Week 59
WARRRM!  How we could go from 6 degrees last Sunday to 71 degrees today is a marvel of OK weather.

We had a pretty busy week--some work and some fun.  On Tuesday we went to OKC to attend the temple, then see a movie, and end the day with the lights in Yukon.  I posted some pictures of the lights a year ago, because it truly is the most amazing display of Christmas lights either of us had ever seen.  It continued to amaze this year.

Over 4 million lights used!!

Yukon is on Route 66 and also on the Chisholm Trail (the trail used to drive cattle from Texas ranches to railheads in Kansas after the civil war--you probably learned about it in grade school).  It also has a Garth Brooks Avenue, because he lived in Yukon much of his youth.

Wednesday was the Mission Christmas Conference in OKC.  The far south half of the mission had its conference on Tuesday, and ours was Wednesday.  It began with testimonies of the missionaries who will return home in the next couple of transfers (first batch next Thursday and then 6 weeks later).  Then Sister and President Mansell spoke, each giving very touching messages.  Next was the "talent show" with individual missionaries, districts, or other configurations performing Christmas numbers.  I kept thinking about all those mothers who kept those young men and woman practicing even when they didn't want to--it paid off.  After lunch there were a couple of slide shows, followed by each companionship decorating a gingerbread house.  The one on the bottom right was made by the sisters in our YSA ward.  It's a sorority house (because there are so many and the institutes sits in the middle of four of them).  They asked Elder Kerr what Greek letters they should use--I should make you test your knowledge of the Greek alphabet, but won't.  They're Lamba Delta Sigma (LDS).  After dinner the houses were judged and we called it a day.

The most exciting news at the Conference is that our mission is expanding.  As of next Wednesday, we pick up the three stakes in Tulsa and Bartlesville that are now in the Bentonville, AR mission.  That means closing 30 apartments in our current mission boundaries and opening 30 new apartments in Tulsa/Bartlesville.  We currently have many wards or branches with more than one set of missionaries, while the Bentonville mission doesn't have enough missionaries for all units to have even one set.  After Wednesday, both missions will have a set of missionaries in every ward or branch.  Both missions keep the current number of elders/sisters, but the area of our mission is larger and the Bentonville mission area gets smaller.  President Mansell is very excited about the changes, though it has been a logistical nightmare for about a month.  (Our YSA ward will continue to have a set of elders and a set of sisters, the other two Stillwater wards each lose one set of missionaries.)

Though we intended to do a little cleaning at the institute on Thursday, the carpet cleaners had come early in the morning (rather than at 5 pm as they usually do), so the building smelled awful and the carpets were wet.  Fortunately, we had tickets to the basketball game at noon, so we just took off and didn't go back that day.

Not a full house, but fun to watch OSU beat Texas A & M Corpus Christie

Friends of mine on a CES mission in California told us that CES stands for cook every second.  Though we do quite a bit of cooking, in the last two weeks it's been clean every second for us.  We spent most of Friday working on the kitchen (refrigerators, oven, flour/sugar bins, etc).  As a reward, we went to see the 10 homes nominated for best Christmas lighting displays in Stillwater.  It was fun, and between nominated houses, we saw lots of other great decorations.

On this wonderful Christmas day, we had the missionaries over for breakfast, then went to church.  The wards were combined today for a lovely program of music and two talks.  There is a Spanish group in the second ward (not enough of them for a branch), and one of the speakers gave his talk in Spanish with his daughter translating for him. It was very nice.

In the afternoon we took our two computers and two iPads to the institute so we could put our missionaries in four different rooms to either skype or facetime with their families.  They get an hour on Christmas and on Mother's Day.  Sure different than the very short (and very expensive) phone conversations we got in Taiwan during my Christmases there.  Between Saturday and today, we facetimed with my sister in Croatia and Kerby's three children (and the grandchildren) and spoke with Kerby's sister.  What marvelous communication methods we have today!

Then we all came back here for Christmas dinner and a Christmas message.  A very nice day, indeed.  Especially nice because of the real meaning of the day.  As President Hinckley said, if there had been no Easter, there would be no Christmas.  How grateful we are for the atoning sacrifice of the Lord, Jesus Christ which gives us a reason to celebrate His birth.

Week 58
COOOLD!!!!  Right now it is 6 degrees, and it was 1 degree when we woke up this morning. Wind chill makes it feel much colder (feels like -6 now), and we have a little bit of snow on the ground (very little, but we had none last year).  The pond by our apartment is completely frozen over--the poor geese should have kept flying farther south!

On Monday we met the couple that is coming to replace the CES couple in Edmond--they go into the MTC in January.  They have three children living in various parts of Oklahoma and used to live here themselves, although Texas was home.

For FHE we went to the bishop's house and watched White Christmas--many of the kids had never seen it before.

Wednesday we both saw Dr. Stubbs, the orthopedic doc--Kerby is now out of his boot but has to work up slowly to walking long distances and/or quickly.  I got a cortisone injection in my knee--we both agree with a sentiment we saw on a t-shirt:  "I thought growing old would take longer!"
We went to the institute in our jeans and sweatshirts after the doctor and spent the rest of the day cleaning out YSA cupboards and closets.  The accumulation of stuff was truly remarkable, and we took a huge load of craft supplies to the Wondertorium.  Then we took everything out of the kitchen cupboards and put down shelf liner; getting rid of even more stuff in the process.  It actually took us part of Thursday as well to finish the kitchen.  Nothing like a good clearing out to lift the spirits!!

I was not really aware of the Pioneer Woman phenomenon until our daughter-in-law gave me one of her cookbooks a couple of years ago.  Ree Drummond is a blogger, TV cooking show star, and cookbook author who lives on a big cattle ranch in Pawhuska, OK.  In October, she opened the Mercantile in Pawhuska, and I suspect the town hasn't seen as many people in the last 50 years as it has in the last few months.  So, on Friday we made the 1 1/2 hour trip to Pawhuska to check it out.
http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/ in case you want to see the website (she really does have some good recipes).

Ree and her husband bought the old mercantile about four years ago.  It houses the offices for the ranch and they've spent the last four years remodeling, refurbishing, and reworking the old building into a deli/restaurant, bakery, and general store.  What they've done with the building is really remarkable.  The wait to get into the restaurant was about 40 minutes in the cold (it was over 3 hours the first few weeks), but they had tall heaters going and some employees were outside with a basket of gifts for the 'winners' of the little trivia contests, the Christmas charades, etc.  I thought they did a nice job of keeping the crowd from getting too grumpy.  Ree's youngest son and Papa, her father-in-law, were also on hand to greet and interact with the crowd.  The food was good, but not worth a 3-hour wait!

An original Nabisco ad wall they found when remodeling

Ree signing any purchase, the outside, and the ranch several miles outside of town

The Drummond Ranch next door neighbor (literally just across the fence) is the Church cattle ranch--it is also a huge operation.

Friday afternoon we went to the temple when Jeron received his endowment in preparation for his mission to the Alpine German Speaking mission. (Jeron's uncle Tal was serving in Taiwan at the same time I was.)  On the way down to OKC it got to 71 degrees then the chill hit us on Saturday.

Me, Molly, Nicole, Seth, Jeron, Elder Kerr--YSA eyes are not so eerie in real life

One of the things we really enjoy on our mission is attending the temple with the YSAs.  We've been with eight of them when they received their own endowments or did baptisms for the first time, and that has been a special treat.

Week 57
Well, finals happened and the students seem to have survived.  Many have already left town for the Christmas break, so attendance at church was sparse today, and it will get even "sparser" as the weeks go by.

The next few weeks will be pretty quiet with most of our YSAs gone and no classes to teach, but we have quite a list of tasks we want to complete around the institute and we have our classes to prepare for next semester.  We're not yet sure what we'll be teaching next semester, but that will all be decided this week.  We also plan to attend the temple each week and take a few day trips to explore more of Oklahoma.  It will be nice to have a bit of relaxed time.

For FHE on Monday we had a white elephant gift exchange.  I raided the utility closet in the apartment and found a few things that we've never used and never will--a popcorn bucket with 6 small popcorn bowls for one gift and a basket, plate covers for use in the microwave, and a copper colored bundt-shaped mold for the other.  We added a couple of chocolate bars to each bag, as well.  Over the break I plan to continue exploring the nooks and crannies in our apartment and get rid of some more white elephants.

On the nature front, the cardinals have come back!  We haven't seen any for a couple of months (whether they flew north or were just hiding in the wood I don't know), but they're making their presence known again.

I've been in love with cardinals since my Kansas City days--the cardinal was our high school mascot. We also saw a beautiful blue jay yesterday--they've been absent for a while, too.

And finally, the geese have returned to our pond.  They've been at other ponds in the area for a while, but just came back to our pond this week.  My impression of geese is that one or two are quite lovely, but a gaggle of geese gets too loud and aggressive for my taste.

Our window is not far from the pond, and yesterday about a dozen suddenly flew by really close to the water.  Their wings sounded like a mini buffalo herd rumbling by.

Most leaves are off the trees and it has been cold (16 degrees when we went to the gym on Thursday morning).  No snow or rain to speak of, but lots of cold wind.  If this is "south" to the geese, they must come from a really cold climate.

Christmas lights last year were rather disappointing, but this year we're much more familiar with the neighborhoods in Stillwater and we've seen some beautiful displays.  There are a couple of mansions a few miles south of us, and they were most tastefully decorated.  I'm glad they realize they have a responsibility to us peons--to the manor born and all that. . .

Last evening was the ward Christmas Music Devotional.  Despite the small size of the group, it was very lovely and unique in the choice of music from around the world.  The young man who "created" it is very talented.

Tonight we are going to dinner at Thomas's apartment.  He's a senior in psychology this year, and we truly enjoy him.  Knowing we feed the missionaries every Sunday, he just invited us all over for dinner.  As mentioned in previous posts, there are two elders and two sisters assigned to our ward.  Something very impressive to me is how our little group of YSAs get the missionaries fed almost every night of the week.  Sometimes they cook dinner, sometimes they take the missionaries out, but both men and women in the ward take feeding the missionaries seriously.

Week 56
This was the final week of classes at OSU, so the final week of classes in the institute; also our last Soup Tuesday until January 17.  We had such good discussions in each of our three classes--it's been a good semester of learning and growth.  OSU has a week of finals, then the students get an extra long break; 5 weeks.  During finals week, different local people come do breakfast for the kids at the institute from 7:30-10 am Monday through Wednesday.  That way students can come get some breakfast before or after a final exam.  They are well cared for here!

For FHE on Monday they made graham cracker houses.  Amazing what a little frosting, some candy, and imagination can do:

Such a nice break from studying

The Fanfare of Lights on campus this week brought Santa in his orange suit (I tell you, these people are maniacs for their school colors!) and all the beautiful lights on campus came on.

Last night we went to a performance of Messiah by the OSU Concert Chorale and OSU Orchestra.  It really was magnificent!  Before the performance about a dozen members of the Chorale were singing old English carols in the lobby.  They were delightful, and certainly made us feel like Christmas.

It was drizzling all day today.  We spent the morning finishing up our Christmas packages and cards. Here they are all ready to mail:

The plant is the bright spot of Christmas color in our apartment

After our shift at Elite Repeat we just finished up some errands and then snuggled in for the rest of the day. Not very eventful, but that's nice once in a while.  

Tomorrow evening there is a little Christmas open house at the bishop's house. We'll all bring some finger foods and munch and visit until the First Presidency Christmas Devotional is broadcast.  It's a fun tradition to watch that together.

Week 55
A wonderful Thanksgiving week.  It started on Monday with the FHE Thanksgiving potluck dinner.  There were 45 people, and "a good time was had by all."  We cooked two turkey breasts and made gravy and stuffing.  Brother Linsenmeyer brought a deep fried turkey, the bishop brought ham, and the YSAs brought all the rest.

Lots of folks and lots of food

School was out Wednesday through Friday, and the majority of our YSAs live within comfortable driving distance from OSU (mostly Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas).  For the few who were left in town and for the missionaries assigned to our ward, we had another Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday.  We enjoyed the food, the company and visiting, and the game of catch phrase.  

Our little Thanksgiving crew

On Wednesday we talked to Kerby's siblings, to the kids and grandkids on Thursday, and to my sister on Saturday--and we're grateful for every one of them!

Thanksgiving afternoon was beautiful and about 70 degrees.  We drove out to Boomer Lake and walked a bit.  The Veteran's Memorial is on the lake, and we'd never stopped at it before.  

"Eternal flames" at the Veteran's Memorial

The big flame in the middle represents the United States, and there is a flame for each branch of the military and one for the POWs/MIAs.  To the right of each flag (all military branches and POWs) is a bench with the name and founding date of each branch.  It is serene and very lovely.

Earlier this month, an art installation celebrating science was unveiled at the Bellmon Research Center on campus.  We hadn't seen that yet, either, so we moseyed over there on Thursday.  The research center houses six categories of study:  synthetic chemistry, biodiversity, biophysics, photonics, bioforensics, and biogeophysics.  I don't even know what all of those words mean, but the artist who was commissioned to do the artwork gathered microscopic images representing each area of study.  He then converted those images into six-foot diameter art glass discs.  They are absolutely stunning (and lit up at night, so we need to go back after dark soon).

Extra credit if you can identify each area of study by its glass disc

On Thanksgiving night we watched a production called Winter Thaw on BYUtv.  It is based on a Tolstoy short story, and has a wonderful message for the Christmas season.  We recommend it highly.

http://www.byutv.org/

Since fall is my favorite season, I've been disappointed by the lack of fall colors on the trees.  It's just been so warm that the trees couldn't figure out it was time to put on a show.  In fact, lots of them just gave up and dropped their leaves with no color.  However FINALLY it's cool enough that we're getting some awfully pretty trees, and I'm thinking nicer thoughts about Stillwater's autumn.

We're thankful for so many blessings--family, friends, the gospel, scriptures, our mission in Stillwater, YSAs, beauty all around, shelter, food, clothing, transportation, central heat, running water, technology. . . . . isn't it wonderful just to be alive in this amazing time?!?

Week 54
Another quiet week for us.  FHE was a bonfire by the light of the Super Moon.  It wasn't cold, but it's definitely cooling off around here.

The excitement on Monday was Jeron receiving his mission call. Well, actually, his mission call was lost in the mail, but he got visa papers from his mission, so learned he was going to the Austria German Speaking Mission.  He is super excited because he lived in that area for four years while his father was in the military.  Jeron has been in a couple of our institute classes, and we love his love of the gospel and his great insights.  He's going to be a wonderful missionary.

Jeron adding his name to the missionary board

My great-nephew Brigham left the MTC this week bound for the Washington, Vancouver mission.  Another wonderful missionary!

Wednesday was transfer day for the young missionaries--we lost Sister Belshe to Cushing, and Elder Richardson to home.  We enjoyed both of them very much.  The new missionaries in our ward are Sister Allred from Utah and Elder Riffenburg from California.

Good--bye to Sister Belshe and Elder Richardson

The semester is almost over (just two weeks left).  We have enjoyed teaching the Doctrine and Covenants and the Book of Mormon.  This week Kerby taught about the love of Christ as described in Moroni 7.  He used an excerpt from Elder Holland's book stating that the only truly charitable act was the Savior's atonement, and without His love we are nothing.  The Book of Mormon is the most remarkable book, and teaching about and from it for a whole year has been a great blessing to us.

Week 53
The week started with a bang--last Sunday night at about 7:45 pm we had a big (magnitude 5.0) earthquake in Cushing, 29 miles south east of here.  We shook for about a minute (which is a long time when the earth is moving), but had no damage in Stillwater.  Cushing had a lot of building damage, but no people were injured.

The rest of the week was fairly uneventful--good classes, good visits with our YSAs, good Soup Tuesday.  On Tuesday we had our first interview with President Mansell since his arrival in July.  He is really a delightful and dedicated man, and the younger missionaries seem to enjoy his leadership style--once they got used to the changes he introduced in the mission.  Transitions are always challenging, but usually work out well.

On Friday we took 5 of the YSAs with us to the temple--two did baptisms and we and the other three did sealings.  Molly had quite a stack of family names for sealings and it was wonderful to participate in those ordinances.  Every time we go with the ward we take a different configuration of young adults, and we love getting to know them even better in the confines of the car; we also love seeing their dedication to attending the temple.

Saturday morning we had a CES in-service in Edmond.  Most of the attendees are early morning seminary teachers, and I'm always amazed at their sacrifice of time and effort (as well as sleep), and their love of their students.  I am still influenced by Carol LeMon and our 6 am Mon-Fri seminary classes when I was in high school.  The in-service was very good; we worked more with the Doctrinal Mastery process and Acquiring Spiritual Knowledge (ASK) that is being used in seminary to help the youth find answers to their questions.

When we are in Edmond, we always like to drive down Broadway.  It has two blocks of intense restoration, and another couple of blocks of building and upgrading.  All of the old buildings have a plaque listing the building date (often in late 1800s) and a list of every business that occupied the building in its life.  Every one of those blocks has between one and three statues--some whimsical, some more serious, and all part of the personality of Edmond.  I'll end today with pictures of many of them just because they're fun.

Week 52--One Year in Stillwater!!
Yesterday was our one year anniversary of arriving in Stillwater, and we have exactly 6 months to go until we leave on May 5. Technically our release date is April 26 (18 months after we entered the MTC) but we are going to extend our time so we can complete the Spring semester.

Since Monday was Halloween, FHE was, of course, a Halloween party.  Fun decorations and treats, and several rounds of Halloween-themed Minute to Win It games with three teams competing.  It was very fun.

Tuesday night at about 11:30 we felt the 4.5 magnitude earthquake centered in Pawnee.  Lasted about 20 seconds and gave us a good shake, but nothing like the big one in September.

By Monday morning, many of the House Decs from Homecoming were already down--the houses spent the rest of the week getting the metal frames deconstructed and pulled down.  So much work for so little time!

The house across the street on Monday morning

Monday night Hannah (pictured outside the temple last week) received her mission call--Scotland/Ireland Mission.  She is so excited and she'll be a great missionary.

Every week the missionaries assigned to the YSA ward set up a booth on campus--it's from 1-3 pm alternating between Wednesday and Thursday.  It's location varies as assigned by the OSU folks.  The missionaries generally find a few people to teach each week and get to talk to lots more.  Several members of the ward participate at the booth as well.  Last Spring they used a handmade poster that was hard to see and didn't do very well in windy or wet weather.  In August we had this vinyl poster made that includes a message and picture on both sides.  It seems to work well.

After we wandered by the booth, we went to the new Welcome Area by the student union.  It was just dedicated last week, and features statues of a mare and her foal.  The mare represents the faculty, staff, and alumni who nurture the new freshmen (the foal).  There is also a pretty little fountain and a saddle statue on a fence, I guess just representing OSU Cowboys.  It really is a lovely spot.

To get there, we went through this lovely garden outside the Atherton Hotel--it's run by the Hotel & Restaurant Management students and is connected to the student union.

Kerby's poor tendon was tired after the long walk.  He is still in the boot for 3 or 4 more weeks, and feels like the heel is improving but very slowly.

After we caught a mouse a few weeks ago, we've just kept a sticky trap by the refrigerator (mostly because they came in packs of 2).  Yesterday I just happened to look down at it and there was a mouse--still wiggling!  Even though we're friendly, sharing the house with a mouse is not on our list of charitable activities.

So, at the end of a year, we are very grateful for the call to serve in the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Mission--Stillwater Church Education System.  It has been a wonderful experience.  We love working with the YSA ward, we love studying the gospel so intently and teaching our classes, and we love the young single adults in Stillwater.  (And we love making soup and bread on Tuesday, even if it does wear us out!)  We're looking forward to what the next six months hold.

Week 51
I'll just warn you right up front--there are a zillion pictures in this week's post.  It was homecoming week and we want to share the full experience with you.  We also had a pretty busy week separate from homecoming, so lots to share.

Best news is that my great nephew Brigham entered the MTC on Wednesday in preparation for serving in the Vancouver, WA mission.  He went on October 26th, the one year anniversary of when we went to the MTC.  He is the 7th missionary in our family to be serving right now--his sister is in California, his two grandmothers are companions in Croatia, his cousin is in New York, and his aunt and uncle are in Stillwater.  Love being part of a missionary family!

We had a wonderful week at the institute.  Brother Valletta was ill (which wasn't good) but we got to fill in for his Wednesday evening class (Foundations and Doctrines of the Book of Mormon).  It's the biggest class of the week, and we had such a good discussion in class.  Our D & C and Book of Mormon classes were also especially enjoyable this week, as well.  As I keep saying, we simply love our YSAs and enjoy working with them so much.

FHE this week was pumpkin carving, and Elder Kerr's was one of the best!

Friday one of our YSAs received her endowment, so we went to the temple with two other YSAs to share the experience.  Hannah is waiting for her mission call, which should arrive this week.

Seth, Hannah, and Nicole

OK, now on to America's Greatest Homecoming celebration.  One of the highlights is the House Decs (that stands for Greek House Decorations).  The homecoming theme for the year is announced in the spring, and the houses start working on their designs then!  This year's theme is A Cowboy Dream. 

We've previously posted pictures of the structures being built, because the frat houses started in late August.  There is a competition between the houses (each is paired with a sorority) for the best display.  They have to have moving parts (thank goodness they all have some engineering majors on board--I don't know where they learned welding) and they are massive.  On Thursday they start attaching the "pomping" that they've been working on inside the sororities since the end of August, as well.  The kids work around the clock (literally through the night) to have everything up and running by 5:00 pm Friday for the Walkaround.

Just a word about what the YSAs did during all this.  The institute is surrounded on all sides by fraternity and sorority houses.  At 10:00 pm on Thursday, about 8 YSAs started taking donuts around to all the houses (about 14 of them) to cheer the kids on.  Then during Walkaround (when the streets are blocked off and 80,000 people wander through the Greek neighborhood from 5-10 pm on Friday) the missionaries and YSAs had a free lemonade stand in front of the institute and also let people inside to use the restrooms.  They went through about 30 gallons of lemonade and talked to a whole lot of folks!

Here are some "work in progress" photos taken on Thursday morning, Friday morning, and Friday evening of the house right across the street from us:

24 hours to go from frame to finished!

What is hard to believe is that every bit of color you see is 4 inch squares of tissue paper poked in chicken wire!  They are completed in long rolls and brought on site to hang.  The detail is astounding, and the color shading is hard to believe--these pictures just don't do them justice.

Here are some more pictures of the decs:

Notice 6' 2" Elder Kerr by the top one for scale--he's dwarfed by the dec!

Here is a picture from the newspaper of the crowd at Walkaround:

Earlier in the week the fountain by the library was dyed orange, and various clubs put up signs on the library lawn--all addressing the theme, and all judged.

The fountain on the right is actually downtown--can't leave a possible orange spot un-tinged

Theta Pond even got in the homecoming act with a big lighted sign:

 Saturday was the Sea of Orange homecoming parade--it was fun.  Just a couple of floats, but lots of marching bands from high schools in the state, lots of horses, lots of farm equipment (antique and modern), and a variety of other entries (130 in all).  It started with a formation fly-over by the aeronautics club--they spewed orange smoke.  The first few minutes of the parade were especially touching as the grand marshals were representatives of all the first responders to last year's tragedy.  Then there were four riderless horses--each with a blanket of flowers and cowboy boots backwards in the stirrups--for the four people who were killed in last year's parade.  The first three were full-sized horses, but the last was a pony because one of the people killed was a little two-year old.  There were no dry eyes as the horse went by.

Riderless horses to honor the dead

More shots from the parade:

Mostly to show orange Corvettes, but bottom right is the OSU president and the First Cowgirl (that's what they call his wife)

The gorgeous Clydesdale horses are pulling a coach carrying many of the people who were injured last year

All in all a very fun and busy week.

Week 50
First, a creepy tale for Halloween.  When we arrived here last November, the Walmart had an infestation of black birds (grackles, starlings, or a combination of both).  The trees were bare of leaves, but full (about 100 per tree) of birds.  They made a horrible racket, swooped and darted, and in general made going to Walmart at night horrifying!  When winter came the birds went away.  Well, about a month ago they started coming back, and they are now here in full force. If you've seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds, you have an idea of how awful this is.  The noise is almost deafening, and the way the birds fill every tree and fly around is, again, creepy!  This is the only thing that makes a coming winter look good.  I don't know where they spend the day, but these birds are faithful Walmart shoppers by night.  This picture was taken several weeks ago at dusk--there are many multiples of this many birds now.

On a happier note, this is the start of homecoming week at OSU, home of America's Greatest Homecoming Celebration.  I'm not sure who hands out that designation, but apparently it's official, and reading about the activities planned for the week, it just may be true.  They expect 80,000 alumni to come to Stillwater for the events. The work at each frat house constructing the framework for the Walk-around is growing feverish.  Each structure has to have a moving part, so those are going on now.  On Friday, the paper pompom art will be attached, and the displays will be up for a couple of days.  Tonight the fountain by the library was dyed orange--hope it stays orange so we can see it tomorrow.  (The other tag line here is, "America's Brightest Orange.")  We joined in the fun last night by going to the Cowboy Stampede--an honest to goodness rodeo!  It featured the OSU Rodeo Team and teams from several schools in OK and Kansas.  Here's what we saw:  bareback bronc riding, tie down calf roping, breakaway roping, saddle bronc riding, steer wrestling, goat tying, team roping, barrel racing, and bull riding.  This is the 70th year of the OSU Rodeo Team, and they take it seriously.  It was a lot of fun--between the contestants, crew, and audience, I've never seen so many cowboy hats and cowboy boots in one place in my life.

There's only so much a phone can do in the dark and with lots of fast action, but here is Kerby's attempt to capture a little bit of the rodeo.

Pistol Pete stopped right in front of us for a minute

National Anthem, bareback bronco on left, Pistol Pete and calf roping on right

Barrel racing top left, steer wrestling bottom left--bull riding on the right

This will be a somber week for many in Stillwater.  It was at the homecoming parade last year that a woman deliberately drove into the crowd, killing four and injuring 46 people.  Today's paper had a story about one of the injured who has had more than 2 dozen surgeries and had to re-learn how to walk.  There are many more hard stories, but lots of stories of people coming together and supporting one another.   The first responders to the tragedy last year are going to be the parade marshals this year.

Today was ward conference, and all of the meetings had a wonderful spirit and important messages.  I really think our stake president, President Bowman, is a powerful leader.  He never fails to give uplifting, edifying talks.