wedding dress that one of Brigham Young's daughters wore...I was that size never! It was seriously tiny, like a size -1 petite!

Afterward we admired the flowers and Whitney pointed out that they appeared to be on steroids.

Upon walking across the street back to City Creek we were passed by Jeffrey R. Holland! I was excited just to have him walk by, but when he was stopped by some people to shake hands we had Landon run over too.

This is the hand that shook the hand of an apostle!! Very cool!

After checking out a few of the shops we caught Trax again and decided to ride it around the rest of the loop to see the city.

This was pretty cool until it stopped in a ghetto-ish part of town and announced it was the "end of the line!" Yikes! We thought perhaps we'd made a huge mistake until I found an employee who informed us we could get back on and it would back the other way in a few minutes...phew! I had visions of trekking across town all night.

Instead we went back to the hotel to swim. It was early evening so we only had another hour of sunlight left and it felt so good lounging on that chair reading. I only got about 4 pages read before the guilt got to me and I joined the family in the pool. We played tag with a kid named Brandon until 9:00. I also sustained a pretty painful raised bruise on my left knee from accidentally slamming it into a protruding underwater filter thing. It hurt terribly then and is painful and ugly now...good times.

Back at the room Landon kicked back with some NBA basketball while Randy went to pick up dinner and Whitney and I got cleaned up from the pool.

We got Rusted Sun Pizza and confirmed what Adam is always telling us...that we're living like animals with no good pizza where we live in the UC (Utah County). This was seriously fantastic pizza, something we'll dream about and yearn for in the future. Ahhh.

The good news is we all slept better the 2nd night and had none of the hilarious banter we'd had the night before. This time we knew what to expect and we were exhausted.

Sunday Thoughts

Goodness, 4 days without a post, you know when that happens I'm either super sick, super busy or super mad about something blogging related (fortunately this is rare). This time I've just been super busy. I'm happy to report that I'm in good spirits, just needing a few more hours of coherence in my day before I stumble into bed and fall dead asleep (no more sleeping woes with my new schedule).

I must report on today's fantastic Sacrament Meeting. We had the Special Needs Mutual kids put on the program and I was crying before it even started! As soon as I saw all those special souls sitting up on the stand and then read on the program that they'd be singing "Nephi's Courage" and "In This Very Room" I was a mess. I started to panic about my tissue supply even though I'd reloaded before church (an inspired act).

Andrew is no longer a part of this Special Needs group since moving South to the group home, but he went to their weekly activities for years. Because of him I have an incredibly soft place in my heart for Special Needs' kids. If I even see someone with Down's Syndrome while I'm out in public (especially a little kid) I am in tears and have to resist the urge to run up and hug them.

Anyway, the program today was set up so that each of the Special Needs' kids had their "buddy" (a local youth called for 9 months to help them--Michelle's son Max is doing this in his area) next to them on the stand. Some of the Special Needs' kids spoke and some of their buddies spoke, the entire group performed "Nephi's Courage" and one of the mother's of a Down's daughter spoke (and unraveled me further).

• The hardest part of having a Special Needs' Child is dealing with the lack of love and acceptance of others.
• Special Needs' Mutual is a huge blessing for her daughter.
• Remember that we are preparing for eternity. The disability is temporary, the spirit is not disabled.
• Her daughter's Patriarchal blessing said "she was sent here with no malice in her heart to show us how to love."
• What is normal? What mold are we trying to fit in anyway?
• Don't try so hard to fit in, you were born to stand out.
• We don't know what these children did in the pre-existence to allow them to be protected in these bodies while on Earth.

They closed the program by singing "In This Very Room". That song undoes me on a normal day, so to have these God-like people singing it made me sob so hard that I shifted into the ugly cry and had to talk myself down before losing it completely. (It wasn't pretty.) The spirit was so incredibly strong in there and all around you could see red eyes and tears and hear a chorus of sniffling.

In This Very Room  

Words and Music by Ron Harris

In this very room there's quite enough love for one like me,
And in this very room there's quite enough joy for one like me,
And there's quite enough hope and quite enough power to chase away any gloom,
For Jesus, Lord Jesus ... is in this very room.

And in this very room there's quite enough love for all of us,
And in this very room there's quite enough joy for all of us,
And there's quite enough hope and quite enough power to chase away any gloom,
For Jesus, Lord Jesus ... is in this very room.

In this very room there's quite enough love for all the world,
And in this very room there's quite enough joy for all the world,
And there's quite enough hope and quite enough power to chase away any gloom,
For Jesus, Lord Jesus ... is in this very room.

**Thoughts??**

Comment Window Tidbit: I'm holding steady with no Sunday nap, but that doesn't mean I'm don't want one.

Women's Conference--Days 2 & 3

Despite having such a busy first day and late first night, we arrived at The Marriott Center on time for the 9:00 session by Sister Beck. (It helped that Kristi had secured our sweet parking spot by reserving it the day before.)

Once again, Michelle and Susan had arrived early and saved us some seats so we were able to join them along with Denise, Charlotte and Emily. Sister Beck gave a great talk (of course) but I had heard much of it before since I've been able to hear her speak twice already this year. I was a little disappointed by this because her talk last year was life-changing for me and I expected this one to be also (no pressure right?).

After Sister Beck's talk we all split up to attend different classes. Kristi and I went over to the HFAC to try to get into a class called "Enhancing Our Temple Experience". The room capacity for that class was 509, but we didn't even make it into one of the three overflow rooms! I must say the combination of it being day 2 of my cold, standing in a long line of women, and not feeling like I had heard what I needed to hear yet was making me irrationally grumpy. I felt full of negativity (not what one should be feeling while at Women's Conference) and frustrated that I was giving in to those feelings (it's exhausting to battle my emotions all the time).

So after waiting for ages to get into the temple class only to be denied, we opted to go to a class across the hall called "Putting Off the Natural [Wo]man, and Come Off Conqueror".

 

I sat down feeling all grumbly and out of sorts, but as soon as Sister Reynolds started speaking I knew I was in the right place (this was emotional and humbling for me). She said, "The natural man is an unrepentant man and that a disciple is one who is learning to be like Christ. To think, feel, and act like Christ, to change from being a natural man." I have always thought the natural man meant being worldly, so this rocked my world and made me see how much this applies to me! Not that I'm not repentant, just that I need to repent so often! (I'm going to use the rest of my notes from this class for my Sunday Thoughts post this week, so stayed tuned. )

Oh my goodness, by the end of this class I was a complete wreck! I had already been a snotty mess from my cold, so after all the crying I had done it felt like I'd lost control of my face. (Kristi took this picture with her iphone after the class.) I managed to choke out "This was the class I needed!" and then continued to sob. I'm not even sure I can articulate exactly why the things said in this class hit me so hard, but they did and I was am so grateful!

After that emotional class we went over to The Wilk to get some lunch. We met up with Michelle (and eventually Susan) and got some time with Collette since her office is in there.

We ended up not being able to get into our next class because we waited too long to get in line, so we went over to the art museum to see the Dorthea Lange exhibit.We weren't allowed to take any pictures in there, but we were both moved to tears by the photographs.

We moseyed over to The Marriott Center for the closing session and took our self-portrait on the bridge walkway.

We met up again with Michelle, Susan, Denise, Charlotte, Emily and Shannon.

My bag was full of trail mix and tissues.

Elder and Sister Bednar were the speakers for the closing session and both did an excellent job. I especially loved what Elder Bednar had to say about creating and living a spiritual pattern of small and simple things. He said, "Consistent, meaningful prayer is more effective than one long prayer said in a time of need." I need to rewatch/reread his talk because there was so much substance to it that I missed in my note taking.

We didn't get to spend much time with Michelle this year since she was in high demand with her family, but we were able to get this self-portrait of the three of us when it was all over.

 

After the conference we gathered outside to chat and say goodbye to everyone. (I love this candid shot I took.)

Our final group shot. If they weren't such nice people I would think they were too cute to hang out with.

I love this picture of Michelle and Susan.

It cracked me up to see Kristi juggling 3 cameras as she took a group shop of the Blogger Moms.

I love Wende's response to a shot of them jumping.

After parting ways with everyone, Kristi and I drove over to visit a girl who had been one of her Young Women back in Nashville when she was the YW's President.

Then we met up with the Blogger Moms at The Brick Oven for dinner. We had a very interesting waiter who did a really good job but lacked a sense of humor (I think it would be hard to work there).

We woke up Saturday morning to 3 inches of snow!

 We got to sleep in until 9:00 on Saturday, which felt luxurious after such a busy couple of days. Kristi put on the world's cutest skirt and went to the temple. I got ready and went to my niece Olivia's baptism, where I made a fool of myself as I tried to lead the music. Robyn must have wanted some comic relief at the baptism, because my music-leading debut at my grandma's funeral a few years ago went so poorly.

By the time I got back from the baptism and Kristi got back from the temple and then lunch with some friends it was time for her to pack up and go. She originally planned to stay until Sunday morning, but since Jeff was getting sustained as Bishop of their ward the next day she changed her ticket so she could get home Saturday evening.

Our final self-portrait which ended up being comical as we had to keep shuffling around so the sun wasn't in our eyes.



Farewell until next year! Though this year was good, it wasn't like the roommate weekends we've had in year's past. We rolled with it since all our challenges were out of our hands, but hopefully next year we will get to spend more time together as a threesome.

**Thoughts??**

(I'm too tired to think of any questions.)

Comment Window Tidbit: This post took so long to put together that I fear I won't recover for days and days! Plus, the frustration of getting used to the new blogger template is driving me crazy. The spacing and centering for this post is wonky and I can't fix it!