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.

The Bike Ride

The familiar smell of freshly cut hay, pungent sagebrush, and the occasional bovine is mingled with the tarry odor of recently poured blacktop. The melodious chirping of a sparrow watching from his wire perch complements the subtle click-click of the chain wrapping continuously around the gears and the rhythmic hum of the tires as the rubber meets the road.

The ticking thrum is interrupted every once in a while as you glide past a field of sprinkler pipe and hear the pst-pst-pst of the rain birds as if they are whispering thousands of secrets. You forgive the little birds for not sharing their confidences because the breeze cooled by the mist they emit is the only reprieve you'll get on this ride until the sun drops behind the mountain. As the zephyr hits the sweat pouring from your pores, the way it chills your feverish skin distracts momentarily from the lactic acid burning in every muscle and pushes from your mind how sore those muscles and your coccyx will be tomorrow.

You're pumping the pedals with strength you didn't realize you had. You tell yourself that there are as many downhills on the way home as there are uphills on the way out. It almost works as consolation until you realize that there are also as many uphills on the way home as there are downhills on the way there. Somehow breaking even just doesn't seem fair. If you can just crest this hill you can coast for a bit.

Despite your new-found strength, you can't seem to pull your own weight without heightened effort. No matter how hard you pedal, every vehicle that approaches easily overtakes your momentum, effortlessly pulling their full load of ton bales. The forceful gust and the hay that flies into your face does little to bolster your confidence that you will ever return home tonight.

Finally, after 13.2 miles, you reach the last impediment, the steep incline of your gravel driveway. Somehow you make it up to the house and collapse on the living room floor. Your energy is completely exhausted. And you've never felt better.

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.