Temple Attendance

photo courtesy Adam Williams

I think it is very important to attend the Temple regularly. When Ryan and I were contemplating where to get a job after graduation, we wanted to make sure there was a temple nearby so we could attend regularly, especially while raising small children. The Boise Temple is 15 minutes away from our house. From 2005 to 2009 I was a part of several temple playgroups and I went about twice a month. With a kindergartner, the timing is a little off, so I've been a little more sporadic since, but still averaging once a month.

In July, the Boise Temple was closed for extensive renovation. Likely, it will be closed for 18 months. Now, our closest temple is in Twin Falls - about a 2 hour drive away. Sessions start every 90 minutes, appointments are required. This has made it a bit tricky to attend the temple often. And yet, attending the temple is very important to us, so we are being creative in our attempts to go. When we're on a trip, we plan to attend the temple. And at home, we take turns gathering carpools to head to the temple with us.

July: Nauvoo (both), Sacramento (Malauna)
August: Twin Falls (Malauna with 1 other)
September: none
October: Houston (Malauna)
November: Twin Falls (Ryan with 3 others), Salt Lake (both)

I've also discussed with our neighbor, taking a day trip to Twin Falls, and trading babysitting with them there so we can each attend the temple with our spouses. Sabrina got to attend the temple with the youth of our ward on the first Saturday of November to do Baptisms for the Dead. The next day, our testimony meeting was full of youth and adults saying how amazing it is to sacrifice a bit more to attend the temple. I'm looking forward to having the temple again 15 minutes from my house, but in the meantime, I'll be thankful that I can sacrifice.

Happy Thanksgiving!

For Thanksgiving, we drove to UT to spend the day with Ryan's family. Genette and Glen hosted the dinner and let us stay the weekend. We wore our 'Angry Birds' shirts that I made for Halloween but never wore all together and had no pictures of.

Before we were able to eat on Thursday, we each had to write at least 5 things we are thankful for. The person who wrote the most would win a prize.

Ryan: spouse, grown-up daughter, boys, our builder John, parents that follow the Lord
Malauna: Ryan, honest builder, good-nights sleep, family, modern transportation
Sabrina: Leo, Roderic, Hyrum, Mom & Dad, my friends, good food, hope, joy, turkey, writing, good fortune, Christmas, temples, pans, brothers, youth leaders, systematic agriculture, stairs, plates, lights, pools, forks, table cloths, clocks, extended family, SPOONS, colors, glass, fast transportation, knives, color TV, dogs, The Gospel, cups, corn, heat, chocolate, hospitality, intercoms, potatoes, metal, castles, plaques, school, educations, beef jerky, snow, candles, ribbon, fabric, fiber, pumpkins, stuffing, airplanes, hats, books, the Book of Mormon, angry birds, games, baby signing time, jello, missionaries, pioneers, Nauvoo, Trek, the Atonement, Mrs. Durller, high chairs, grapes, apples, apricots, raspberries, BYU, Boise State, zebras, penguins, kangaroo, shingles, cotton, wood, trees, white boards, couches, rugs, flash memory, digital processors, capacitors, smart people, Newton, England, India, Egypt, China, freeway, Boise, ID, bliss, Grandma & Grandpa, cats, rolls, bread, wheat, eyes, microwaves, leaves, indoor plumbing, buttons, pi, pie, acorns, TV, flowers, Hollywood, paper plates, LEDs, oleds, silver, gold, steel, sunlight, fire, plastic, door, tile, carpet, blankets, cars, trucks, tupperware, awards, Mark Twain, shoes, sticks , Toto, computers, pictures, pillows, Apple, jewelrey, Disney, houses, Romans, Troy, clapping [she won the prize - a theater size pack of Reese's Pieces]
Roderic: Legos, toys, food, homes, family
Hyrum: Toto, good house, good family, good food, couches for jumping on
Leo: sign language, family, food, dogs, bananas

We played "Kill Dr. Lucky", "Memoir '44", "The Dutch Golden Age", ate some delicious food, and enjoyed a fun afternoon with family! Can you believe no one brought a pumpkin pie?

Construction Update

At the beginning of October, my parents sent me this sign:


Apparently, my dad found it (and purchased it) while browsing in a knick-knack store, waiting for his laundry to be done at the laundromat. Retirement has changed all sorts of things about my dad! (I added the blue painters tape to cover the n't on isn't and added a +.)


The exterior of the house is complete. The interior framing is complete. The rough electrical is complete. The rough plumbing is being worked on this week. After that is the HVAC. Then the drywall, electrical, plumbing, painting, flooring.

Before the electrical wires were strung, Ryan took the boys upstairs for a nerf gun war. They reported a lot of fun. No pictures were taken. Ryan and I are installing an intercom system in our house and so we're drilling, wiring, cutting.
We've run into a couple of problems putting in the intercom. We cut a hole for the master unit on a wall to find a couple of extra 2x4s that cannot be removed. We cut another hole for the master unit on a different wall and then, while drilling holes to feed the wires down, we found a horizontal 2x4 about 27 inches from the ceiling and 15 inches from the hole downstairs. Ryan had to put his arm and drill in the hole and drill from the bottom. So the several-hour project for us to do together, turned into a multi-night affair. The whole-house intercom with mp3 playing capabilities should be well worth it.

Don't open the box until Dec. 24!

Last year, while I was finishing sewing our Christmas pjs at 6pm on Christmas Eve, I made a goal. I would not be in the same predicament this year! I told myself - and my family, that if the Christmas PJs were not completed by November 15, they would not be made and I would have to purchase PJs. (The horror!)

I am happy to report that the PJs are sewn! The school-aged children haven't seen them, so it will be a surprise (for them). What a relief to have them finished. Bring on the holidays, I'm ready!

Leftovers for Lunch

We ate leftovers for lunch today. (Left over from our annual eat-dinner-with-the-Smith's-on-Halloween at a restaurant. Last night we ate at Carino's.) Leo put on quite the 'party face' eating his share of spaghetti and meatballs.

He's 5!

We've got a green-loving, strawberry-eating, LEGO-playing, big-smiling 5 year old at our house now!

With Sabrina already gone to school by the time the boys woke up, we limited Hyrum to opening 2 of his presents on the birthday couch. At lunchtime, I had to move them to a secret location so he would no longer be tempted to open the rest.

A camouflage outfit and a Lightning McQueen LEGO set. He has already built the set twice by himself.


He has told me that he wanted a strawberry cake for months now. I decided that since his favorite color was green, I would make it an unripe strawberry (and I haven't ever had luck at getting frosting to be true red - even with the gel colors, and didn't want a pink strawberry).

At our house, when it's your birthday, you get to pick the menu for dinner. This is Hyrum's request for tonight: Chicken Nuggets, French Toast and Tomato Soup. I have never served these items together in one meal. I guess there is a first time for everything.

I've recorded him singing "I'm Five" which is a song from the Muppet Show. It is really adorable to watch. Unfortunately, it is 120MB, and blogger only allows movies up to 100MB to be put on the blog. I'll post it on YouTube if there is enough interest.

General Conference Weekend

On Friday night, Ryan and I went to his mission reunion celebrating 20 years of missionaries in the Kiev Ukraine Mission (although I think they now spell it Kyiv Ukraine Mission - difference of Russian vs. Ukrainian). All of the former Mission Presidents and their wives were there and there was a fair number of returned missionaries, though just a handful of those who had served when Ryan was there.

He did get to reconnect with Isaacson (his MTC companion), Whipple (who was serving in the office when Ryan had to leave the country with Visa troubles - he gave a pretty good explanation on why Ryan had to go, but Isaacson didn't), Roylance (who went to the temple dedication with him last year), Lunt (also went to Ukraine last year) and Osipenko (Ukrainian now living in Utah). It was a great evening. I enjoyed talking with the wives of these former missionaries and listening to Ryan talk with them. There were a few cool decorations that I took pictures of as well.

I really like the nesting dolls with the latter-day prophets on them. And the quilt was charming.


We stayed with our friends the Harmon's overnight. When telling the kids who we'd be staying with, I told them, "If you're a 12-year old, they have a 12-year old girl. If you're 7 they have a 7-year old boy. If you're 4, they have a 4-year old boy. If you're 1, they have a 1 year-old girl." They were so excited! And they played very well together.


Sabrina and I got tickets to attend the Saturday afternoon session in the conference center. We arrived fairly early, and were able to sit on the front row of the balcony. Sabrina counted the number of seats set up for the General Authorities (136). When President Monson came in, we stood up with the rest of those in attendance and the room was silent. We knew there would be no new members of the Seventy called because there were no empty chairs. Elder Oaks, Elder Hales and Elder Cook were not in attendance.


We also had opportunity to see family while there. Ryan picked grapes at his parent's house (which have now been turned into 10 quarts of concord grape juice). He went to Priesthood Session [at 3 different church buildings due to freshly re-done basketball court at the first and technical difficulties at the second] with brother Daniel, and Ethan, while the kids and I played with Michelle and kids. They introduced us to Kid History on YouTube. Sunday morning we went to Heather's for breakfast and the morning session of conference. It was a delicious feast (food and conference talks). We stopped in on the newlyweds at Ryan's parents house, and on Shanda to see the painting she's been doing at her new house.


About an hour into our drive home (coincidentally an hour into the last session of conference), we could no longer pick up KSL on the radio, so we listened to the rest of it via Ryan's droid on the Mormon Channel. It was better than nothing, although we did miss out on the end of President Monson's talk.


We then stopped at Malad Gorge State Park. It was beautiful scenery. There were hundreds of dead lady bugs in the bathrooms. The playground had a small merry-go-round. There was quite a bit of water still flowing into the canyon.

I feel like I took some decent notes from the conference speakers. I still need to print pages 23-25 of the April 2011 Junior Primary Conference Packet from sugardoodle.net to put in our quiet book for the next six months of remembering what the Prophet and Apostles spoke about this time.