November

November was a busy month. (I feel like I start all my posts that way.) I attended a stake relief society conference where I accepted the Holy Woman challenge. There's a little book entitled "What Would A Holy Woman Do?" that issues the challenge to choose one thing that you do every day and for three days, ask yourself, "How would a holy woman [or man] do this?" How would a holy woman dress? How would a holy woman do housework? How would a holy woman handle this stressful situation? I tell you, that was a great three days!

BYU played a football game in Missouri for only the second time in history. I went to Kmart and bought blue wigs and blue hairspray and face paint off a 90% off after Halloween clearance rack. We painted the windows of our 15-passenger van and loaded up our family and Justin's brothers family, plus an extra friend and drove two hours to Kansas City to watch them play. We went to the BYU alumni tailgating party in Independence, right across the street from the Community of Christ/RLDS corkscrew temple. We took pictures with Cosmo and painted our faces and ate cotton candy. Then we went to the game and watched BYU LOSE! That was sad. But the experience was a fun one!

I got caught up in doing family history work one day. It was awesome! I didn't think I'd know how to find any names to take to the temple, but the family history consultant encouraged me to try, and I ended up finding TEN NAMES to take to the temple! And I discovered a family secret in the process. I found a marriage certificate for my grandma with some strange man's name on it! I thought it had to be a mistake, but it turns out that Granny Morgan was married once before! I never knew! So even though her first husband isn't really my ancestor, I went ahead and took his name to the temple along with his parents and sister. We took the whole family to the St Louis temple and I was excited for Brock to be able to do some baptisms for his relatives, but when we got there, we realized Brock's recommend had expired! I wanted to cry! He had to wait outside with he other kids and we ended up having some other youth do the baptisms and confirmations for the names we had brought and then Justin and I did their initiatories. What an amazing experience it was to do that work for people that I found and had grown to love! There really is something to the Spirit of Elijah after all! I can't wait to find more names and next time, I'll make sure Brock has a current recommend so he can take part as well!

We had a wonderful thanksgiving feast at our house, including birthday cake for Justin, who turned 39 on Thanksgiving this year. I did some fun Black Friday shopping that night and the next day, and maybe a few other days that week as well. It was really time for a fashion makeover, and I had some good friends help me get that done. Then on Monday, my baby boy turned ONE YEAR OLD!!! Seriously. I wasn't prepared for that. Every year of life really does get shorter than the one before it.