NYC Temple!

It was a good year to get passes at Massanutten!  We've had some great snow fall which always helps! It's fun to hop in the Chevy and go skiing for about an hour or so, then head home. 

Elden put snow in a letter for Clark. Haha, yep, it melted.  I put this whole sealed up thing in another envelope and mailed it to him. 

The fifth Sunday in January Haley did a little presentation to the youth and adults 

One night Lee and I sat down and created our own funeral programs. Weird, yes. Helpful when needed, yes. 

Cal making pizza for dinner!

More Massanutten fun.  Our friend Henry came skiing with us this day.

Haley made dinner one night.  The next day she would be too busy to make anything, so she made it ahead of time which was really nice for me!

Shanna has her own room and we've been trying to update it a little, and sadly a bit slowly. But we got a new rug, which was a great start.

Lee bought a new phoroptor but some dials weren't working.  He went to work and found the problem, got it cleand and put back together!

We did a day trip to NYC! We went to the Manhattan temple to do baptisms for the dead. It was a fun trip.  New York!

After parking we walked around, went to Times Square and popped into a few stores. The candy rocks looked fun, but didn't taste great. 

We walked to Times Square. Always a fun place to go.

We stopped at a sock shop and bought some fun socks and also got Shanna and NYC sweatshirt.  Dunkin Donuts was our last stop before heading back to go to the temple.

The Manhattan Temple!

We were really late to the temple. I thought our appointment was at 3:00pm but it was at 1:00pm! Ahh.  Thankfully they fit us in.  They were keeping groups completely separate.  Since we were crunched for time, they would baptize someone and then had them sit right by the font to do confirmations.  I chatted with a temple worker who is a Senior Missionary. There are only 3 temples I guess that have Senior Missionaries. The missionary couple get to live in apartments right by the temple that the church owns.  Pretty amazing! It was so wonderful being in the temple with all of us.  And thankful that even though it would be fun to have Clark with us, I'm so glad he's on his mission.  One of the temple workers thanked us a couple of times for coming and coming so far.  But it was our pleasure.  Not a sacrifice at all!

We did a little driving tour on the way out of the city that night.    Can you spy the Statue of Liberty?

Nashville Getaway

It's funny this post in titled the Nashville trip, becuase I only cover it briefly at the end. I guess I should change the name of it to More Snow.  It kept on snowing here! We loved seeing this huge snowman.

Sunglasses modeling time.  Yep, another selfie!

A beautiful winter's sunset.

I did a little cleaning behind the piano, and a dresser we keep in the living room. Lots of surprises.  Okay, just garbage!

The kids had fun with some spray cream.

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Crepe time!

Talking to Elder Robertson every Monday!

Standard's Night! The kids enjoyed seeing their friends. 

A storm was coming and we hunkered down at home on a Sunday.  I can't remember if we had church or not that day.

We took pictures of the storm as it progressed as we knew it as going to snow quite a bit. 

Lee, Elden, Haley and I went out walking that evening.  It was pretty crazy!  The wind was blowing and the snow was more like little pellets, flying around. When we were walking in the snow it felt like snow that was sand. 

With this snow storm a layer of ice settled on top of the snow, which made it hard to shovel away.

It became even colder and the water froze quite a bit at the park after a big snowstorm we had. 

Some of the cars were buried or we had snow by them for over a week.  I think Clark's car was buried even longer since we didn't try and shovel it out at all. It took us quite a while to shovel. 

A castle Haley is creating!

Thankfully I was able to get to Nashville in between all the snow!  I went down for a live event Dave Ramsey put on about building wealth.  Chris Hogan released his Everyday Millionaire book a few years ago.  I recently found out that right before his book came out it was made known to Ramsey Solutions that Chris Hogan was having an affair. It sounded really messy and Ramsey Solutions wanted to know about all the counseling he and his wife were receiving which I think is very weird.  Anyway, from what I gleaned (which doesn't mean much) they should have fired Chris right away because it's policy that if something like this happens you get fired.  Like a lady there had a baby out of wedlock and she was fired right away.  But with Chris' book coming out they didn't fire him.  Hmm...not following their own standards and doing what would suit them best financially.  Finally, over a year later, Chris finally stepped down.  I think this building wealth event that is linked to Dave Ramsey's new book about building wealth, is in part to cover up Chris Hogan. The titles to the two books are so similar as well. I just found out about all of this so it's kind of crazy!  I bought the book for $20, and with it came a free ticket to the event, so I decided to do another little trip. I asked Lena about her coming and she came too, which was fun.  We stayed at Hampton Inn at Berry Farms.  In 2020 when I was stranded in Gadsden, Alabama it was actually pretty nice to have a day to myself.  Which I wanted to do again.  This was kind of that.  Though next time I'll go by myself. 

We did a session at the Nashville temple that evening!

I enjoyed the hot chocolate at night.  I brought some cocoa powder to add in and make it darker.  Yum!

The second day we went to Ramsey Solutions so Lena could see their new building-which is very impressive.  We walked around, got a treat from the free cafe, listened to the show a little bit and got a picture with Dave Ramsey.  John Deloney was standing in as well. 

At the event!

The event was fun, but came with the same information I already knew.  They did tell a couple new stories which was fun. I wish they would take a more FIRE approach to their wealth building.  I just love the idea of saving as much as you can by lowering your expenses and spending  money only on things you truly value.  Of course I would through in the Dave Ramsey stuff and become debt free as quickly as you can. Buy cars with cash, don't take out loans, pay your house off quickly, stuff like that. But then when you are debt free, to focus on saving to be finacially independent. Overall it was a nice trip.  Looking back I would have gone by myself. 

I should have highlighted this quote first, but I really liked it.  It's from the October 2021 General Conference I believe. You life is made up of single days.  They are important!