LET'S CATCH YOU UP

Natalie turned 11 on the 26th of November. She is such a good kid. On her birthday she helped out with her entire family celebration. We had a special dinner for her and let her open presents. Our weekends have been filled since and we cannot have her birthday party until the 21st of December. She just thinks that is fine and is excited to have something to look forward to. Yesterday day she bore her testimony on how much she loved her brother. It was so sweet and tender. They sure are good friends. I hope it stays that way
Preston was baptized on December 1. What a crazy day. I truly believe that he will remember this day forever. Our stake holds baptisms together. They are held the first Saturday of the month at 10:00 a.m. We were aware of this because Dale attends every baptism for the bishopric and had planned our day accordingly. We realized a few weeks before the baptism that the Snow College National Championship game would be held that same day in Utah and we could attend the baptism in the morning and the game in the afternoon. After making these plans Dale came home from a stake meeting and told me that they had scheduled a scout gathering the same day as the baptism so the baptism would be held in the afternoon not the morning. This caused a bit of a uproar in my family and we began to look into alternatives. We did not want to postpone the baptism (since we already had once). I was able to find another site for the baptism. It was the historical Tabernacle in our community. We were excited, because we were told that it was near impossible to schedule a baptism there. All our ducks were in a row. We could make everyone happy and hit everything that day. The weatherman had clear skies and 45 degree weather (warm for Utah) in the forecast on Tuesday and Wednesday (the last two days I checked on the forecast). My parents arrived Friday night and everyone else would come the next morning. We woke up to a little bit of snow. I would call it a drizzle. We began to get everyone ready when the first call came in from Aunt Sue at about 8:00 a.m. she said that she was in Salt Lake and had taken Cless(her husband) into guard duty and her car was sliding all over the place. She was nervous driving her car and wanted to see if she could get a ride with someone. She said in was coming down hard there and was surprised how little snow there was where we were. Soon calls came in from all the cars driving up. The car furthest ahead of everyone finally called to say it was to dangerous to continue. We called everyone behind and requested that they turn back of stay where they were until the storm passed. By doing this we lost our entire program an hour before the baptism was to start. We made a few calls, assigned mom and dad to talks, and made sure we had enough priesthood present to have a baptism and held it anyway. I don't think you would have known it was last minute if you had come. Special thanks to Mom, Dad, Shauna, Shelley, Wayne, and Grandma Martin. Along with no program we were short a few food items. It was like the stone soup story. Everyone who came brought what they had and we had a lovely meal. Shelley thanks for offering your home and buying the cake for the celebration following

The gathering may have been small, but we felt the spirits of all those who really were trying to get there in that room. Dale made a point to recognize the strong spirit we felt and we know it came from those present and you who couldn't make it. Here is our cute little family. What a special day. I also want to thank all those who said a little prayer to help me be calm and not stress out because of the last minute confusion. It really helped.
We came close to baptizing Julia to while we were there. She had a great fascination with the font.

We are busy doing good here. I wish I were more prompt in telling you about it, but hope you enjoy the recap. Thanks to a wonderful family who is also my blogging community.