This is the Payson Utah LDS Temple. This temple was announced on January 25, 2010 by President Monson. Its estimated completion date is early 2015.
I took these pictures in the passenger seat while my husband was driving by last fall.
I can’t decide which one I like better. Can you help me decide? A or B?
So far on my facebook there are:
3 votes for A
4 votes for B
To see the rest of the drive by pictures see full gallery here.
Can you believe I have family pictures taken back in Sept 2012 that haven’t been sorted or edited or touched?
Well, cheers to the long journey that I have embarked on to rate, sort and edited my pictures. But guess what?! I have all my pictures files organized and backed up. This was a 6 month process!!! And… I only lost about 700 pictures during the process. I have over 100,000 personal pictures and 17,000 pictures I’ve taken for other people. It’s amazing how data adds up over time.
Did you know? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has billions of free genealogy records online? You can find them here on https://familysearch.org/. The records include pictures, birth certificates, death records and so much more!
To see the rest of these family pictures taken by my little brother click here or on the picture. These pictures were taken back in Sept 2012 in Big Cottonwood Canyon in Utah.
Since I’m retro-blogging, I’m going to implement “Throwback Thursday” aka #TBT.
It’s been really stressful getting my computer back up and running but I’m almost there! I’ve reformatted my computer and backed up everything. It just takes so long to copy terabytes of data. Once this stops consuming my life… may be i’ll be able to produce new or more current updates. 🙂
You can see the original “Sunday Outfits” post here.
We recently watched the movie Courageous
The movie is about Fathers. I cried throughout the whole thing.
There was no swearing or profanity. The reason why it is rated PG-13 is because it shows gang violence but it uses it in the right context and doesn’t justify violence.
It’s a perfect movie to watch with a date because it is action packed and exciting but it also delivers a heartfelt message about families. We were on the edge of our seats the whole time and afterwards we couldn’t stop quoting the funny parts.
You have to watch this movie!!
For a while we gave up on watching movies because we couldn’t ever find a good movie but then our wonderful neighbor started giving us movie suggestions and we have been enjoying many good wholesome movies!!
The Family Proclamation to the World says that we should enjoy “wholesome recreational activities”.
Elder Christofferson said in his talked, Reflections on a Consecrated Life, “Ironically, it sometimes takes hard work to find wholesome leisure. When entertainment turns from virtue to vice, it becomes a destroyer of the consecrated life. “Wherefore, take heed … that ye do not judge that which is evil to be of God” (Moroni 7:14).”
It has been hard to find wholesome movies but when we find one to watch it brings us a lot of joy so I guess we haven’t giving up on movies after all.
The For Strength of Youth gives us a good guideline on what type of media is ok to watch.
I’m a mom who loves social media.
I’m a mom who loves taking pictures. I take way more pictures than I can keep up with.
I’m a mom who enjoys blogging and reading blogs.
I’m a mom who really doesn’t have time for blogging.
I’m a mom who blogs anyways usually in place of housework.
When I’m blogging my kids are probably asleep or watching TV.
The funny thing is that I’m usually blogging about my kids.
I usually don’t blog unless my chores are done. That’s why, you see, I haven’t been blogging.
Guess what? My chores are not done today.
… and I guess I’m still blogging today.
There’s probably a lot of better things I could do right now… Oh well.
My absolute favorite quote from general conference was from Sister Reeves called Protection from Pornography – a Christ-Focused Home.
“It is OK if the house is a mess and the children are still in their pajamas and some responsibilities are left undone. The only things that really need to be accomplished in the home are daily scripture study and prayer and weekly family home evening.”
The apartment is not clean.
My kids and I are still in my PJs.
But I did do my personal scripture and personal prayer today.
We also did our family scripture study and family prayer.
And we planted our garden yesterday for Family Home Evening.
So I guess the essentials are done.
So right now, I’m indulging myself by blogging before my kids wake up from nap.
… oh wait … I hear a kid crying.
I guess nap time is over! 🙂
Enjoy cute pictures of Micah and Quentin. It’s a rare occasion to get a picture of both of them looking at the camera at the same time. My mother-in-law hand knit them matching sweaters.
I would love to hear about you!
Who are you? Why do you blog or read other people’s blogs?
Hey!
So I’ve been a little non-existent here but it’s because:
1) My computer broke (self explanatory)
2) I was distracted into getting a new blog design (do you like it?)
3) I’ve also been working on my new SmugMug site with my photography stuff.
I went on a 1.5 week of computer fast and then the computer miraculously turned on again when my husband decided to fix it. IDK what happened. I did spay it out with a duster can but that’s about it.
It’s been really nice to disconnect for a while. I’ve spent more time with my kids and my apartment is clean! The dishes and laundry is done too. It’s amazing how much time I waste online.
So we’ve just been preparing for General Conference weekend. We are so excited for that.
Quentin started crawling three days ago!!
Micah has been learning his phonics…. like “oo’s” and “a’s”
Dallin is still working hard at grad school. He just recently submitted a science publication… congrats to him!
Me… I’ve just been focusing on working out, eating healthy, cleaning the house, and getting in a better scripture study… you know… being a mom. I’ve lost 6 pounds since January! 10 more pounds to go to be back at pre-pregnancy weight.
Dallin was sick this week. Now both of the kids have been sick and have been throwing up like crazy… yuck.
Anyways… thanks for reading my rambles.
I want to thank everyone who has ever let me take their picture. I’ve been able to organize my portfolio better with the new SmugMug platform. You should check out my new photography site and give me feedback!
Here’s a slide show of some of my favorite pictures I’ve taken over the last few years.
Stay tune and I’ll add more to my blog and new SmugMug Site! 🙂
Oh man it’s already March 17th and I haven’t posted anything in March! Ok I have lots of excuses. In January, my external hard drive lost half it’s data. I wrote about that here. I spent until March recovering and organizing everything onto a disk drive. I finally finished and was about to back everything up to a cloud storage. Then a few days before spring break, the disk drive failed. The MTF and MTFmirr files were corrupted meaning that the whole hard drive is corrupted! Well that was 1 T of organized data from 2004 to 2014! Anyways… for spring break we left to St. Louis to go visit Dallin’s grandma for her 90th birthday. Now we’re home.
I feel like I’m in such a hole with my big data problem that I don’t want to start recovering from it… but I’ll get back at it during the next few weeks and I’ll start retro-blogging. I have lots to share so check back later!
For now there are new ways to follow us!
These cute icons are from here.
Networked Blogs: 
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Here is our latest Instagram post! Gotta love quick pictures taken with a smart phone. It’s a little different than the pictures I usually post on our blog.
Micah was super upset that his milk turned #green this morning. Quentin was O.K. with it!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! Strange to think that we were in Ireland last year for this special holiday! If only I had my hard drive of pictures to show you St. Paddy’s Day in Ireland. 🙂 Oh well this will do.
I grew up going to Classic Skating all the time! I remember in 6th grade when they took us on a field trip to Classic Skating and I was super excited. My mom encouraged me to learn how to roller blade at a very young age and I’ve always loved it! I didn’t realize that my son, who is only 2, would love roller skating!!!
Last week, we went to Classic Skating family activity planned by our ward’s elders quorum. We had a blast! It made me really happy to see that Micah loved being on wheels. 🙂 He went around the rink like 8 times!
They’ve remodeled the place a little since I’ve been there but they still do things like “wipe out”, “snowball”, “blackout” and “train”. It sure brings back old memories!
After a while, Micah insisted on rolling by himself.
Our little Quentin bear just had fun looking at the lights. During blackout it seemed like we were at a rave or something! LOL! No, we didn’t take babies to a rave. It was just Classic Skating.
One thing that has changed is that I didn’t know they allow little kids to bring in strider balance bikes. They also let us have strollers on the rink! LOL! Our family definitely rolls in style. And yep, we used our own converted single to double stroller.
In The Family Proclamation it says that “Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.”
As, a family we definitely try to work hard to keep our house in order and keep up with our studies but we also play hard too! Going to classic skating sure was a lot of fun and it was a good family/ward bonding activity.
What kind of wholesome recreational activities does your family like to do?
It’s been a while since I’ve posted picture on LDS temples.
This is the Las Vegas Nevada Temple. We stopped here on the way to San Diego back in October.
My husband is really good at going to the temple every week. I’ve been trying to go every other week but it is really a lot harder to go to the temple with little kids. It has worked out though for the most part. I get the the temple about twice a month. Even though I don’t always get to go with Dallin to the temple, the sisters in our ward are always arranging trips together to the temple. It’s nice to get away to have some “girls time” too. This allows me to be able to get to know different sisters in our ward better by going to the temple with them.
I also notice that even though I can’t go to the temple as often, there is still an increased measure of the Spirit at home. Why? I think it’s because little babies bring with them a special spirit. Also, I think it’s because my husband has been so faithful in attending the temple. I also believe that new moms can be blessed to have the “spirit of the temple” at home through prayer, scripture study, and uplifting music.
I heard once that a mom would take 2 hours of her week to have “temple time” even though she couldn’t physically get the the temple because of distance and time. During that time she would study about the temple.
How do you find time to go to the temple? (Especially if you have little kids…)
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So far on our virtual temple tour we have been to these temples:
I have more temple pictures. It’ll probably take the rest of the year to edit them!
By the way! I finally joined Instagram. You can follow me here.
My LDS Temple boards on Pinterest is here.
Random Photography Ramble: Why do I like to do this star burst effect? Because it was about noon day when we arrived at the temple and there was no clouds in the sky. I usually like to take pictures during sunrise or sunset with clouds to help defuse the light. Lunch time really isn’t the best time for lighting so I think the light “burst” adds to the picture instead of just having a plan blue sky. You can learn how to do the star effect here.
DID YOU KNOW? It’s actually “Happy St. Valentine’s Day”? Even though it is unclear exactly who St. Valentine is. One legend I heard while we were in Ireland is that February 14 is the day St. Valentine died. The Dubliners believe he is burried somewhere in Dublin, Ireland. They believe he was killed because he was performing marriage ceremonies for soldiers and young couples even though marriage was not allowed at the time.
While St. Valentine’s Day doesn’t have any significant religious value or doctrine in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the church does support dating after the age of 16 and marriage between one man and one women. After marriage we are to work hard to keep a healthy and happy marriage. Our stake president counseled the husbands to take their wives on a date every week.
Basically, we celebrate Valentine’s Day because of culture and not religion. 🙂
WHAT DOES OUR FAMILY DO FOR VALENTINE’S DAY? Dallin told me that his mom use to make him a big heart shaped cookie for breakfast. So I woke up at 5 AM this morning to make him that big cookie!
May Bo loves to receive and give valentine’s. Her favorite memory is making tin foil Valentine’s day boxes in elementary school. Every year, May Bo has taken Valentine’s Day pictures of Micah ever since he was born. You can see the other years here:
We will post the 2014 Valentine’s Day pictures of Micah and Quentin another day. Why? Because there is this little girl who always comes up to us in Sunday school almost every week. She always gives us a cute smile and we give her gold fish crackers. Every time May Bo saw her she wanted to take a picture of her. So finally we just invited her over to take Valentine’s Day pictures. It’s not everyday that May Bo can take pictures of cute little girls since we have 2 boys!
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY
Hubbard's Cupboard 