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One of the benefits of our new house is that it comes with a fire pit!  It's not the stone ones that most of the homes have around here, but it sits in the yard with a covered pergola.   When the weather warmed up this week, we decided to break it in with the babies. Ethan built the fire (we missed one-match Mark, but Cheese represented as two-match Ethan), and Brother was all in, doing all the manly things that Poppiest and his dad were doing.  I love seeing Brother embrace his boy-ness and want to be strong and involved with the men.  He was even trying to scale the fire pit to get closer so he could blow on it.  It's the most darling thing. As soon as we saw flames, the mallows went in.  As Ethan reminded us, we're supposed to wait for coals, but there was no way that was happening with the excitement of everyone! ;-)      Like everything lately, Baby didn't want it to end, and she's begged us every night to do it...

The coronavirus.  Who knew what it meant to all of us Americans when it was discovered in China last month? This past week, I attended preparation meeting on Thursday evening, my usual shift.  The temple president told us not to worry--that the temple would remain open because it is not a gathering place for large groups of people (like the CDC was telling us to avoid).  He also told us to not fear, and to not spread that fear.  By the time I left the endowment session that evening, another worker was announcing in the dressing room that all church meetings had been canceled indefinitely (I seriously wanted to call her out for not heeding the warning of the temple president).  The next day, I received two different emails, writing that despite all church meetings being canceled, the temple would remain open. I breathed a sigh of relief.  At least we, as Saints, would still have a place to go. That evening, I received an email that all temples would be...

Several months ago, I received an email notification that Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, and Leonidas Kavakos were coming to Hill Auditorium to perform a concert of Beethoven piano trios. Yo-Yo Ma would be the main draw for most people, having branched out throughout his career to appeal to many types of listeners.  For me, however, the draw was Emanuel Ax.  I've been listening to recordings by Emanuel Ax of piano music for as long as I can remember, and that being said, he's aging and I don't know how much longer he'll be performing live.  So, I bit the bullet, shelled over the $100 for a nosebleed seat, and waited for my ticket to arrive it in the mail. (I must add here that I wasn't trying to exclude John from the experience.  I just knew that with little knowledge of the music, it wasn't worth it to pay $100 for him to go.  He could go to a free student recital at Michigan and have the same experience.) Within a day or two, my ticket arrived in the mail, and...

I'm sure there are some pretty amazing examples out there of super heroes who were originally kind of wimpy or insecure or weak who, through some freak accident, become amazing individuals...but my knowledge of that kind of person is limited, so I'll leave that up to my children.  However, there is a scripture that applies to this idea: "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness.  I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for it they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them" (Ether 12: 27) I remember reading this verse many years ago and wondering how some of my weaknesses would ever become my strengths.  The one that I remember praying about the hardest was my fear of social situations.  Being married to a man who thrives in social situations, and belonging to a church that forces us to talk to others,...

Friday night, Annie and I headed out together, without Rebecca and Everett. This NEVER happens. I think I’ve probably been alone with Everett more often than I have been alone with Annie, which is crazy because she’s been around for two years more. But here we were. Everett was sick, and one of my best friends from when we lived in Germany was driving through DC with his family, so I wanted to see them. Then, in a happy coincidence, my Aunt Katrina and some of her kids, my cousins, were also in DC. We decided to do dinner with my friend and his family, and then dessert with our relatives. Annie and I took the metro down to DC, which I think she really enjoyed. It’s a train, and kids don’t take trains much, so she thought it was very fun. She also thought it was crazy that we ended up underground, even after the train started above ground when we got on. I honestly think my favorite part of the night was walking around DC with Annie. I was walking, but she does a little bit of a...

Yesterday, I saw that a friend from work, Tommy,  had posted an article on Facebook titled "I Am a Female, and I Am So Over Feminists." Now, obviously, Tommy is not a female, but he said that he considered himself to be a feminist. The article focuses on the current situation of women feeling empowered by putting men down. Feminists are straying from solely helping women have equal rights, and are moving to the general slogan of "Men Suck." I found this interesting, because the movie "Birds of Prey" recently came out. Being a DC Comics lover, I was really sad to see that it was rated R. Some people told me that it was the best DC movie ever made, which I highly doubted, because nothing beats Wonder Woman. I decided to read the reviews to see if other people thought that it really was that great. I found that it actually has a terrible rating, and the majority of the comments focused on the fact that it was an all-female movie dedicated to bashing men. Su...