Gratitude Post #2: The Beautiful Earth

This post will focus on how grateful I am for the beautiful world God has created for us to live in. These are all pictures from the past year in my Google Photos of places we've enjoyed visiting. I had forgotten how many places we got to visit this year! We were really blessed.

North Wash area for canyoneering

The bowl behind Mt. Timpanogas

Bryce Canyon

Nobletts Spring near Wolf Pass in the Uintahs

A view of Utah Valley from Buffalo Peak

A turkey hawk? on Kyiv Peak

Palisade Lake in Idaho

Palisade Creek in Idaho

Falls Creek Falls near Snake River, Idaho

View from Edvard Grieg's home in Bergen, Norway

Giant waterfall in Norway

Norway

Riga, Latvia

Lund, Sweden

Copenhagen, Denmark

Tacoma, Washington

Gunlock Reservoir, Utah

Orem, Utah

Mt. Timpanogas

Lava Tubes near Meadow, Utah

The view from our backyard

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2024 Hansen Family Reunion, Wednesday

Recently we had another Hansen Family Reunion at Bear Lake. We've been having these destination reunions since 2008. There were about 70 of us in attendance. Bruce and Michelle organized the activities and did a good job. I enjoyed myself! Hopefully lots of other people did too. We showed up on Wednesday afternoon and enjoyed a taco salad dinner, served by Neil and Kristie's family. We also worked on two mixer games: a word search with the names of all 100 Hansen family members as well as a Bingo card that involved finding people with different attributes like recent high school graduation, birthdays in certain months, etc. The word search was definitely the most popular. Also popular was playing Nine-Square and Sandy Pickle (a cross between pickle ball and badminton). Thys and Katrina might have won! After dinner, we had an FHE activity/lesson. Liz had made a book with stories of the first ancestors to join the church. She had selected different stories for us to act out in g...

Hansen Family Reunion 2024, Thursday afternoon

For lunch on Thursday, Lauren and Kurt made Cafe Rio which was delicious. On Thursday afternoon, we had free time at the lake. Heidi and Aaron rented a pontoon boat and took people out for rides. This was very popular. Some of us went on the kayaks and/or swimming or just hung out on the beach.

Book Review: Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

This is a juvenile fiction book about a young girl named Melody with severe cerebral palsy. Her body doesn't allow her to feed herself, speak, or do much at all. She's very intelligent with a photographic memory but she can't really communicate. Finally, in 5th grade, she gets a "Medi-Talker" which is a computer that speaks what she types in. Finally she has a voice. This book explores what it is like to be severely physically disabled but not mentally disabled. It seems like one of the most frustrating of all scenarios. She is completely aware of all the cruelty (subtle and otherwise) that her classmates inflict on her because they don't really want to include her in their activities. One of the saddest moments in the book comes when she realizes that every one of her special ed classmates is kind, where the "normal" ones are not. Who really has the worse disability? The book was a quick read and fairly enjoyable. Wha...

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