Today is December 23, 2005. Two hundred years ago today Joseph Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont. We humans like to celebrate things like this and today was no exception. The Church put on an hour and a half special program tonight broadcast to 81 countries around the world commemorating the birth of the Prophet and Founder Joseph Smith. The program was delightful and the music by the Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra on Temple Square was exquisite. Since we get the BYU channel on our Dish Network satellite system, we were able to watch the program in the comfort of our own home. Plus — we have visitors! Heather, Ty, and their family came up this afternoon and will stay until tomorrow mid-morning. They watched the program with us and afterwards we had another sumptious turkey dinner. It’s about 10:30 at night and folks are now fading fast. Turkey does that to you!

The work on the blog is finished. I’ve also set up a blog for Heather and will show her how to use it in the morning. I’ve got blogs for all the rest of the family in testing and will make those available to those who want a blog over the next few days. It’ll be interesting to see how well this works. The purpose of these blogs is to let family members write about what is going on in their lives and share it with the rest of the family (as well as anyone else in the world who might be interested). A blog is only as good as the frequency of posting. For a while I had to remind myself to go write in the blog. It’s become pretty much a habit in the meantime and it has also gotten much easier to write since I don’t have to think about making each post some kind of a world-shaking event. It’s been a good evening and I’m looking forward to the rest of the weekend!