You Never Know What a New Week Brings!

Last week I took a fun trip through the Church Museum of Art in Salt Lake City with three of my dear friends, one of whom, Bobbi Snow, is a docent there. The quilt exhibit there right now is breathtaking and the fabulous art of LaConte Stewart is a feast for the eyes!

 

 

Then it was off to Time Out for Women. I met Shawni and the rest of the fun people we were presenting with in Richmond, VA where we had a stellar experience rejoicing in the gospel!

 

Our darling friends who moved to Southern Virginia University a couple of years ago, Annelle Doxey and her daughter Rachel Hall were our guests. It was so fun to see them again. The “Virginia Mother of the Year” (center) also joined us!

Shawni was mobbed with friends from her old ward in Fairfax, Virginia and her fans from her blog (71toes.blogspot.com). 

We loved being back in historic Richmond where we had visited once before on our annual MFME (Mothers and Future Mothers of Eyrealm) trip. 

Dad/Rick and I “passed in the morning.” He gave me a quick hug at the airport before he dashed off to catch a plane 3 gates down to NYC where he did a show on The Entitlement Trap with Glenn Beck. They called on Friday to have him do a show on Monday and it aired on Wednesday. If you’d like to see an 8 minute clip from the 20 minute interview click HERE.

Included this week also was a great movie that we would highly recommend: We had read the book and thought the movie was even better!  That was squeezed in amongst the World Series. First things first!

On my way back from SL to Park City the other night at about 9:30, just as I rounded the corner by the mailbox hut, I was startled to see two “teen-aged” moose enjoying munching on the leaves of a large bush. I was about six feet away from them, rolled my window down, took several flash pictures (couldn’t think of how to put my camera on the nighttime setting for anything…sorry Eli, but you’ll get idea) and even talked to them for a while but they just ignored me and happily ate away!

The other one was around the bush to the left.

I was genuinely excited to meet them! What a lot of fun a week brings!

Fun Radio Show…Join us on October 25

I’ll be doing a radio show with Johnny Tan tomorrow morning (October 25th) on The Entitlement Trap.  It will be from 9-10 Mountain Time and they’d love to have any of you call in who would be interested in asking a question or making a comment. 

The number to call is 347-327-9995.  This guy has written a book called My Mama’s Kitchen and is a real champion for Mothers!  He says he’s had 9 wonderful women who have impacted his life and he is really interested in the power of moms (sound familiar)? 

Hope to hear from some of you! 

Our Own Eva Koleva Timothy coming to Utah!

Great Kids Make Great Communities

Put a great Judge, a fabulous organizer, seven hundred and fifty parents and community workers who love kids together at the Grand Wayne Conference Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana and you have a terrific force for the good of children and youth!

Judge Charlie Pratt, who is revered and inspired by everyone who knows him has been running an annual Conference on Youth for parents and community workers in Fort Wayne for 22 years! His passion is helping kids in difficult situations and their counselors, supporters and parents to succeed. This year the conference was called "Great Kids Make Great Communities".

We became more and more impressed with Judge Pratt as he gave a thoughtful speech about entitlement as he introduced us and offered a beautiful prayer at the beginning of the conference and again at lunch thanking and asking for help from a higher power for their success. He was so humble and unassuming...the last thing he would want is for anyone to think he was important. He helped cleaned up the board room after the event and was the last one out. He even helped me look for my phone, which I lost at lunch (and is gone forever. Shucks!)






The event included three keynote speakers of whom we were delighted to be one (well actually two) and several workshops. Ideas from The Entitlement Trap were fun to present to a very receptive audience.

As we sat at book signings during the day we were blown away by the stories of the good people who stopped by: so many parents who had fostered countless kids and adopted the ones who fit into their family and a cute young dad who said his life turned around when, as a 16 year-old African American juvenile, he was told by a police officer that within ten years he thought he would probably be in prison. In actual fact, in ten years he had taken that man's job! His name tag said "Detective" which comes after much training as a police officer.

The other keynote speakers were amazing! Clay Roberts told us how to make a difference in the lives of young people and had us reminisce about who had made a difference in our life as a youth. It was very compelling!

The last speaker, Tricia Downing, was an amazing woman in a wheelchair who walked us through her life, first as a first class bicyclist, and then after being hit by a car on her way home from a long ride (shades of Jonah), was told that she would never walk again. The story of her journey of recovery which included never saying "I can't" was incredible! After many years of unbelievable will and effort she participated in the Iron Man race in Hawaii (she swam backwards and used two different kinds of bikes operated with her arms in the other two events). I guess I'll just go ahead and quit whining about the pain and numbness in my leg!

One of the highlights of the day was having our niece Brittani and her husband Aaron and their darling little Joy School girl Sera join us for lunch! They have just moved to Fort Wayne, which we discovered just before we left. They were able to meet the Judge and some of the other speakers and we were so grateful to have a few minutes to catch up!

With thanks to Megan Kelly, the incredible organizer of the event, we learned so much about the "salt of the earth" that day, both from the conference participants and the Mitchells!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

As Predicted…. But Not Ready!

I want SUMMER back! Give me that luscious warm sun on the balcony to read a book by!  (Check out the ice on that “rain drain”)

After all our TLC, this is what our poor little flowers get for giving us three months of color and light!

Shucks!  I’m just going to remember that I LOVE winter….for three weeks! Nine months? We’re going to have to look at joining Jonah and Aja in Hawaii! 

BCRANK (Beaver Creek Ranch at Narnia Canyon)

Time to take a break from the minutia of launching a new book, which feels very much like having a new baby, take a deep breath and enjoy the wonders of nature!

On Monday as we listened to the weather and heard the inevitable was coming….SNOW!

We’ve had my kind of autumn at BCRANK. Hot air, cool breezes, then a cool snap and sudden brilliant reds, oranges and yellows. Summer is glorious in our neck of the woods. Also short. Autumn is nothing short of spectacular…and even shorter. So I put on my five-finger walking shoes and took the “long walk” (five minutes) to our little slice of heaven, a series of beaver dams that keep us mystified thinking about these incredibly industrious nocturnal animals. We’ve never seen even one beaver in all the years we’ve been here, but their insatiable need to build, build, build, have created a wonderland in our backyard. In addition we have fields of cattails and a little old structure we have nicknamed “The Pony Express Station”, having no idea if that was really what it was. Romantic thought though.

There’s nothing like ‘a walk in the woods’ to revive your soul and gird up your loins for a winter that lasts about nine months.  So here we go:

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the evidence of the “night shift” of the beavers:

 

The path leads to the glories of autumn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A path to “ye old pony express station” from years gone by:

 

 

 

Someone has found a place of rest!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home again….bracing for the S word!