Come, listen to a prophet's voice

Last weekend (April 5-7) we decided to do something new and take the family to see General Conference in person.  Rachel has been to several sessions before in her time living in Utah, and I went to one session back in 1987, but the rest have never been.

Friday after Lisa and Daniel got home from school we drove down to Provo.  Yumiko's car did well on its first road trip, averaging between 34 and 35 mpg.  The weather was nice, and the increasing numbers of windmills were turning lazily.  

We got to Provo about 11:00 and dropped off some food at Andrew's apartment, then got some sleep.

Saturday we hung out with Rachel and Justin at their apartment and watched conference.  Everyone stayed awake and attentive the whole time.

After the afternoon session the girls got ready for a bridal shower.  One of Rachel's best friends from high school is marrying our across-the-street neighbor.  Here are the cute little cupcakes Yumiko made for the party.

Meanwhile, Daniel and I took Andrew grocery shopping...

...and then we headed to the priesthood session.

Sunday morning we watched conference at Rachel and Justin's apartment again.  They have a very nice apartment, and it's very neat and well decorated.  Definitely a step above student apartments when I was a student.  And of course, everyone stayed awake for the whole session.

Then we headed to the cars for the drive up to Salt Lake City.

We joined the other crowds of people heading to the Conference Center, and stopped to take a few photos outside.

...then headed inside.

The conference center is really, really big.  It would have been fun to wander around and explore more than we did.  It was a good experience to see it in person, and there were some amazing talks in the session we attended.

I hope you dance

Last weekend Lisa went to our stake's alternative Sweethearts dance.  They do a girl-ask-guy "Sweetheart's" dance at the school in February; our stake, in conjunction with several others, puts on an alternative dance in March for those who want to have fun in a perhaps less worldly setting, or maybe just want to go to two dances instead of one.

Lisa asked Michael, a really nice guy in our ward.  In the afternoon she and her group went and played Nerf darts.  In the evening we took photos down by the Boise River.

Here are a few photos of her and her group.

After that they went to dinner at the home of one of the girls, then went to the dance.  It was held at our church building.  A lady in our ward was in charge of the decorations, so Yumiko got roped into helping (which means I did too).  It was quite the production -- there were 20-30 people working on it at any given time, and it took about eight hours to get the room all ready.  It was pretty impressive.

 

After the dance the kids came over to our house for desert.  Here's what Yumiko made for them.

Everyone seemed to have a good time!

I Like to Look for Rainbows

Haydn was baptized on March 2.  Here are a few photos, plus some from the Hadyn/Jeff birthday celebration on March 3.

Hadyn's birthday donut.

Jeff and the NRA-approved AK-47 lighter.

Happy Birthday, Andrew!

Andrew downing some serious ribs with Rachel and Justin at Texas Roadhouse.