Our Family History

In Our Family This Week... We stayed quite busy this week! I had 2 photos shoots (on Monday and Tuesday). We had the awesome opportunity to take Grandma and Grandpa Vogt, Aunt Heidy and Grandma-Great to the Temple on Tuesday morning for tour! I had been looking forward to this for quite some time and had spent some time in prayer that they could feel the sweet Spirit that is there. They all mentioned about the beauty of the building and the peace that they felt. (Insert John's feelings...)
After the tour, Grandma Great treated us to lunch at the Chuck-A-Rama.

On Wednesday (which was HALLOWEEN!) I had to take off a little after 3pm to head to the Temple for our shift being Ushers for the Open House. Even with it being Halloween, it was pretty steady with people. I had the fortunate opportunity to be placed directly in front of the Celestial Room.  What an amazing experience to be right next to the Celestial room for close to 5 hours!  I had several thoughts and impressions come to me during my time there. Many were specific to Homeschooling and what specific things were needed for certain children. It also struck me that we should do all we can to keep our homes neat and orderly and clean - looking to the Temple to be the example in all things! Friday - after John got home from work - we spent some time getting our yard winterized :)

Saturday morning brought another Youth Cultural Celebration that the boys and I went to at the Stake Center. The practices are a couple of hours and so after getting some pictures taken for the church, I worked on the lesson plans for next week.

When we got back from rehearsal, John and Ben took off for tailgating down at BSU. I worked on more editing and then later that afternoon, the rest of the kids and I went down to join in on the festivities! As you can see from the pictures, it's some serious tailgating! Unfortunately, the Bronco's did not prevail and we lost by 3.

Sunday was Stake Conference with an early morning Youth Fireside at 7:50am. The boys and I were able to attend and it was fabulous! It was an entire meeting of Q&A with Elder Kim B. Clark (the President of BYU-I).

In Our Homeschool This Week... here's just a tiny glimpse of all that we did this week using some photos.

Spiritually Speaking.... I felt impressed to add another "category" to blog about each week.  Spirituality is such a huge part of our lives and encompasses so many aspects of things and really helps define who we are as a family - that I want to capture and remember all of the blessings and spiritual experiences that we have each week. For me this week, I was really excited to hear what would be taught at Stake Conference!  I was really excited to find out that we would be hearing from Elder Clark for the majority of the 2nd hour.  What really impressed me about him (both from the morning Youth Fireside and his general address to everyone at conference) was that he KNEW the gospel!  Random questions were being thrown at him about Miracles to Temple Work to Repentance to Modesty to Why can't Women hold the Priesthood to even questions like "If we're not sealed to our families, will we forget them in the eternities?" Without missing a single beat - he directed all of us to the doctrines of these questions in the scriptures (and he used ALL the works of scriptures). He was an incredible example of how we need to implement the new Youth Curriculum. For instance, when a youth would ask a question, he would:

FIRST: Teach the Doctrine from the Scriptures

SECOND: He gave specific examples (from either additional scriptures or from personal experience)

THIRD: He related everything back to the original question being asked

FOURTH: He asked the person presenting the question IF they understood.

Goals For Next Week... It might be a bit ambitious - but I would really love to finish up editing my last two photo sessions and move on with life! LOL. I would also like to invite 2 of our neighbors to tour the Boise Temple (the last day for tours is this Saturday!). Get back to being serious with the 2 older boys and work on finishing the last 2 paragraphs of The Living Christ (memorizing)

Photos I Love From The Week... just a couple of the little ones while we were down at the tailgate.  I was loving the fall splendor!