Crazy Utah Weather

So I feel the need to document how crazy the weather in Utah is. I love living in a place of such beautiful diversity; mountains, deserts, lakes, glaciers, sand dunes, cliffs, rivers and so much more....... BUT this weather is a bit much for me.

SATURDAY March 28th!

SUNDAY March 29th!

REALLY ?!?!?!

GENERAL CONFERENCE

General Conference is coming! I am excited for so many reasons! I feel a lot like I do at new years when General Conference comes. It is a time to pause and take stock, to tweak the things that I need to do better, to set new goals, to remember why I believe, worship, love & obey the way I do. It also means SPRING! When I was growing up we would work in our garden while listening to the Saturday session of conference. We (by we I mean Dad & Mom) would plant peas, among other garden work, and I LOVE fresh, garden peas. I also have great memories of the variety of ways my parents would try to help us listen (we did not have TV reception in either of the homes I grew up in). We made bingo boards with words on them and marked them with pennies as the word was said, at the beginning of a talk we would choose a word we thought would be used often in the talk and then make tally marks each time it was said, we would make dot - dot games with dad and try to look like we were listening while really trying to guess dad's next move. So for me General Conference means faith, family, new beginnings, and much more!

As I look forward to Conference with my own family I am grateful for SOOOO many resources available to help us. One of the things I use every year is a Conference packet created by a very talented sister. She shares it with the world on her blog, just click on the link below and you can print it out to use with your family, primary, what ever. enJOY! http://coloroftheskyinmyworld.blogspot.com/

Another great place to get activities and ides for Conference (and every other church thing) is http://theideadoor.com/

And there are many, many more.

The point is to make this time special, help us all remember what is important and to build strong testimonies of our Savior Jesus Christ and our Father in Heaven.

Snow Day

You are never to old to play in the SNOW! I love living Utah and having the beautiful mix of sun and snow. Anne Marie has fallen in love with snowboarding this year and decided we needed to make a "mommies day off" of it. I have been boarding twice before, once about 7 years ago and once about 3 years ago, so even though I was up for it in theory, I was a little nervous too. So about noon we left all six kids with Jason (THANK YOU!) and headed up to Sundance. We met up with Joe and Amber who had been there all morning and hit the slopes. Joe gave me a quick refresher course and it was all down hill from there but in a good way :-) I discovered that I remembered the feel of it very quickly and just had fun. The weather was beautiful!! It was 65 and sunny. We did not wear coats at all and even had to take off our sweat shirts. Anne and I just had fun and really enjoyed being together and doing something so fun. I really am grateful for the people in my life and the experiences I get to enJOY!

Brain Waves

Kevin and Sarah had the opportunity to be a part of a study at BYU. They were collecting data on childhood brain development and offered $10.00 to each participant. The kids thought it sounded great so we signed up. They had to start by filling out about 4 pages of questions about how they view themselves, their responses to different situations, etc. Mommy also had to answer several pages of questions. Kevin went first, they went into a little room with a computer screen and a key pad with only 4 keys. They told him what each key was and explained that questions would come up on the screen and he was to answer them correctly as quickly as he could. Then they fun part. They put a "net" of over 100 monitors, that were sopping wet, onto his head. The monitors were hooked to another computer that showed his brain waves as he responded to the questions. Then they shut the door and he was left in a little room to complete the test. We could all watch him on the monitors in the other room. He said after a bit he felt like he was in an interrogation room. The BYU students conducting the test showed us his brain wave patterns as he answered the questions. It was pretty cool that from a bunch of wavy lines they could learn so much.
Then it was Sarah's turn. When they put the net on her they had to add so much extra water that she had salt water dripping in her face for the whole test. It was quite an adventure for both kids but they were both very pleased to get a crisp, new $10.00 bill at the end and I have great photos to remember the whole thing.