Testimonies

I'm hoping to make my Sunday post a bit more on the spiritual side. I don't do enough bearing of my testimony or such late, well maybe that's not totally true, but I don't do it as much as I did when I was single. Testimonies for me are not so much the grand realization of spiritual topics like they once were. Then again, my audience has changed since I was single or a missionary. As the Primary Music Leader, and as a mom, my focus on the gospel is in much simpler terms.

Not that there's anything wrong with focusing on those basic building blocks of the gospel. The things that I teach those kids and my own children will be the foundation of their testimonies later in life. Plus it reaffirms what my own testimony is built on. That's partly why I love the children song book. The basic truths, set to music, are inside.

For example: In July, I had a friend get baptized. I was asked to give her talk on the Holy Ghost, and I was kind of excited. Not only do I love baptisms, but I was excited to talk in front of adults. Then, when I wrote my talk, I realized that the best way I could describe who the Holy Ghost is and what he does is right in the song we I had taught the kids in June called The Holy Ghost. So I used it for the base of my talk. So it wasn't some grand lofty adult themed talk like I thought it would be, but I'm thankful to know that if anyone wants to know how the Holy Ghost can influence them in their lives, they just need to learn that song.

Our Primary Program is next week. Its the culmination of all the work they've done this year learning the gospel and the songs they've learned. Sariah has a little part. Its "Obey your parents." She does a good job saying it. (If she'd only just follow it sometimes!) The senior primary kids wrote their own testimonies to share. It happens near the end followed by one of my favorite songs they learned this year "I Know That My Savior Loves Me." It is like a testimony set to music and I love it. I definitely feel the spirit when these kids share their testimonies. It gave me goose bumps when we practiced today, I know I'm going to cry next week.

A testimony is something so simple that a child can share it. Isn't that amazing? Sometimes I think as adults we'd do well to remember that. It is one of those "share what you know" kind of things. How do we know these thing? By learning the basics, studying the scriptures, letting the spirit influence our lives, prayer.

One of my most treasured testimony memories (in a meeting setting) happened at the very end of my mission. The last night before me and other missionaries were set to go home, President would hold a big meeting where the other missionaries would bring their investigators and the leaving missionaries would bear their testimonies. I don't remember what I said, but I know I was influenced by the Holy Ghost, and I think it probably ended up being a lot like the first discussion. But afterward, one of the investigators I had been working with for a long time came up to me and told me how much my testimony influenced her. It was one of those teach by the spirit, receive by the spirit things. It was simple.

One last thing about testimonies. One of the best ways to share your testimony is just to live it. If you believe the gospel, then you want to follow those teachings of Jesus. People catch onto that. Sometimes I think we're teaching our kids more about the gospel then we think we are because its just natural for us to live this way. We teach them the truths without even realizing it. For instance: Sariah really picked up on modestly. Not because we had a long sit down chat about why its important to be modest in our dress and actions, but because that's how we dress at home. There are standards to the way we choose clothes to wear. Its important to treat our bodies like the sacred gift they are. She gets that because that's the way we live. We've shown her what is important to us.

This blog post went a totally different direction then I meant it to go. I had another topic in mind when I sat down to write this. I guess that'll be for next week. Till then, keep living and sharing your testimonies. I know they strengthen me!

Is Halloween Still Spooky if You Blog About it a Week Late?

Here are the pumpkins we carved. Doug and Sariah did the one on the left. Sariah drew, Doug cut. Bryson and I did the one on the right. I cut, Bryson watched. Here's Bryson at the Library dance party. He had more fun than Sariah. He also makes an excellent Alien.
Check out his cook alien space ship. Yes, this is the best picture I got of the two of them, my Astronaut & my Alien. Sadly, we're at a point were neither child cooperates when the camera comes out and they're in the same shot.
But Sariah is still a pretty cute Astronaut. She wore this costume all week, and not just because of all the parties, but because she likes it. It is probably pretty comfy!
Doug and I dressed up as people from the tv show Stargate-SG1. Yep, we travel in worms holes to other planets in our spare time, when were not wrangling our children. The trunk or treat was kind of stressful this year, I'm hoping next year will be better.

Animals

Whoo... I'm almost forgot about this today, and I had a good picture post, pushing it off again until tomorrow. Instead you get this random post on a topic that Doug just gave me.

I like animals. I enjoy that we have a free zoo here in Madison and we like to go in the late Spring/Summer/early Fall. Its technically open in the Winter, but cold and snow prevents me from really wanting to go. I like pets at home as well. Although my hamster project didn't go so well. I could see in the future getting some sort of small dog or a cat, but I'm talking about like when we've got teenagers or something so they can help take care of it.

I'm not really good with fish, I've killed a lot of them, so that's right out. I wonder, though, what it would be like to be a fish. If I was one, I think I'd want to be an Ocean fish, more room to swim around in, since I get claustrophobic in smaller spaces. I can't imagine being a salmon and trying to swim upstream with all those other fish to spawn. I wouldn't want to be a really tiny fish or a really big fish (whales and other mammals are out as well) but a nice small to medium fish would be okay. Something blue and sparkly.

Although I do love swimming, I wonder if I wouldn't be happier being a land animal. Not a bird though, because I don't like heights. I do like airplane flying, but that's because I don't really get the sensation of falling while I'm in a plane. I don't really like landings though. Plus, I think feathers would be a pain. I do like to sing though, so that might be a fun part of being a bird.

So something nice and fluffy. I'm really busy and stressed right now, so a sloth seems appealing. I bet I'd get bored after a while. I do think herbivore is the way to go, I'm not fond of having to search for food. I want what I want when I want it with minimal effort. I think a koala might be fun, because I've always thought eucalyptus might be fun to eat. Or a panda and eat bamboo, which makes me think of tofu. Tofu, though, can take on any flavor and I don't think bamboo does that.

So I'm leaning on something calm and fluffy. That could change though. And yes, I wrote this in 5 min. Pretty good, huh?

Darn Internets!

Today's post was going to be on why I can't get both my kids to actually smile cute at the same time aka the mess of Halloween pictures I have. But A) I'm too tired to actually try to post pictures and 2) Blogger is messing up how my blog looks from Internet Explorer. So instead you get a rant on how my relationship with the internet is love/hate.

First off, yay for all the awesome things I can do online. Its great to keep in touch or when I need ideas for church or preschool. Its fun to hear other people's idea on current events or tv shows I watch or what not. I like being able to stream General Conference or local talk radio (from Austin if I want to) or show the kids clips of lightening strikes when all my preschool experiments don't work. I like paying my bills online or get my latest homework for choir, buy tickets online, buy pizza online, or music or dvds or almost everything I buy nowdays except for groceries (although you can do that I hear if you want to.)

What I don't like is all the pain I have to go through to do those things. When I feel like something is taking forever to download because of the speed or when websites don't work correctly (like blogger today or the server was down on one of my other sites yesterday.) I know, selfish, huh? Yeah, now that I've typed it, it does seem like I'm whinning a little too much. I blame my lack of understand of computer code. So maybe I can blame my Computer Science teacher in High School? Maybe not, she was pretty nice & understanding about the fact that it was all gobbledegook to me! Thank goodness Doug understands it, that's the nice thing about marriage, filling out each other's weaknesses with our strengthes.... whoops off topic.

One more thing though. The internet can be a total distraction. And I'm easily distracted. So its hard to be the adult and try and stay off it as much as possible. I like being connected, but its also important to be connected in the real world. And its nice to get your chores done and make food and stuff. Everything has its place, right? Now... let's just hope that writing this post somehow fixes how my blog looks in IE. That would be magic, right?

Edited to add: I fixed what was messed up with IE, it turns out I got messy with code when I moved my pictures around (I tend to go to the HTML setting and cut and paste when I want to move pics, its usually easier.) See? My CS teacher should have totally failed me!

Vests

I like vests. Especially vests on men. I think men should wear more vests. (Yes, this is really a post on vests, what did you think I could sustain blogging about important things for a whole month? Um, no...)

I'm not particular about the type of vest. I like a good button down equally as much as a sweater vest. I do think the important part is that the vest fits right. It can't be too small or too big. There was a guy at Target the other day who's vest was too short, it wasn't nice. So the right fit is important.

When Doug and I got married he had a really nice tux. It included a white vest. I thought he looked really smart. There's not a great picture of us, but one of the few of the vest, so here you go.


Handsome, right? I think so... so did all these ladies...




Okay, that was just an excuse to post the picture Doug thinks is the most embarrassing from our wedding.

My favorite show on television right now has to be Castle. Everyone I read online has been complaining about this season's wardrobe, but I think its particularly nice and not so generic for everyone. I'm especially appreciating Detective Ryan's vests. Check him out.



See, pretty nice, huh? See vests aren't just for suits or tuxes, but can be paired with jeans. Often Ryan takes off his jacket, the vest looks pretty good then, too. They're versatile.

I'm trying to get Doug to wear more vests. I bought him a sweater vest for his suit, but we need to get said suit cleaned, so he hasn't worn it yet. He did say he'd wear it when is suit is cleaned, so its a step in the right direction. I don't know if I could totally change his wardrobe, Doug's big on polo shirts, but I do buy most of his clothes now, so you never know, a change could happen.

In the mean time, buy your man a vest.

Infant Learning Lab

Here at the UW they like to do all kinds of studies (don't most colleges?) A month or two ago, Bryson got invited to participate in a study at the Infant Learning Lab at the Weisman Center. The info said it would be about hearing, vision and language learning, and I thought it sounded really interesting, so we agreed to participate.

So after we dropped Sariah off at preschool, we headed over for our appointment. The study was pretty simple. They're trying to figure out how babies learn to understand languages, break apart words from sentences, etc. So this is how it worked. Bryson and I went into a big sound proof booth. For 3 min they play 4 nonsense syllables over & over to "teach" him the "language" while 3 lights flash randomly, one in front of us, one to the right and the other to the left. Bryson sat on my lap, I had headphones on with Italian playing in my ears, probably so I couldn't influence Bryson's actions.

After the 3 min. the nonsense stopped. At this point the test started. They would flash a light to either the right or left of us, and when Bryson would look that way, they would start some of the syllables repeating. When he looked away it would stop. Then they would flash the light to the front of us, to get his attention again, and then flash the light to the right or left and see if he would look that direction to get the sound started again. They would usually go 3-5 times on either side, then switch.

Bryson was really intrigued by it. The flashing light would catch his attention, but I think the babbling syllables kept it. Once he realized that the sound would start when he looked at the light, he started anticipating the lights on the side, even before the one on the front had stopped flashing. This is usually when they would change it up on him and flash it from the other side. He was really great about seeing it and switching, then anticipating from that side the next time. I think he was kind of dissappointed when it stopped. I was also pretty intrigued, although I tried to stay neutral, and let Bryson do his thing.

The researchers were really excited by Bryson's results and praised him for doing so well. They said that some of the time the babies don't want to play along at all. They gave Bryson a book about Trucks for participating. (He had been playing with the trucks while they explained everything to me before hand, so it seemed fitting.) I told them that we'd be willing to do studies in the future. I found the whole thing pretty fascinating. They'll be sharing their results with other studies and hopefully they can use this information in the future to help kids learn. It was a well spent half an hour.

NaBloPoMo

Every year I think , hey I should really do the National Blog Posting Month, it always seems really fun, but I always remember 2 weeks in, and not on Nov. 1st.

Well today is offically Nov 2, but since I'm only a day late, I'm going to try this thing.

So consider this Nov 1st's post... Here we go!

(edit: I guess I should have explained that basically NaBloPoMo is a blog post a day for the whole month of Nov. :) )