There and Back Again Part I

A few highlights and observations from our recent weeklong trip to Utah:

• Losing any sense of direction and discretion with my "diet" (not that I had much before getting there). This has become standard fare when visiting my parents, though sadly I found means to do it this year even when they had no cereal in the house. It's also standard fare to promise myself on Sunday evening to start over Monday morning. Tonight is no different.
• Attending the sealing of Layne Pederson and Elizabeth Lund on Tuesday in the Salt Lake Temple. Elizabeth and I have been friends for years, and I felt privileged to be among those invited to witness the sealing. The Spirit felt there and the counsel given by the sealer, though, added so much to that event that I hope I will never forget what I felt and remembered there. If I can remember nothing else it was that I need to attend the temple as often as possible to remember and make more permanent the things I felt then.
• Losing 20 or so of my brother Matthew's golf balls on my two golf outings. Since he's in Mongolia he'd had have been hard pressed to keep me from using them. And anyway, he did the same to my stuff when I was on my mission. Turnabout is fair play.
• Forgetting to put on sun screen for my mid-day round of golf on Wednesday. I had forgotten just how red I can get.
• Playing Home Run Derby with my little brother Peter with the wiffle ball in the back yard. It might not have been so memorable if we hadn't been playing "for Slavery": the winner on Saturday was entitled to make the other serve as his slave for the rest of the day. I won, but my most outlandish command was to make him do 10 pushups. I am a benevolent tyrant.

On a tangent, I finally found something redeeming about the movie Legacy. Apparently, when one wishes to avoid the problems of gambling President Hinckley spoke of one may simply rename the object of the bet as "a prize to the winner." That's what we did here. (The movie may not actually be that bad, but there are some elements to it that have long since kept me from taking it seriously--this may deserve its own post someday).