Black and White of PJ

Parker, at Landon's birthday party from a few weeks ago. I hope to post more of the party shots soon...
We went sledding and so this is PJ climbing back up the hill.

Taking things literally...

I brought Maddie and Ashley to work with me on Friday because my 1st hour class wanted to throw a b-day party for Madelyn (thanks guys!). Of course, Maddie wanted to show off a little by doing summersaults, twirling around like a ballerina, and counting to 10. Pretty good stuff. Then I said, "Maddie, can you stand on one foot?" I really wanted to see if she could balance on one foot...

She took her right foot and put in on top of her left foot. Literally standing on one foot.

Happy birthday Mads!

Love, Poppa

Update

I have been busy....shoveling snow. And I mean snow. Lots of it. Feet of it.

We even cancelled church last Sunday.

But, as far as updating goes...We did have quite a little adventure last weekend.

When Landon came up quite upset about the passing of Pres. Hinckley two Sundays ago, I secretly prayed that Heavenly Father would "fix it" somehow. Maybe Pres. Hinckley could appear to Landon in a dream (or something along those lines)? I didn't know if my prayer was an appropriate one or not, but the next morning Landon seemed to feel all right about things, so I decided to let it go and pray about other stuff (I'm developing quite a list). Two days later I learned that the viewing for our prophet would be Thursday and Friday at the Conference Center in SLC, so I asked Landon and Parker if they were interested in going down. They were very excited! I kinda thought this would help Landon "be in the same room" as the prophet (the prophet's body, anyway) like he wanted. We left our home at about 4 pm, drove for an hour or so, caught TRAX to the Conference Center, and walked to find the end of the line.

We stood in line for 5 1/2 hours. I cannot explain how cold it was.

I'm not comparing our experience to the pioneers coming west, but after about 3 hours I started thinking this was some kind of learning experience. Could I survive one more hour? Could I just make it to the next pillar in line? Would the feeling come back in my legs? Again, it was so cold. Oh, and I didn't bring any cold weather jackets for me or the boys...minor detail. We stood in this line that never seemed to end. We shivered like crazy. We were a little hungry. We ran around to try to get warm. We huddled together to block each other from the wind.

At one point, hours into the wait, I said to Landon, "You say the word, and we'll go home". He said he was fine, and Parker agreed, so we kept standing there. I asked again an hour later, and they both said they wanted to stay. A little while later I, again, explained that we could go and eat and be warm and go home to bed, and Landon said (a little teary-eyed), "Dad, I'm not leaving until I see what I came here to see."

At that point I promised Landon that we would stand there all night if that was what was required.

At 10:30 pm, we stood right there next to the body of our beloved prophet, with Parker up in one arm, and Landon under my other arm. We looked at the prophet, looked at each other, smiled, hugged and drove home. There was a very, very warm feeling between the three of us.

Prayer answered....