Here's to you Lawrence Welk

Here's a shout out to Grandpa Lindsay's favorite variety show and to all you poor kids born with baby doll hands. Hope you enjoy!
(sorry about the 30 sec commercial)

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Brad's Talk

so brad gave a talk today in our new ward. he'd been thinking on it for the past week, but really didn't write stuff down until this morning and put it together in about an hour. he was asked to go off of elder nelson's conference talk on eternal marriage and address how prophets help us fulfill God's plan for us, etc. here are some condensed thoughts from it:

1) family and His children are so important to God that He has asked us to address Him as Father, above all other titles. think about that. all the innumerable miracles and wonders He has performed, all the glorious titles He possesses, and the act and role He wants to be known for is that of a Father, our Father. especially in the most intimate of circumstances as our one-on-one personal prayers, it's always Father first.

2) the family is the most basic and fundamental unit of society, both here in mortality and in the eternities. societies that are not founded upon the family unit will eventually fail. here's a lesson from d&c 49 addressing the shakers. they were a religious group who arose out of the same great awakening as our church, but they believed that Christ had come again in the form of a woman named ann lee, the leader of their group. they tried to build a utopian society where they were forbidden to eat meat, baptism was unnecessary, and they were forbidden to marry or have families. section 49 is a revelation of the Lord basically calling them to repentance and was read to them, but it was rejected. the lesson, though, is that because of their disobedience to the commandment of marriage and family (the first commandment given to man) and their failure to gain new converts, their group fell apart and the shakers went extinct. hopefully our society won't come to that, but we can see, beginning in western europe, that families are dying out at a remarkable rate.

3) the sealing of families is of utmost importance to the Lord. the prophecy of the coming of elijah and the hearts of the children turning to their fathers is the only one that i know of that is quoted in each of the 4 standard works. it must be pretty important. often we only think of sealing in one dimension--that is, to our own families, our descendants and ancestors, forward and backward. but what the Lord wants is a gigantic 3-dimensional web, not just a single-link chain. we're to be sealed to our own family by blood, to other families by marriage, and to the Lord by spirit and covenant.

more text will come in a couple of days when brad has time to write details...


Our friend Cami came to play and visit for a bit at the beginning of the month, it was fun catching up and see you Cami!


So Emma's on WIC (a gov't thing that provides a little bit of food for kids 5 and under) and they give you dried black beans. So i finally took the plunge and made some and i think by the looks of the photo they were a success.


So this is emma's new winter hat (courtesy of grandma, thank you!) anywho, i love it, and emma doesn't seem to mind it too much.


So yeah, this wasn't the most comfortable position for me. I was texting brad that emma was standing on my head. And emma only has one pigtail cause she'd just woken up.


So Brad and i took our first trip together since the july before emma was born. We left Emma with Brad's parents (and she did GREAT) and off we went. Another graduate brad's friends with was teaching a class that dealt with the people that lived in four corners area and at the end of the class they take a trip to Chaoco Canyon and Mesa Verde. He'd asked Brad if he could be a driver/chaperon and so Brad said sure and asked if i could tag along. So it was basically a free vacation, all we had to pay for was dinners. It was an AMAZING trip and it made me love the south west all the more. Camping out was so fun and the stars were breathtaking! I definitely went through quite a Emma withdraw, but i survived;)


Hiking to the top of the cliffs to look down into the valley





i didn't have a hat to shade me, so i just used my light weight scarf, it worked great















The top of Mesa Verde. To the left was a herd of "wild" horses. I don't know they didn't look too wild to me, but that's what the ranger said.





















Emma is crazy and that's why we love her. It was bed time and i was getting her ready and cleaning up when i heard Emma cracking up in the front room. This is what i found her doing.




I sent her to retrieve the hangers, i quickly cut off the video because Emma was heading for Sammy's water dish.




Acrobats with Grandma. Brad was probably holding his breath the whole time;)