Many years ago, our family lived in Gaithersburg, Maryland, while Scott worked at NIST doing a post-doc. We had this family picture taken on the grounds of the Washington, D.C. temple. The background is hard to see but it is the temple. Scott and I enjoyed going to this temple for the three years we lived in the area. Recently I read a really good article about the property the Washington, D.C. LDS temple is on:  History of the temple site . The article talks about how the interesting part about the property is that it was never developed before the temple was built even though it is in a prime location. As you go west on the freeway called the Beltway that circles the District, you come up a hill and the temple is right there. You can't really imagine how amazing it is until you've seen it that way. The article by Dale Van Atta (adapted from his  book) told how the land was known for centuries as "Joseph's Park" and had 17 owners. It was originally inhabited by N...

This last week Everett and Caroline graduated from BYU. Everett graduated in the Applied Math program and Caroline graduated in Social Studies Secondary Education. They're both very excited to be done with school!  Congratulations! At BYU, they received a top-quality, spiritually-enriching education at a very low cost and I am very appreciative. Tulips in front of the Provo Temple this week BYU commencement always has the best talks. President Worthen spoke on "propinquity" which is the state of being close to someone. After two years of Covid, he encouraged us to work on that. Elder Palmer spoke on a theme of " Focus, Center, and Re-center. " Watch it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llRCy_NVg18 FOCUS :  He talked about coming to Salt Lake City in August of 2020 from the continent of Africa where he was helping to lead the church. He sat next to President Nelson in the cafeteria for lunch. He told Pres. Nelson how intimidating it was to sit next to the pr...

  Last weekend we visited the Goblin Valley area with our son's family with the goals of doing some hikes in the area. After many years of roughing it, I decided that camping without a flush toilet was no longer acceptable so we decided to rent a trailer in Payson. Our son's family already had a pop-up trailer which they brought. Here's what we learned about renting trailers: 1.  I loved the flush toilet and private bathroom. 2.  I loved the heater when it was cold outside. 3.  I loved everyone having a bed. 4.  I didn't love the bad gas mileage we got hauling a trailer. Our big van got about 8-9 mpg hauling the trailer.  And our van had much less power with a trailer behind it. The moral is don't travel very far with a trailer. The trip was good! We arrived on Thursday night and got all set up. We had initially thought we would find a spot next to the cliffs but ended up going to the Temple Hill campground which has a few improvements since the last time w...