Yesterday was my birthday!  It was a good day with my husband working hard to make it a nice day for me.  The weather was surprisingly cold and rainy but my house was warm.  I enjoy many, many blessings and I frequently wonder why I have been given so much. Yesterday I thought about a past birthday from 22 years ago which happens to be an historically significant day.  That day--September 23, 1995--was the day that the president of our church read the brand-new "The Family: A Proclamation to the World"  at a conference for the women of our church.  It is a much-needed document on what we believe about families and how important they are.  At the time it didn't seem that significant but as families become less and less meaningful to the world and society continues to deteriorate, it seems prescient. This is a picture we took right around my birthday in 1993 right before Scott had a ruptured appendix--another very stressful time in my life. But I wasn't re

Two weeks ago, my daughter's class went to Timpanogas Cave National Monument on a field trip.  It's a challenging hike to get there and I was a little worried about her making it so I decided to go with her in case she needed help. But in order to go on the field trip, I had to get fingerprinted!  It cost me $55 and about an hour to go to the district office and get this done.  I found it very annoying but the district has decided to require all school volunteers to do this so I didn't really have a choice. We took the bus to the visitors' center in American Fork Canyon and I ended up sitting next to a woman of Armenian heritage.  It was cool to talk to her about Armenia with my son being there. Next we hiked up to the cave.  The hike is 1.5 miles with an elevation gain of about 1000 feet.  It was a warmish day but we were in the shade for most of the hike so that helped a lot. As soon as we got there, we started our tour: This is called a column when a stal

A few weeks ago our family toured the Missionary Training Center in Provo.  The MTC has been around for a long time but recently they added some new buildings and they opened it to the public for tours. I really enjoyed the tour.  I especially enjoyed the art and quotes on the wall which I found inspiring.  It made me realize that I'd like to use that more in my home too. First we toured the old MTC buildings and then we went into the new ones which provide more space for classrooms, sleeping and study areas as well as space for larger meetings.  The new buildings have more natural light and also have the new technology for the classrooms.  Many missionaries get iPads when they go to the MTC because they will be using them in their missions.  Most of the foreign missions do not have them. This is a picture of Dan Jones preaching in his native land of Wales as a missionary. Approximately 22,000 missionaries enter the Provo MTC each year. Along the sidewalks were ba