The Price of Freedom

Today is Memorial Day, and while I would love to wax eloquent about the meaning of the day and the price paid for our freedoms, the picture above says far more than I ever could. Marine Staff Sergeant Marcus "Marc" Golczynski was killed on March 27, 2007 during his second tour of duty in Iraq - a tour he volunteered for. This picture shows 8 year old Christian, receiving the flag that covered his daddy's casket from Lt. Col Ric Thompson at the conclusion of Marc's funeral services on April 4, 2007.

As we relish the "freedom" of a three-day weekend, let's remember the real meaning of freedom and the price paid for us to have that freedom.

God bless our Veterans and their families.

Oh, what a beautiful morning...

I spent this morning in the Temple with Teeny Bopper (top secret blogging code name for my oldest daughter) and young women from our ward and two others in the stake. Although we had to get up really early it was a great experience for both of us. I baptized about thirty young women for between 10 and 15 people each and had a wonderful time. For four of these young ladies it was their first time doing baptisms and I could see that they were impressed by the spirit they felt.

This wasn't Teeny Bopper's first opportunity to do baptisms, but it was her first time in the Mesa Arizona Temple. It was neat to see her there and to talk with her afterwards about how she felt, the meaning of the ordinances, why we have temples, and how come all of this is important.
I would love to go on and on about my experience this morning, but I don’t have the time or mental energy right now (this is two days in a row getting up at 4am). I just wanted to record this experience before I got too busy to remember what a great morning I had.

I am grateful to live so close to the Temple, and thankful for a young lady who shared a very early morning with me in a holy place.

Confessions of a Scrapbooker's Husband

My sweet wife has an addiction to rubber stamps, paper cutouts, brads, hole punches, picture layouts, colored paper, ink, toner, ribbons, scissors and tape. All signs indicate that she has contracted that life-altering infection commonly known as "Scrapbookus Giganticus Obsessium" or "Recordum Lifeus Largo" Some of the more obvious signs of this addiction include a dizzying array of colored ink pads, enough paper to make the environuts go postal, and photographs scattered from heck to breakfast throughout the house. An ever increasing number of scrapbooks seem to absorb an ever diminishing supply of bookshelf real estate, and the one thing in the house my wife can always find is her camera.

Like most clueless husbands, I originally ignored the increasingly obvious signs of my wife's affliction with this bug. "This is just a fad." I would say. "She will enjoy this for a little while and then everything will return to normal." I was so naive, so innocent, so blind.

In its current state, my wife's affliction has ratcheted up her creativity (already impressive) to heights never explored before. She has become much more tech saavy with her digital camera and the computer that organizes a plethora of pictures each week. She can turn ordinary events into a celebration of family life, and records them in a way that drive us back to the books time and again to relive fun times and remember those moments which help shape our family's character.

In the not so distant past, my wife took her scrapbooking out to the blogosphere where she has not only recorded images of our life, but written her own thoughts about the images shown there and how they have affected her. I confess that I look at her blog daily, to see what has happened with our family and to get her wonderful perspective on life and parenting. I also confess that, while I personally am not addicted to scrapbooking, I am addicted to the way that my wife is recording our family history. My children and I are indebted to her for taking the time to record our lives and her observations on them. I enjoy her talent to capture our family activities and turn them into permanent exhibits on who we are and what we do.

I am grateful for my wife and her attention to the details that make up our experiences here. I thoroughly enjoy her hobby and am glad that she has found something exciting for her to work on during the few quiet hours she gets at home.

Thanks Dulcinea!