The Unexamined Life

A few Saturdays ago, I had the opportunity to attend a Mormon Woman Project salon to hear Claudia Bushman speak about "Telling Mormon Women's Stories."  I expected Claudia to talk about telling other Mormon women's stories, but instead, she talked about the need for Mormon women everywhere to tell their own stories.  Geneological records will always be there, she said, but some things need to be recorded now. The stories of the living. Why? She gave a number of reasons: if you keep a journal, you'll live a better life because you'll consider your life; if you don't write it down, you'll forget it; if you don't writ it down, you'll be forgotten; and simply because we value the stories of our lives.

I used to be an every day journal writer. Now, I don't write except for keeping this blog (which Claudia thinks doesn't count!). I can see her point, though, as I look at most of my entries, especially over the past year. Most of what I include here is for my kids and for family since, until a couple of months ago, we didn't live by most of our family. Most of what I include is more like a travelogue or a report of happenings and less about examining and considering my life.  So I'm going to try to do more examining and considering and less simply reporting.

Um, how about starting next week? :) I need to post some pics of our recent cousins cabin trip and our beach house family reunion with J's family.

The Cabin Trip:  We first called this the girls trip because the boys stayed to work so just the girls went with the kids. Then we realized that it wasn't a girls trip. It was a kids/cousins trip. It was fun, except for the night when H and Little Zelly took turns waking each other up, so I got only about 2 hours of sleep. The kids loved 4-wheeling and roaming the woods. We saw 2 moose and bunch of deer.

The dirty 3

  

 Everyone had to have a bow and arrow

Rach and her boys

 Newport Beach! Overcast the first couple of days, then beautiful.

 One of the only pics of Andrew, since he had the stomach flu after day 1. Poor guy. H couldn't get enough of the beach. He stayed out from morning until evening.

  

  

  

  Boogie boarding with the dolphins. You can see them in the 2nd pic.

 

  Visiting Grandma Shirley