There's a great podcast by Bryce Dunford that I listened to recently that I want to summarize. First, here's the link: The Gold and the Clay Principle Here's the summary. Everything God touches and does is gold. Everything humans touch and do is clay. God gives us gold and our imperfect fingerprints get all over it. The gold gets mixed with clay. And God is okay with that. He works through imperfect people. But people get disappointed with the clay that they find in the gold and sometimes they reject the gold. The challenge is to see the gold mixed with the clay, acknowledge the clay, but embrace the gold and use it in our lives. A story in 1 Nephi 17 is a good example of this. When Nephi breaks his bow, the family gets very hungry and even Lehi starts murmuring. Lehi temporarily lacks faith that God can help them. But Nephi is still faithful. He makes a new bow and ONE arrow and then goes to his father. He recognizes his father's human weakness and but still honors and...

June 1, 2008 [written by David] This past week was fairly hectic. Dad was gone from Tuesday morning to Thursday night midnight to Pennsylvania. I went and got him from the airport. Jan mowed lawns, Garrett was busy reading and things were generally crazy. Lincoln threw up once, Mindy got the stomach flu, Camille got shots. End of school was okay. Memorial Day it rained. Jan and I got soaked at the Orem Cemetery with the band. After that, we sat around and played Boggle for a while. Family meal at Grandma's and general goofing off. I got everyone together and we made a 2' tall trebuchet. Our best throw ever was about 75' and by the end of the week we can regularly get about 50 feet with 40 to 60 lbs. throwing a tennis ball. Talk about adding on to the house has become common. Jan trims lawns and babysits, Garrett sometimes mows but only with complaining. He does a good job anyhow. There has also been a good amount of running around the cul-de-sac as a consequence for yelling...

 Here are a few pages from our family history that we have tried to write in every week for a long time. These entries were all written by our older children. March 9, 2008 (Paula) Yesterday Lincoln earned the music merit badge at the stake powwow. Garrett and Jan still have more work to do on theirs. David and Jan had 2 jazz band festivals this week including one for the new Voodoo Swing Orchestra which he's quitting. David worked on his trebuchet project [for a physics class he was taking at Mountain View]. They launched a shotput last night and lost it. Susanna and Everett performed in their piano festival and got a 36 and 37 each. Talmage know that when it's 1:41, there are 19 more minutes until 2:00. He's getting good at math. [He was not quite 7.] Mindy loves to play princesses and "wandses" at Abby's house while Paula visits Camille in the hospital. Camille's doing well this week and is working up to full feedings. She's now at 20cc and needs to...

 This last year, I was given the gift of Storyworth which sends me a prompt every week to help me write my personal history. At the end of the year, I will get a book of my essays. Here is one of my recent essays about what I have in common with my husband: I am grateful to be married to someone who shares many things in common with me, some of which have changed over the years. The thing that brought us together originally was our common interest in music. We were both music majors and spent a lot of time in the HFAC at BYU. Scott was very successful in music, playing in both the BYU Philharmonic and Synthesis. He came close to finishing his bachelor of arts degree in music but ultimately decided he was better off just finishing his physics degree so he could graduate after 5 years at BYU instead of taking longer. We enjoy going to concerts together now and then, although it’s much more common for Scott to come to my orchestra concerts when I’m playing. I’m grateful that he enjoys...

 We were thrilled to recently meet our newest little granddaughter. We now have 6 grandsons and 4 granddaughters. It is a privilege to have so many grandchildren--I have many friends my age and older that have not been blessed with grandchildren yet. One of my high school friends has four children, none of whom have married yet. I have an older friend that has four sons. Two of them died as young adults and one of them has never married. Her one married son has twin girls and they live on the other side of the country. So she takes a lot of trips to see them and loves her time with them. Our grandchildren enrich our lives and I feel greatly blessed to live by 6 of them.