Time Capsule

 This week I went up to the Stake Center to clean out the Stake Young Women closets, and boy oh boy did we find relics of the past.  I could not believe all the things we found.  We found a program of Greater Than Us All from 1997 with my name in it from high school.  There were napkins from When Its Love circa 1994.  My personal favorites were the VHS on Sports Regulations and the chastity pamphlets from 1986!!

I couldn't believe the amount of stuff that was crammed in there. 

We threw out 6 bags of trash and donated another 4 bags.  It was a successful cleaning!

The Final Program

 It's hard to believe, but today was Little Guy's final Primary Program.  It's an end of a Thompson era in primary.  He'll be a deacon in January.  

A Lovely Fall Day in Palmyra

 I was loving the trees and mums at the temple grounds.  It was so pretty I had to stop at Hill Cumorah to take a couple of pictures.  

Day 2 With a Twist

 Day 2 of pumpkin testing was switched up, so that different pumpkin items were pitted against similar products of a different flavor.  I'm not going to lie, pumpkin lost the majority of the time.

Little Man also enjoyed his own pumpkin conference package from the dorms.  He was so lucky and got to see conference in person in Salt Lake City for the Sunday afternoon session.

The boys had their snuggle items for conference.  

It was a great weekend!

Pumpkin Test Day 1

 General Conference weekend commences our yearly pumpkin taste test.  This year we had a few new options.  It works a lot like a Sweet 16 bracket - single elimination. Some things were hits and there were definitely a couple of misses in the bunch.

 We whittled it down to the final two and then pitted it against the winner of the 2 ice cream options (they typically always win, so we waited to introduce them until the end to give other options a chance.

It came down to our final two and we were very divided: Joel became the tie breaker, but he hates egg nog and he felt the ice cream tasted too close to egg nog, because of the strong nutmeg flavor. For the first time ever the Covered Joe Joes became the winner.  

Where it All Began

 It was so fun to go back to the place where Joel and I were married.  We had a lovely morning in the temple, and then we had lunch at this cute sandwich place along the Erie Canal.  It's been so nice having both of us home for a couple of weeks before Joel starts back up at work.  

Last Sunday Together

 We realized we hadn't taken the kiddos to some of the Missouri historical church sites in a long time.  It had been so long they couldn't even remember them, so we spent our final Sunday together enjoying the extreme humidity while exploring these sites.  We visited the Far West Temple site and Adam-ondi-Ahman.  

Teacher Training

 When you're daughters of a King it feels necessary to wear tiaras for Relief Society training.  I sure do love these ladies.

Early Morning Journeys

Since we had to stay for the tournaments we got up at 3 in the morning to drive straight to Lawton, Oklahoma.  We stopped along the way to see the Wichita Temple.  We had so much fun seeing the Stringhams again!  We hadn't seen them since we moved to Kansas.  

We went to Mount Scott, ate Korean, and watched World Cup together. 

10 years later...

We sure love our cousins! 

Youth Temple Trip

 I love that my kids get to go to the temple way more often than I did as a youth.  We used to have to drive all the way to Toronto from Syracuse once a year, and now it's only 40 minutes away and they go fairly regularly.  

Beautiful Friendships

 I sure do love these ladies!  I think one of the great joys in life is getting to serve alongside fabulous people who teach you and inspire you to become a better person.  I've had so many wonderful experiences over the years just from saying yes to opportunities to serve, and I feel like it's the people who inspire me the most.  Right now I'm serving with these 2 lovely ladies in Relief Society in church.  I could go on and on how much they've taught me.  It's a reminder to me to say yes to opportunities of growth and stretching.