Marchuary

Back when we still considered March a Spring month, Todd signed up to do a Boy Scout training in the mountains. He's the advisor for the 14-15 year old boys at church, not the Scout leader, but he's still supposed to go on their outings. Todd has probably not been camping since before these kids were born. We own exactly zero outdoor supplies.


Armed with a Christmas gift card to REI (thanks Mom & Dad), we spent way more than I would have liked on the bare minimum camping requirements. He packed it all into his school backpack and carried a pillow like he was headed for a big boy sleepover. And he survived the totally uneventful, far too cold, first camping trip of his adult life.

All over the South, "Marchuary" has literally been colder than January. I am so over it. We're moving to the frozen north in 4 months, I need all the warmth I can get! Since Todd and I share a car, I'm usually left to my own two feet + bike to get around when he's at work. So my life kind of revolves around the weather, and walking/biking are not enticing if I have to bundle up to do it. I'll have to change my tune in Denmark.

On the plus side, there has been a lot of basketball to watch. We do a bracket competition every year. The years we bet something, Todd wins. The years we bet nothing, I win. We bet nothing this year, so an early congratulations to myself.


The best part of March, in my opinion, was stake conference. Now, I have never liked stake conference. I do like only going to 2 hours of church that Sunday instead of 3, it's like a vacation! But the two Raleigh Stake conferences we've been to were great. Our stake presidency is awesome, and they pick the most engaging, thoughtful speakers.

One of the speakers this conference challenged everyone to read the chapter "How Do I Develop Christlike Attributes?" from the "Preach My Gospel" manual out loud with their spouse. The attributes of Christ it lists are: faith, hope, charity & love, virtue, knowledge, patience, humility, diligence, and obedience. We decided to study each one-by-one and started with patience.

A few weeks ago, I listened to Elder Scott's talk from the last general conference about family history and temple work. I've done some temple work for relatives, but basically zero family history work. According to Mom, our family has all been done or they've hit very definite dead ends. I thought I could maybe do some indexing online, but I don't even know what that means.

The same day I listened to the talk, Mom called to ask me to help her start a family history blog. What do you know, family history I can handle! So Ballantyne/Stradling family, here's the blog: Greer Family Connection. All I've done is the blog-making part, but now I feel far less guilty about my lack of family history work.