A quiet week--for me!

After two weeks in Italy and a weekend trip to the cabin for Memorial Day, I was ready for a quiet week.  I spent the week studying for my gospel doctrine lesson and catching up on some sewing and reading.  Roy isn't as excited by quiet time at home, so he signed up to go on another side by side ride with the club he joined.  This time he invited Gunnar and Hyeji to accompany him.  I was more than happy to let them have my spot in the vehicle!  We picked up Hyeji on Friday night and then went to get Gunnar.  He'd forgotten, so he wasn't there, so he missed out on a dinner out with grandpa and grandma.  Hyeji took this selfie in front of Gourmandise Bakery where we went for dessert.  

We tried a picture with my camera, but my lens was smudged, so Hyeji took our
  picture with her camera.  She's more practiced at it than we are!

Gunnar spent the night at our house since they had to get up early to meet the other riders.  We watched a silly movie together called, Ghoster."  I think it was a little below Gunnar's intelligence level, but it was clean!

  

 It seems they had a beautiful day for their ride with perfect weather--not too hot or too cold.

The briefing before the ride

Getting dusty is a given

Roy let them each have a turn to try driving on an easy stretch of dirt road at the end of the planned ride.  I think they both had a good time.  Roy said they were pretty tired by the end of the day.

Foster Mei;  Mark Green with Ila and Gunnar (We enjoyed dinner with the Green's and the other Green's on Sunday evening).

Poor Yuli had a run-in with a mosquito.  I think the mosquito won!

I'm not sure if she was tired because of the bite, or just tired, because

she sat on my lap through most of Sacrament Meeting.  I always enjoy that.

The gospel doctrine lesson was on being prepared for the Second Coming and the parables associated with that, and then on the Last Supper.  When Jesus told his disciples that one of them would betray Him, they each asked, "Is it I."  I think most of us would have been looking around the room trying to decide who was the guilty party.  In a talk entitled, "Is it I," then President Uchtdorf shared a great story:

Once there was a man who enjoyed taking evening walks around his neighborhood. He particularly looked forward to walking past his neighbor’s house. This neighbor kept his lawn perfectly manicured, flowers always in bloom, the trees healthy and shady. It was obvious that the neighbor made every effort to have a beautiful lawn.

But one day as the man was walking past his neighbor’s house, he noticed in the middle of this beautiful lawn a single, enormous, yellow dandelion weed.

It looked so out of place that it surprised him. Why didn’t his neighbor pull it out? Couldn’t he see it? Didn’t he know that the dandelion could cast seeds that could give root to dozens of additional weeds?

This solitary dandelion bothered him beyond description, and he wanted to do something about it. Should he just pluck it out? Or spray it with weed killer? Perhaps if he went under cover of night, he could remove it secretly.

These thoughts totally occupied his mind as he walked toward his own home. He entered his house without even glancing at his own front yard—which was blanketed with hundreds of yellow dandelions.

 Lord, Is it I?

We spent some time talking about introspection, looking at the beam in our own eye, rather than the mote in the eye of our neighbor.  We are given the perfect opportunity each Sunday to look inside our hearts and to see if we are "filling the oil in our lamps" so that we can be prepared when the Savior comes again.