Journal, December 21

We had our last temple shift on Thursday and cleaned out our lockers before the two week closure. We go back in January. After the temple, we drove to Salt Lake for dinner with Wendy’s siblings and spouses.

The old refrigerator in Grandma Evan’s house died last Wednesday. We decided to give the renters (the Potters) our current fridge and get a new one for our place. We had Friday morning to start the switch. Travis Reynolds was home and helped tremendously, as we had lots of trouble getting the fridge out of our kitchen. The island that is in our kitchen blocks going out any way except for the back door which is only a 32" door. After quite a bit of effort we got it out and delivered it to Potter’s porch about noon time. We couldn’t get it inside because they were not home and the door was locked. We finally were able to find time to buy a replacement fridge yesterday, but it won’t be delivered until Thursday. In the meantime, we have a makeshift refrigerator in the corner of the garage. (Picture)

Friday afternoon we hurried for the cabin, to host a party that Heidi wanted, to have a goodbye time with a group of her BYU friends at the end of the semester and before her mission. It was a lot of fun to meet these nice and clean young people and observe how much they enjoyed each other. There was a little light snow both Thursday and Friday nights, but we were blessed that it did not interfere with the travel to and from the cabin. (See pictures of Heidi and her friends.) We stayed to watch the BYU football team win its bowl game handily, then came back home in the late afternoon so that Wendy could help in the kitchen at a wedding reception for the Stamm’s daughter (Sister Stamm is our ward Relief Society President and Wendy is one of her counselors).

We sang several Christmas numbers with the ward choir Sunday. We also heard Cole Hunter report on his mission in Portland OR. The week before, we heard Travis Reynolds report, coming home from his mission in Barcelona Spain. Both of these guys were Priests while I was YM President, and I sure felt a fatherly joy in their faithful service as missionaries. We also finished the last session of the Teacher Development class that we have been attending, by making a 7 minutes presentation on sacrifice, demonstrating the use of discussion techniques. Sunday evening we drove to Salt Lake to attend the annual Christmas party for the family of Wendy’s mother. We brought Olivia and Jack back here to spend a couple of days with us. Last night we took them along with Scott and Emilie and family to Spanish Fork’s Christmas Festival of Lights

We have had almost stead snow here since Sunday evening. There was about 6-7 inches when we got up yesterday morning, light snow throughout the day, and probably another 6-8 inches last night. Wendy measured 16 inches total on the back patio thus morning (and that is after it had settled). Pictured is the crew shoveling the sidewalks yesterday and also how covered the truck and driveway are from last night’s added snowfall.