Thanksgiving 2018

I love Thanksgiving.  It is my favorite holiday.  I worked like crazy the week and days before the holiday.  Due to the horrible wildfires burning to the north of us, the air quality in the Sacramento Valley was so poor, school was cancelled for Gil the last two weeks.  To get him out of the apartment, I had him up to the office to volunteer for about three hours Tuesday so we could finish a project and I could take Wednesday off.  Wonderful man.

We started Wednesday with a session at the Sacramento Temple.  The colors this fall have been incredibly vibrant.  Fiery reds and oranges and blinding yellows.  Best of all, when we left, it was raining!!  I honestly have not seen rain in our part of the state since April or May.  It was cold, but kinda nice to be wet.

 My dear brother Adam drove over from Utah to spend the holiday.  He arrived Wednesday afternoon.  We had dinner, then started on the turkey.  It was my first time ever to cook a turkey and I was quite nervous.  Everything we read said to brine, so we did.  It sat over night in the fridge, then cooked the next day.  I don't think I've ever enjoyed turkey more.  It was delicious.

We had one of my friends from work and her friend join us for dinner and it was a good group.  Good food, good company, good friends.

I love Thanksgiving.

Youth Conference

Our ward has amazing youth.  We had a really interesting discussion in class the other day about the struggles they are facing in high school and how they are totally different than my generation and my mother's generation.  It was incredibly eye opening for myself and the other leaders in the room and led to a really good discussion about being spiritually and emotionally self-reliant.  

We had our youth conference this past weekend and it was on the ward level.  We fed the youth a crazy good breakfast in the morning (some even tried my grits, and like them!) then did service for three different single women in the ward.  We raked, weed-eated, took out a dead tree, painted, stacked fire wood for winter... fantastic.  They were treated to In-n-Out for lunch.  Poor California youth... don't know the joys of What-a-Burger....

 We went to the home of another member for the afternoon.  We had some games and activities planned if needed but the majority of the group, in a very organic way, started their own game of chase/tag/capture the flag.  It was really, really good to not see any phones and to see them play and create on their own game and teams without prompting or input from the leaders.  

For those not running like crazy through the olive vineyard on the property, we worked on a puzzle and played a game called "Timeline."  The groups that ended up at the puzzle and game tables were also surprising.  This was another great insight for me, as a leader, to understand these girls I serve.

We ended with dinner, brownies, and a quick devotional.  It was a nice, simple, enjoyable, 1-day event.  Perfect!