When Last We Met

 When last we met, I shared about a Regions swim meet that took place near the end of January.  As I write this, we are now near the end of February, and I sit at yet another swim meet.  This one is a three-day Utah Senior State Championship down in St. George.  Just Faith and I are on this trip and she will be on deck with her team for most of the time each day.  Which leaves me with many, many hours to self-entertain in the stands.  To be honest, I am more than okay with this arrangement.  I'm quite looking forward to the next few days.  My backside-- not so much.  

I love this picture of George and several Deacons from the ward.   I see four good friends- sticking together, supporting, and helping each other. 

Behind them, are shadows-- technically their shadows,--but I see the darkness representing darkness, challenges, the hard things in life, the adversary.  Visible, but of no actual substance.  Frightening, but unable to actually cause harm or halt progress.  

But behind those shadows, is the decidedly larger, solid, immovable, unyielding structure of the temple.  The building with the firmest foundation, where they will go to formally enter into a relationship with their Heavenly Father.  He is all substance, and his work is to help us progress.  

Our good friends, the Snows have season tickets to BYU basketball-- and sometimes they are very good to us and offer us tickets they aren't able to use.  A little while back, Abe took Peter and Greta down to a game.

Their first Cougar Tail

I think Greta's face is saying-- hey, that's too big of a bite!  #largefamilytroubles

Don't worry, Greta-- there is enough for everyone:)

It's a terribly blurry picture, but this was the funniest thing about the evening.  Faith was also down at the game, on a double date.  What are the chances that in that whole huge arena, our gang would end up sitting RIGHT IN FRONT OF FAITH and her gang?  Oh, the horror!  Actually, they were really good sports about it and everyone had a good laugh.  

Occasionally, George has a little babysitting job at our house for a cutie little neighbor kid.  They are pretty much best friends:)

Greta was very industrious at the Museum of Natural Curiosity.

George and Ryder played a Trade-it-Up game recently.  They started with a penny and went around the neighborhood, seeing who was willing to trade for something of more value.  They stopped the game after several rounds because they had acquired this little beauty-- a dog skeleton with red, light-up eyes and an electronic barking noise.   Surely nothing could be of more value than that!

Our dog Grover got seriously spooked!

Not too long ago, Cannon asked me, "If I will juggle for 10 minutes straight, can I get 10 minutes off my piano practice time?"

Okay.  Go for it.  So he did.  It turns out juggling for 10 minutes straight is more physically exhausting than he anticipated.

Greta tried to make the same deal if she did the splits for 10 minutes.  Alas, she didn't have the patience to sit there for that long.  No deal.  Peter also offered to do ballet jumps for 10 minutes.  When he stopped at the three-minute mark to get a drink of water, I told him the deal was off.  He was grossly offended.