16 October 2011

This week Joanne was in Utah to visit her mom and sisters.  I'm hoping to have some pictures of her trip for my next update.  While she was gone, our ward had a temple day in Columbus.  We had a chapel session with the temple president prior to our baptistry and endowment sessions.  Here is our youth group after our baptistry session.

Since Jessica turned 12 in August, this was her first opportunity to attend the temple.

It's always a good experience to be in the temple.

9 October 2011 - Conference in Mobile, AL

This week was my annual conference.  This year it was held in Mobile, Alabama at the Battle House Hotel which served as Andrew Jackson's headquarters during the War of 1812.  It's been through a lot in its history, but has recently been meticulously restored by Marriott.  It was a really nice place to have the conference.

Fort Conde was built in the 1720s to defend Mobile from pirates and other invaders approaching from the Gulf of Mexico or along the Mobile River delta.  The building is mostly a reconstruction now.

A really cool thing happened while I was at the conference.  The guy in the yellow shirt in this photo (at the front of the boat by the truck) is Tom, my advisor from my Master's degree program at Utah State.  Tom is at the University of Wisconsin now, and we cross paths each year at the fall conference.  On Friday, he introduced himself to a guy named Harold, who happened to be a professor at the University of South Alabama and lived right there in Mobile.  Harold has a boat and invited us out Friday afternoon/evening.

At first, we went upstream into the Mobile River delta.  It was about 85 degrees and the water was about 76 degrees.  It was beautiful.

There were several floating fishing cabins.  They reminded me of my time in the Amazon, where floating houses and schools were common.

Sunset on the bayou.

Harold took us to an island accessible only by boat (i.e. no bridges).  It had an awesome sandy beach, I was only sad that I hadn't brought my swimming suit to the conference.

Harold brought his son, Giles, who served as boat captain for the day.

After some time on the sandy island, we went back down along the Mobile River out to the bay where we went to a floating restaurant with excellent, very fresh seafood.  This photo is of Bay Bridge, with the city of Mobile in the distance.

We got an up-close look at this freight ship getting unloaded.  I was trying to envision all the junk inside each container that would soon be on its way to Wal-Mart.

It was a good conference made even better by an unexpected invitation to go out on the water.

2 October 2011 - General Conference

For this week, I was going post something to the effect of "nothing happened".  It was just a normal week, busy with school, church and kids running to piano, swim team, etc.  Of course that would completely overlook General Conference, which would be a mistake.  As always, we very much enjoyed two days of good gospel instruction.

If you have time, consider taking 15 minutes to click the link above and watch the video highlights of conference.