Let's get classical, kind of.

Does anyone else ever feel like some classical music is actually just exercises for the musicians to see how well they can play? Sometimes I can not even pick out a real melody and it really isn't even nice to listen to.
Victor was a bit leery about attending the symphony the other night. I can't say I blame him. There are some music pieces that I love so much and well... we already mentioned those I am not as fond of.

I just wanted to share with you some of our favorites from the other night.

Aaron Copeland's "Fanfare for the common man"

Camille Saint-Saens "Danse macabre"

Ralph Vaughan Williams English Folk Song Suite March "Seventeen come Sunday"

Reinhold Gliere "Russian Sailor Dance" from the ballet "The Red Poppy" ( We played this song in orchestra. I really like this one.)

Georges Bizet Suite from Carmen "Intermezzo"

Also from Carmen "Habanera"

 And of course you can't forget "Chanson Du Toreador" from Carmen. (We are big fans of Carmen around here.)

We finished up the night with Franz Liszt "Les Preludes, Symphonic poem #3"

Music can be so uplifting. I think my favorite part was sitting down and looking over the program with Victor and listening to him getting excited about pieces that he already knew and loved. Of course his first question was " Are they playing  In the Hall of the Mountain King?" No they didn't, but you can listen to it if you want.

Because of Him

In an effort to put important things first and to teach my kids good habits, for the last month we have been having personal scripture study time for each kid after family prayer.

The problem with this particular scenario is that only two of the five are independant  readers. So that means Caleb and Phebe need someone to read with them.  Right now we have been reading from some illustrated scripture reader books.

Phebe likes the New Testament. She looks through each night to find the portion she wants to read. Each night she chooses the crucifixtion. After a few days of only this choice I started to add the portion of Christ's ressurection in to remind here the story doesn't end at his death.

I began to feel a bit concerned about her seemingly morbid consistent selection.

One night as we sat down to read I finally asked her why she liked reading about when Jesus died. "Because it is important. He died so I can live with Heavenly Father again."

So tonight and tomorrow and most likely each night in my foreseeable future I know what we will read. And I will no longer be concerned, only touched.

The question answered and random stuff.

Hi, my name is Vanessa. I am a slacking blogger. Sorry for the utter lack of any posts at all. Plenty of cool stuff going on here. I just have been being part of that cool stuff and not hanging out on the internet.

 

OK, the answer to the last who am I, was indeed Neil L Andersen. Good job Meggan and Darcy my daring contestants who got the correct answer. You can learn more about Elder Andersen here.

Here is his talk in the most recent general conference-

Good stuff in there I tell you.

***

In other news-

The baby is crawling and now has a tooth.

We were given free tickets to see the Pittsburgh Symphony do their student side by side performance. There are high school students who help put together the whole ordeal and students who actually  perform next to the professionals. You can find out more about the program here.  The music selections were fantastic. My oldest 3 children and I went down with a friend and their children. It was a truly lovely evening. Of course my kids were not crushed when they handed out ice cream sandwiches at the end. 

My husband is in a play. A very funny play. I am excited for him. I love his desire to do things outside of his comfort zone like this.

I have been working on processing beeswax. I have been taking pictures a long the way and will soon do a blog about it. I think it is pretty awesome.

Tonight we will feed the missionaries. We are going to have coconut curried stew because that fills me with happiness, and my family likes it. I hope the missionaries do too.

Then to activity days and scouts.

Yay for life and things to do!

Guess who, take 4!

The answer is....

L Tom Perry.

Learn more about his awesomeness here.

Here is a previous address of his. 

***

Who am I?

• I was five when my parents moved our family to a dairy farm in Pocatello, Idaho.
• I accepted a mission call and served faithfully in the France Mission.
• I attended BYU and Harvard.
• I married Kathy Williams in the Salt Lake Temple in March 1975.
• While I attended BYU my day would start at 4:00 am when I would go to clean bathrooms in the library .
• I have a master’s degree in business administration.
• I became an apostle in 2009
• I speak French, Portuguese, and Spanish in addition to his native English.  
• I settled in Tampa, Florida, where my business interests included advertising, real estate development, and health care.
• My wife and I have 4 children.
• I was born Logan Utah on August 9, 1951.
• I served as a mission president in France and Brazil.
• Our family moved 8 times due to church assignments.
• I served as Executive Director of the Church Audiovisual Department,
• I counseled missionaries: “Don’t live your life without miracles.”

Guess who, Take 3!

The answer is...

.  

D. Todd Christofferson.

You can learn more about him here.

Here is an address of his from a previous conference.

***

Next up...

Who am I?

• I was born August 5, 1922, in Logan, Utah
• I was committed to perfect attendance at church. One Sunday I was sick with tonsillitis, and my parents decided the attendance record would have to be broken. All members of the family left for Church except my mother and me. But the family was surprised to see us enter the chapel a few minutes after the meeting had started.
• Currently, he is the third most senior and oldest living apostle in the church.
• Among the neighborhood boys, I was the leader. No umpires were needed for our ball games because of my ability to arbitrate disputes.
• I attended Utah State Agricultural College in Logan, Utah, (now Utah State University), Utah.
• I then served a mission to the Northern States, where i gained a great love for the Book of Mormon.
• Weeks after returning from my mission, I was drafted into military service and volunteered for the Marine Corps. I was among the first of the occupation troops to enter Japan after World War II.
• While experiencing the passing of my wife in 1974, my daughter in 1983, and two of my grandchildren, I relied on my faith in a loving Father in Heaven.
• My son, spoke of the times he accompanied me as a timekeeper on speaking assignments while I was a high councilor in the Sacramento area. “He would give me his watch, and I would sit in the center of the congregation, a few rows from the front. We used the signs of the three monkeys—see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. If he wasn’t standing straight, I would cover my eyes. If he was speaking too loudly, I would cover my ears, and just before his time was up, I would cover my mouth,”
• My professional career was spent in the retail business, where I served as vice president and treasurer in companies located in Idaho, California, New York, and Massachusetts.
• On July 18, 1947, I married Virginia Lee of Hyde Park, Utah, in the Logan Temple.
• We have 3 children,
• I became an apostle April 6, 1974.
• I became a fan of the Boston Red Sox and I threw out the first pitch at a Red Sox game on May 8, 2004.
• I was able to help my volley ball team win the championship thanks to my enthusiastic attitude.

Guess who, take 2!

The answer was....

 M. Russell Ballard! You can find more about him here. 

Here is one of his talks from a previous general conference.

***

Alright, let's get to know our next church leader. Here are your clues-

Who am I?

• I was born January 24, 1945.
• I was born in was born in American Fork, Utah.
• I was raised in Pleasant Grove, Utah; Lindon, Utah and Somerset, New Jersey. 
• I served a mission in Argentina.  Richard G Scott was my mission president.
• I earned a bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University and a J.D.from Duke University School of Law.
• I began his law career as a law clerk to Judge John J. Sirica during the Watergate hearings.
• I worked as a lawyer in Washington, D.C.; Nashville, Tennessee; Herndon, Virginia; and Charlotte, North Carolina.
• I married Katherine Jacob in the Salt Lake Temple in 1968.
• My wife and I are the parents of five children.
• I served as the executive director of the Family and Church History Department of the LDS Church. While I was in this position I was involved with negotiations with Jewish leaders on policies on temple work for Holocaust victims, which emphasized that church members should only do such temple work for family members. 
• On April 5, 2008, during the solemn assembly session of the church's general conference when Thomas S. Monson was sustained as church president, I was sustained as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
• As a teenager living in Somerset, New Jersey, I participated in the cast of the Hill Cumorah Pageant near Palmyra, New York, for two summers.
• One night during the summer working at the pageant I decided to find out for myself if the church was true. I went to the Sacred Grove alone and prayed. Nothing happened. A month later, as I was reading the Book of Mormon, I received my answer. “Without my asking for it, the witness came.”
• When I was 13 my mother had a very serious surgery that limited her ability to do things. Knowing how much she loved home made bread I asked my grandmother to teach me how to do it. For years I continued to make bread for my family.

Guess Who?

So yet again it is that time of year! General Conference! Yay!  I love this time of year, and early October because there is more General Conference. 

General conference if the time of year that the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints address the church world wide through satellite, internet etc. You can watch it this weekend if you want. I highly recommend doing so. Here is the link if you are interested. 

So to help prepare our children for conference we decided to play a game each night. A game I was going to let you join in on if you are interested.  Each night at dinner I present to them facts about a specific general authority and then they try to figure out who it is. 

Sometimes I question whether my kids actually like mom's brilliant plans. Caleb warmed my heart yesterday by reminding me at lunch time to get my questions ready for dinner time. Aw... you do care!

Here are your clues from last night's mystery person-

Who am I?

• He was born in Salt Lake City, Utah.
• He served as a missionary in England.
• He is a descendant of Hyrum Smith.
• He was sustained to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on October 6, 1985.
• He was involved in several enterprises, including automotive, real estate, and investment businesses.
• He was the top-selling salesman for his father’s Nash car dealership.
• He served in the United States Army Reserve.
• He was recruited by the Ford Motor Company to become the first Edsel car dealer for Salt Lake City. After praying for guidance, he had the "clear impression" not to sign the franchise. He did anyway and incurred a huge loss, "without doubt the darkest period" of his business career.
•  He was in the presidency of the Valley Music Hall in Bountiful, Utah, which offered high-quality family entertainment. It later failed.
• He married Barbara Bowen in the Salt Lake Temple.
• They are the parents of seven children

·        His wife, Barbara, explains: “We were just ready to leave the house to go to conference. The phone rang, and it was President Hinckley, who asked my husband to come to the office. He thought he would perhaps be called on to speak in conference, since one of the speakers was ill.“We were relaxed on the way to President Hinckley’s office and discussed what my husband might talk about if called to speak. When we got to the office, President Hinckley called my husband to be an Apostle. I almost thought, ‘Please say that again. I don’t know if I heard correctly.’ 

·        In 1949, as a 21-year-old missionary, he was called as first counselor in the presidency of the British Mission.

·        He said about his wife, “I knew from the beginning that I wanted to marry her, but she didn’t share the same feelings. It was a little hard convincing her. I kid her now that getting her to agree to marry me was the greatest sales job I ever did,”

·         In college, his fraternity brothers called him “the bishop.” They knew that whatever the situation, he would be true to his faith, an example of the gospel in action.

·        “If I should choose a word to describe him, it would be teachable”. said Elder Packer.

Any guesses?