The Great Pumpkin Hunt!

The great tradition is here! That's right it's the Monday before Halloween.

 

For those not familiar with the Great Pumpkin I will tell you the story of The First Great Pumpkin Hunt.

 

The little boy with the blue blanket really did have it right. There really is a great pumpkin. And he really does rise out of the pumpkin patch. And He really does bring all the good little boys and girls presents. Only he doesn't do it out of the kindness of his heart, like a leprechaun, you have to catch him! Once you catch him, you have to give him a face.

 

 This is a story of four little kids who caught the great pumpkin. 

 

The oldest, soon to be a teenager. Everyone around her wanted her to grow up and forget about being a kid. All she wanted was to stay a little girl forever. She also desperately wanted to be an only child.

 

 

 

 

The next one was sometimes forgotten and sometimes stuck in the middle. She was stuck doing her own thing, while watching and wanting to be a part of the action, just a little too scared to say anything.

 

The third was, believe it or not, another little girl. At just eight years old she was ready for adventure, just as long as she didn't get dirty or wet or hurt. She looked to her older two sisters to figure out just how to do things. That's how she learned to be afraid of spiders and learned to like making cookies.

 

Our fourth little adventurer was really quite different from the others. For starters, he was a boy, and you would not believe just how much he showed it. By the time he was 5 he had been on many adventures. Like Jack and Jill, he too climbed a hill and came tumbling down, broke his crown, then got up and did it all over again. Never minding that he was filthy head to toe or that was covered in water and forgetting he was hurt.

 

Our brave group of hunters, went where no one had ever dared to venture in costume! Searching high and low, over and under, this way and that way for that elusive pumpkin. Alas, it was too dark to see every pumpkin and too windy to look in every nook and cranny. So they found the largest pumpkin around and the littlest pumpkin ever seen and took them home. 

Once home, that great pumpkin was in need of a face! "Let the carving begin!"

Now with a look all his own, The Great Pumpkin was brought to life, granting one great wish. And what, pray tell, did our warriors ask? Why for candy of course!

Glitches…

Sometimes they work in your favor, sometimes they don't. The food stamp debacle showed just how dishonest people can be. If you are saying foodstamp debacle? What's that? Then you should read about it here. After you read that then you should know who the government will hold responsible.  Here a couple that worked for me and one that just annoys me.

First, the wife got an email from the DMV. It said that an emissions test was required on my car. Me being me, ignored that and went to the website anyway to attempt to reregister my car without the emissions test done. Would you believe it let me! Not only that but register it for five more years. So that was nice. 

The next one surely can't remain for very long, but it has been a few months and no fix has presented itself yet. This one has to do with my wireless provider. The say they can separate data used one your phone from data used while your phone is acting as a wireless hotspot. So I pay for unlimited data for use on my phone, it comes with 500MB to use as a hotspot. I have exceded that 500MB several times and the hotspot service never counted the data used. Just to test it I watched 2 movies from netflix on my ipad while using my phone as a hotspot. The next day I checked my data usage and the hotspot data still read 0MB used. 

So the one that annoys me is iOS 7. This is is by far the nicest update but at the same time the most glitchy. There are times while using my phone it will reboot all on its own. It's crashing. iTunes Radio is nice, but for some reason the multi tasking feature isn't working like it did in previous versions so when I leave the screen and pause the music even for a minute the app is shut down. It's the same story with any app running. This is by far the biggest annoyance. 

In other stuff…

D was assigned the wonderful chore to clean out the litter box. After dumping the old stuff out in the trash, she washed the pan. What could go wrong? Well she washed it in the kitchen sink on the garbage disposal side. When she dumped the litter she didn't get it all. I came home to a backed up sink with litter in it and in the disposal. What a job she left for me. I told everyone it would have to wait a few days and not to use the sink. I took the disposal out cleaned it and made sure the U shaped pipe didn't have any gravel in it. So far so good. Hopefully D has learned her lesson and we won't have any repeats. 

T has officially joined the general conference fan club, or at least said it's not that bad, it's kinda like church. 

That's it for now. Maybe if we are really good, my sister Moe will treat us with a blog update. Six months is too long to wait, hint, hint. 

General Conference…

Well we had general conference, I was somewhat excited for it this time. A lot of the speakers reaffirmed my commitments and gave counsel on how to better to adopt principles for living a Christ like life. So when I put this together it will be insights from multiple speakers and I won't be able to say for sure which speaker said what. So here is the gist of of it all.

Your body is a temple. As a temple it is ahold place where the Holy Spirit may reside. We learn from our dedication of temples that they are clean and built to perfection. When we apply this lesson to ourselves, we learn that to have the spirit of god in our lives we must be clean, physically and mentally. We must strive for perfect obedience to God's commandments. To achieve perfection in obedience, we must learn and live principles taught in the scriptures. To gain a testimony of any principle you must live it. You most likely will not keep commitments unless it was your idea to do it. Therefore, to obtain perfect obedience, you must look at yourself in the mirror daily and say my body is a temple of God, then learn to apply the lessons in the scriptures to your life and live them.

True repentance is only achieved by turning away from sin (all sin not just the one you are repenting of) and focussing all your heart and energy on loving a Christ like life. An example from the Book of Mormon was given. They was a people who were warriors, the killed and took pleasure in it. When they were taught about God and his plan of happiness they were pricked in their hearts and not only turned away from their sin, they covenanted with God never to use weapons of war again for fear of reawakening that desire for killing and thereby loosing their redemption. Years later their commitment to the covenant was was tested. Their land was being attacked and they wanted desperately to take up arms to defend themselves, their countrymen and their land. Captain Moroni ,from outside the town, told them that they should keep their covenant and suggested that since their sons had not made the covenant, they would be free to defend them. This example shows the commitment level you must have. Part of the story that wasn't mentioned but I feel is important to illustrate the point was this, prior to their sons taking up arms in defense of their families and country, these committed people walked out on the battlefield without weapons, and laid down on the ground. Their enemies came and began to slaughter them. During this, a large portion of the enemy became disgusted with themselves and through down their weapons and then entered into the same covenant. So to sum up repentance is granted when we have a change of heart, when sin disgusts us and we loose the desire to sin. Our commitment will be tested, and through our example many more will see and begin their own personal transformation.

Weaved through out all of this is the importance of fasting. Fasting teaches us to control the natural desires of our bodies. So when we are struggling to keep the life altering principles we learn about in the scriptures or the commandments from God, fasting will put our spirit in charge and make it easier to keep them.

To help my family to learn an appreciation of conference, for family home evening we are watching one talk and then talking about it. Afterword, we play games and just hang out.