While Justin and the kids were in WA I had two visitors one night! These two showed up just minutes after I closed the chicken coop. These things would take out a whole flock for sure! While Justin and the kids were gone, I cleaned out the chicken coop (this is a 2-3 times/year chore) and made a trip to the dump. Like I said in a previous post - I cleaned like a crazy lady while they were gone!
While Spencer and Benett were here I took them to my favorite fossil spot. We managed to find a couple cool specimens for them to take home.
Classroom shenanigans: I made them do "mitosis charades" one day. We made DNA with candy and I used Oreos to teach plate tectonics to the 8th graders.
**anaphase**
that thumb!
He's happy happy when he's bouncing away.
Occasionally during tummy time Beckham finds a spot that feels juuuuust right and lays there contentedly.
A while back Justin found a dinosaur park in Utah that hosts a Halloween night where kids can dress up in their costumes and walk around the park in the dark with flashlights. The weekend after he got back from their Washington trip we headed down to Utah as a family. On the way we stopped at the Pocatello temple open house. It was PACKED. We had to park at a stake center several miles away and take a bus up to the temple. As we made our way through I tried to pause at certain spots to point out certain details to the kids. Mom and Dad got to have a private tour with their old temple presidency buddies for two hours! Lucky! But they shared a lot of the details with us beforehand so we tried to look for those details and enjoy them as we blitzkrieg-ed our way through.
We made our way down to Ogden and went straight to the Dinosaur Park for the kids to enjoy while the sun was still up. Emmett was hilarious. He could tell you the names of nearly all the dinosaurs, and he wasn't shy about correcting your pronunciation if you happened to say the names wrong. The boy was in heaven and Logan was loving it just as much. We had dinner at Kneaders, changed at our hotel, and made our way back for the night time fun. We walked through all the Halloween-lit paths. The kids spent a lot of time in the fossil pit. Beckham slept for most of it, thank goodness.
"Look Mom! I'm excavating!"
Excavating in the dark = double the fun.
Saturday morning we ate the hotel breakfast and headed home. 30 minutes outside of Ogden I realized I left my laptop in the hotel room! That added a painful hour to our three-hour drive. We stopped at Costco in Pocatello on the way home.
Emmett takes after the Rose side for sure! This picture reminds me a lot Papa Jon for some reason.
Justin said, "He never snuggles me like that!" This is right after eating - he always gives me gentle hugs afterward.
Mom and Dad got a call from the stake president a while ago and asked them to come in. Dad received the call to be the new Stake Patriarch. With everything Mom and Dad have had the opportunity to do in the last five years or so, I am reminded of how blessed I am to have such goodly parents. I fall short all the time but man do I try to be faithful like them to teach my children the gospel the way they taught me.
Today during stake conference Dad was sustained and he bore his testimony. Afterward Justin took the littles home and I got to sit in on his setting-apart. I learned quite a bit during this whole ordeal: a Patriarch is its own category of priesthood office. Once Dad is done serving as the Stake Patriarch, he can continue to give patriarchal blessings to his descendants (yay for my kids!!). The stake president shared that on the SLC temple underneath one set of the three-spires there are five windows representing offices of the Priesthood: Apostle, Seventy, and Patriarch being the top three. The stake president also shared before Dad's setting-apart that he actually doesn't hold the authority to set a Patriarch apart, but that he was acting on behalf of the Quorum of the Twelve. Nobody else was allowed to lay hands on Dad's head while he was set apart. He read a letter that was sent from President Ballard regarding Dad and their choice to call him as the Patriarch. It was really special to listen to what the letter said.
Dad shared that as intimidating as this calling is, he knows Heavenly Father loves his children, and wants them to return to Him. He shared that he knows Priesthood power is real, and through that power he can do his best to fulfill this calling. In other words, Dad remains as humble as ever giving God all the glory, and rightfully so. As amazing as Mom and Dad are and the wonderful opportunities they've had in their church service, they have never made it about themselves. I am reminded again how proud I am to be a Beal. Mom and I were talking about the good men in our lives and I told her how amazing it is that she had such an amazing dad and now husband. She said she was always proud to say "I'm Mark Hart's daughter" and I feel the same. I love saying, "I'm Seth Beal's daughter" when given the opportunity. Today was a special day and even though my kids are small, I hope that they remember a bit of it. They'll be so lucky when they can receive their patriarchal blessings from their Gramps one day.💓