Moran Family Fun

I think for the past few years I've felt as if whatever year it is has been the hardest of my life. In addition to the ways in which the COVID pandemic impacted our lives, 2020 was a very challenging year for our family. At the end of 2019, I remember thinking that I couldn't wait to put the year behind us and move on to bigger and better things in 2020. But things didn't magically become easier when the calendar was flipped to January of 2020 and in many ways, they continued to grow more difficult. Robert D. Hales gave a talk about gratitude where he said, "In some quiet way, the expression and feelings of gratitude have a wonderful cleansing or healing nature." I know that's true because as I've turned to the Lord with gratitude I've felt happiness and hope for the future during some really dark times. James 1:2 tells us to "count it all joy when we fall into divers afflictions." That joy can and does come from living a life full of gratitu...

This semester I've been taking an Institute class about eternal families. The main text for the course is The Family: A Proclamation to the World . This was originally written in 1995 and it's easy to see how prophetic it is and how we need the truths contained in it more than ever. We've also been studying the scriptures, General Conference talks, and other addresses from church leaders that further expand on the teachings in the Proclamation. In the introductory unit, we started by learning about the doctrine of the family and why families are so important. Then we moved on to learning about the Plan of Salvation and how families are the essential unit of that plan and that everything within the plan is based on truth and law.  We learned about the purpose of His plan - which is to allow us to gain eternal life - and how marriage and gender help us progress along the path back to Him. In the next unit, we focused on how covenants and ordinances, specifically temple ordina...

This evening we drove to see the Roy City Christmas lights. I got a glimpse of them when I was driving by the city offices a few nights ago and I knew we needed to go back and check them out. There are over a million lights covering the city offices and the surrounding grounds and it's totally free to walk around and enjoy the lights. On the hour and half hour, there is an entire light show! You just tune your radio to a certain frequency and there is music playing and all the lights turn on and off in time with the music. It was so cool! I love that the city just does this. It's totally free and just a perfect little family Christmas activity. You could stay in your car the entire time if you wanted to, but how fun would it be to get out and dance in the middle of the light show? We love Christmastime! 

Can you believe all of our Christmas things made it here with only one ornament casualty? After the mess with our piano and our cuckoo clock, I was a little apprehensive wondering what we'd find when we opened the boxes of decorations. But one broken ornament is a blessing for sure. The only thing we weren't so happy about was that the girls were missing all of their ornaments. They each have their own box of ornaments that we've added to each year and they just aren't here. Our best guess is that they're with our things that are in storage right now. However, without all of those things, we were worried that our tree would be looking pretty bare.  Somehow it took all stinking day to decorate one average-sized tree. Part of that was because we slept in and part was because we ended up going out three separate times to get more lights and ornaments. We had two functioning strands of lights and several that were only half-lit and ended up in the bin. We thought five s...

Thanksgiving! It's really such a great holiday. For starters, there's all that yummy food and enough sides on the table that everyone can find something they love to eat. Forget the turkey, the sides are the stars of the show. My favorite place to be is at home and what else is there to do on Thanksgiving but be at home with the people you love? Sure, preparing the feast takes some effort but I love to cook so that's another thing to love about Thanksgiving. Throw in a four or five-day weekend because it always falls on a Thursday and you've got the recipe for a really fantastic holiday.  This year started off really well when I woke up and walked into the kitchen to find this waiting on the counter for me. My brother is always thoughtful and he knows what I like - caffeine without calories. In the morning we had a family 5K Turkey Trot! It was sunny and cold but it was also worth it to wake up and move our bodies and have fun together at the beginning of the day.  My s...

A couple of months ago, and probably for longer than that if I really think about it, I just couldn't handle social media anymore. Twelve years ago when I first got a Facebook account it was different. Remember when you had to read things on your feed to know what was going on in people's lives and not just scroll through pretty pictures? I really do appreciate social media because we've seen a lot of people come and go from our lives and it is a good way for me to feel at least a little bit connected to all those good friends and to our family. What used to be a way to see what was happening in the lives of people I know and love had become an almost constant stream of contention. Fighting about politics for sure, fighting about COVID, it seemed as if people were using social media solely to argue about things others post. What happened to cute pictures of babies and the yummy salad you had for lunch? I'm sure they were still there, but the social media algorithm maker...

About four years ago one of Jared's coworkers was preparing to move from England to the States. He had a beater car that they didn't plan to ship to their new home and they had a buyer but the deal kind of fell through at the last minute. And that's how we ended up buying a 1997 4Runner for $300 even though we already had two perfectly good cars. Over the past four years, those two newer nicer cars have been sold but the 4Runner is still with us. Samantha took a picture of me while I was pumping gas today and I didn't know she'd done it until I opened my camera roll tonight. That little sticker on the fuel door is one of many bumper stickers on this car; the liftgate is plastered with them. Even though our car runs and has reliably gotten us from point a to point b every time we've needed it to, I really want a new car. I know I sound spoiled and ungrateful and maybe I am a little. I'm just ready to have a nicer car again. Our plan is to wait and see where w...