Category: Fatherhood

Jackson, WY and Grand Teton National Park

I’ve decided to post photos from our trip in portions over the next few days because this seems to be the best way to honor the great planning that Richard did for this trip. Our days were full and we slept soundly every night.

The first leg of our trip was through Jackson, Wyoming and Grand Teton National Park. We began our audiobook of the trip, The Fellowship of the Ring, read by Rob Inglis. It was a great backdrop for our adventures in the hills and mountains. We tried different narrators, but he was our favorite.

We left on Sunday after church and enjoyed a picnic dinner in a mountain campground before continuing our drive to Jackson. We loved driving through the beautiful Star Valley as the sun set over the very green fields in this open valley. The Star Valley Temple was right on the main road through town.

On Monday morning, we drove into Grand Teton National Park. We couldn’t stop for everything, but we tried to locate the most interesting places.

One of our early stops was a group of pioneer houses called “Mormon Row.”

This view of the Snake River and The Grand Tetons was made famous by Ansel Adams, and it seemed to be Mark’s favorite view at the park.

In the line of the Teton Mountains, Mount Moran seemed the least of them until we drove a little closer and discovered how beautiful its reflection was on the water.

During the afternoon, the men went on a white water rafting trip. I rested in the hotel room because I am exciting like that.

In the evening, we went on a wagon ride to a chuckwagon dinner just outside of Jackson. The wagons were pulled by draft horses and we chatted with people in our wagon from Huntsville, Alabama and San Francisco, California. There was a live band with a fiddler and guitars for entertainment at dinner. I think the favorite parts of dinner were the beans and the cookies.

The boys shopped for shirts, hats, and candy in town.

This was a great first day of vacation.

Mark’s Senior Piano Recital

Well, we made it to our last piano recital, and it was a big one. It was a solo recital for Mark, and he played seven pieces.

I have heard nearly every practice session of Mark’s life in our home (11 years of lessons), but Richard and I enjoyed hearing his pieces played on this magnificent piano. Knowing all it took to get to this point made us really appreciate his interpretations and his growth as a musician and a person.

We had 44 in the audience. I wasn’t expecting that many, and we are touched that people came to cheer for Mark. Piano study is usually pretty solitary, unlike sports or band. So, having family and friends fill the recital hall to give one last hurrah for our youngest pianist made this a joyful night.

Family quotes that matter to me

The most extraordinary thing in this world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.

G.K. Chesterton

The end of all activity in the Church is to see that a man and a woman with their children are happy at home and sealed together for time and for all eternity.

Boyd K. Packer

Many who knew her, thought it a pity that so substantive and rare a creature should have been absorbed into the life of another, and be only known in a certain circle as a wife and mother. But no one stated exactly what else that was in her power she ought rather to have done…

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature…spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life.

George Eliot, Middlemarch

Deadline

We are in college and scholarship application season, and it seems to get more intense each time.

I sat through an application seminar last week, even though we have successfully navigated this process several times. “Things are changing,” is what I keep hearing about scholarships and universities.

This week, there is a deadline for a scholarship competition, and we have been through several phases of realization, some of them pretty miserable.

I have loved raising our kids, even this difficult, anxious phase with some of the last lessons before flight. As Mark writes his essays, we revisit the triumphs of growing up and the failures, too. Its a time to look back together before things get really busy, so I won’t wish away these days.

Moab Trip

The Ross family tour bus departed on Memorial Day, just as most people packed up their RV’s to come home. We passed masses of traffic traveling home in the other direction, and discovered that the places we visited near Moab were not crowded. Richard made excellent plans and accommodations for us. He is so good at this.

After such a wet winter, the landscape was more green than we can remember. There were so many wildflowers, that whole fields were dusted in color, mostly orange, but many other colors, too.

Do you spy Paige and Michael, and Daniel and McKenna traveling with us? Lucky us! My brother Joe shared his van with us so we could all ride together.