One Nation Under God

Last night the kids sang with the Juab High School Concert Choir at the Utah capitol building in a program called, "One Nation Under God." It was a patriotic program aimed at emphasizing the Christian roots of our country and the religious basis of our Constitution. Here is Hannah on the bus next to her friend, Jessica Harris. Below is Emily next to Audrey Timmerman and Amanda Brooks, who are also from Levan, with Hannah and Jessica in the background.

This is Caleb eating during a break with his friend, Josiah Spencer.
The music for the program was written by Lex de Azevedo and Kaye Starr Heninger, and conducted by them. There were two semi-professional choirs, a small orchestra, George Dyer as one of the soloists, and 400 high school singers. The concert was held in the rotunda of the capitol, and it was a beautiful setting. The only thing we thought was terrible was that the singers had to stand on the risers through the entire concert! They told me that four people fainted and some sat down just in the nick of time. In the picture above (during the rehearsal) my three children are in the group on the right. Caleb is on the upper left hand corner of that right hand group in the picture. Emily and Hannah are there, too, but they are more obscured by the size of the picture, so I won't try to point them out. The kids rode on a bus. Russ and I came to Salt Lake to buy a car, and we brought Katie and Molly with us. The two little girls stayed at grandma's house while Russ and I attended the concert.

Katie's Faith in God

Katie has been working on earning her Faith in God award. She was so excited to turn eight so she could start. Today she decided to read a recent conference talk by our prophet, Thomas S. Monson. The reading was a little hard for her, but she was determined! The talk was entitled, "Be Your Best Self."


Molly and Matthew were there, too, because they took the cushions off the couch and had some blankets to make a nice cozy place to sit.Molly loves piles of blankets!

These guys are the three musketeers, and they're always playing together. Thank goodness for siblings!

Beautiful Winter Morning

I have a friend who took some lovely pictures of the moon in and by a tree at her house....I just loved those pictures and when I saw this outside, I had to go out and look at it and see if I could capture it.

It was such a beautiful morning this morning. Everything was covered with ice crystals, the sun hadn't come over the mountain yet, and with the moon still out, it was a feast for the eyes. It was also very cold!!!
We live under a busy flight path, and there are always comtrails overhead. In the early morning, they look especially neat.
I found this cobweb inside a hole in the fence. It had ice crystals on it just like everything else.

Here's the moon above the horizon beside a crystallized tree in back of the house.

This is the big ham radio antenna on top of our house. I was trying all different shots of the moon, inspired by the photography of my friend, Kim Whiting.
We frequently see a mist or fog in the area behind our house. This is the view from our back porch. I love the shades of lavender and blue.
More comtrails by the moon

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! For New Year's Eve, we ate yummy food and watched Frank Capra movies,
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (with Gary Cooper) and It's a Wonderful Life (Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed). It's a Wonderful Life is our New Year's Eve tradition.

The one thing we didn't do is take pictures of ourselves!

At midnight we took a little break from our movie to do some small fireworks that were given to us by our neighbors. It was a fun night!