December stuff

The Harker's had their annual food drive for the Utah Food Bank. I love that they do this. This year they had the hill lit up for sledding.

A community member, Heather Johnson and City Council member, Ryan Poduska and I, worked together to bring a public speaker named Collin Kartchner to our schools to speak about the dangers of social media. It was a great and engaging presentation. 

During the Christmas break we took the family to Temple Square to see the lights and explore the visitor centers. 

While playing with the Family History computers, we found that we are related to President Nelson. 

Also, our cat, Mali, loves Sterling. This photo was not set up. It just happened and it is adorable.

And this is what my brain looks like. I'd like to say just during the busy days of December but really its all the time. A mass jumble of lots of things.

Sheep dog Festival

I'm not sure why I'm even posting this because I don't have any pictures of the actual festival or any dogs.

But we DID watch the sheep dogs work their magic and round up, then separate and lock in their sheep. Its amazing to watch.

We also watched dogs jump into water and boy, can those dogs catch some air. 

There was a tent with a petting zoo that also did animal demonstrations. The kids loved that and because that's what they were most excited about, that's what I took pictures of. 

Big Rabbit

Skunk - so soft!

This bird of prey (hawk, eagle, falcon?) flew out of the trainer's hand unplanned and landed on the chair next to Parker. He was surprised and a little nervous. :)

On the way home, we stopped by the home where my grandma and grandpa Dewey used to live in Orem. I lived here with them when I met and was dating Sterling. I took a picture and sent it to all my siblings. 

Spring Break Day 3: Easter Sunday

We woke up Sunday Easter morning in the hotel. And wouldn't you know it, the easter bunny found us, but instead of easter baskets, he left easter backpacks. (homemade ones that were super cute, I must admit).

The backpacks held a little bit of candy and a small book. 

In no big rush, we drove through the beautiful Arizona mountains and headed for Mesa. We parked in the Mesa temple parking lot and listened to President Nelson announce the new ministering program of the church and Elder Holland And Sister Bingham talk about the new, beautiful way to care for our spiritual brothers and sisters. And also announce new temples.

What an amazing general conference with lots of amazing revelation for the world and for the church!

We drove by old family homes. This is Cecil and Marilla Allen's cabin in Pine, AZ. (Grandma Brown's parents)

And this was their home in Mesa.

After driving around a bit, we found our way to Clark and Mitzi's in Queen Creek for family dinner. Wish I'd taken a picture of everyone. But I did snap these pictures of my kids gathered around Grandpa Brown. Priceless!

RootsTech

As I prepare this blog post, I am realizing that I left out any and all pictures with my mom. 

My mom and I went to RootsTech! The biggest geneology/family history conference in the nation (probably in the world). 

We met up with my friend from my ward, Sherry Bookman, and her daughter, Amy. It was a lot of fun! They told us to take crazy selfies and post them all over the internet. So I took a picture but did not post it. 

I was particularly thrilled to see Relative Race at the tradeshow. My family loves watching that show!

I accomplished one of the challenges at won a t-shirt that I LOVE!

I also went to a Relative Race Q&A class and listened to the Red team and the Green team share behind the scenes experiences. It was so much fun.

Someone asked what they learned about their partner on the race. The red team guy started to cry and said it made him realize he definitely married the right person. 

(the green team are sisters and they are hilarious!)

BFF Diahan was there too and she presented several times. She is a master at teaching about DNA and getting people fired up to use it in their geneology. 

 (the day before this, Tina and I went shopping with Diahan and out to dinner. She bought this sweater on the shopping trip. Doesn't she look great?)

So the whole conference was great but it was exhausting. Probably why I don't have pictures of my mom. We went to different classes and by the time we got to the hotel we were sleep walking. 

On family day, President Oaks and his wife gave a wonderful presentation on how they incorporate family history with their family. 

Discover, Gather, Connect.

Even though I am exhausted and am not sure if I will go again, I am definitely fired up about doing more family history and sharing it with my family!

And I loved spending time with my mom!

October stuff

We celebrated October birthdays at Grandma's house with the cousins. It was a lot of good fun!

Uncle Mike put on an awesome skate boarding demonstration. He had a captive audience!

After the cousins went home, the rest of us went downstairs, snuggled on the couch and snuggled up to watch the BYU game. It was a great game and then, with 5 seconds to spare, the channel got changed and we couldn't figure out how to get it back. So we all ran upstairs to Grandpa's shop and saw the last seconds. It was quite funny in the moment.

Rachel got these crazy glasses at school. 

She wore them non-stop for several days and even took them to ballet!

Sydney closed out her Freshman volleyball season in October. They played in the silver bracket in the championship tournament and all the games were so close they had to go to a 3rd game. In the end, they went up against the other Westlake freshman team (and smoked 'em.) Sydney has improved enormously as a player this year and had a lot of fun with Coach Li, from Hawaii. 

Finally, our ward had a Fall party and we were supposed to dress up for a wax museum as one of our ancestors or bring something that represents them. So I told the kids about their 3 times great grandpa, Skunk Williams. And then we put a white streak in each of our hair. It was awesome!

SKUNK WILLIAMS STORY:

Thomas Andrew Williams, the son of Steven Williams and and Emma Jane Hillard, traveled across the ocean and the planes with the "3d company or Captain Darwin Richardson's Company" as a young boy, arriving in Salt Lake on September 30, 1854.  He spent most of his adult life in the Ephraim area.  Indians were always a source of concern to the people of Ephraim during this early period.  They had to build a stockade and were constantly on the look-out for possible attacks. On one occasion, he and some other men went up Salina canyon to cut timber.  They started taking rifle fire from Indians and Thomas was hit.  A bullet split his scalp across the top and down the back and he lay unconscious.  The men thought he was dead and were about to leave him in the canyon.  Lewis Larson persuaded them not to leave him.  They put Thomas on his horse and tied him so that he could not fall off.  The horse took him home, but as the horse reached the yard it fell down and died.  It too had been shot.  Thomas lay unconscious for over six weeks.  He had thirty-two stitches placed in his scalp.  New hair grew back as white as snow, and from that time on he always had a white strip down the center of his head.