A Peaden Christmas

We spent Christmas this year with my family in Orem. This meant we got up, ate breakfast, opened gifts, drove to Murray to see my dad's side of the family, ate lunch with them, opened more presents, and drove back to Orem. Then my mom's side of the family (my two grandparents and two aunts) came down to eat dinner with us and open another round of presents. It was a lot of fun. The picture above is of my brother Allan with his wrapped spatula and my mom behind him giving him bunny ears. (It is blurry if you look closely, but we decided to post it anyway.)

Nate gave me this book of The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics. It is a very nice copy, and I am pretty excited about it.

Among other really nice things (according to him), I gave Nate this daily Dilbert calendar.

Of course we spent some time playing with our family dog, Apollo, who loves the camera. Actually, he is mostly fascinated by the flash and enjoys trying to "catch" it...

We also visited some friends over our break, including Kristy, Steve, and their baby Jake.

We stopped by to visit some of Nate's extended family too. His cousins had constructed a huge crazy steep sled going down from the top of their house.

Friday night we went with my family to see the Festival of Lights in Spanish Fork. They had some pretty cool displays, and it was fun to see and take pictures of.

And Saturday Nate and I went snowshoeing with my brothers Allan and Ben up South Fork Canyon to Big Springs. It was fun, cold, and beautiful! It was also longer than we had planned on, since my brothers decided we should take a different, less traveled route back...

Traveling Through the Snow

Since Nate was going to lose all his vacation time if he didn't use it before this week, he took a day off Friday and we went to Salt Lake City. First we decided to visit the Aviary. Unfortunately for us, it decided to snow a lot that day. It started to snow on us soon after we got to the Aviary. We were very cold, and most of the birds seemed cold too. Many of the birds took shelter inside, but we still enjoyed the ones that were out. The snow also made travel slow and a bit dangerous in our car that is not built to travel well in such conditions, but we were still blessed with a safe trip.

Golden Eagles

Bald Eagle

Seeing the flamingos in the snow made us laugh a bit...

After going to the Aviary, we spent a little time in one of the visitor centers on Temple Square. Then we changed clothes and attended a session in the Salt Lake City Temple. That was a wonderful experience. The only other time I had been in the Salt Lake City temple was several years ago doing baptisms while a couple friends of mine got married there. After finishing the session and changing our clothes again we walked around Temple Square enjoying the lights and taking pictures. Then we listened to a high school choir perform Christmas music in the Assembly Hall before returning home. It was a fantastic day.

Saturday we drove to Logan through more snow to visit Nate's sister Melissa and her family. We gave them their Christmas presents, visited with them, and helped Melissa paint ornaments to give to the mothers of preemies in the hospital. We also played with our nephews and watched them open our gifts. Above is a picture of our nephew Micah and below is Nate receiving a huge hug from our nephews Simon, Max, and Scotty.

Just for Fun

Some of you know how much I like to dance. I convinced Nate to learn some fancy dance moves as well, and we put the following together for your enjoyment:

The Charleston

And since we decided it worked better with three people, my brother Allan helped with this one:

The Disco

Hope you enjoy!

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas...

Our Tree

Our Gingerbread House

Frosting Cookies

Preparing Treats for Caroling

Merry Cuddling!

Cyber Monday

Office Depot definitely lost money on this one...who would have thought?

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!

We had a pumpkin left over from October so we thought it would be fun to just keep it for a while and make it a Thanksgiving decoration instead. Hope you like it and hope you all have a great Thanksgiving.

Family Home Evening Thoughts

Last night for FHE, Nate showed me a cool website that one of his co-workers told him about. The website is http://scriptures.byu.edu/. The archives go much further back on this site than on lds.org. You can read material from as far back as 1839. You can look up articles from the Journal of Discourses starting in 1853. It is an interesting and useful site.

This site also allows you to look up scripture references and see where, how, and by who else they are used. If you go to "Options" in the side bar, you can also look up the number of references taken from any given book of scripture through any given time period. It is very interesting to see how references taken from The Book of Mormon have increased over the past couple decades. From 1839 to 1984, it is surprising just how infrequent the references to the Book of Mormon are comparatively to other scripture volumes. The majority of scripture references used came from the New Testament with 32,523 citations, while The Book of Mormon was referenced second least of any volume of scriptures with just 8,367 references (the Pearl of Great Price was referenced the very least). However, from 1984 to present, the Book of Mormon has been referenced more than any other volume.

Another interesting search we did was to look up the most frequently cited scriptures from the General Conference sessions of this year. We noticed a definite pattern among the most frequently sited scriptures. Almost all these scriptures explained the very basics of the plan of salvation: God's purpose to give His children eternal life, Christ's atonement that made that possible, and how we must continue steadfastly with faith in Christ to obtain eternal life.

This made us think about how basic the gospel really is. There are so many facets to the gospel. While these facets are good, worthwhile, and important, sometimes I think people get caught up in little things that are not as essential at the cost of things that are essential. All of the more supporting aspects and organization of the gospel are meant to uphold and strengthen the basic principles of the gospel, not vice versa. If this is flipped around, then all the less central points of the gospel would collapse. For example, families can do alright without stakes, but stakes would not prosper without strong families. By zooming out to the core principles, we can make sure those things take first priority in our lives and stay more focused on what our direction is.

This idea can also be applied to our individual lives. We may struggle through rough times in our lives, but those times do not make up the whole of our life or who we are. As we push forward through our weaknesses and rough times, they make us stronger. They are like the facets of the gospel in that they build up the whole of who we are and who we are becoming, but they alone are not who we are. For example, if a person struggles with a quick and hot temper, that temper does not define who that person is. Or, if a person struggles with same-sex attraction, that temptation does not define who that person is either. That person is a child of God with divine potential despite any struggles or temptations he or she may face. In fact, the purpose of those struggles and temptations is to strengthen that person and bring him or her closer to God. But in focusing solely on a difficult problem or temptation, it is possible to let those things define us in our minds instead of remembering the larger picture.

We dress to impress

Last night we partied with Rebecca's family in Orem. Here's a picture of everyone's costumes and pumpkins. We did the ghost pumpkin and Rebecca designed the wolf for her brother to cut out.

Halloween Cards

Ever since I can remember while growing up, my family had the tradition of creating Halloween cards out of construction paper and mailing them to extended family members and close family friends. So, this year Nate and I decided to continue this tradition. Our cards were a bit more involved though than the ones I made as a child. They also took a good deal more time to put together, greatly limiting the number we could make. But we still had a lot of fun with them, so here they are:

Proposition 8

We have always been in favor of marriage being defined as strictly between a man and a women. However, it was not until talking with Nate's family (who live in California) last night that I started to fully realize the full implications of the legalization of same-sex marriage. Maybe I am just out of the loop with the whole thing, but I did not really understand until listening to Nate's family just how much the legalization of same-sex marriage encroaches on parent's rights to teach their children the moral values they feel appropriate and right, or how it encroaches on the freedom and rights of religious institutions. I have now heard stories of all the following:

• A father in Massachusetts was sent to jail at a meeting with school officials after repeatedly insisting that he be notified about what his children were being taught at school concerning homosexuality.
• A Catholic adoption agency shut down after being told that it was required to place children with same-sex couples.
• First graders took a school sponsored field trip to San Francisco City Hall to watch their teacher be married to her lesbian partner.

In places where homosexual marriage is legalized, schools are required to spend equal amounts of time covering homosexual relationships as they are cover heterosexual relationships and traditional marriage relationships.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as well as other churches are concerned that they will lose their tax-exempt status over this issue as well.

So, in reality legalization of same-sex marriage goes much deeper under the surface than just allowing such couples to obtain legal marriage status. It goes deeper than simply being "tolerant" of such relationships. It infringes on our freedom to uphold fundamental religious and social convictions, morals, values and to be able to teach our children those same values.

While most of you who read this blog do not live in California, I think it is still good and important to understand the implications of homosexual marriage being legal. We believe that Proposition 8 and traditional marriage are worthy causes to support, regardless of where you are living. For more information, or to support this cause, you can visit protectmarriage.com.

Fancy Shmancy Airforce Ball

Friday evening we went to the Airforce Anniversary Ball. Every year, a couple of people from Northrup Grumman where Nate works are invited to go. This year they invited Nate, since he was the newest employee, and another employee who has been there for a long time. We had fun dressing up and going. Nate looked especially good in his sharp tux. We had our pick of steak or salmon for dinner with cake for dessert. The program was pretty long, but there was dancing afterward which we really enjoyed.


Saturday afternoon we attempted our first hike in this area. We planned to meet up with some friends, but unfortunately we went to different trail heads a couple blocks apart to meet, and so we never found each other. After Nate and I had waited for about a half hour, we decided to take off on our own. We meant to hike up Waterfall Canyon to a 200 foot waterfall, but we started late and we were unfamiliar with the trail (which greatly slowed our progress, not to mention it was raining), we had to turn back before reaching our intended destination. We still had fun though, and it was still very pretty!

Alaskan Cruise

Lots has happened since we last posted anything. We just haven't had time to post anything about it. A couple weeks ago, we celebrated graduation.

Nate finally finished his ATK project, and I quit work at AlphaGraphics in Provo (but not before going to the company party and watching our manager compete in the Spanish Fork demolition derby). And we moved up here to a new apartment in Clearfield, UT.

Then, at the end of that same week, we took off again to Alaska for a week long cruise. The cruise was a generous graduation present from Nate's parents. It was so much fun! Our five star cruise ship was called the Diamond Princess. It had 15 decks, five or six restraunts plus a buffet that was opened all day, several swimming pools and jacuzzies, a work out facility, ping pong tables, shuffle board floors, a basketball/tennis court, a theater, a library, lots of bars, and a casino (although we didn't care much for those last two items...) Actually, we did spend some time in a couple of the bars since they did host other activities there, like line dancing, ballroom dance, and some shows.

I can't say we were a huge fan of all the entertainment since a lot of it had "adult" content in it that we didn't appreciate. We also didn't much like the super gaudy costuming used during the singing/dancing shows. But there was a lot of good stuff too. There were really fascinating lectures about sustenance living (living off the land) in Alaska. Another man from Skagway gave a show involving folk music, lore, and Skagway history, which was also really good. The dancing was way fun too.

The food was good, and we tried a lot of things we had never tried before, including duck, rabbit, lobster, crab, mussels, and escargo. The fresh Alaskan salmon was wonderful.

We flew up to Anchorage on Friday, arrived early Saturday morning, and spent the rest of the night it a hotel. Saturday morning we took a shuttle to Whittier and boarded our ship. Our ship left later that night.

Sunday morning we got up early to stand outside freezing while we enjoyed the beauty of College Fjord as our ship cruised through it.

Then we attended an odd 20 minute long interdenominational church service held in the Wheelhouse bar. (We were definitely happy to go to a regular church service again with our new ward this last Sunday.)

Monday our ship cruised through glacier bay, which was also cold and beautiful. This is Margerie Galcier:

Tuesday our ship stopped in Skagway for the day. We got off and started our morning by riding a ferry over to Haines. From there we rode a bus to the Chilkoot Lake were we went kayaking and ate lunch. We saw lots and lots of wildlife there, including five bears, several bald eagles, a blue heron, and silver salmon. Overall on our trip we also saw other salmon, seals, humpback whales, and dolphins in the wild.

That afternoon we went hiking along trails right next to Skagway. We went to Icy Lake and Lower Dewey Lake. The forests there are breathtaking! They are moist temperate rainforests. The ground is wet or spongy. There are rich blankets of moss covering almost everything and all sorts of fungi we were completely unfamiliar with. Streams wind everywhere, lakes and ponds dot the landscape, and waterfalls cascade freely all over the place. The pictures we took hardly do it real justice. I have never seen such amazingly beautiful forests anywhere else before.

Wednesday our ship stopped in Juneau. While there, we took a shuttle to see Mendenhall glacier. Then we hiked a beautiful 3.5 mile loop that took us above a waterfall to the side of the glacier (not the one seen in this picture).

After hiking, we rode the shuttle back and took a tram part way up Mount Roberts (since we didn't have time to hike) before getting back on our ship.

Thursday our ship stopped in Ketchican. We visited the Discovery Center there, which was interesting, looked at totem poles, and walked around looking at the streams swarming with salmon.

We spent Friday at sea on our way to Vancouver, and Saturday morning we arrived at Vancouver. We ate breakfast before leaving the ship. Then we walked to Stanley Park and went to the aquarium, which was really fun. They had so much to see there, including a mother beluga whale with her calf, which was born toward the end of June, and four dolphins that put on a show for us.

We returned home that evening on a flight that had a total of six passengers on it, including us. That was the smallest flight we had ever been on.

So, our trip was definitely worth it! We have tons more great pictures, but putting them here on the blog would be too much. So, you can check them out HERE.