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President Hinckley

My mom called me last night to tell me that President Hinckley had passed away, and one thing stuck in my head. How lucky we are to belong to the true church!! We don't have to worry about another prophet being called … and worry whether or not he will lead us in the right way. I remember when the Pope passed away a few years ago and they held that secret caucus and voted to determine who the next Pope would be. I remember being grateful to know that we didn't have to do something like that – our next prophet is called of God, not voted in by other men. We know another prophet will be called and we will love him and follow him because we know from whom he is called. There is no doubt in my mind that this is true. I feel at peace that the church will move forward in the right direction, continuing to spread and grow. How lucky we are to know that! President Hinckley has always felt like “my prophet” since he’s the one that has been the prophet through my teenage years and into my 20’s. I loved President Hinckley and I know he will be sorely missed by many. I know that he is enjoying his reunion with his sweet wife, Marjorie, and his many friends and family that preceded him in death. Can you imagine the reunion that is going on in heaven?!?! I bet it’s pretty spectacular! I will miss his many pearls of wisdom, and his gentle and humorous manner. 97 years old - what a legacy he leaves with us!!

Go Orangemen!!!

On Saturday we went up to Syracuse – only our 4th adventure into Syracuse. For some reason, we find ourselves going to Rochester more often than to Syracuse even though they are really pretty equal in distance. This time it had to be Syracuse though, since we had tickets to see the Syracuse University men’s basketball team take on the Villanova Wildcats. It was a Big East conference game – and a good one at that! I have wanted to go to a game for a while now … ever since we moved out here … but tickets are not cheap! We bought the cheapest ones and we were at the very top. It was all good though since we took our binoculars and we wore our orange! We cheered for the home team, but they lost in the end. Good game, though!!










To round out our weekend, we got some furniture from another NYCC student who is graduating. So we moved our living room and 2^nd bedroom around to accommodate all the new stuff. I must say, we are pretty pleased! We also had a baptism after church, which was really neat! Can’t say enough about how cool it is to watch someone choose to be baptized! I do love living out here!

Book club

We started a virtual book club, for those of you that are interested. The website is: http://www.booksrockoursocks.blogspot.com/ if you want to check it out. And if you want to be a part of the club just email me - it's open to anyone who loves to read.

Home for the holidays

Well, what can I say about Christmas? We got to go home to Utah for 2 full weeks, so we spent Christmas and New Years at home. It was really, really nice to see everyone and have the time to be able to be home with the people we love. Sounds corny, but it’s true. We didn’t go home last year (2006) for Christmas and we really haven’t been home since we moved out here to New York (save for a quick weekend trip for Cory’s brother’s wedding), so it was nice to have 2 weeks to be home. I thought 2 weeks would be plenty of time but there were still a few friends that we didn’t get time to see. We split the time between my parents and Cory’s parents, and did a lot of driving between the two … luckily they are only 45 minutes apart! Cory’s parents hosted a murder mystery dinner (see picture) and it was a lot of fun. I was a famous family psychologist and Cory got to be the detective. On Christmas day we got to talk to my brother Kendall who is serving a mission in Philadelphia, which was AWESOME. He’s doing so well and it was good to hear his voice and listen to his testimony. He’ll be home in June … only 5 more months to go! The time has flown by!! All in all, we’re very grateful for loving families and all the support they show us. We’re grateful we could go home for Christmas and see family and friends. Now it’s back to work for me and back to school for Cory – he started classes this morning. He’s in his 6^th tri (out of 10 trimesters total) and this one should be an interesting one as far as diagnostics go. Should be a fun trimester!

Playing fuseball with Nathan (Cory's brother) and his wife Shar.