Last weekend after attending TOFW in Utah, I traveled back to Idaho with my daughter and stayed overnight at her home. On Monday as I was headed back to my home, I decided to stop off along the greenbelt in Idaho Falls and take a few pictures of the temple and the falls. It is such a pretty area, even in the colder months with no foliage on the trees.
Not only do we have this in our front yard…………..
Right below our window, under the eaves, we have this……………
Can you believe it? With temperatures that dipped 10 degrees or more below zero this winter, this little flower continued to thrive. Everything else, including the weeds all died off. Wow, amazing little flower, for sure!
I wrote this blog piece yesterday with the intentions of sending it today. What a surprise when I got up this morning and looked out the window. I had no idea it was going to snow. Sometime during the night or early morning, we got another inch of snow. Like they say…..in Idaho, you never know.
This past weekend, I traveled to Layton, Utah with my daughter, Amber. We met up with my other daughter, Brittney, and my sister, Maxine, to attend TOFW (Time Out For Women). I got this quote from the TOFW site: “For 13 years, Time Out for Women has been inviting faithful women to step away from the daily routine and make space for themselves and their spiritual lives”. Each year, the program has a different theme that all the entertainment and talks are based around. This years theme was “Living Proof”. The conference was held in the Davis Conference Center. It was a two-day conference so while there, we stayed in the Holiday Inn Express. Our room was nice and worked out great for our one-night stay. Everything (hotel, conference center, places to eat) was within walking distance to where we were staying and going.
Before the evening conference started, we walked over to Applebee’s to get something to eat. My daughter, Amber, said that the Cheeseburger Sliders were pretty good so along with Amber, that is what Maxine and I ordered. She was right, they did taste good.
Our first session of the conference was on Friday night (February 20, 2015) and went from 6:30pm till 9:30pm.
I’ve been to a few other TOFW conferences, and I think this Friday night session was my most favorite. It was so wonderful to be laughing and constantly entertained, yet, there is also a spirit in there like no other. You definitely know that what you are hearing are words pleasing to our Heavenly Father.
For the first night, instead of trying to squeeze in between all the other women, we thought we would sit a ways back and scope the place out then decide where we would sit the following day. We were sitting about half-way in the conference room but actually, there was not a bad place to sit in the entire room. Room……leg room….it was so nice the way they had the chairs placed. I have long legs and for once, it was nice to sit in a place with lots of people and still get to stretch out your legs. They had 3 big screens placed around the room so everyone could see. We really liked where we were sitting so that’s where we planned to head the next morning.
After the evening session was over and we were headed back to our hotel, we decided to stand in front of the TOFW screen and have someone take our picture.
The hotel we stayed at had a wonderful breakfast that was included in the price of the room. It seemed a bit pricy, but when we split the room cost 4 ways, it only ended up costing each of us about $24. They had everything you could want for breakfast. There was a full set-up of muffins, pancakes, biscuits and gravy, cinnamon rolls, scrambled eggs (the scrambled eggs were great), milk, juices, cereal, bagels………………………..I’m sure I’ve forgotten something. It was a breakfast feast.
After eating our breakfast and loading all our luggage into our cars, we walked over to the Saturday (February 21, 2015) session of the conference. This session went from 9am till 3:45pm, with an 80 minute lunch break.
The chairs we had the previous night were already taken so we just sat one more row back. We were early enough to get up much closer but we decided to sit further back where we knew the view was great and we wouldn’t be looking over, under, or around other heads. Although the screen by us failed to work for a big portion of the session, the other screens were big enough that we could still view the entire conference with no difficulty. As they were introducing everyone, they highlighted on the lady in the front, wearing the red shirt. It was her 100th time speaking at TOFW conferences in various parts of the United States.
During lunch, we could go anywhere wanted. We opted to just stay on site and eat what they provided because it had started to snow. We either had the choice of a chicken salad or a club sandwich. We all purchased the club sandwich which included potato chips, soda pop of choice and a cookie for $10. There were lots of places/rooms throughout the conference center where we could go eat which made it nice because we werent’ crammed in like sardines. At past conferences in another place, sardines, yep…we were sardines.
As we were eating, the snow started coming down more heavily. We were sure glad that we decided to stay and eat at the conference center and didn’t venture walking somewhere.
With lunch time over, it was back to the program. Calee Reed was not only a beautiful singer, but her talks were just as good.
I actually have individual pictures of all the presenters but since this blog is already quite long, I will end it here. We have attended two other conferences (2012 and 2013) but due to my daughter having a newborn last year, we could not attend a conference. This year, nothing stood in our way and keeping fingers crossed, next year will be free too. These conferences are super – GO if you get the opportunity.
Ok, here it is, almost the end of February…..and believe it or not, my husband was sitting at his computer working when he heard this sound……CLICK HERE and push play. Can you believe it? When my husband heard the sound buzzing around his head his thoughts turned to “mosquito” but he brushed it off thinking…..mosquitoes aren’t supposed to be out this time of the year and the next thing he knew, ZAP…the mosquito had found his target on my husbands thumb. Although the pictures aren’t so great….it is absolutely a mosquito….a dead mosquito, but still a mosquito. Wonder where this one has been hiding all winter? I guess he stuck his nose in where it wasn’t wanted – Ha! Wow, I guess with the warmer weather we’ve been having, even the mosquitoes think it’s summer.
We headed to Idaho Falls for Valentine’s Day and it was a beautiful day. So warm and nice……didn’t seem like February, at all. The trees are still barren around the temple but you’d never guess what time of the year it was if you judged by warmth.
There were geese walking around a grassy area in a lot not far from the temple. But don’t let the looks of these two geese fool you, thinking….what nice little geese these two look to be. They were so mean to any other geese that tried to come anywhere near their turf. They would chase them and bite them and flap their wings while honking madly. I was even a bit leery getting as close as I did to take a few pictures.
For lunch, we met our daughter, her husband and our little grandson at a place called “Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers”…(Google Image Photo).
Their hamburgers really do look like the following photo that I also got from Google Images. The meat patty’s are really thin, but packed with flavor. And of course, I had bacon added to mine. Is it a place I would eat at again……….definitely.
After eating and shopping around a few stores, it was time to head home. We wanted to leave early so we wouldn’t be coming home in the dark because as I have mentioned in other blogs, when you get near our home area, you really take your chances of hitting deer in the evening hours. As it turned out, I’m so glad we were running behind schedule or we would never have gotten to see the following sunset by one of the Twin Buttes, as we were traveling through the desert area to get to our home. Really, it was breathtaking.
Do you think the sunset was God’s Valentine gift of LOVE to us? I’m thinking, YES!…………….
On February 2nd, I went out to lunch with a friend and afterwards, we went to the mine hill bridge. It was a beautiful day.
The river water was very calm with a few Golden Barrow ducks that did not want their picture taken…..they kept me walking back and forth, back and forth. When I would go one way to get a picture, they would swim off the other way.
The reflections in the water were crystal clear. If you didn’t know it was a reflection, you wouldn’t know…..does that make sense?
The reflections just below the first layer of rocks were so eye deceiving. My friend said it looked like it wasn’t a reflection and that it looked like the water just dropped off in a hole between the log and the rocks. It was hard to tell where the rocks ended and the water started. It was like a depth perception, reflection.
What a change in the sky from yesterday and today. Yesterday the sky was totally filled with billowy clouds and today there’s hardly a cloud in the sky and it’s as blue as blue……BeAuTiFuL! And, part of the sky that is white is formed jet trails.
There’s even a touch of the moon still peeking out just above the tree branches.
From another Primary song: “My Heavenly Father Loves Me”……I’m glad that I live in this beautiful world Heav’nly Father created for me.
As I was sitting at our dining room table this morning, eating breakfast, I looked out the window and saw the sky filled with row upon row of billowing, white fluffy clouds. I don’t ever remember seeing the clouds look like this…….filling the entire sky. Since I was in the house, I wasn’t sure what setting to use on my camera so I took the first photo on an indoor setting and the second one was taken on a snow scene setting. After these two photos were taken, the sky was losing detail so I didn’t try more settings but it amazes me how I can take a picture of the exact same scenery and get two totally looking photos.
One last parting shot (camera on manual) before I post this blog. Although I didn’t hear anything, it looks like a jet, or two, or even maybe three had passed by. There are three distinct lines running through the clouds.
While typing this blog, a Primary song (I Know That My Savior Loves Me) keeps playing over and over in my mind. At the beginning of the second verse, it states this: Now I am here in a beautiful place…… Then it ends with the chorus stating: I know that my Savior loves me.
