First Mountain Snow

Our weather has been turning colder and more clouds are in the sky all day. Friday night we had our first mountain snow that we could actually see on Saturday. Just on the high mountains and we only saw it for a minute but it brought a smile to my face and excitement to my heart. Snow! It's been a long time since I have lived in the light white stuff and I have some fears about driving in it and the icy conditions of the streets and sidewalks some days, but we have been assured that the City/County/State are very good about keeping the roads safe and that the Church keeps Temple Square and the surrounding apartments for the missionaries very safe as well. We are a little worried because we are walking around at 6am in the morning going to choir practice and I'm not so sure the walkways will be clean by then, but we will see. They say we will not have much snow in the city until late December or Jan. It will be interesting!

We had a fun week. It began with my birthday on Monday and so many birthday wishes from all around. Thank you to all who made it a special day. We were going to take the day off of work but there was a project to get done so we could move to the next level of posting our Tongan genealogies so we elected to work instead. We had a fun time at my mom's for cake and ice cream that evening with lots of family members who could make it, complete with the trick candles.

On Wednesday we went with our missionary social group to the State Capitol Building for a tour. It has been years since I was there and the entire building has been restored to the original condition. They did this at the same time they decided to "earthquakeproof" the building. It was quite an undertaking. It is a beautiful building. There is one thing that I had not remembered that I liked. Apparently Seraph Young, one of Brigham Young's daughters, was the first woman in America to vote. There is a painting depicting the event. We just don't hear about it much because at the time Utah was not yet a State, but a Territory. Utah tried 7 times to be admitted as a State but was denied until the 7th time. The conditions to becoming a state included, among other things, that the Church had to divest some portion of its land holdings in the area and Utah would have to repeal the right to vote for women. At least we got that back!

Friday night we listened to a concert by the Orchestra at Temple Square. It was a wonderful evening. I feel so happy to be here and to take advantage of all the wonderful programs and concerts that are offered for free. There is something to do every weekend. There are even more concerts during the weeks before Christmas. We have put in our request for tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert. This year the guest artist is David Archuleta so the tickets to this event are a hot item. The Church does a random selection process of the people who submit a request. Last year there were over a million requests sent in for about 50,000 tickets. I don't hold out a lot of hope that we will be selected, but you never know. We did get tickets for our family to go to The Savior of the World program. All of these tickets became available last week. I can't believe that October is almost over and Thanksgiving is around the corner.

Here in Utah Halloween will be celebrated on Saturday evening. I wondered if we would get any trick or treaters in our apartment and the answer came today. There is a flyer in the elevator with a little envelope of small paper pumpkins. If we want them to come to our apartment we are to tape the pumpkin to our door. So I guess there will be kids running through the halls knocking on doors. I wonder if it would be against the mission rules to dress up like a witch to greet the kids as the come??? I don't think the badge would look real good on the costume. hahaha

It has rained much of the day today and I wasn't able to see up into the mountains but I am certain there is a lot more snow on those high peaks. I wonder how low the snow will go this week. We have more rain in the future and maybe even some snow on Thursday. It will be another great week for us here. Hope the same for you all.