Can't remember the spiffy title I had thought of earlier...

It's been an action-packed couple of days. Sort of.

I finished The Dark is Rising today, and found the book SO MUCH better than the movie. I was glad that I saw the show before I read the book, because it allowed me to enjoy both of them. Had I gone in reverse order, I probably would have cried during the movie. :)

Book 1 was pretty boring. Just ask Jess. Book 2 was awesome (the one I just finished). Book 3 ties together some characters from both. We'll see how it turns out.

We had a nice 3-hour nap today. It was wonderful. Minus the part where 3 or 4 of Joanne's grandkids started pounding away at the piano that's right above our bedroom. It would have been frustrating even if we hadn't been trying to take a nap.

Last night was Ben's 1st birthday party. Fun and good times were had by all. Especially the kid who hacked up a lung. Seriously, he had a bad cough, and I hope that the other little ones didn't catch what he had.

Mandy and Paul came over for lunch today, which was both fun and tasty (they weren't tasty--lunch was). It's not often that we see them here in our neck of the woods.

Our stake president commented briefly in sacrament today about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. How sad is it when people see the best solution to a problem is killing the person who's making the problem. Granted, it's one way to deal with things, but it's not a very good one. Same thing happened to Jesus Christ and Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Sad stuff. Seems they should follow Michael Scott's advice and "hug it out."

Also in regards to the assassination, I was surprised when I read about it. Those sort of things seem to me to be things of a time long ago (the 1960s and earlier--JFK, Franz Ferdinand, etc). It's weird to see it happening again.

Also in sacrament meeting, a guy from our ward mentioned how Joseph Smith had been wondering about which church to join for two years before he went to the grove and received the First Vision. It was neat to learn that he didn't just have a question pop into his head, pray about it and then--whammy! get an answer like he did. It took time and effort. That helps me feel better about when I don't get answers to my prayers very quickly.

Jess also mentioned on our way home from church that a couple weeks ago they had learned in Relief Society that the grove Joseph went to was one that his mother often went to in order to pray. It wasn't just some place that was arbitrarily chosen for his first vocal prayer. Cool stuff.

One of the other talks mentioned what Elder Ballard said recently about using new media to participate in conversations about the church. I think that's why my mom started her blog...

Happy 2nd-to-last day of the year, everybody.