Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Trip to Idaho Falls and SLC

We just got back from a fun trip to Utah and Idaho.   
We went to Idaho Falls for the wedding of our good friend Chris. 

Here are Scott and several of his closest friends from college:

They did an amazing job transforming the cultural hall in the church:

Also on this trip, we were able to go visit the grave of my grandma who passed away last December.  It was nice to be able to say goodbye to her.  I was also able to visit my grandpa's grave for the first time (at least that I remember).  He passed away when I was one. 

 On Memorial Day, we went with Scott's sisters to leave flowers at the graves of their mom's parents. I didn't have my camera there for that one.

We later visited BYU Provo and checked out the new addition to the Tanner building.  They have added dozens of team rooms including some with flat screens?  This would have made our group assignments so much easier!

 Scott was impressed by this classroom full of trading computers. 

On Tuesday, we visited the Church History Museum.  After teaching about Church History in seminary this year, it was really cool to go there and see some of the artifacts first hand like Emma Smith's hymn book, John Taylor's pocketwatch that stopped a bullet in Carthage Jail, some of the original transcripts of the Book of Mormon, and the stone that David O. McKay saw in Scotland ("Whate'er thou art, act well thy part").  I was really glad I had one more lesson to give to my class before the end of the year so I could tell them about it.

Also at the museum, we had a lot of fun in their children's area.  Building Nephi's ship and going fishing over the side of it:


Celebrating Mexican culture by learning a dance (complete with costumes):



We even got to practice speaking from a replica of the pulpit at the Conference Center (I'm willing to bet its much more fun than the real thing). 

I'm sure no one else has ever done this before:



If you check out the end of this video, you'll see a sample of Matthew's dance moves: