Mel's Denver Report

Mel and Christian came to visit today and I just finally got some details about their weekend trip to Colorado back in April. I could go put it there, but I'm just gonna put it here. So this was on April 26th, the day after she graduated, so it was a graduation trip/gift to Mel. The main reason Christian wanted to go out was to see a piano concert. Mel said Christian was so excited for the concert. He had been looking forward to it for months. Tchaikovsky's piano concerto in D. It had been in his head for months, cause he always listened to it because he's been to Russia and loves Russia. Right before it started he teared up a little bit. Mel said it was cute to watch how excited he was, he was in awe during the whole thing, cause listening to it live is so different.

Other things they did for their 24 hour weekend trip - Flew out in the morning, rented a car and went to Walmart to get food to snack on. Breakfast and lunch. They stopped by a yard sale just for fun, cause they thought it would be fun to see a yardsale in another state, haha. They went on a hike ~

Took a nap in a car, walked around Red rock stadium to look for an outlet where they could charge their phones. They went to a baseball game and got a funnel cake. As a child Mel said she would have seen someone eating that and thought "wow!" but it was too expensive. Now she can afford it, so they got it, and it was only alright. 

I guess she prob should have done it as a kid, though I don't think we ever went to a baseball game. Maybe she saw it at an amusement park. So it was Mel's first baseball game. 

She said the Rockies aren't a very good team. There was a lot of weed and swear words. Mel said Christian stood out like gold or a diamond in that environment. 

She said one funny moment was when they were looking for a vegan restaurant for dinner, and there was some place that had "green" in the name and it sounded like food, but as they were close to the door they realized it was a weed store. So then the concert was in the evening ~

Then instead of getting a hotel where they'd only be staying 3 hours, they just went to the airport and slept there. She laughed when Christian pulled out bedsheets and eye masks from his backpack. With the travel pillows they set up a pretty good little bed. Mel was laughing "What are we doing?" Christian said "We're not that tacky to not bring bedsheets..." 

They just spent all day together for an entire day, and it was good! I think they like each other. Tonight when they were here, I asked Mel if Christian had ever seen Mel's multitasking video (playing City of Stars - Mel doing both the flute AND piano at the same time!) She didn't know which one I was talking about, so I just started it on the big screen, and he hadn't seen it, and he was impressed! It is impressive, so that was fun to let him see another way she's even more amazing than he knew. We also played Wesley playing an Elvis song on his ukulele wearing some Indian punjabi clothes. Corey laughed that a video like that might need some explanation... 

Eliza is also here. She came down from Idaho today - she stayed a week longer than Joseph so she could go to a family reunion. She is going to fly out tomorrow evening. We love having baby Mary around! Her aunts and uncles were all very attentive.

Sophi got some candy from somewhere, and everyone was all to willing to help her eat it. 

I woke up this morning and did a little bit of reading while the house was quiet. I need to do that more often. I picked up "Let God Love You" by Wendy Ulrich. From my notes on the pages, I think I last picked up this book in April 2017, and so today I started where I left off on page 50. A part I really liked today was from page 58 - she pointed out how in the JST of Mark 14:21-24 Christ tells the apostles that whenever they partake of the bread and wine, they should 'remember this hour that I was with you...and as oft as ye do this ordinance, ye will remember me in this hour that I was with you." The apostles were going to go through hard times after Christ's death. When those hard times of persecution and trial come, remember the times that God WAS with us, our last Supper experiences, so that we don't give up when the clouds roll in (page 64). I liked that, that the sacrament isn't just symbolic of his flesh and blood, but of his presence with us, his companionship, his love. We can depend on that love as we remember him when life gets hard. 

The messages at church were really good too. For sacrament meeting, the young men shared things about their High Adventure trip in the Uintah mountains this week - a 50 mile hiking trip! They camped at various lakes, let's see... I wrote down Moon Lake, Kidney Lake, and Thompson Lake. I liked a statement by Jack, where he said sometimes we go to nature to "get away from the world" but really nature is getting back TO the world. Nature and God's creations ARE the real world. All this other stuff is man made, nature and the earth is God made. Sam shared that he learned there needs to be a balance between looking around at where you are at now, AND looking ahead to where you are going. I liked that. We need to do both! I guess I don't need to feel to guilty about looking down at the rocks when I'm biking on the trail. It is good to know where I am at, AND it's good to look up and look ahead at where I'm going (but don't let a big hill ahead of me make me want to give up before I even start climbing it). And I enjoyed Bro Chandler's comments. He said he really became grateful for trails, which he usually took for granted. There was a trail sometimes, but on other places it was just grass, scree, or boulders. Tribulation worketh patience, and patience > experiecne, and Experience > HOPE. Romans 5:3-5. The closing hymn was Israel Israel, God is Calling, calling us from lands of woe. Leave our lands and our world behind and get back to the real world as often as we can - nature and the temple. I'll keep that as a goal for the rest of my life, to get up into the mountains, into the real world, and to the mountain of the Lord's house (Isaiah 2).