Dear Family,After watching (or almost watching) 10 hours of conference this weekend, I am writing to say that I would indeed be ungrateful if I didn't appear before you this day and publicly .... publish some of the cool pictures we took this morning while some of you were here for breakfast.
Seriously, it has been a really nice day - a good sabbath for us. We had Bryce and Clayton and Amy and Olivia and Eli and Addison and Courtney and Logan and Caden over for breakfast while we watched the morning session of conference.
I think Jason stayed home cleaning up the mess I made in their house sloshing around buckets of backed up sewer water in the showers and tubs after their drain lines clogged up.
We ate bacon and french toast and pancakes and juice. After the grandkids went home, we almost placed a call to FEMA for what looked like gulf coast hurricane damage. Amy says she lives with this every day. The young kids are really cute and some of these pictures show you that.
It has been raining for a couple of days now. Our first real rain of the season. We are enjoying the rain - the gardens and lawn are ready for it. The roof is not leaking and we are dry and comfortable and warm.
Yesterday Kaaren and I painted part of our bedroom in between session of conference. We are slowly getting a new and improved bedroom. Our white wall is now a soft and peaceful green.
After priesthood meeting, our home teacher, Wally Glausi, took me and Bryce and Clayton to dinner at the restaurant where Amy works on Saturday night "to relax." She an energetic and good server. The place, Little Cooperstown, was jammed with sports fans watching the 10 television screens overhead. Amy fits right in. Obviously, I didn't fit right in, having not a clue as to who all those uniformed people were on the walls or why the teams on TV were dressed up in astronaut suits running all around fields chasing a little ball and beating each other up over it. And when some unfortunate soul stumbles with it or is so rudely taken down to the ground, why 8 more astronauts feel a need to make a brutal pile on top of him. Anyway, inspired by the high spirits of the sports bar/restaurant and feeling creative, I called on my entrepeneurial gifts and suggested that I start a choir bar and restaurant chain. We could bring in satellite feed of the best choirs in the country performing Bach and Wagner's greatest hits. We could provide stimulating variety with an occasional Buxtehude or Ravelle organ solo. We could play reruns of St. Olaf's choir's greatest musical climaxes and soaring obligatos and put pictures all over the walls of all the great bassos profundos, counter-tenors contraltos. We could hang the director's batons of the great choral conductors on the walls - Rutter, Shaw, Jessop, Pixton.... Well, the idea wasn't really well received last night.
Last Monday night I went with Kaaren to our AquaFit class at Club Sport. Kaaren loves it; she's really happy in the water. There we were in the water gently bobbing to the music and the call of the instructor. In the water were people all at that point in their life where they need gentle, low-impact exercise, if you get my drift. At one point the music picked up and the instructor called out for us to run in place in the water to the rhythm of the music. It went boom-chuck-a-boom-chuck-a-boom-chuck-a-boom and we all went flop-slosh-flop-slosh. No connection or correlation with the music whatsoever. I had to laugh out loud because we were all imagining that we were exercising. Some of the older guys and ladies like to just bob around in the water and talk to each other. Once in a while they pay attention to the instructor and change their position. It's a darn humorous class to watch from outside the pool. Funny thing though: at the end I had to admit that even for me the "workout" was actually pretty refreshing and enjoyable. So that is what it has finally come to.
I hope you enjoyed whatever portion of the conference you could get. Kaaren and I think that Elder Oaks talk on the relationships between priesthood holders and their families and strong women and their role and Elder Holland's talk about how the media have betrayed women were significant - benchmark - addresses. I noted Elder Uchtdorf's talk encouraging European members to stay and build up the church in their countries , that the members there are finally experiencing the blessing of multiple generations staying put and building the strength of the church in place. I always enjoy President Hinkley's practical approach to the current issues of church administration - this time announcing new temples and reporting on huge and well organized church involvement in hurricane disaster relief for the gulf states and not just for members of the church but all persons and he gave credit to the efforts of all the churches involved. I enjoyed hearing the choir perform Mack Wilberg's stirring arrangements of "Praise to the Man" and "We Thank Thee O God For A Prophet". I also enjoyed hearing for the first time in my entire (!!) life the song "The Seer, Joseph the Seer" from the old blue hymnbook - which was apparently sung as a personal favor/request from President Hinkley. I'm going to be playing and singing and talking about this hymn, among others, in my "paper" I will deliver at the Seattle Sunstone Symposium in two weeks. I wish you could all be there because it's going to be the talk I have always wanted to give in church but never could. It's going to be as much song with piano (they have a nice grand piano there I'll use) as spoken word if not more.
Well, this is enough for this evening. The pictures will tell a lot more of the great feelings we had here this morning at home for breakast during conference - a great family tradition we hope to continue.
love,
Dad
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