Love Will Steer the Stars

Yesterday rocked. 12-year-old Eden gave her first talk at church, and did an awesome job. She had written the whole thing herself, spending eight hours to write a beautiful eight minute talk about covenants; the great victory in this is that she finished it mostly without nagging, while battling her huge struggles with ADD, so maybe two thirds of that time was spent staring into space. She also overcame intense shyness and spoke up even though it was her first time at the pulpit in front of the entire adult congregation. We are so proud of her. The babies also made a mark in our family history book in another way. On Saturday I'd brought Gideon a cute pair of bright red Angry Birds crocs. He loved them so much that he wanted to wear them to church, with his little formal black suit, to which we said no. Justin and I were busy getting the final things ready, turned to leave and couldn't find the babies. Anywhere. We were getting very worried but since Eden had to be on time to give her talk Justin sent me ahead with the older kids and kept looking for the little ones. I walked the two blocks to our chapel only to find Gideon and Audrey sitting down prim and proper in the front pew. That funny clever 3 year old had figured out how to get away with wearing the angry bird shoes to church! I can just see him grabbing Audrey's hand and saying "come on Audrey, let's go church" and toddling on their merry way, alone the two blocks and crossing the parking lot. Thank heaven they were safe! Thank you to our young friend Andrea S. for noticing they were alone and going to sit with them until we arrived! We were so relieved that I even forgot to correct him; so I guess you'd call that a clean getaway. Then in the evening we had an impromptu visit from Justin's sister and her family who live an hour away; we visited the cemetery together to pay our respects to his grandfather and to our friend Mae Roberts who had devoted her life to helping raise funds through collecting people's discarded soda cans to recycle for Primary Children's Medical Center, with her bent back and sore neck she pulled her wagon ten miles a week and in that way raised over a thousand dollars a year for the hospital, on top of this she also walked or hitchhiked to worship at the temple every morning before it was light; she passed away just before Audrey was born and our own journey with Primary began. This was one of my first times joining Carmen and Jared for their annual tradition to visit graves, and it was pretty moving to see how busy the cemetery was, literally packed with happy visitors putting flowers on graves and remembering their loved ones. The atmosphere was like a big celebration of life and gratitude for our ancestors--I saw one woman's grave from the early 1900s buried next to her seven babies, all died the year they were born except one who lived one year. It's remarkable how the depth and breadth of the stories contained in a cemetery can cause you to re-center on the most important things, simultaneously reflecting on the past, being more intensely grateful for blessings in the present, and planning for the future. We had so much fun afterward eating homemade scones with Justin's sister and her family that I forgot all about looking at the night sky after sunset to see the dawning of the Age of Aquarius (in case you missed it too, Jupiter Mars and Venus supposedly formed a bright triangle in the sky just after sunset). Crud. Maybe the planets could arrange a bonus performance tonight? But either way, I guess even the planets agreed that yesterday was pretty epic.