Temple Bucket List

A goal

without

a plan

is just

a wish

I have had a goal since my freshman year of college (2007) to visit every temple in Utah. All the temples between Provo and Logan were easy. I visited those in just a couple months. However, the outlying ones, Vernal, Manti, St. George, and Monticello, have been a little more difficult. Finally I realized something about goals.

If you make them happen, they do.

It just takes a little planning, a little determination, maybe a little time and money, but once you decide to just do it, it actually happens. So far this summer, I've accomplished more towards this goal than I have in the last six years. Granted, I was out of the country for one and a half of those last six years, but the point is, I let six years go by without making any progress toward a goal that took less than a few months when I actually buckled down.
So here's my progress:
I finally went to Vernal with my family. We visited all the dinosaur sites and made a weekend of it.

I finally went to Manti. I just grabbed Aubrie, Mary, and Chanel and drove down there. I don't know why it's taken me so long to get to Manti. I've lived in Provo for several years, and Manti is only an hour and a half away. I've been to Manti 3 times to see the pageant, but never had the opportunity to go inside.

It was such a beautiful day. I had a handful of family names that I helped my mom find and prepare for the temple. They were some of my German ancestors. My friends and I took the names to Manti and spent SEVEN hours in the temple. We did all the baptisms, confirmations, and initiatories for all of the women I had, then the endowment for four of them, and we were also able to do some sealings for Aubrie's family. It was a long day, but so rewarding to be able to spend a day performing every ordinance in sequence. I absolutely love the Manti temple. My mom has always said that the Spirit is stronger there, and I thought she just said that because that's where she was sealed to my dad. Well, it's true!
Maybe it is because that is where my eternal family began, but the Spirit there was stronger than I've ever felt it. It is the most beautiful temple I've ever been in. It's a true pioneer temple. I felt like I walked in just after it had been dedicated. So beautiful. (I also got to see the sealing room where my parents were sealed, and let me tell you, they must have spent six of the seven years that it took to build the Manti Temple just decorating that room.)

Then, just a few weeks after we went to Manti, Aubrie and I took a mid-week adventure/road trip down to St. George. We packed in hiking and letterboxing in Snow Canyon and all over town, Mary Poppins at the Tuachan theatre, and Love's Labour's Lost at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City. But the highlight of the trip was the St. George Temple. We did initiatories and an some more endowments for my German ancestors, and it was wonderful.

So, now all I have left is the Monticello Temple (Until the Cedar City Temple is built and we'll have to take another trip down to Dixie). We planned to take a weekend and go to Monticello and then go camping in Moab, but we ran out of time before school started, so it will have to wait till I get a little break. But hey, I think I made some good progress this summer.

Let's put it in today's terms. . .

My dad was telling my nephews Josef, Lasse, and Troy the story of David and Goliath. He asked them if they knew what a slingshot was. 

After thinking for a second, Lasse says, "Is it like a Angry Birds thing?"

Yes, Lasse. That's exactly what it is. 

(And apparently Lasse isn't the first to think of this connection.)

Nothing says summer . . .

like a bicycle modified for two.

Peter and I wanted to continue our routine of a daily bike ride,
but Austin was visiting and we didn't have a bike his size.

So, Peter, ever resourceful, rigged up a new apparatus to
attach to his new bike that would allow Austin to come along.

Sometimes I think Peter is just a little too creative.

The hardcore tandem bikers who passed us, accompanied by a rescue van, told Austin he was brave. I think they were jealous of Peter's homemade version of their bicycles built for two.

Chores

Dad is always leaving the lawn mower out.

Sunny Florida

I spent a week with Joe, Heidi, Henry, and Amelia in Ormond Beach. Here are some highlights:Joe and Amelia and drip castle #1.

Joe and Henry and drip castle #2.
Me and Amelia enjoying the beach.

This lovely picture is in the jungle that we floated through at the Springs. It was gorgeous and way better than the flume in Dayton. There were tons of fish just swimming right under us in the clear water. We had a lot of stick races under the bridges after we floated down until the sticks, including a red ant-covered tree limb chosen by Henry, became so big we were afraid they would be a hazard to the other patrons of the Springs.
The Ponce de Leon lighthouse.
The view from the top of the lighthouse.
Inside . . .
Outside . . .
And in case you are incompetent, but by some miracle can read or interpret diagrams, or your first stop once you got out of the jungle you grew up in was the Ponce de Leon lighthouse . . .

Racing at the Daytona Boardwalk Speedway. Joe lapped us three times.
A little luck at Aunt Catfish. This is where I ate Alligator and my first real Hush Puppy.

Henry's Graduation from Preschool. All day, he told everyone we saw, "I'm graduating." Earlier he had told me, "Now I go to Noah's Ark School. When we lived in the brown house, I went to Challenger School. And before that, when we lived in the white house, I was home schooled." I had never realized the pre-preschool was considered home school. Congratulations to Henry and Good Luck to him as he goes on to kind-er-gar-ten at Pine Trails Elementary!
Henry only looks like he's training to become an alter boy because Noah's Ark is run by a Lutheran church. Really, he was graduating!

On the weekend, we took a little road trip up through Jacksonville, St. Augustine--the oldest town in Florida--and Amelia Island, finally ending up in St. Mary's, Georgia.
Henry and a shrimp in Amelia Island. That ain't no cocktail shrimp.
From St. Mary's, we took a ferry over to Cumberland Island, Georgia. Thomas Carnegie (Andrew's brother) and his wife Lucy built mansions on this island for his family, and while a few of them still stand as inns and private residences, the main attraction open to the public is the ruins of Lucy's mansion, Dungeness. After the Tycoon Age ended, and her husband died, Lucy stopped using the mansion very frequently, and it eventually caught on fire and was never rebuilt.
Now the island is basically home to wild horses that are everywhere, rangers who maintain the National Park, and some vacation homes of the people who own Coca Cola.
Some romantics choose to be married on the island, usually at the Grayfield Inn that was once the mansion of Thomas and Lucy's daughter Margaret. As I was waiting for the Ferry to take us to Cumberland Island, I struck up a conversation with a man who pastors a church in St. Mary's. I asked him why he was dressed in a suit and tie when most ferry goers were in swimming suits or hiking boots. Turns out he was performing an intimate marriage ceremony on the island.

After we got to the Island I couldn't help but take a picture of the intimate ceremony. Just the couple, the pastor, and the photographer, right in front of the ruins of Dungeness, with only the tourists and wild horses as witnesses.

I definitely live in Idaho.

Three things that have recently reminded me that I live on a Ranch:

1. Last week I was chatting with Amy and Camille and I told them, "A donkey just walked past my door."

2. My dad asked if I wanted to go for a long walk "just around the yard."


3. I'm looking forward to my mission so I can sleep in until 6:30.

My bad habits are rubbing off on my mother. Well, sort of.

I have a tendency to say that things "taste like butt" or "look like butt." Especially my hair. My mom Hates (yes, with a capital H) when I say that. But this is what she told me this morning: "I have to put curlers in my hair or else it looks like [pause] tush." My mom still cannot bring herself to use the "B" word.

The Quest Continues Part 2

Saturday was possibly the best day I've had in a while--and I love life right now. Amy joined me on my quest to find Little Grandma's past in Salt Lake City. We wandered around in the rain (which made it a true continuation of my British quest), creeping people out by taking pictures of random houses. Unfortunately, we couldn't find either of the places Lilly once worked downtown (one of them was usurped by the Wells Fargo block), but we managed to find all but one of her houses (see below) and one other gem.

The Invisible House (321 13th E.)

Two of the other houses in which she rented rooms, I must have felt a connection with before because I distinctly remembered them.

This one (360 G Street):

I run past this house often when I go running in the Aves. I know I remember this house specifically because I remember seeing the pillows in the upstairs bay window and thinking how wonderful it would be to have a window seat like that to curl up and read in.
















And this one (1150 E. 500 S.):












Because it now looks like this:



I drive past this every week on my way to institute and I always wonder who would pay only $6.00 for a haircut! (I've learned that you get what you pay for when it comes to haircuts.)




The rest of her houses, I'd never seen before but enjoyed finding them and thinking about the time that she had spent there nonetheless.








(349 Hampton Ave)

















(2536 Green Street)








(The house on Major either doesn't exist anymore or has been turned into a church, but I didn't get a picture of the church or verify the address because a creepy van seemed to be following me.)







And just across the street from this house (2475 S. 600 E.) . . .

I found this little gem:

This is the Nibley Park Ward, est. 1925. I'll let Lilly tell you about this building in her own words, as taken from her personal history:

About 6 months before then [marrying Grover], they divided the Forest Dale Ward. I was in the new ward and they assessed us quite heavy to build the new church house. Our new bishop said that some of us would think our assessment was rather high (and I did). I was earning fifteen dollars a week and they assessed me one hundred and fifty dollars, payable at the rate of seven fifty a month. If you moved from the ward you were forgiven of the debt (some moved) but I stayed and we had lots of wonderful times.
But when I was halfway thru with my payment, I met my husband, and when I took him to see our bishop and ask for a recommend so we could be married in the temple, Bishop Thomas Bennion told me that this man was a blessing for me being so faithful in making my payments.

I owe a lot to that meetinghouse. Like my grandpa, my dad, myself, and all the other descendants of Grover and Lilly Atkin. I'm grateful for a Heavenly Father who gives us opportunities to show our faith and obedience and then blesses us beyond imagination for it. I'm grateful for the heritage I have in not only the pioneers that crossed the plains pulling a handcart, but also the pioneer who left her home in London to join the Saints in Salt Lake and later sacrificed everything to move to a ranch in Salmon, Idaho and raise a son who would become my grandpa. I cannot wait to meet Lilly someday and get to know her even better than I feel I already do.

On that note, I am grateful for the pioneer of the Price family, my mother, who never gave up on the testimony she gained as a six-year-old girl, and continued to make choices that would lead her to marry my dad, so that they could raise a family in the gospel. All of these wonderful people and the righteous choices they made created the opportunity for me to now, almost 100 years later, truly have my heart turned to my fathers (and mothers). I feel incredibly blessed to be a part of it all.

The Quest Continues

A year and a half ago I set off on a quest to trace my great-grandmother Lilly Annie Cross Atkin's footsteps. I went to the places she had lived and visited in London, England. Why it has taken me a year and a half to realize I can do the same in my own hometown, Salt Lake City, Utah, I just don't know.

A few weeks ago, I had to take a tour of the Church History Library for work. (Again, why I had never done that before I just don't know.) In the tour, the sister missionary briefly mentioned the Salt Lake City Directory, which listed all residents and their occupations and addresses, as we walked past the full shelf of them from the late 1800's to today. I wondered if my family were in them since we lived in Salt Lake for so many years. When I went back after the tour to check out the directories, I couldn't find any Blake Atkin, Attorney, so I tried to think of someone else I knew had lived in Salt Lake that I could try to find.

Finally I thought of my fellow working woman, Lilly Annie Cross, who lived and worked in Salt Lake City from the time she came to Utah in 1914 until she married my great-grandpa in 1925.
I looked her up in all the directories I could find her in and found the following information under Cross:

1918 Lilly, smstrs Electronet Mfg Co. rms 1150 E. 5^th So.

1919 Lilly A. smstrs Electronet Mfg Co. r 321 13^th East

1920 Lilly smstrs rms 349 Hampton Ave

1921 Lilly smstrs Filter Fabrics Co. rms 349 Hampton Ave

1922 Lilly A. smtrs rms 2536 Green

1923 Lilly A. Opr Electronet Sls Co. rms 2536 Green

1924 Lilly A. Opr Electronet Sls Co. 1457 Major

1925 Lilly A. smstrs Electronet Sales Co. Inc. rms 2475 6^th East

A google map rendering of my quest:

I am going to go find these places tomorrow. I am excited. If I can track down some addresses for her workplaces I'll go find those too.







Update: I found the addresses for her two work places and a possible extra residence for her. And I'm going to check them out while I'm out and about:

1915 Lillie A, dom 360 G.

1916 Lillian A, maid, 360 G.

1918 Electronet Manufacturing and Sales Co, W H Turver Sec-Treas- Mgr, Mfrs of Magnetic Health Garments for the Treatment of All Diseases, 251 E. 2d South, Tel Was 8479

1918 Filter Fabrics Co, Spencer P. Felt Mgr Mfrs of Filter Filter Bags, Cloths, Cloth Oil Flotation Bottoms, 321 Felt Bldg [241 S. Main], Tel Was 6068.

I've never heard of magnetic clothing, but apparently my grandma made it. And the phone numbers are Wasatch 8479 and 6068, not formerly 8479 and 6068. I guess that's a precursor to the area codes we have now. Wow, I guess this is ancient history I am delving into.

Updated Map:

Christmas Treats

When I heard of a Christmas travesty—Grandma said she wasn't going to make any candies this year because her hands hurt too bad for all the beating and stirring—I knew I had to do something to remedy the situation. I called Grandma up and asked her if I brought the cherries and nuts and my young, limber wrists if she would teach me how to make her famous candies. So the minute I was done with my obligations in Provo, I rushed up to Grandma's house and the candy making began. Grandma, Rebecca, and I made my two favorites, turtles and chocolate covered cherries, as well as some truffles, peanut clusters and pretzel sticks for good measure. Every new experience has a learning process, and I sure learned a lot making Christmas candies:

1. When making truffles, always melt the chocolate slowly and THEN add the cream. Don't put the cream in first or your truffles, even though they taste delicious, will never ever set up. But in case you forget, you can salvage it by melting it down again and adding a little more chocolate.
2. When the recipe for fondant calls for 1 tablespoon of Karo syrup, use 1 tablespoon, NOT 1 cup. You will have to run it down the drain.
3. Make sure you put the pecans on tinfoil when you pour the caramel on them for turtles, they will stick to wax paper, and you will spend half an hour peeling them off the next morning before you can dip them in chocolate.
4. When you run out of milk chocolate and don't want to dip everything in dark chocolate, it probably would be easier if you just pinned a note to Grandpa's jacket before you sent him to the store to get another block of dipping chocolate. (Men have this thing about asking for directions and absolutely no knowledge of how to navigate the grocery store.)
5. The white stuff inside chocolate cherries starts out as a solid ball of fondant and melts as it absorbs the cherry juice. It's not really as hard as you thought it would be to dip liquid. And when the fondant does start oozing and popping out of the cherry, just patch it with a little more chocolate (or a piece of stray caramel).
6. Peanut clusters aren't a candy unto themselves, they are just the delicious byproduct. Peanuts happen to pick up extra chocolate really well when there isn't enough to do any more dipping.
7. I inherited my tendency to boil my hands while doing dishes from my grandmother. She wouldn't even let me turn on the cold water. It's much more sanitary if its boiling.

And the result of this education? 106 turtles, 96 chocolate covered cherries, 79 peanut clusters, 143 truffles, 19 pretzel sticks, and a satisfied sweet tooth.



Our little helpers

Oh, and then I got home and my mom made me help her make these babies to give away—16 small cornflake wreaths and 1 big one. I love Christmas!

Sisterly Love

We can see who wears the pants in my family.
Honestly though, I think I have the coolest little brother in the world, because he wore his kilt to the Scottish Festival last week.

And he can still be manly, even wearing a skirt. Look at the size of that knife!

Aliza and I have always loved having Peter as a second sister. Ever since he was little:


And what a cute little sister he is.