Dallin's Baptism

A few weeks ago our nephew, Dallin, got baptized by his dad, the Bishop. It’s been a few years since I’ve been to a baptism, and I really enjoyed this one. It was short, sweet, and spiritual. I played the piano during the prelude, interlude, and postlude, and it gave me some time to reflect on the simple truths and gift given to us at our baptism and confirmation. It reminded me again of how perfect the church and this gospel is and what a blessing baptism is to give us a fresh start on life.

That weekend was busy for Jeff and Sally because after the baptism and confirmation on Thursday, they had things packed and Jason and their ward helped them move to a new house in Orem. I was over there for a while at the beginning, but it looked like they were in such good hands, there didn’t seem to be a lot for me to do. They had to be out of their house by Saturday, especially since they had already planned several months ago to go on a two-week trip to Italy the next day. I’ve heard the new house is beautiful, but I haven’t seen it yet myself.

Pioneer Day/ Family Reunions

Last Monday after class Jason and I went over to my friend Nicky Burgoyne Smith’s to have dinner/ FHE with her and her new husband Rob. We had a good time talking. Rob made pizza, Jason gave the lesson, we played a scripture game, and then had doughnut holes for dessert. It was a fun evening.

Thursday I didn’t go to class so we could go to an extended Rasband family get together in Lindon. We went to a family complex where the families put their backyards together and built a play land suite that had a nice swimming pool, sports court, soccer fields, batting cages, racquetball courts, miniature golf, swing set, and ride-able train. We had a delicious potluck dinner and played a lot, including swimming, batting, basketball, etc. It was a very fun evening and great to see my cousins, aunts, and uncles.

Friday was Pioneer Day. We played tennis in the morning and then went to Mom and Dad Burningham’s house around lunchtime. Uncle Scott, Aunt Maryann, and their two boys came to visit from Florida. We had a fun time talking and then pulled out the giant slip n’slide in the backyard. I may be biased, but I thought Jason was the best slider. ☺

Close to dinner we drove to West Jordan to have dinner with my family. We ate a delicious chicken dinner and I tried to entertain the kids while Jason played Dominion with Keith, Katrina, and Neal. After Keith and his family left, we put Daniel and Anna to bed and then played Five Crowns and had popcorn and root beer floats.

Jason and I spent the night there so we could save some driving time. Saturday morning my mom gave Jason and I some money to go buy some balls and sports equipment since our house was noticeably lacking in the ball area. We had a blast and came home with a basketball, soccer ball, Frisbee, baseball set, and a few soft, bouncy balls to throw around. It will be fun to play with the little kids outside now.

Next we went with Neal and Katrina and Mom and Dad to the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point. It is huge! I’ve been there before, but I was still amazed at how big it was. It was fun to see the dinosaur skeletons and there was tons of hands-on stuff for Daniel to play with.

From Thanksgiving Point we drove back to the Burninghams and took a little rest before we headed back to an extended Burningham Family reunion in Sandy with Grandpa Burningham’s brothers and sisters and their families. I saw a whole lot of people that I didn’t know! It was fun to meet them though, and we heard some of the genealogy of Thomas Burningham from England, and that was cool.

Sunday, after our block of meetings, were back in West Jordan for the final dinner before Katrina and Neal went back to New York. It was a nice evening, and we even squeezed in one last game of Dominion.

All in all, it has been a very fun-filled, and family-filled month of July. We spent at least one night away from our apartment every weekend in July and spent between 2-4 days a week with family every week. I don’t know how I’ve been keeping up with full-time school and part-time work as well as I have. August will be dedicated to catching up on a few things before Fall semester starts and finding out what has happened to all my friends. It’s hard to believe that my last day of class for Summer term is next week.

Happy Birthday to Katrina tomorrow and Happy ½ Birthday to me!

First anniversary

I had another busy week with school and work, but with one important difference—it was Jason and my one year wedding anniversary on Friday. I cut Jason’s hair in the morning, tried to get a little work in, and then we left at 2:00pm to do sealings at the Draper temple. We wanted to do them at the Salt Lake Temple, but it was closed for cleaning, so we thought doing them at a new temple would be special too. Afterwards we got to be alone in the celestial room for several minutes before the next endowment group came in. It was a beautiful experience.

After the temple, we drove to the Olive Garden restaurant in Salt Lake and got there just before the dinner rush. We enjoyed a delicious dinner thanks to a gift certificate given to me by Jason’s mom for my birthday. We walked 3 blocks in the blazing sun over to the Conference Center. We stood in line and right when we got to the door, Jason’s dad made arrangements for the security guard to hand us the tickets through the door. Jason’s mom saved us some great seats on the Terrace and we enjoyed an amazing concert by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Symphony celebrating the 80th year anniversary of Music and the Spoken Word. The concert really was superb and both Jason and I enjoyed it. Katrina and Neal were also there at the concert up on the Balcony, and we ran into Aunt Edie DuPaix as we were coming out.

Saturday we went to the ward activity at Bi-centennial Park in South Provo. We talked and ate and Jason played a game of wiffel ball.

At 5:00pm we hurried home, picked up some treats from the store, and arrived home just in time to shower and get ready for Neal and Katrina to come over to play games. They brought Daniel and Anna with them, but they were really good and let us play games all night while they slept/ watched us play/ or watched Ice Age. We played Dominion a couple of time and Ticket to Ride with eating popcorn, Red Vines, and orange dreamsicles. They didn’t leave until 11:00pm and I’m sure didn’t get to bed until very late.

Sunday we were able to relax a little more, or at least I was. Jason had a day full of meetings, but we ate a good dinner and had some time to talk and be together. Jason and I exchanged cards for our anniversary that we finally got around to writing, and
I must say that I married the best-looking, kindest, most patient, most loving husband in the world. I love him so much and my love grows as the days go by. I am so very grateful that we met and are now sealed for eternity. I have been more happy in the last year than any other year in my life, and they say it only gets better as time goes by. I’m just waiting to see where life will take us in the next year. ☺

July 12

Wednesday, Melody and Brandon came down to Provo so we could float down the Provo River on inner-tubes. We did it through a company called High Country Rafting. We paid $10 dollars each to have them rent us a life jacket and tube and bus us up the canyon to float down. The water was freezing! Probably a result of all the snow we’re had this year. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. We tried to keep each other from running into the bushes and trees on the banks of the river. It took us a few minutes to get the hang of it, and 10 minutes into our journey we ran into some branches that knocked Melody off of her tube backwards. The river isn’t deep, so when she stood up, she had an expression of cold shock! Fortunately, she was able to get back into her tube without too many problems. There were a few rapid-y parts, but nothing we couldn’t handle. It took us about an hour and a half to get all the way down the river. Afterwards we got Subway sandwiches for lunch and changed back into dry clothes.

Wednesday night Jason went to institute while I worked and Thursday night we catch the last temple session of the night.

Friday, Jason and I drove to West Jordan to see Brandon, Melody, Katrina, Neal, Daniel, and finally Anna. We washed and waxed our car and did laundry as well. We had a nice Spaghetti dinner and spent the time talking and watching the kids play. After Keith and Kim and Kristilyn and Mark left, the rest of us played Rage and talked until after midnight. Jason and I didn’t want to wake people up by blowing up the air mattress so we slept on the twin bed in the Sunflower room. I think I slept on ¼ of it and Jason got the other ¾. ☺

Saturday Jason and I took Melody and Brandon to the airport and then played a little more with Daniel and Anna. We watched our wedding video with Mom, Dad, Katrina, and Neal before we left and I tried on my wedding dress to see if it still fit. I barely squeezed back into it. I don’t think I’ll even have a chance after I have kids. ☺

Before going back to Provo we visited Grandma and Grandpa Burningham. We enjoyed talking to them and they fed us freshly picked raspberries from their garden along with some cookies. I love grandparents! We took some pictures of them before we left since we didn’t have any.

I spent the rest of the day cooking and taking care of school and work assignments. Jason volunteered at the MTC and took care of errands in the evening.

Today has been a good day and very productive. I had possibly my last day in primary for a while since the last of the primary/nursery kids moved out until the end of August. The Bishop is looking into possibly lowering the age so we don’t have to take a sabbatical from our callings, but we’ll see what happens. Jason just got two new assistant ward clerks today, so hopefully his load will be lifted a little more. He’s very diligent in taking care of his calling. He is a great example to me.

4th of July Weekend

It’s so much fun to hang out with family! This has definitely been a week of family reunion time. I spent the first part of the week working on research and studying for class. I took the first test out of four and felt pretty good about it. I haven’t had to take a test at the testing center for a long time, but there I was, sitting in that large room of desks for almost 2 hours while I tried to remember and apply everything that I learned. I can say that for a class all about assessments, they sure have intense assessments!

Tuesday night I also managed to get to Home Depot to buy a piece of plexi-glass for our bedroom window since I figured out a way to keep the heavy air conditioner from falling out our window. We tried it out immediately and I must say it makes a lot of difference in an 85 degree bedroom.

Wednesday night I went to enrichment for an hour or so to make a cute patriotic door hanging and then rushed to a UVU Church History institute class with Jason form 9:00-10:30pm. The teacher was planning to be a lawyer before he decided to go into church education, and he definitely presents his case in the classroom!

Thursday was the first day of a Utah Burningham mini family reunion. We started it off with an adventurous game of disc golf at a course in American Fork. It was a lot of fun and fairly entertaining. Although we were rained out of some of our plans, we still played Ping Pong and Nintendo in the basement and watched home videos on the big screen that night. I had to go back to my class that night, but apparently I missed a Treasure Hunt and water fight compliments of Jason’s dad. We stayed the night and went to Lagoon the next morning, but not before Jason learned how to ride a motorcycle.

I was so excited to go Lagoon and when we finally got in, Jason and I and Chelsey went on Wicked, the Spider, and Colossus right in a row and I was already motion sick. I think it was the Colossus that did me in. Anyway I spent an hour at the pavilion recovering in the shade, trying to get some food in my stomach, and resting my head in my arms until I mostly fell asleep for a few minutes while Jason went on another ride. By the time he came back I was feeling quite a bit better and we ventured out to find the rest of the family again. Fortunately I recovered enough to go on a few more rides like the Rocket, Rattlesnake Rapids, the Log flume, the Bat, the Ferris wheel, the Hydro luge, and the Skywalk. Jason went on his favorite ride, the Samurai, but I happily watched from the sidelines for that one. We left about 7:30pm for home and enjoyed a nice shower, leftover breakfast, and good conversation with Steve and Kirsten and Mom and Dad Burningham before helping Steve and Kirsten pack their moving van the next morning.

I was excited to have Mike and Desi and Melody and Brandon come in for the 4th of July weekend. On Saturday afternoon we went to Mom and Dad’s and had Papa Murphy’s pizza for dinner. Afterwards we went outside to do some fireworks like worms, parachutes, snappers, and smoke bombs. It was fun to see the reaction on the kids’ faces. We also had fun watching the horses in the back yard trying to show off for us. Later that evening we did the rest of the fireworks for the 4th of July. Mike and Desi made sure we were amply supplied and we lit off fountains and flowers for well over an hour. Thanks Mike and Desi! Unfortunately none of the kids wanted to see them. Being scared of the fireworks, Emily insisted on covering her eyes while I covered her ears so she wouldn’t be scared. It didn’t take long before we persuaded her to go inside with Grant and James to watch a Disney movie with Grandma while they watched the fireworks through the glass door.

Jason and I slept over so we could be there for Kira’s baby blessing the next morning. Kira looked like she came straight from heaven in her blessing dress, and I don’t doubt that heaven came down with her during the blessing that her daddy gave. The testimony meeting afterwards was very tender, as mom would say, and tears were shed by many, including myself.

After the meeting we all went over to Keith and Kim’s and had a delicious lunch outside. Thanks to everyone that contributed! Later Mom, Dad, Melody, and Jason and I took Sunday afternoon naps and then played Ticket to Ride until Brandon got there. I showed them the proto-type I helped design for the Church History department and got excited all over just explaining it to them. Here’s the link to an article written about it. I sat in on the interview and so I have a couple of quotes in it. ☺ http://education.byu.edu/news/news546.html

Monday was back to work for both Jason and I, although we did take some time to sign another year contract. We like our apartment and we both don’t like moving. So, I guess you’ll find us here for another year.

Manti Pageant and Stuart Falls

It’s hard to believe that it’s almost the end of June. This month has flown by, especially since starting a summer class this past Monday. It’s called Assessing Learning Outcomes. It’s a 4 credit class about the best ways to assess whether or not the students are learning what they’re supposed to, including how to write many different kinds of tests. Anyway, I have it M - Th for two hours a day and we have a test every other week and a project due on the weeks we don’t have tests. I really enjoyed the substitute professor we had this week, Dr. Richard Sudweeks, an expert and professional in the field of educational assessment.

Last Sunday was Father’s Day. We spent the day with Jason’s family where we had an extended family get-together, something that doesn’t happen very often in his family, but I guess the stars were aligned and lots of people were in town. Besides his sister and two brothers and their families, there were both sets of grandparents there; Aunt Nancy and Uncle Bruce, who are about to start a mission in Washington; their daughter Amanda and her family; Uncle Gary and his son Stephan from Texas who just started BYU as a freshman; his cousin Alex who was there for basketball camp; his cousin Andrea, who goes to BYU, and her friend Nate. Anyway, we had about 30 people there. It was nice to talk to them and get to know them more than just names. So, happy Father’s Day!

In addition to classes this week, I’ve been working on finding resources to teach motivation in my research and I attended a BYU conference on course design for about 5 hours on Friday. It was kind of fun to work with a conglomeration of BYU professors from all the disciplines in trying to improve the courses here at BYU. I must say that I think more that anything, it boosted my confidence in what I’ve been learning because there wasn’t much said that was novel to me since many of my classes focus on the kinds of things they were teaching at the conference. And the free lunch was also a great incentive!

Friday Jason and I decided to go to the Manti Pageant. We wanted to go last weekend, but it just kept raining and was cold so we decided to go this week. After a rainy afternoon, we were glad it cleared up in time for the pageant. After we got past Spanish Fork Jason said, “Where are we? This doesn’t look like Utah.” We enjoyed a beautiful green drive down to Manti and it felt like we were really far from home. The pageant itself was pretty good. It had been years since I’ve seen it, and Jason had never seen it. It was a little over dramatic for me, but the costuming and the stage production in general was really well done. We had great seats about 15 rows backs in the center, and we were able to get out quickly so we didn’t have to wait for a long line of cars to get out of Manti afterwards. It turned out really well.

This morning we got up and went on a ward hike up to Stuart Falls near the Timpanogos trailhead up by Sundance. The ward turnout ended up being three other couples besides ourselves, but we had fun and had a good chance to get to know the other couples better. It was fun to get out and hike a little and the trail was pretty shady. With all the winter run off and rainfall we’ve had, the falls were much more magnificent than usual. Definitely worth the hike!

Jason spends most of his time working at the coding lab, taking care of the responsibilities of his calling, or spending time with me. :) One nice addition this week has been that he has been taking care of fixing dinners. Since my summer class is between 5:00 and 7:00pm, he decided that he would try cooking the meals. He even made Curry on Monday when Steve and Kirsten came over for dinner! He does a great job! . . . so much so that I’ve decided to take all of my classes between 5:00 and 7:00 from now on! J

June 7

Last Tuesday Jason and I decided to try a new exercise routine. Usually when I want to exercise Jason will come run or bike with me or something. The problem is that what is “exercise” for me not even “breaking a sweat” for him. He never complains about it because he generally just likes being with me, but for some reason it’s hard not to feel bad when I’m huffing and puffing and he’s going around me in circles. Anyway, we decided to try something new, I would ride the one bike we have and he would run. Now, if we’re going on flat ground there’s no contest who would win, but going uphill is another story. So we went up to the MTC from our apartment (probably about 4-5 miles round trip), Jason running and me riding the bike. It’s pretty much all uphill and it was just as I suspected, we were pretty much going at the same speed. Granted on the way down I had to slow down just a little, but Jason ran all the way there and back again without stopping. And you know what, the next day he had sore muscles. That doesn’t happen very often and he didn’t even know what sore muscles really felt like for the first 6 mo. of our marriage! I’m glad I could introduce him back to a “real” workout again. I won’t even mention the fact that when we got back to our apartment he started hopping up and down the stairs on one leg because he said “his muscles didn’t get a very good workout.” All I can say is that I hope our children inherit his physical skills and ability.

Wednesday at institute was definitely a surprise for us. We’ve been looking around to find an institute to go to since Jason has Bishopric meeting on the night our stake institute meets. I looked on-line and found a contact number for our area. I made Jason call, and the person on the phone said that the information on-line was correct and invited us to come, so we headed over there and were very surprised to find that in was an institute program especially for young adults with special needs. Needless to say that our institute experience was quite different from the one we anticipated; but I still learned a lot about Heber J. Grant and I will never forget how helpful and kind everyone was, nor will I forget the enthusiastic leading of the opening and closing hymn, or the spiritual thought about the movie “Titanic.” ☺

Thursday I helped out a sister that I visit teach by watching her 18 mo. old while she and her husband went out to eat and shopping. The little girl Emily slept for the first two hours, but when she woke up we played with almost every toy, read almost every book, and went in almost every room of the apartment in about an hour and half. I was starting to wonder what moms do with one and half year olds every day if I had already done it all in an hour and a half when her parents came home and I didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

Friday Jason and I babysat Jeff and Sally’s three kids and then later Steve and Kirsten dropped off Ben as well. It went really well minus the crying babies, but it just gives us good practice for being parents right?

Saturday morning I took the Praxis II Principles of Learning and Teaching exam at BYU. It’s a standardized test given by ETS and required for teachers getting their permanent license. It also happens to mostly be based off the class that I teach, Educational Psychology. So, since I have to take the test if I ever want to go back to teaching and I working right now to help revamp the course to better prepare the students to take the test, I thought I would take advantage of the opportunity to count my study and preparation hours as work hours too and get paid for it. The test went pretty well and hopefully I scored well too.

That night Jason and I went to meet our new three-week-old niece Kira Rogers in Riverton. She is really cute and very fun to hold. It’s hard to believe how small she is!



Jason and our niece Kira