How We Spent 9/11

 We had a neat day today.

Joey had to work so I took the kids to see the 

"Healing Fields" in Sandy.

 There was a flag for every person who died in 9/11.

It was really moving to see them all lined up like that

and it was a great visual for my kids to 

try to understand what happened 10 years ago.

It was the first time I had tried explained to them 

what happened that day.

I felt very patriotic & it caused me to reflect a lot.

 Joey & I were attending BYU-Hawaii on Sept 11, 2001.

My mom called & woke us up around 6am Hawaii time

to let us know what happened.

We didn't have a tv, radio, anything so in our sleepy stupor we

didn't quite grasp the magnitude of the terror.

It wasn't til a few hours later when we went to

school & saw on the big tv at the Aloha Student Center

what had happened.

I had a Psychology class at 9am and our professor

actually skipped lecture and facilitated basically a group

therapy session.

Then the school had an "emergency devotional/assembly" (whatever you want to call it) in the big gymnasium/stadium.

There was singing and words of comfort from our leaders.

That's mostly all I remember of that day.

But I'm grateful to have these wonderful kids now

and the chance to talk to them about what I value

& believe about our country.

I hope nothing like that happens on our soil again

and that this country can be a safe, free place for my 

children to grow up in!

And I'm grateful to those who make it that way!

On a more light-hearted note:

September 11 also happens to be the day we moved into

our new house. 

So today was our 1-year anniversary of living in our home.

So we called it our "house's birthday" and had a little party.

Somehow the kids convinced my brother, sister, & dad to come over.

They are such good sports.

We made everyone play "pin the door on the house"

 We played "Find-the-horse" 

(which is a knock-off of a game my mom made up for the kids years ago one Christmas Eve where she hid her many sheep from her sheep collection & the kids had to find them-"Find-the-Sheep"
--we're pretty creative in this family ;)

And we made "Stinkerdoodles"

My kids choice instead of a cake.

They are my kids favorite cookie. 
Sav sometime has a hard

time saying words and that's how she said Snickerdoodle--

"Stinkerdoodle" has just stuck!