Moran Family Fun

Whether or not you want it to, time marches on. Even if you want things to stay the same, people change, circumstances change, and you can't recreate the memories of the past so it's best to accept it and move on with your life. After all, you can't go home again, right? As someone who has lived in twelve different places in my life I kind of agree with that sentiment. I've gone back before and things aren't the same and often are just plain disappointing. When Jared proposed this trip to Germany I was apprehensive for many reasons; one of the main reasons was the fact that I know it can be disheartening to go back and find that things have changed more than you'd like. Even though I know time marches on, in my head everyone and everything are in some sort of suspended animation just waiting for my return. It is best to keep your happy memories in your head and enjoy them there because it really won't be the same if you go back. Even knowing all this, w...

A couple of months ago Jared hatched a crazy plan. We'd pull the girls out of school the week after Thanksgiving and go to Germany! Not only that, but it would be an amazing surprise and we wouldn't tell the girls that we were even going anywhere until right before we left. Pulling off this plan would require a little bit of work and a LOT of luck.  You see, the only way were could afford for this to work was if we could fly Space Available on a military flight. Seven tickets from DC to Germany would cost roughly a million dollars. Really it would be more like $8,000, which is still more than we had just laying around to spend on airplane tickets. Flying Space A is an amazing military benefit. The military flies people and cargo around the world all the time and instead of letting free seats/space on the plane go to waste, they allow people like us to fly on their planes. It's kind of like flying standby on a regular airline because you have to be flexible and there...

Jared and I have our roles and we play them well. I cook the dinner, he eats the dinner. I do the laundry, he splits the firewood. I set up the Christmas tree, he puts on the lights. The only problem with our little division of labor is that I'm never happy with the Christmas tree lighting situation. I always want more lights. This year we broke from our traditional jobs and I put on the Christmas tree lights. We have seven strands of lights for our seven foot tree; that's 700 lights. After a quick google search to learn the best way to light a tree I set to work. Since I like lots of lights I wound and wrapped the strands around every. single. branch.  It took forever (a couple of hours start to finish) and by the time I got to the last of our 700 lights I still had a third of the tree left to light. So it was off to the store to buy three more boxes of lights. I hoped that an even 1,000 would do the trick. It just seemed like the right number because the boxes said that ...

Earlier this week in seminary we played a little Thanksgiving themed scripture mastery game. It was a turkey shoot! I try to devote at least part of one class period a week to working on scripture mastery because I think it's important. Of course, I want my students to learn from the Old Testament as we study this year and to really feel how much the stories and events of the Old Testament testify of Jesus Christ.  In addition to learning that truth, I think there's something special about having those twenty-five scriptures from each year ingrained in their minds and hearts. In the October 2011 General Conference Elder Richard G. Scott said, "Scriptures are like packets of light that illuminate our minds and give place to guidance and inspiration from on high . . . Learning, pondering, searching, and memorizing scriptures is like filling a filing cabinet with friends, values, and truths that can be called upon anytime, anywhere in the world."  My hope is that long a...

Emily wasn't sure she wanted a birthday party for her sixteenth birthday but we eventually wore her down and convinced her that a party would be fun. We were only successful in our persuasions because of Bethany, Emily's friend who has a birthday right around Emily's and is also turning sixteen. Bethany wanted a party and thought it would be fun to do a big joint party since they share a bunch friends and their guest lists would be almost identical. The party planning kicked in to high gear when Bethany came to stay at our house for the Halloween weekend. She and Emily turned to Pinterest for ideas and come up with a plan and a list of things I would need to buy to make it happen. They decided on a bonfire birthday party so we started handing out invitations and bought lanterns to hang in the trees, glow sticks, everything for s'mores and hot chocolate, and a giant cake.  Bethany and her parents took on the big task of setting up their backyard for the party...

I'm really trying to get caught on the November plan of a picture and post every day. At this point I'm about a week behind and there's not a picture for every day that I've missed, but we did have some fun goings on that I want to make sure we document.  Last Friday night was our ward's youth temple trip but it was also Emily's sweet sixteen party. When we picked the date for her party we'd purposefully chosen a date that wouldn't conflict with any church events. The invitations were sent and the RSVPs were rolling in when the date for the temple trip was switched (just a week before I should add) to the exact time of Emily's party.  Poor Emily had a difficult decision to make - temple or party? We're proud of her for making a good choice and changing the date of her party so she could be at the temple with the other youth in our ward and so they didn't have to choose between going to the temple and going to her party. In the end we wer...

Everyone has at least two different versions of themselves that they present to the world. For example, at home I'm a little more relaxed and definitely a more authentic version of me than I am at church, my kids' schools, or at work. The less secure I feel in a given situation, the more I worry about what people think of me and I spend more time considering what impression my words and actions might make. At home or with close friends, I don't think about that at all because I feel loved and supported so I'm comfortable letting my imperfections and idiosyncrasies show.  Some might see this as hypocritical, but I don't think behaving and presenting yourself differently in differing surroundings is a problem as long as you're still the same person at heart. Work Jared, getting it done in his tuxedo shirt! Late the other night I was with Jared at his office waiting on him to finish up responding to some emails and I was struck by the difference betwe...