A Brief Howdy

The snow just now finally stopped falling after about 12 hours! I knew those sunny warm days last week were ushering in winter's last hurrah (it seems we get most of our good snow in March--at least that's how it's been ever since I moved here!) What a cruel joke for my tiny red-and-green tulip shoots!


We had a nice weekend at Stake Conference in Bozeman. Rich had so many meetings on Saturday that we just got a hotel and stayed over to attend the 8:50am Sunday meeting all together. So he went to meetings on Saturday and I took the kids swimming, then Grandma Rosalie joined me to take them to the Chidren's Museum of Bozeman to play (we bought an annual membership there, so YOU can come, too, next time you're up here). Then we all met at the Stake Center, including Uncle Mike, and we ate a picnic dinner. Then Mike took the kids back to play and swim at the hotel, and I joined Rich and Mom & Dad Melin for the adult session of Stake Conference.



The Saturday Night session focused on reverence, family reverence--as an attitude and a feeling, not just folding our arms and being quiet. One of the best talks compared Sacrament meeting to a funeral or a memorial. The speaker asked the congregation how people look and act and dress at a funeral, and why. Of course we talked about the hushed and reverent attitude people display at a memorial, how people usually wear their best black dresses and suits to show respect for the dead. He pointed out that Sacrament meeting is really a memorial of the death of our Savior and should be treated with our utmost reverence and respect. I thought that was a great way to teach reverence and respect to kids. He also used some Carl Bloch paintings of the crucifixion and entombment and focused on the attitudes and expressions of the people in the paintings mourning Christ. It really helped me to adjust my perspective and to be more reverent myself.


Our downstairs family room TV died last week, so we bought a new LCD flat screen this week and have spent FOREVER rearranging the family room. The beautiful entertainment center that Rich built for me is going into storage at the ranch (we pushed the two bookcases together and put them on the other wall near the girls' room to hold games, books, DVDs and my scrapbooking stuff). The flat screen shares a wall with the laundry room, so Rich built some shelves in there to hold the satellite receiver/DVR and the DVD player and got us UHF remotes (the remote and the receiver don't have to be in the same room cuz UHF is radio), so the only thing in the viewing area is the TV. It's pretty awesoem, but now I am re-doing all the decorating, too--we have two new little brown leather ottomans, so I am thinking a new area rug, more pictures, and some paint on the three white walls. SHEESH! It's almost like moving! Tonight after FHE, we plan on working late to get eveything moved and put away whiel the younguns sleep. CRAZY!

By the way, here's a fun thing for FHE: sing "Book of Mormon Stories"; use the pictures from your gospel art picture kit and give a brief synapsis of the following four stories to the kids. Then print out the game from THIS LINK (page 15...there's a cool thing on page 16, too) on cardstock, cut out the rhymes and the pictures; then have the kids guess what rhyme goes with what picture. My girls glued the rhymes next to the pictures on another sheet of paper and hung them in their rooms so they can learn about Samuel the Lamanite, Enos, Nephi and the broken bow, and Mahonri and the Shiny Stones.

I think I have some fun pix from the weekend--I'll have to find the camera and upload them. But the family room project comes FIRST!! Have a great week!