Let Your Light So Shine

During that beautiful day outside on Monday, Phoebe decided to listen to an audiobook while sitting in her favorite tree. Sophie saw her up there and demanded that Phoebe toss her phone down. Sophie had had a flash of photographic inspiration. She took all the photos that follow in this post. After, while we were looking at the pictures and admiring her work, Phoebe teased that she had inspired Sophie. Sophie told us she'd been inspired by the sun. In all of these pictures, her focus was on the light.

I think they're beautiful, the pictures and the girls in them.

Blue

Somebody (I really don't know who) gave Topher a large blue Airhead after church.

And this is what happened during the baptism.

Do Unto Others

We attended both our old ward and our new ward on Sunday. We went to our old ward at 9:00 to support our young friends and watch their Primary program. It was both wonderful to witness and so sad to see all these kids that I don't get to work with anymore. We got lots of hugs and some shared tears.

Then we went directly to our own meeting which starts at 11:00. That included our second and final practice for the Primary program. Right after that was a baptism for a young man who had a remarkable conversion story. By the time we got home we had just enough time to change, make a quick dinner, wolf some of that food down, and get back in the car.

Cooper, Phoebe, and I spent the hours from 5:00 until 8:30 preparing, serving, and cleaning up dinner at a local emergency shelter. It functions out of the basement of a church during the six cold months of the year to provide food, shelter, and showers to those without. I was simultaneously incredibly thankful that it exists and incredibly sad that it needs to exist. The people we served were so thankful. Phoebe took the job of handing trays of food out the window between the kitchen and the dining room. I joined her near the end. One woman came up to the window and asked if we were from a school. I told her we were from a church. She asked which church. I answered, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." She grinned, said thank you, and left.

I didn't anticipate how exhausting standing for three and a half hours would be. After that very long day, I fell asleep at 10:30, which is a totally normal time to go to sleep, but not at all normal for me. I slept for nine and a half hours that night.

I guess the moral of this story is that spending a full day serving others leads to a really great night of sleep.

Enjoy It While It Lasts

The high today was 64 degrees and the low was 44. Tomorrow the high is forecast to be 46 degrees and the low will hover around 27. I'm never ready for the temperature to drop so low. The kids took advantage of the relatively warm day and spent time outside. It helped that our school district doesn't hold school on Veteran's Day; there was more time to be outside.

Brotherly Love

"Cooper, will you help me study the gospel?"

Artist's Eye

Sophie, Topher, and I went to a costume party on Saturday night. They had a huge yard and an amazing art installation that reminded me of Alice in Wonderland. Sophie was inspired and kept borrowing my phone to express her artistic soul through pictures. I took the first picture, the rest are Sophie's.

In the Clouds

This evening, while driving home, I looked out the front window of my car and saw these clouds. I was stopped at a red light and my phone was on my dashboard showing me directions. I tilted the phone in its stand and clicked a picture. There were dark clouds below and bright, sunlit clouds above. I suddenly had the impression that the dark clouds could represent the turmoil and sadness that sometimes exist on earth. Those bright clouds above were a reminder that God is there and He loves us, even when things aren't going well here.

Sometimes clouds can be a tender mercy.

Doing My Duty

The adults in our household (including Peter) all used mail-in-ballots this year. I dropped mine off last week and got an email on Friday that it had been received. I'm thankful that we live in a country where we get to add our voices and vote.

All Treats, No Tricks

Topher snagged us some spooky glasses at the trunk-or-treat on Wednesday night. We wore them just long enough to take pictures.

We only got out twenty minutes late to trick-or-treat vs. our standard thirty minutes. Our township allows trick-or-treating from 6pm to 8pm and we walked about two miles during that block of time. The temperature got up to the 80s during the day, so no one needed a jacket while we roamed around the neighborhood.

We returned home sore from walking and hauling those heavy bags of candy.

Yes, Phoebe was green. She got lots of positive comments on her costume. A few people even guessed that she and Sophie were characters from Wicked, though most people thought Sophie was a princess.

Bryan sat at the end of the driveway and handed out candy to the approximately twenty kids that came by. We have A LOT of candy left over.

A Glimpse

I just got home from attending an Endowment session at the Philadelphia Temple. I went to support a sweet friend from my old ward who was going through for the first time. If my count is correct, there were at least twenty-one of us in attendance to encourage and support my friend and her husband. I've never been in a session with so many people that I hold dear. None of us wanted to leave the Celestial Room when it was over and I kept thinking, "This is what heaven will be like."

It was wonderful.