Well, as if our spiritual feast here LAST weekend wasn't enough, this weekend was our stake conference, and Elder Henry B. Eyring was here. It was a lovely weekend. PMM, however, has been running a fever all weekend, so dh went to Saturday's sessions alone. A highlight was he got to shake Elder Eyring's hand and speak with him!
Yesterday, we tag-teamed and dh stayed home with PMM while I took the two older boys. I got to walk by Elder Eyring in the hallway, and he smiled at me! LOL
In addition to PMM being sick, now I've apparently caught a cold. :-) So no summer library activity today. I'm holing up on the couch with books and lesson plans for the fall.

I'm reading a volume of poetry by Eliza R. Snow and wanted to share one:

Beauty Everywhere

There's beauty in the human face--
Beauty of motion, form and grace--
Beauty of innocence and youth--
Beauty of lips that speak the truth.

There's beauty in the lucid stream
That sparkles with the sun's bright beam;
There's beauty in the clouds that fly
In fleecy sheets across the sky.

There's beauty in the tiny wave,
Where moving waters gently lave;
There's beauty in the dashing flow,
When cataracts melt in foam below.

There's beauty in the grassy blade
That decks the spacious summer glade;
And in the wild flower's peerless bloom,
That fills the air with sweet perfume.

There's beauty in the gentle rain
That waters garden, field and plain;
And in the fiercer storm that beats,
And sends its torrents through the streets.

There's beauty in the aerial bow,
Which God has set above, to show
The world will not be drowned again,
While on its surface men remain.

There's beauty in the lightnin's blaze
And in the moon's pale borrow'd rays;
There's beauty in the twilight hour,
When night's brown tinge begins to lower.

There's beauty in the starry night,
And in the morning's golden light;
There's beauty in the sun's first rays,
And in its noontide burnish'd blaze.

The stars that twinkle in the sky,
Are gems of beauty placed on high;
Go where you will--look here and there,
And beauty meets you everywhere.

Read this poem as I was studying Teach Ye Diligently by Boyd K. Packer, and liked it so much I decided to post it today:

Today a professor, in garden relaxing,
Like Plato of old in the Academe shade,
Spoke out in a manner I never had heard him
And this is one of the things that he said:

Suppose that we state as a tenet of wisdom
That knowledge is not for delight of the mind.
Nor an end in itself, but a packet of treasure
To hold and emply for the good of mankind.

A torch or a candle is barren of meaning
Except it give light to men as they climb.
And theses and tomes are but impotent jumble
Unless they are tools in the building of time.

We scholars toil on with the zeal of a miner
For nuggets and nuggets and one nugget more
But scholars are needed to study the uses
Of all the great mass of data and lore.

And truly our tireless and endless researches
Need yoking with man's daily problems and strife
For truth and beauty and virtue have value
Confirmed by their uses in practical life.
Author Unknown

For some must push, and some must pull, as we go marching up the hill,
So merrily on our way we go, until we reach the valley-o!!!
We attended the Handcart Pioneer Sesquicentennial Commemoration in Iowa City on Saturday. Unfortunately, the Iowa weather turned traitor, and in June we had 45-degree temperatures, cold rain turning to sleet, and low turnout. Sigh. But it was a great object lesson for parents to remind their children that the REAL handcart pioneers had no place warm to go after a day pulling a handcart in bad weather. Tallman ran around the entire handcart course several times, then took a turn IN the card with a friend of ours, while Cheery pushed and Daddy and PMM pulled. There were a number of activities, performances and displays, and we enjoyed them all. One note--there was originally a concession planned selling snowcones--it's Iowa in June, after all! Apparently and wisely, at the last minute they changed to hot chocolate and were one of the most popular attractions.
We got to follow this up last night, with yet ANOTHER trip to Iowa City, to attend the fireside. It was a tremendous experience for us to be there while President Packer and President Hinckley spoke. The PMM was very well-behaved, fortunately, since we had to arrive very early and take our seats early--we were in our seats at 6:00. It was a weekend in which we put many, many miles on our van, but also in which we made many family memories.

Here we are, as a handcart pioneer family! LOL

These two young men were performance missionaries in Nauvoo; they regularly perform shows there. They traveled to Iowa City and entertained us on a cold, dreary day at the Handcart Pioneer Commemoration. We laughed until we cried. There was also a young lady who was one mean fiddle player and many lovely voices. It was worth the trip and the cold!

Well, yesterday was our SEVENTEENTH wedding anniversary. Don't try to figure out how old this must make me. :-) This Halloween will be the TWENTIETH anniversary of our first date. Remind me to tell that story sometime. :-) We celebrated by going out to lunch at Applebee's, sans kids.
I also decided to let dh have one of the things I had ordered for him for Father's Day. Deseret Book helpfully sent HIM the confirmation email instead of me, so he already knew what it all was anyway, lol. (Deseret Book did that in REVERSE a couple of Christmases ago, sending ME the confirmation email for my own gift from dh, lol) So I gave him the new DVD of The Work and the Glory II: American Zion. We decided to pop it in last night. We had enjoyed the first Work and the Glory movie, naturally we felt the book was better, but still, we had liked it.
Not so with this one, I'm afraid. Not only was it only very LOOSELY based on the books, it even played loose with the facts of Church history, and I for one cannot understand why on earth they would need to change the amazing true story of Church history around for a movie.
For starters, I was pretty irritated at the departures from the book. Benjamin Steed did NOT go on march with Zion's Camp. Melissa Steed was NOT a whiny, backtalking brat who ought to have been whipped. Some of the very best segments of the book were totally left out. The movie left the viewer wondering why on earth Jessica did not go back with that nice Joshua, especially since in the MOVIE version of their fight, Joshua got hurt much worse than did Jessica.
Some of the most dramatic scenes, some of them true Church history scenes, were totally left out, including a favorite of mine, the true and amazing story of the boatful of pioneers led to Ohio by Lucy Mack Smith, and the story of how her faith got them through when other pioneers were stranded by ice. Where on earth was this story? The scene at Fishing River, when the Lord protected Zion's Camp--it was there, but not nearly as amazing and dramatic as it could have been. It came across as rather flat, in fact. I am left to wonder if the producers simply didn't have enough money to do it right, or whether they just weren't as moved by these true stories and wanted to hype up the Benjamin-Joshua-Nathan conflicts artificially instead.
The departures from real Church history are what bugged me the most. I kept telling my kids "Just forget this, this is NOT how it happened!" Perhaps the Lucy Mack Smith and ice part was left out on purpose because Joseph and Emma arrived in Kirtland, in a wagon, in the SPRING with the trees already leafed out, not in February in the snow in a sleigh. Why mess with that? The movie has the scene in which Joseph Smith was drug out of his home in Kirtland, taken from his sick baby he was comforting, and beaten and tarred and feathered, all messed up too. In the movie, the baby dies DURING the night while Lucy Smith cleans the tar off of Joseph and Emma sits in a chair crying. (another side note, I did not think Emma was portrayed as the strong woman she really was in this film either) Then, after being cleaned up, Joseph goes to work at the TEMPLE site, leaving bereaved Emma alone. That is not what happened either! EMMA was part of the cleaning up of Joseph, the baby did not die that night, but 2 or 3 days later, and Joseph did not go to work at the temple site the next morning, but preached at Sunday services. Why on earth do we need to change this story? The movie has Joseph making prophecies and predictions that he did in fact make, but many of them were made much later than the movie has it--after the temple was completed, or even in Nauvoo, not Kirtland.
I must admit to being disappointed. If the real story was changed to reflect what the director and producers want to have happened, then their vision of the story is far from my own. If it just reflects time and money constraints, then they should wait until they have the means, and then tell the story RIGHT.
I could handle departures from the book storyline. After all, it's not the Gospel, it's a work of fiction. But I have a much harder time overlooking departures from the truth of Church history. This is a story deserving of Academy Award-quality filmmaking. All the drama, faith, tragedy, pain, overcoming love are all in the story already. Why tamper with it? It certainly cannot be improved upon. It was written by the Master Storyteller Himself, and cast carefully and deliberately with the best He had to offer. It's a shame to see it reduced and manipulated like any other "plot element"

You've had a birthday, shout hooray!
We'd like to sing to you today.
One year older, and wiser, too.
Happy Birthday to you!
The PMM is six years old today! Will upload a couple of birthday celebration pictures later. I can't believe my baby is six!
He's been very excited and especially cute lately. We have two fun stories from the last few days. One evening, I told him to take off his clothes while I kissed the older boys goodnight so I could put him right in the bath. Dh says when he came out, PMM was on the floor, bare-bottomed, but had somehow gotten feet and legs and clothing in a hopeless tangle. PMM looked up and said "Daddy, I'm having technical difficulties." ROFL
Then, apparently lately we've been saying a little too often to the children "What would Jesus do?" LOL PMM has learned to play many of our games, and he tends to follow us about the house nearly nonstop, plaintively begging someone to play a game with him. Well, the other day, after hearing one too many refusals, he fixed Daddy in the eye and said, "Would Jesus play another game with me?" Oh, how we laughed. And yes, he got his extra game. :-)