Weekly Review June 27 '25

This week was a lot quieter and less eventful than the previous two weeks, but it was kind of nice for a change. On Sunday I had choir practice before church because the choir sang in sacrament meeting. I said a few words before we sang to introduce the song we were singing, which is called "I Surrender All". Seth didn't have temple prep class (the teacher was out of town) but he did have mission prep and he also had an interview with our bishop to start the process of receiving the Melchizedek priesthood. Before Seth went to mission prep class, we had family night lesson. It was my turn for the lesson, so I shared some stories about Benjamin Franklin Johnson. I wanted Seth to know more about him before he goes to Kirtland for Youth Conference.

On Monday I helped with a lunch that our ward was providing for the medical workers at a project called Mission of Mercy. This organization provides free medical and dental care to individuals in need (no health insurance, low income, etc.) It is run by another church, but our church has partnered with them by providing a place to hold their weekly clinic (at our stake center) and by providing lunch for the health care workers. I've helped with lunches a few times in the past. It is always a good experience. I think it's a wonderful idea and I am happy to help in any way I can. I stayed to help clean up and then I ran an errand before going home--I went to the local Michael's to see if they carry fabric or other sewing supplies (they don't yet...but it looked like they may be getting things set up to do that). I had some coupons too and I got some paper and pens using those (I want to learn to do some lettering.) After I got home and we had dinner, we had family night activity. Seth hasn't had to work on Mondays lately, which has been a nice change. 

I don't remember much about Tuesday except that Frank did his temple shift, I did quite a bit of quilting and Seth went to a combined YM / YW activity. They went swimming, which was a great idea since it was really hot. Most of this week has been that way--temperatures in the high 90s that feel like over 100 when you add in the humidity. Today has been a bit cooler, but the rest of the week was scorching. On the bright side, the fireflies have started to show up in much larger numbers. I love fireflies!

On Wednesday Seth went to a stake youth temple day, so he was gone a good portion of the day. They did baptisms in the temple and did some other activities at the visitor's center, led by missionaries. He really seemed to enjoy it, judging by what he said when he got home. I had an eye doctor appointment that morning. My prescription has changed a bit so I'm getting new glasses and since my frames are 4 years old, I'm getting new frames too. I quilted some more that day and finished quilting the first July quilt block:

Yesterday I had an appointment with my cardiologist. He wants me to get an echo done to check on my leaky valve but overall my heart seems to be in good shape. He said my cholesterol is really high, though. I knew it was high because I had bloodwork done a few months ago, but when the nurse from my PCP's office called she said it was "a little high". The cardiologist got those results too and he told me my cholesterol is 164 and it should be below 100. That's more than a "little" high. I guess I will need to get more serious about changing to a low cholesterol diet. 

I did more quilting yesterday and finished quilting the second July quilt block last night:

I just have to sew the backs on, and the July pillows will be done. (Just in the nick of time!)

Seth worked yesterday and today but he came home early today because he got one of his headaches and threw up. We never have been able to figure out why that happens to him, but it doesn't happen very often any more, thankfully.

This morning I went to the temple to do initiatories. I ran into a few friends from my stake there which is always fun and also saw a friend from a long time ago...one of the other moms that I did Joy School with (way back when Tanner was 3 years old). 

I just got a copy of the book for book chat today (I had to buy it because it isn't available at the library, even through interlibrary loan). Frank and I have spent quite a bit of time this week planning what we're going to do while we're in Utah next month. Today we started watching a new show together called Eureka. We've seen it before but it's been a while--we watched it together when it was new, nearly 2 decades ago. 

I told you it was a quiet week! That's all I have to report. 

Weekly Reviews June 13 and June 20 '25

I didn't write last week because I was out of town, so now I have a lot to cover. I am going to try to summarize as much as possible so that this post won't be a book! I will also try to be pretty selective with the photos I include since I took over 500 photos this week. 😲

Predictively, I am not remembering much about what happened before I left for my trip. I have a few photos to help me remember some things, though. On Saturday the 7th, Tanner ran a marathon. We wish we could have been there to cheer for him, but Scott and a lot of other family members who live nearby met him at the finish line and Scott did a video call so that we (including Jared & Jessie in Texas) were able to see him finish and join in the celebration a little bit. 

I don't remember much else about that day except that I sewed together one of the July quilt blocks:

Oh yes, and I finished preparing my talk for Sunday. It came together pretty quickly and I'd say I stressed less about this talk than any other I've given (at least in recent memory). I knew that 4 of the youth were speaking and my team teacher was sharing her testimony and there was going to be an intermediate hymn as well, so I really wasn't sure how much time I would have. I was supposed to speak for about 10 minutes, so I prepared a 10 minute talk but I also looked it over and decided what I would cut out if I only had a few minutes instead of 10! In the end, it all worked out perfectly. All four youth (Seth was one of them) gave beautiful talks that were just right--not too long, not too short. I got my full 10 minutes to talk and still left 5 minutes for my team teacher to share testimony and another 5 minutes for the closing song and prayer. I didn't feel nervous at all, which was a miracle, believe me! I think after preparing for and teaching 2 years worth of Seminary lessons to a somewhat unreceptive (sleepy!) group,  preparing a 10 minute talk given to a friendly / receptive audience just didn't seem very intimidating. An unanticipated blessing of teaching Seminary!! I was also really grateful for the things that the youth shared. Each one of them expressed appreciation for their teachers, said that it was worth the effort to get up even though it is hard, encouraged the incoming freshman to come, and testified that they have felt the spirit in Seminary and benefitted from going. Besides that, one of the girls talked about the concept of what she called "garbage in, garbage out"--she said that what you get out of Seminary depends on what you put into it, and testified that she always felt the spirit and learned something if she was willing to engage and participate in the lessons. There is no message that I would rather have all the youth hear than that! The whole meeting left me feeling so happy--all the sacrifices I've been making these last 2 years feel totally worth it because at least a few of the youth are getting something out of Seminary. 

I don't remember a lot about the rest of Sunday except that our RS lesson was beautiful, I got to talk to my Seminary team teacher and hear a little bit about her trip to Brazil (she and her husband took their son who just graduated on a trip there), and Seth attended both temple prep and mission prep classes. 

I don't have anything on the calendar for Monday the 9th or Tuesday the 10th, but I know I was busy getting ready for my trip and trying to get as much done as I could to make sure things went smoothly here while I was gone. I took some time on Monday to sew the other July quilt block:

On Tuesday I sewed the border strips on both blocks and on Wednesday I marked them and prepared them for quilting. I forgot to take photos, though. I did a little bit of quilting on one of the blocks on Wednesday, but I haven't been able to touch either of them since then. Hopefully I will get going on that project next week. 

We've seen deer in back of our house quite a bit lately. I took the first photo on Wednesday (the 11th) and the second one on Thursday morning (the 12th):

(Just took a break to go outside for a few minutes and there's a deer out there now, as well as a few fireflies. 😊)

Amy arrived here on Wednesday evening (the 11th) and I drove to the airport to pick her up. We came home and ate quickly, then I took Amy with me to book club. (We were a bit late, but welcomed by all and my friends got a kick out of meeting my twin sister.) I forgot to mention that I did finish reading the book and I liked it. Now we are reading Exodus by Leon Uris. I have not received my copy yet because I didn't have time to do anything about it before leaving for my trip. I finally ordered a copy through interlibrary loan this morning. Hopefully I will get it soon, but we aren't meeting again until August so I have plenty of time to read it. I actually read this book once already but it was back when I was in high school so it will be good to read it again. I remember that I really liked it the first time and I do remember some of the things that happened too but I'm sure I've forgotten a lot more than I remember.

Thursday morning our sisters road trip to Kirtland / Niagara Falls / Palmyra began! 

At one rest stop, there was a stand with Amish baked goods, so we decided to buy a loaf of banana bread and a loaf of pumpkin bread. I am laughing in this photo because of how inept I am at taking selfies. I could not get all of us, the bread, and the sign into the photo! (As you can see.) 

I am not going to go into all the details about the trip or this post would last forever, but I'll give you the abbreviated version. We drove through beautiful Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Ohio countryside. (We passed the US Open on our way.) We drove to the airport in Cleveland, where we picked up Shellie. Then we drove to our hotel, checked in, and then drove to the Kirtland stake center where we checked in for the Benjamin Franklin Johnson Family Reunion, bought dinner from a food truck that was there, and attended the welcome meeting for the reunion. (Shellie brought her own food for most of her meals because she has celiac.) We got to see Vachelle and Ashleigh Johnson as well as my cousins Webb and Jared Johnson at this meeting. We saw all of them several other times over the next few days and had some chances to visit, which was awesome. 

All right, I will say this right now and then not mention it again: organizing a renunion for about 900 people is very complicated and there are bound to be problems--and there were! There were a lot of issues with scheduling and communication and this caused a lot of complications and uncertainties and changing of plans. I'm not very good with lack of organizagion and uncertainty and last minute changes in plans, so I found this aspect of the reunion to be quite frustrating and stressful, but I tried to be flexible and eventually learned to go with the flow a little better and in the end we were able to do everything we wanted to do and it was a beautiful experience. And I am definitely very grateful to everyone who put in a mountain of work to pull this whole reunion together. I'm sure it wasn't easy!

We were late leaving the meeting because we were trying to get some answers about a scheduling issue but we finally made it back to our hotel shortly before Julia arrived. (She flew into Cleveland also and got a taxi from the airport to the hotel.) Then we went to the store so that Julia and Shellie could get some food and we all got to bed pretty late. (Which was the theme for this trip...not enough sleep and a lack of regular meals! I still had fun!)

Friday morning our first stop was the Joseph and Emma Smith home. On the back porch, waiting for our turn to go in for a tour:

After touring this home, we walked over to the Kirtland Temple grounds. We listened to part of a concert given by the Utah Valley Youth Choir, purchased some souvenirs (I got two magnets, a postcard, and a Christmas tree ornament),  and picked up our pre-ordered lunches and ate them. 

Thanks to this sign, we figured out where the Frederick G. Williams farm was located.

  Turns out the Utah Valley Youth Choir was singing on part of the former Frederick G. Williams farm. 

Had to get a photo of us standing on our ancestor's former farm:

I remembered reading some information about Frederick G. Williams donating this farm to the Church in a book a while back and I had taken a photo of the page because I liked what it said so much, so I found the photo on my phone and read the page again while sitting on the land. It was a very sweet expereince!

One of the magnets I bought (had to get this one!):

After eating lunch, we were able to tour the Kirtland Temple. I've been there once before, but it was about 27 years ago. It is such a beautiful building and it really amazing to me what the early saints were able to do with limited resources. It was really awe inspiring to be standing in a building where I know a lot of my ancestors were standing at one time. (Not to mention that many of them contributed in one way or another to building it.) My favorite part of the tour was when we sat in the main assembly hall on the 1st floor and we all sang "The Spirit of God" together. I was also remembering BFJ's experience where he was standing in the door of the temple during a meeting when everyone who had helped build the temple were receiving blessings. I kept looking back at the doors and thinking "he was standing right there, in one of those two doorways!" 

 After the temple tour, we went to the Historic Kirtland area and toured the Newel K. Whitney home and store and the sawmill (built by Joel Hills Johnson) and the ashery. 

(I took a ton of photos inside all of these places, but I'm choosing not to include them here...just too much!)

After all that, we found a restaurant near our hotel that had food that Shellie could eat and went there for dinner. Then we had to go back to the store to get food for breakfast (we realized the breakfast the hotel provided wouldn't be available before we had to head out in the morning) and then back to the hotel and to bed very late again.

It started raining Friday evening and rained a lot in the night; it was still pouring down rain in the morning and continued to rain for most of the morning. The heavy rain threw a monkey wrench into all the plans for that day because there was supposed to be a 5K / Fun Walk and then a pancake breakfast, which were scheduled to be outdoors. The starting point for the races and the pancake breakfast were moved to the local stake center, and to my surprise, a huge crowd still showed up to run / walk. We had all signed up to do the walk and ultimately decided to go ahead and walk in the rain. We had rain coats and / or umbrellas, but our feet got really wet and I spent half the day walking around in shoes without socks because my socks got so wet that I took them off. I took this photo while walking up to the temple. I didn't take many others because it was too awkward to take photos in the rain:

Here are the three of us after the walk:

After some challenges related to shuttle buses that didn't show up, we managed to make it to the right place just in time to be included in the large family photo that was taken. (I've seen a copy of it on Facebook, but haven't figured out how to get my own copy to share here...hopefully I will be able to do that later.) We encountered Webb and Jared (and Ashleigh) at the photo shoot and were able to stand next to them in the photo. (And got a photo of just us after the big family photo shoot.)

Afterwards, we visited with them for a while and we all decided to go back to the Historic Kirtland area to do a few things. There are two visitor's centers in that area that we didn't have time to visit the day before so we went to both of those. The first one had a really great movie about the things that happened in Kirtland. I really felt the spirit while watching it and it left me with an increased appreciation for my ancestors and all the sacrifices they made. I had a really strong feeling of how much they loved Kirtland and how hard it was for them to leave--but they did it because of their desire to continue to follow the prophet and to be obedient to the Lord's commandments. The other visitor center had a display with a QR code that you could scan and it would link to your Family Search account and give you a list of all of your ancestors who had lived in Kirtland. I have 133 ancestors who lived in Kirtland! I knew there were quite a few, but I was surprised it was that many.

While walking through the historic area on Friday, we crossed a bridge over a river where some early baptisms were performed. The water level was really low and we were commenting that no baptisms could be done in that river that day (unless they were Catholic baptisms...the sprinkling kind). On Saturday when we walked across the same bridge, the river was really high and moving fast. I had taken a photo of the river on Friday, so I took another one on Saturday:

After we finished at the two visitor's centers, we arranged to meet Webb and Jared at the John Johnson farm in Hiram, Ohio later. We headed to the Kirtland stake center to pick up and eat our lunch and to attend a devotional. (Because there were about 900 people, they held 3 different devotionals and different times and we were assigned to go to one of them. We were not assigned to the same devotional as Webb and Jared.) Our devotional speaker was Steven Lund, the YM General President. (He is also a descendant of Ezekiel & Julia Johnson. He didn't mention if he is a descendant of BFJ or of one of his siblings so I don't know how he fits into the family, just that he is one of my many cousins.) Anyway, the devotional was fantastic! President Lund shared a lot of awesome stories about places he's been and experiences he has had that show the importance of the gathering of Israel. It was super inspiring and at the end we all sang The Spirit of God (again!) and the spirit was powerful. After the devotional, we went back to the hotel so I could get some dry shoes and socks. 😂 Then we went to the John Johnson farm and did the tour there. It is about 45 minutes away from Kirtland, so that trip took about 3 hours. It was fun to do the tour with Webb and Jared.

We then drove back to the Kirtland area so we could do a little exploring of some BFJ family sites. When we signed in the first evening of the reunion, we were given some papers that listed a bunch of the places that BFJ and his family lived / worked / went to school etc., with a map that showed appoximately where these things were located. We hadn't had any time to look for these places but we had scanned the list and I really wanted to find a few of them. One was a house that was still standing, built by Joel Hills Johnson. The paper said that missionaries were living in it. The land where the family home (where BFJ and his parents and many of his siblings lived) was located as well as a replica of a school house where they attended school looked like they were nearby. (The map was not incredibly detailed.) We could tell that the house Joel built was near the Historic Kirtland area, so we went there, parked in the parking lot next to one of the visitor's centers, and got out the map to try to figure out where to go. After studying the map for a while, we realized that a house that was sitting right next to the parking lot was the house we were looking for! We had already driven or walked right past it a few times over the last few days...we had to laugh about that. The replica school house was right next to it, and after studying the map a bit more we realized that the land where the family home was located was right under our feet...the parking lot was built on part of it. 

Joel Johnson house and land:

Replica school house:

Some of the Johnson family land (next to the parking lot):

Similar to how it felt to be standing on part of the Frederick G. Williams farm, it felt really special to be standing on land once owned by the Johnson family. By the time we finished there, it was getting late and we still hadn't had dinner so we headed back towards our hotel, stopped at Cracker Barrel to get some take out food for some of us, and went to a grocery store so Shellie could get something that she could eat. We got to bed late again.

Sunday morning we attended church at the Kirtland 1st Ward, along with a whole load of other visitors. It looked more like a stake conference than a regular ward meeting! As I was sitting there, I was thinking that BFJ and his mother, Julia, would probably be really pleased to know that they had so many descendants who are active members of the Church that when a relatively small group of them visit a ward at the same time, they turn it into stake conference! It took probably close to half of the meeting time to pass the sacrament to all those people and the last speaker on the program didn't get to speak. The Primary kids sang a couple of songs for Father's Day and it was really cute. We were able to sit with Webb, Jared, Ashleigh and Vachelle and afterwards we visited for a while before we all had to be on our way. We went back to our hotel to change and check out, and then headed toward New York.

We fit all the luggage for 4 females in the trunk!:

 

Ready to go:

We drove to Geneva, NY that day with a detour to Niagara Falls on the way. The view of the falls from the Canadian side is a lot more impressive, so we went into Canada and we all got stamps in our passports. 

There was a total lack of road signs directing us to Niagara Falls, but with some help from the GPS we finally made our way there and found a place to park. We spent a few hours there and took a lot of photos--believe it or not, this isn't all of them!: 

(For some reason, blogger added my photos in reverse order, so the photos at the top are the last ones I took...shortly before we left, the sun came out enough that we saw a rainbow in the falls.)

We took the Rainbow Bridge back into the United States and then drove the rest of the way to our hotel in Geneva, arriving after dark (around 10:00 pm) and got to bed late once again. On the way to Geneva, we saw lots of deer beside the road--live ones, not dead ones. 😊 I should mention that the entire trip, Shellie, Amy and Julia kept commenting on how beautiful the countryside was (and it was...I agree). They aren't used to everything being so green!!

On Monday we visited all the Church history sites in the Fayette / Palmyra area. It was a long day, but we saw everything. We started at the Peter Whitmer Home in Fayette, then visited the Joseph Smith Farm (Visitor's Center, Log Home, Frame Home, and Sacred Grove), then the Hill Cumorah (Visitor's Center and monument on the top of the Hill), and finally the Grandin Building (print shop where the Book of Mormon was printed). By the time we got through all of that, it was well past dinner time and we had never had lunch (just a few snacks) and I had an incredibly bad headache. We decided to go to a Mexican restaurant recommended by one of the missionaries at the Grandin Building. After getting some water, food, and taking a couple of Ibuprofen, I started to feel a lot better, thankfully. Some of the photos from this day:

Most things looked the way I remembered them, but the Hill Cumorah is different. When the Hill Cumorah Pageant was being presented every year, there was a very large grass lawn in front of the Hill and the part of the Hill where the stage was built was also smooth and grassy. Now they have decided to allow the natural vegetation to return to those parts of the Hill and the field below it. Some trees have been planted on the Hill and are starting to grow and there is also a lot of underbrush already growing on the Hill and in the field below it. It's amazing to me how quickly it has changed!

After dinner, we drove back to Geneva and I drove around a little bit...showed everyone else the building where Frank worked, part of the college campus where he worked, and the house that we lived in. We got to bed a bit earlier that night, but unfortunately I woke up really early and didn't fall back asleep. That happened more than once on this trip. 😒

On Tuesday we all had appointments for the 11:30 session at the Palmyra Temple. I have wanted to attend a session at this temple since it was built, so I was very happy to finally be able to go. I saw one person that I knew from my old ward in our session. I don't think she really remembered me (we only lived in Geneva for 18 months) but she was impressed that I remembered her. The Palmyra Temple is tiny but beautiful! After the session, we took a few photos and then headed to the airport in Rochester to drop Julia off for her flight home. 

After saying our goodbyes to Julia, we headed towards home. (Well, home for me, anyway!) We stopped at this cute diner for lunch:

Then we went to a store to get a few snacks for the trip. After that, Amy took over the driving (I drove everywhere up to that point) and she drove the rest of the way to my house. We stopped at a rest area just inside Pennsylvania that had some pretty great views.

We drove through a very heavy rainstorm shortly before getting to my house, but arrived safely. It was late but we hadn't had dinner yet so we ate something and I got unpacked and we went to bed. 

On Wednesday we visited a friend of Amy's from Boerne who just moved to Frederick. So crazy, right?! After that I drove them around some of the prettier parts of downtown Frederick and we got some groceries. That evening we went to a session at the Washington DC Temple. It was raining when we arrived, and we saw a rainbow.

After the session, we briefly visited the Visitor's Center to see the stained glass artwork (the Visitor's Center was closing in a few minutes) and then walked all around the temple to get some pictures. 

The traffic going home was bad because there was a stretch of the road where one lane was closed (and there were only two lanes total, so it was down to one lane) so we got home very late again.

On Thursday Amy and Shellie were flying home in the afternoon / evening, but that morning we drove to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia and spent a few hours there. Shellie and Amy had not been to West Virginia previously so I had to take them there! We were really fortunate that the entire trip to Ohio and New York the weather was not hot--temperatures were always between 70 and 80, so it was always pretty pleasant (although rainy at times and sometimes a bit humid). On Thursday it started to get a lot warmer so we tried to stay in the shade as much as possible. Other than being a bit hot, it was beautiful at Harper's Ferry:

After returning from Haper's Ferry, we headed to airport to drop off Amy and Shellie. Frank came with us and he drove which I really appreciated after all the driving I did the previous week. It was a little sad to see our girls' trip end, but I think we were all ready to get back to our normal routines, too! (And to get more sleep and to eat meals at regular times again.) I loved spending so much time with my sisters and it was hilarious how many times we got asked "Are you sisters?" and "Are you twins?"

We went through a pretty heavy rain storm on our way back from the airport:

Both Shellie and Amy had delays due to the weather but they both made it home safely finally.

I have spent the last few days since everyone went home trying to get caught up on regular life. I spent most of yesterday working on the finances although I went to a lesson with the missionaries in the afternoon which was a nice break. Today I got my hair cut, cleaned the kitchen floor, did meal planning and some gorcery shopping and spent the rest of the time finishing this post. (I started it yesterday but didn't have time to finish.) Tonight I also gave a ride to Florian (boy from my Seminary class). Seth came with me. 

Now it is past bedtime and I am exhausted so I will sign off! (And it there are a lot of typos and things that don't make sense, it's because I am too tired to go back and proofread.)

Next week I may share more photos from our trip because Amy, Shellie, and Julia took a lot of photos too and they are going to share them with me.