Don’t forget to make your vote count!

I was thinking about a particular subject today while sitting in Sacrament Meeting listening to some great talks. My wife gave one of those great talks. After her talk a couple of members came up to talk to her and were very complimentary of her talk. One guy acted upset because he disagreed with the investment strategy she used as an example in her talk. He was older and thought he knew the perfect way to invest which was different from the way my wife’s company does it. Anyway this caused me to think about the “unorthodox” among us, including myself. Many times these members are set aside by all of us. I wondered how valuable these members could be if we actually gave them a chance and let them serve. I know of a few example of folks who were wonderful teachers and counselors once they were given the opportunity to serve when someone thought they had something to offer. In addition, I think that we are all a bit unorthodox in our own ways. When I use the term unorthodox it could be someone who is a little socially odd to someone who is doctrinally too left or too right…

I have followed the events associated with the Nutty Putty Cave over the last week and a half with a sad heart. While at BYU in the 1990’s I went to the Cave multiple times with various groups. We always had a great time, although occassionally I would start to feel a little panicky when I was in a really tight spot. I was saddened to hear about the death that occurred in the cave. I hope his family is brought some measure of peace.

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I feel like the last 6 months or so, I have had a complete stupor of thought when it comes to blogging. I have really struggled to think of new, interesting things to blog about. In addition, I feel like the entire bloggernacle has had a down year after the exciting political issues of the last couple of years. Anyone else feeling it?

I have a 16 month old who is completely attached to her Teddy Bear. She has loved it since she was about 9 months old. It is the ultimate soother for her. She can hurt herself or be sad and just holding Teddy makes her feel so much better. I was thinking about what are the things that soothe me when I am in need of comfort. I think that first is my family – getting a big hug or kiss from my wife or kids is the best and can brighten any day. Beyond that, I have found that nice music, beautiful weather, and special landscapes are equally soothing. Finally, there are those spiritual soothers when my Spirit is down. The best for me is hearing others personal stories. There is something uplifting about hearing about another’s spiritual journey through life. That is some good medicine! What are your “teddy bears”?

What is your favorite Halloween memory when you were still able to Trick or Treat? Mine was my last year of Trick or Treating – I was in Sixth Grade – 11 years old. Ok, maybe a bit old, but we had so much fun. I went with two of my best friends at the time. We started at 4 or so and went until 8 at night. We filled two pillow cases with Candy – it was an amazing haul. We must have visited hundreds of houses – just running in between houses to get to the next one. You would have thought we were collecting gold given our zeal. Our course, every year with my own kids is my favorite. I love watching their enthusiasm. Last night, our 17 month old loved to go to each door and get her candy. It was so much fun to watch. So overall, what a wonderful and strange holiday even if one could get shot if you dressed up and knocked on perfect strangers doors and asked for candy any other night of the year!

One thing that is important to us as we have moved is the need for a “good” ward. I am not sure what that means exactly, but there were a few criteria that were important to us? Large Primary, Strong Youth Program, Minimal Students, etc. There are two wards in our new area. We have attended both as we are looking for homes in both areas. We have finally settled on the ward which covers the boundaries of our rental house. The ward meets most of our criteria, but I think what really closed the deal was our first week attending the new ward.

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This is the third post (part one and part two) about my recent move after 14 years in the Boston area. You are probably thinking that my loneliest day at Church was my family’s first week in the new ward. Actually our loneliest week was the last Sunday in our old ward – the ward we were in for 14 years. Here is the story:

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In Part 1, we made the decision to move. Once we knew we were moving, we had a month to find a rental property that was furnished. We looked at some nasty spots and went into one house and said yes and signed a lease on the spot. It looked nice enough – everything had been redone (or so we thought). We have been in the place for a month and here is a short list of things that have broken – it is a bit of a money pit (at least for the landlords):

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We have been in the process of moving from one state to another due to a job change. It has been quite an experience. I thought it should be broken into a series of posts given there have been some interesting and challenging experiences in this move. The first big challenge was making the decision to change jobs.

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I will admit to being a hymn snob, although I am a complete music novice, I only know how to play the piano with one hand. My hymn snobbery comes from being a lifetime member who is really comfortable with the traditional hymns of Mormonism. I love General Conference because of the music as I know that they usually sing the same 3-4 hymns every time and it is one of the few times during the year that I get to sing these hymns in a congregational setting. I guess it depends on the Chorister or Organist or whoever is the hymn picker, but we always seem to sing the new songs, most of which people don’t know and most of which I don’t care for (being the non-music expert). What are my top three?

1. We Thank Thee O God For A Prophet
2. How Firm A Foundation
3. High On The Mountain Top
3. Come, Come Ye Saints (Ok, I could not decide between these two)

My least favorite are some of the hymns that recent Church leaders wrote (I won’t name names), but the music and words are not particularly interesting or enjoyable to me. I also really don’t like the War Hymns like Onward Christian Soldiers and We Are All Enlisted – I feel silly singing about killing people during Church.

Call me a traditionalist… What are your favorite? What are your least favorite?

I have enjoyed reading some of the posts associated with the recent five year anniversary of Nine Moons and was surprised with the controversy surrounding the recent Niblets voting. Whenever some phenomenon experiences explosive growth and change, there is bound to be old timer vs new timer fighting for turf (at least that is my interpretation).

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I always find that there are experiences in my life that test my ability to hold my tongue when stressed – In other words not let out any profanity. One of those experiences occurred last week. My son and I were in the grocery store picking up some groceries. He loves the Cambell’s canned hearty soups and picked up a can and set it in the cart. Unfortunately, he set it in the front part of the carriage where a baby would sit. The can slid out of there and fell and landed directly on my big toe (I was wearing flip flops at the time).

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I read this article on CNN which was fascinating and really stretched my mind. Basically, telescopes are the closest thing to time travel we have as they see light emitted from stars or other events. The stronger the telescope is, the more light they “see” that was emitted long ago. For example, the sun’s light takes about 8 minutes to get here so the sun we see in the sky is actually 8 minutes old or stars that are millions of light years away means that the light from those stars takes millions of years to get here and what we see is actually what that star as it appeared millions of years ago. What we are seeing in the night sky is, therefore, a patchwork of the past light emitted from the stars. Now stay with me.

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As the number of LDS associated blogs has expanded significantly over the last few years, it is increasingly difficult to stay on top of what is going on. I find it nearly impossible to visit more than the top 2-3 blogs regularly and a few others irregularly. With that in mind – I thought this poll could be interesting to understand if others are feeling blog overloaded and to see how many blogs are visited in any one week.

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Beyond visiting blogs in any one week, how often do we comment vs lurk? I tend to lurk many times on other sites without commenting since the relevant comments have been made by others or I am too lazy – what about you?

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One of my friends (non-Mormon) is agnostic. He has recently decided to try an experiment to determine if God exists as he really wants to be a believer. He is going to pray and focus his energy on “connecting” with God, if he exists. He asked for my thoughts and suggestions. I mentioned that it seems like an interesting approach and the key will be to determine what is the desired output – in other words, how do you measure success? How do you know God has acknowledged his existence? I mentioned some of the biblical verses like Galatians 5:22 as examples of how God may communicate his existence. Any other thoughts?

I have noticed over the last couple of years one trend that is bothersome. The size of food packages I buy at the store are shrinking, but the price has not. For example, ice cream used to come in half gallon containers, then suddenly they became 1.75 quarts and now they are down to 1.5 quarts, but the price has not moved lower. Other places I have noticed this is in cold cereals – the weight keeps shrinking and at some restaurants – the portions have decreased in size (e.g., Panera Bread). While this may be good for overall obesity trends, it is not great for my wallet. Anyone else noticed these trends?

Ok – I decided to break up the Anne show as much as I have enjoyed it.

Recently I heard on NPV that the Merriam Webster Dictionary had added new words for 2009. It reminded me to check to see if any new Mormon words were added. Sadly, neither Bloggernacle nor Niblet have been added… Oh well, I guess we are not as important as we think

However, there were interesting words added (from my perspective) and those are shown below with the year they came into the language in parenthesis. It amazes me how dynamic our language is and how often new words are added.
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Five years ago, my wife and I had two Haitian teenagers live with us for two years as foster children or as we called it – godchildren and they called us godparents. They were siblings with the boy being 16 and the girl 14 at the time. We made every attempt to treat them as our kids and looking back on the experience 5 years later we still have a great relationship with them and still view them as part of our family. However, it was not an an easy experience for any of us, but that is a story for another day. As my wife and I got to know the foster care system it was rather depressing.

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There are some activities outside of Church (ok sometimes that is NOT peaceful) that just relax me and bring that sense of peace we all crave. First, those quiet snuggly times with the kids (or wife) when they are either sleepy or just waking up. Second, walking on the beach – I love the sound of the ocean and the breaking waves. Third, I love to make bread – it is so therapeutic to knead the dough and create a wonderful bread from nothing. Fourth, I love to mow the lawn. While it is a bit loud, there is something peaceful about mowing the lawn on a nice sunny day, smelling the fresh cut grass, and just having your thoughts all to yourself. Fifth, shoveling snow on those quiet winter days. This is probably the only time our neighborhood is quiet – just after the snowstorm when all is hushed and the only sound is the scrap of the shovel. What are yours?