College visit

My friend, Donya Jenkins, has a daughter, Samantha, at BYU who is a cheerleader. We live "only" 8 hours from Salt Lake City and 9 hours from Provo. Rachel is trying to decide what she wants to be when "she grows up" and where she would like to get the education to make that dream possible. But one thing she is fairly certain of at this point is that she wants to continue marching band in college.

I realized that these two things complemented each other perfectly. A road trip was in order. BYU had a home football game the 23rd of September and Rae had no obligations for marching band that weekend. Donya has another daughter, Laurel, who is a junior in high school. The four of us set off on Thursday night after work and school.

We arrived in SLC about 4am (our time). We stayed the night for all of four hours. Then we got up, showered, and headed south to Provo. We did a campus tour and afterwards met up with Samantha as she got done with class. Rachel and I separated from the Jenkins and went to watch the BYU band rehearse.


Then it was time for the game. The band performed wonderfully and Rachel was really impressed with them. And it was a great game, won by BYU by only 7 points.


After the game we headed back to SLC where we spent the night and then got up to tour Temple Square. We visited both visitor's centers, the Assembly Hall, the Beehive House, and the Joseph Smith Memorial Bldg, where we had dinner. Then that evening we attended the General Relief Society Meeting in the Conference Center. It was a great day.
The Christus at the North Visitor's Center.

The model of the inside of the temple at the South Visitor's Center.

The seagull monument.

The Assembly Hall.

The Salt Lake Temple.


At the conference center for the General Relief Society Meeting. Rachel loves to listen to Dieter F. Uchtdorf and he was speaking that night along with the general Relief Society presidency. They each gave great talks and we enjoyed the annual conference. It was so cool to see it in person.


This is a small snippet of the talk he gave and that was enjoyed by so many.


This is a snippet of the talk given by the President of the Relief Society, Sister Julie B. Beck. The funny thing about this part of her talk is that Donya is my visiting teacher and I am hers. So there we are listening about being wonderful visiting teachers and we're attending, in person, with the help and support of each other.


A view of the temple, from the Conference Center, at night.


We spent the night in SLC again and attended Music and the Spoken Word Sunday morning. As soon as it was over we headed for home and arrived back in Reno about 5:30 Sunday night. We were exhausted and a little behind in our homework, both of us, but we had a wonderful time.

A clip of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square performing Sunday morning.