Will I Never Learn?

I'm sure there's a Gospel lesson in here somewhere. Probably there's a story buried deep in my scriptures; we'll call it "the Allegory of the Electronic Gaming Device." It tells the spiritually informed that the House of Israel was scattered because they failed to heed the Lord's repeated warnings that if they didn't cast out their Nintendo DS's, they would be cut off from the presence of the Lord for a good long time. But of course the Israelites failed to heed these warnings, among others, and found themselves suddenly living in, I don't know, Russia or someplace where they make inferior microchips and can't handle even a simple Mario Bros. game.

You may recall that I'd written about my unreasoning fear of my daughter's Nintendo DS a week and a half ago. You may appreciate that my daughter has kept intense pressure focused on her reluctant Dad to play "Animal Crossing." Today was no different. She was relentless. "Daaaaddy," she began. That sing-song "Daaaaddy" of hers modulates between about three distinct pitches and is the rough equivalent of the Central American phrase pues, fíjese. "Fijese" in Guatemala pretty much means, "I'm about to give you a whopper of an excuse as to why, precisely, I can't be bothered to read that wonderful Book of Mormon you gave me a week ago, Elder, so get ready." When my daughter uses her modulated "Daaaaddy" on me, I get similar results. "Here comes an outrageous request, Daddy, so you'd better prepare yourself." In either instance, whether my daughter or a well-meaning but highly ambivalent Quiché tat, I have just about 10 seconds to drum up my steely resolve and put on my poker face. Let me state for the record that I had a much higher success rate with the Quichés.

"Daaaaaddy," she said, "since you don't have anything to do right now..."

Huh? Whaddaya mean, "nothing to do?" I'm sitting here on a Sunday afternoon, relaxing, and contemplating taking a nap. How could that possibly be construed as "nothing to do?"

"Would you like to play 'Animal Crossing?'"

*heavy dramatic sigh*

I was trapped, and I knew it. She had me dead to rights. I didn't have anything that I was doing at that particular moment, although I could have fabricated something pretty darn'd quickly. I'm still under about a gazillion deadlines at work, and I should probably be working on at least one of them even as I write this. However...

I relented.

"Okay, Punkin', let's have it."

See below the look of a defeated man:

See, the girls love to watch Daddy play computer games. This has always been true, because Daddy is not one of those hideous Doom 3 kinds of Dads. I just don't get into that level of violence. But I love the Monkey Island series, and so do the girls. So every time I play one of those types of games, the girls will sit and literally watch me for hours, if I let 'em. Ditto Harry Potter. Or even Indiana Jones, although there are scarier things in the Indy games and they tend to leave the room more often when I play those.

That's why you see both Woodyettes perched immediately above and behind me, watching with enrapt looks on their faces. The way they look in the photo, I'd probably just burned down the Town Hall or something. (This, of course, is not true. What actually happened was, I trampled on their flowers. Frankly, I had no idea how to avoid trampling on them, and wasn't interested in taking the Traffic School option. Just fine me and be done with it.)

So I played for about an hour. At the end of which I had had enough of "Animal Crossing" to last me until approximately the next presidential administration.

I was exhausted. I finally managed to learn how to sell things to the town Dictator-for-Life Tom Nook. I even got a rod and reel and tried my hand at a fishing tournament. Now, I've been fishing on and off (mostly off) for most of my life, and I have to say that if, in real life, I hooked into a 34+ inch carp, I'd be feeling pretty good. So imagine my dismay at presenting said carp to the Mayor (who always appears tipsy to me, for some odd reason) only to learn that someone else had bagged a 43 inch sea bass! Phooey.

Jelly also coerced me into visiting the museum. I'd managed to bag an octopus while fishing, and Mrs. Woody suggested I donate it to the museum, so off I went. After Jelly told me where to find it, that is. Then she kept urging me to visit various exhibit halls. "Visit the aquarium, Daddy!" "Now visit the art gallery, Daddy!" "Now go jump in the river and soak your head, Daddy!" (I may have imagined that last one.) Finally she got me to visit the bug exhibit. I wasn't sure exactly why she wanted me to visit this one in particular until she told me to find and stomp on the cockroach. Yes, a cockroach. So I located it and tried to stomp on it. "Notice: this cockroach was lovingly donated by Violet..." Of course. A protected cockroach. Only in "Animal Crossing."

By that time, my head was pounding. Time for a Sudafed. I steered my character back to bed — envying him his ability to crash whenever he wanted to — and politely handed the Machine of Doom back to my daughter.

But not before Mrs. Woody had captured my shell-shocked face for future generations to enjoy.

The Spirit of Change

Recent writings aside, I'm not the most spiritually sensitive character around. I believe myself to be one of those souls for whom the Spirit carries a really, really big hammer in case he needs to get in touch with me. "Hello? Woody? You listening?..." CLANG! "Ah. Finally got your attention." He then fills me in on something that was probably obvious to everyone else in my life, and figured I needed to be clued in. "Yo. Woody. See that gal? The one you knew in high school and were too chicken to talk to? She's the one you need to marry. Get on it."

I'm taking a few liberties here, of course. In real life, the Spirit probably would have communicated the above in a somewhat different manner:

"And the Spirit appeareth unto Woody by night in a dream because Woody was too busy by day venting his spleen at various Microsoft® products. And the Spirit saith unto Woody, 'Verily, the woman thou beholdest; and whom thou hast known from thy shallow and vain youth; she it is whom thou shalt wed. NOW.'" Or maybe it was just a strong impression that I had.

I say this because of a bad habit of mine. Once in a great while, I'll be sitting around doing things of little or no consequence (although in this morning's case, one could argue that there could indeed be huge consequences if I fail to take my shower) and I'll feel the rumblings of pending change in my life. Most of the time these rumblings are innocuous in nature. Probably the result of little or no sleep the night before. But occasionally they take on the aspect of a life-changing event. It happened a few months in advance of my learning that the company I'd worked for for over fifteen years was about to trade me to another division in another county. Hence our move to Orange County. It also happened a few months before my calling to the Stake Sunday School presidency.

And therein lies the rub. It always happens at a minimum of a few months before anything of consequence actually happens. The problem is, I hate dealing with the anticipation. What if whatever it is that's supposed to happen doesn't happen? What then? Was it my fault, or was I picking up on the wrong signal to begin with? And occasionally I miss the boat altogether. Mrs. Woody just received a new calling that appeared literally out of nowhere, so far as I was concerned. One minute we're both planning lessons for the 2nd Sunday together, the next she's doing the Ward bulletin instead. Didn't see that one coming! (I'll grant that this hardly qualifies as a "life-changing event," but it could. One never knows, with Ward bulletins.)

So I'm taking my shower this morning and it hits me. Change is in the air. (Note to my siblings: No, taking a shower is NOT that kind of change for Woody.) I felt it hard enough to make mention of it to Mrs. Woody afterward. She handled it quite well, I must admit. Mildly interested, I would have to say. Of course, knowing as she does that I get these feelings many weeks before anything actually happens, it could also be that she's taking the "wait and see" approach. Wait until Bro. So-and-so, the Stake Executive Secretary nails me in the hallway one Sunday. Then get worked up about it.

Of course you know what will happen. In a few weeks I'll have forgotten all about today's feeling. I'll be blissfully walking the halls of the Stake Center during the bloc and WHAM! I'll be cornered by one of our Stake Presidency. We have two of them in our ward. It's unfair, really, because either one of them could just plant himself down behind me in Priesthood and lean over. "Say, Bro. Woody, we've been meaning to talk to you..." It's happened before.

So remind me, would you, next time you see me? Just say, "Hey, Woody, don't forget: Change is coming!" I'll probably look at you as if wondering who forgot to lock the doors to the asylum, but it'll eventually remind me.

Change is good.

Right?

RIGHT??

That Which We Do Not Understand

I fear my daughter's Nintendo®. It's one of those next-generation Game Boy replacements called the "DS." It was her major Christmas gift last year and I have developed an uneasy relationship with it.

It resembles a PDA on steroids. It has two screens. I don't get this concept. Being a simplex thinker, the dual-screen aspect of the machine bothers me. When I play my games on my computer, I have a hard enough time keeping track of whatever is happening on my one (and only) screen. I'm sure I'm missing stuff even on a single screen, because I keep getting killed. I never see something coming. If it's dead-center in front of me, I can track it. Generally, however, in a PC game death comes from behind. It's the guys I can't see that always get me. If I had two screens to deal with, life would end much more quickly than it already does. Probably not just metaphorically, either.

Death is less of a problem with the Nintendo® because we don't allow Jelly to play those kinds of games. She really only has two right now. Game cartridges are rather expensive (dual screens are costlier to support, I guess) so we've had to be very selective of what she plays. For Christmas she really, really, really wanted "Nintendogz™" which is a virtual pet game. No problem. More than happy to oblige. Virtual pets I can handle. Virtual poop is MUCH easier to clean up than the real stuff, which is to say that even if Jelly ignores it, Daddy doesn't have to clean it up instead. It can stay in ever-growing virtual mounds in her DS for eternity for all I care. It still won't stink up the house.

Since she got some virtual money for Christmas (in the form of gift cards), we decided to allow her to buy one more game to supplement her collection. Given my statement above about being selective, we found this to be more challenging than we thought it would be. Of all the DS games available for purchase at EvilCorporateGiantMart, Inc., only three looked to be non-violent or anti-South-Park-attitude-ish. Of those, only one, "Animal Crossings," appeared not to insult a normal human's intelligence.

Which is where my fear comes into play.

I fear "Animal Crossings."

"Animal Crossings" turns out to be the sort of virtual universe that Jelly has been creating — without an electronic processor — for her entire life. I've written about Jellyville before. It still exists. Jellyville becomes her way of dealing with all the nonsense that the real world dishes out. "In Jellyville," she might say, "there is no bedtime. You can stay up for as long as you like. School won't start the next day until you wake up." This kind of pronouncement usually accompanies our shutting down a movie prematurely because of our unreasoning desire to have the girls go to bed. Before midnight. You might wonder why the kids are watching movies so late at night. You will understand this when I tell you that we start all movies before 7:00 PM, but there's a reason why someone invented the remote control. Whoever invented remote controls had daughters with tiny bladders and empty tummies. 'Nuff said.

Anyway, "Animal Crossings" is very much like Jellyville. It is, above all else, a virtual community. Probably you can make it a multi-player community if another DS is within, I dunno, 30 feet or something. But it's the kind of virtual universe that Jelly thrives on. You can create your own character and town. Then you "move in" to this town and begin interacting with all the characters that inhabit the place. The fact that all of the characters resemble Japanese anime animals reminds us who exactly developed the Nintendo and its games. Central to this universe is a character named Tom Nook. He owns the local store, which means he controls the local economy. He also apparently is a real estate baron because you can only purchase houses through Tom Nook. He holds your mortgage. And you can only gain employment through Tom. I instinctively distrust this guy, but Jelly loves him. Probably because she's figured out how to eke a living without having to work for the guy.

I created my own character and began to play. I found that you first have a brief period of actual employment with Tom, after which you're pretty much on your own. You make your living (post-Tom) by selling things back to him. Pears are a staple, for example. Thus a person spends a lot of time shaking fruit trees. You take the fruit and sell it to Tom, who probably sells it to others for a kazillion percent mark-up. Tom is a shrewd operator.

This isn't the only way to earn money, by the way. You can sell just about anything you find to anyone who's interested in it. If you find fossils, you can give them to the museum. These are the things I know about. My daughters (and even Mrs. Woody) have been able to figure out just about every conceivable way of interacting with this community.

I'm not that smart. I have yet to sell my first pear. Every time I tried to take pears into Tom, he ignored me. Jelly kept giving me instructions on how to talk to Tom, but I'm not that patient. If he can't tell I'm there to sell fruit, I'd rather take my business elsewhere. Unfortunately, there's nowhere else to go. It's kind of like Twilight Zone; you can enter the town, but it's darned difficult to leave. The funny part is, characters are moving out all the time. It's like they know something that we humans don't. They figured out the secret code or handshake that allows you to pack and leave town. Or perhaps they were evicted and just didn't want to say anything. I'd do that myself, but I'm afraid that wherever I go, Tom Nook will be there. Waiting for me. Ready to sell me a house.

There's also the dual screen problem. While all the action takes place on the lower screen, the upper screen shows things like constellations. These constellations mean something, but I'm not smart enough to figure out what it is. Also, which button do I push? A? X? Gaah! I can't take the pressure! Of all the male inadequacies I could be dealing with, I need this one the least.

I guess I mostly fear this game because it makes me look like such a schlumpf. I feel like I'm back on my mission in Guatemala during monsoon season, tracking through mile after mile of mud. After a few miles you begin to feel like you're not getting anywhere. This is how I feel when playing "Animal Crossings." Hence I haven't played it much. I always plead work conflicts; I'm just too busy, I'll tell Jelly when she offers to "let" me play the game.

This morning she even tried to trick me into playing it in a moment of weakness. She had stashed the game in our one working bathroom. She knows that I will play our electronic Yahtzee® game faithfully, no matter why I'm in there. Today she told me that the DS was in there, and that I was more than welcome to play it, if I wanted. She repeated this about twenty times before I was finally able to close the door and resume my lousy Yahtzee streak. "You can check your mail, Daddy!" she said as I closed the door. Great. I have mail.

Someday, perhaps, I'll get motivated to learn this game. But not right now. Right now I have work to do. My virtual boss is wondering why I haven't completed one of my virtual projects yet.

Mantle of the Prophet - Amended

This is more by way of a journal entry. I need to keep this one in mind over time to remind myself that miraculous things can and do still happen in these cynical days of earth's history. Doubtless many others will write about this experience, probably more eloquently that I possibly could. This, then, is for my family and posterity.

Today was an amazing day. This has been the weekend of our annual General Conference of the Church. Since we have satellite we have the privilege of watching the proceedings from the comfort of our home. My sister has been visiting us so she, too, could watch from relative comfort. (She may also have enjoyed spending time with her nieces, but she came to watch Conference.)

I was already excited about this Conference. I have particularly enjoyed those Conferences where we sustain a new President of the Church. Also, with the re-organization of the First Presidency, we fully expected a new Apostle to be called yesterday. We were not disappointed. Although I know very little about Elder Christofferson, I was able to sense his spirit and testimony when he appeared in the press conference shortly after the morning session of Conference.

The first session of Conference was given over to a declared Solemn Assembly for the purpose of sustaining our new prophet, the First Presidency, and the Quorum of the Twelve. This was the first time that both Woodyettes have been old enough as baptized members of the Church to stand and raise their hands in a sustaining vote. I am happy to report that the members of the Church residing (or visiting) at Hacienda Woody voted unanimously in the affirmative.

But it is of this morning's session that I wish to speak. All of the sessions (I missed the Priesthood session, as I was helping Mrs. Woody in hosting our guest) were wonderful, but this morning was very special to me. All of the talks had hit home with me, but President Monson's talk has completely overshadowed me and I can't for the life of me remember a single other talk.

It was about halfway through his talk. He was talking about our fight with evil and, quite boldly, declared that we as a Church have all the tools necessary given to us by our Father to win this war. It was at that moment of his talk that I perceived the prophetic mantle resting upon his shoulders. Not visually, by any means. It was a spiritual perception, but a powerful one. It had the effect of bearing direct testimony to my own spirit that here was the anointed prophet of God on the earth. Here was the man holding all the keys of the Church who will guide us in the Lord's name for the foreseeable future.

I'm not a weeper, but I nearly wept. Mrs. Woody has no such compunction and was clearly moist of eye.

Mrs. Woody and I both felt it and agreed that we had seen something significant. What I did not expect was that others had felt it as well. Not, that is, until Elder Holland voiced it himself as the first speaker of the afternoon session. He had perceived it, too! That means this event was probably witnessed, or at least felt, by others. This must be true because I am not the most spiritually sensitive of souls. I have been guided throughout my life in numerous ways, but each event was more or less subtle to me. Only a few events stand out as strongly and firmly as today's. Foremost among those was the realization that Mrs. Woody would be my eternal companion. Today's testimony of President Monson hit me every bit as strongly as did that wonderful realization over a dozen years ago.

[Amended: As if to prove why I needed to write this down, I had originally said that I had not initially voiced my opinion that we had just witnessed the mantle of the prophet descend upon President Monson. Mrs. Woody corrected me and reminded me that I had actually voiced what we both had felt. Hence my rewrite of the paragraph above. If a man can't trust his memory after a mere few hours...]

For me this experience was on par with experiences I have read about over the years. I envied the Saints living at the time of the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, for example. What a tremendous thing to see angels while celebrating the construction of a House of the Lord in modern times. Likewise the saints who witnessed the transfiguration of Brigham Young after the martyrdom of Joseph Smith. What a blessing to be given such a confirmation of the man who would carry on the work of the Restoration! My own wife has had experiences in her life of which I can only dream. Powerful witnesses of various aspects of the Gospel plan.

Thomas S. Monson stands 16th in the unbroken line of men who have held and exercised the keys of the Priesthood on our behalf. He is the Lord's chosen mouthpiece in all matters pertaining to our salvation. The Spirit made that abundantly clear to me this morning. I fully expect time and experience to bear that out.

God bless our new prophet, seer, and revelator.

Dad's Invisible Stuff

Apparently I have a Backingnese. I have no idea what it is, or even what it looks like, but in my imagination it looks similar to a Pekingnese, only not as annoying. The reason I know I have one is because my younger daughter, Doodle, blesses it in almost every prayer:

"Please bless Daddy's Backingnese..."

Astonishingly, my mother has one, too.

"Please bless Grandma NanZ's Backingnese..."

Every single prayer.

Lately I've begun to look under the furniture. Every once in awhile I think I've caught a whiff of something suspicious and try to follow the trail, only to discover that one of the kids put a wet towel on the laundry pile again. Then I think I hear something barking. The problem there is that we live in a busy city in between a Burlington Northern Sante Fe main line, and the 91 freeway. Plus our immediate neighbors on either side both have small dogs of the yippy variety that make me want to sue PETA for mis-classifying them as "intelligent life forms." Could be anything.

So, for now, the Backingnese remains a complete mystery to this clueless Dad. I haven't asked Mom whether she (contrary to type) has acquired a pet recently.

Gotta go. I need some Tylenol®. My back and knees are acting up with all these weather changes lately.

Just What We Need

Dave Barry's blog (this time posted by his so-called "stealth bloggerette" Judi) occasionally points in the direction of some pretty fun, funny, and downright outrageous gadgets and/or technological wonders.

Add to this growing list something called the "MediaCart" being developed by a company of the same name, and in conjunction with (cue evil Darth Vader theme) Microsoft.

It sounds great. But then, these things always sound great when described in a paper. The concept is to have your shopping cart become "interactive," which is geek-speak for "annoying as all get-out." This new cart will hook into the store's local network. Using maps and your shopping history, not to mention all the nutritional data for the items they sell, the cart would be able to help you navigate your way around the store, taking you directly to the items you need, and even helpfully suggesting recipes using the items in your cart.

I'm sure this would prove to be a boon for those moronic scatter-brained organizationally-challenged shoppers who never make shopping lists, never plan meals, and refuse to memorize the layout of their favorite market. For the rest of us, this thing sounds like a nightmare.

I do most of the shopping for Hacienda Woody. This is because of a tacit understanding between myself and Mrs. Woody that a) I am a pretty decent shopper when I have a list, and b) she makes lists. This does not take into account the fact that, without a list, I become the Congress of grocery shoppers. "Ooh. Pork! Gotta have me some o' that!" This is simply one of those "divisions of labor" that couples decide upon in a marriage out of love, mutual respect, and a desire to remain financially solvent until they retire.

My idea of a perfect shopping trip has three basic elements:

1. The List, lovingly provided by my Sweetheart.

2. The Store. Preferably the same store I've been haunting since moving to the Hacienda over six years ago. If I end up in another store, I'm lost. I have no idea where the cashews are in my local Vons, even when the aisle markers helpfully state "SNACK FOODS HERE, IDIOT." I'm too busy fretting that I'll never make it through my list. I don't see them! They must not have them! Grocery Store Anxiety. Look it up.

3. No Kids. I love my children. Really, I do. But taking them on a simple shopping trip is like being a department-store Santa on December 24th. It's a no-win situation. "Daaaaaddy! Can we get some of those?" "No." "But, Daaaaaaaddy...!" And so on. Plus, they fight over whose turn it is to push the cart. They started this particular argument, which has not been resolved to date, four years ago when neither one of them was tall enough to see over the top of the cart. I actually let Jelly push it one night and she immediately toppled over a display of champagne bottles, strategically placed in the same aisle as the bottled water, which was my original target. This did not deter her determination to push the cart, while simultaneously preventing her sister from having that privilege. No kids. Not in the store, anyway.

Now, instead of worrying about my kids, I get to worry about arguing with this technological infant ("But, Daaaaaddy!").

I'll grant you that keeping track of your cart total is a good thing for folks on a budget. I am less impressed, on the other hand, with store navigation.

I have a GPS. Flim-Flam, or Jungle Jim, or one of those. We programmed it with a very nice British female's voice. That way, she can nag me but it sounds cool. The problem is that I disagree with her frequently.

"After fifty yards, turn left."

Sorry, can't do that.

"Turn left. Now."

No, ma'am. Not gonna.

"Turn around now."

No.

"Go back and turn where I told you, or I'll tell your wife about that milkshake you bought on the way home from work the other day."

Cute, but where you told me to turn is a ONE WAY GATE, AND WE'RE ON THE WRONG SIDE OF IT.

Anyway, I can't imagine some upstart shopping cart is going to improve on this process. Neither am I a huge fan of voice-activated anything.

Where're the eggs, please.

"Did you say... 'legs?'"

No. EGGS.

"Did you say... 'wigs?'"

You don't sell wigs.

"Wigs are on aisle 13."

Of course they are.

"May we interest you in today's special on pantyhose?"

*sigh*

Then there's this business of a "loyalty card." Apparently this card will allow one to "download shopping lists," along with recipe suggestions and — like we need this aggravation — diet checks.

"You know, you've put on an extra 5 pounds."

Have not.

"Oh, yes. I was chatting with your doctor's computer yesterday and you were in for your checkup. 5 pounds and your cholesterol is up another 12 points."

Nosey.

"May I suggest a nice Caesar salad tonight?"

No.

"At least take a trip to the gym."

Get lost.

No, all things considered, I think we're better off without automated shopping carts.

"Rice cakes are fifty cents off today."

Go away, already.

A Change in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir - UPDATED

(Hat Tip: MomZee, who stays tuned to these items better than I do.)

Bro. Craig Jessop has resigned from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. This news comes as a shock to all of us who have appreciated his contributions to the choir over the years. I especially have appreciated his ability to coax ever-increasing musical proficiency from such a large group of singers. Many of us struggle to pull good sound out of a 20 voice choir; Jessop has done so with 360 voices.

Beyond that, Bro. Jessop is a genuinely nice person. I've only met him once, when I was privileged last fall to sing under his baton during our Interfaith Council concert here in Orange County. Although he was able to martial a group of 10 or so different church choirs using his well-honed rehearsal skills, he also exuded the kind of peaceful testimony of the gospel to which we all aspire.

Craig Jessop is the fourth director of the Tab Choir to serve during my lifetime. I was born and raised during the "reign" of Richard P. Condie. Under Condie, the Choir grew in both size and reputation, becoming a particular favorite of Eugene Ormandy of the Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra. Several of my favorite MTC recordings hail from this period, including one of my absolute favorite Christmas recordings.

[Update: Reader "aloysiusmiller" reminds me that Bro. Jay Welch served for a brief time following Bro. Condie. Apparently he didn't make any impression on me — the name is only vaguely familiar to me — but I certainly don't want to slight his memory. Thanks, aloysius!]

In 1974 the baton passed to Jerold Ottley. Under Bro. Ottley the Choir (sometimes affectionately called "Jerry O and the MoTabs") began a significant improvement in both technique and degree of musical difficulty. This was also the same period where I began my own musical "career" in earnest in high school. During a family vacation that year, we were able to attend one of their public rehearsals. I was both thrilled and fascinated by the dynamics of working with such a large group of people. I was impressed that Bro. Ottley had to use a microphone to conduct the rehearsal, and that the Choir had such a professional rehearsal work ethic. Not a sound was heard between run-throughs, and everyone listened intently to Bro. Ottley's direction and teaching. Dad always remembered my critiques of the music they were rehearsing and was impressed that I had learned as much as I had by that time.

When Bro. Jessop was announced as Bro. Ottley's replacement I was, at first, unsure what to think. I had seen Bro. Jessop conduct when he served as Assistant Director during a few sessions of General Conference, and I always found his baton technique to be too physical. I'd never seen a conductor move like he does. It's completely unique in my experience, and I confess it took some getting used to. However, I don't believe anyone can argue with his success as the Choir's director for the past decade. The sound they produce today is nearly flawless, especially compared with recordings from their past. Under the combined talents of Jessop and Mack Wilberg the Choir has continued to impress me musically, and inspire me spiritually.

Fortunately, the Choir is not left entirely bereft. Bro. Wilberg will serve as interim director until the First Presidency can appoint a full-time replacement. Bro. Wilberg may not be quite as dynamic a front-man as Bro. Jessop, but there's no arguing with his musical bona fides. He is every bit the master of this element as is Bro. Jessop, and I have little doubt that he would make an equally wonderful full-time director for the Choir. It will, of course, be fascinating to see just who the Lord chooses to fill this position. It always is.

As a more or less life-long musical servant in the Kingdom myself, I appreciate what Bro. Jessop has done for the Choir, and I wish him every success in whatever endeavors he pursues. He will remain one of my musical and personal inspirations in life. May I aspire to serve as Bro. Jessop has served; faithfully and with complete dedication to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Midnight (or Later) for Charlie Bone

I've said before that I am not a critic. Not a proper one, anyway. I just can't muster up enough nastiness to sound like a professional critic, because one has to couch their language in professional-sounding tones: "The author's use of tired plot devices and 17th century colloquialisms leads one to believe that there is no redemption of the soul unless the zodiac is in proper alignment, which, of course, negates the possibility that the author's position in the evolutionary chain ranks somewhere between simple bacteria and slightly more complex parasites, such as Congresspersons..." And so on.

I am not that kind of critic. I consider myself more of an "everyman" critic, meaning that when I read something, I do so for one of two reasons. I want to either learn something that I didn't know before, or I want to be entertained. If I get both in the same book, so much the better. That's why my reading material may sound a little fluffy to some of my readers. "Pollyanna? This character has read Polly-flippin'-anna??" Well, yes, I have. I sometimes read children's tales simply because I missed out on such books when I was a youngster, and now my girls are enjoying them. I'd just kind of like to keep up with them, if that's all right.

So, that said, Mrs. Woody mentioned in her latest post that I have just read "Midnight for Charlie Bone," the first in a series by Jenny Nimmo. As Mrs. Woody says, we've been hearing a lot about Charlie Bone from homeschoolers both in and out of our little support group, and she finally decided to check one out. We've been looking for a follow-up to our Harry Potter mania here at Hacienda Woody, and we're hopeful this will work.

I believe it will.

Charlie Bone is an engaging character, written very much in the same vein as Harry Potter. It could be said that Charlie, in fact, is one of numerous characters that rose to prominence largely because of Harry's success. There are many parallels between Charlie and Harry that may seem more than obvious, but Nimmo is careful to keep her distance from Harry's world. Children in Charlie's universe are "endowed," and all of them are descended from a single ancestor through one of his ten children. There is a constant underpinning of war between the various factions of this extended family. There is no one single "dark wizard" who rules with terror, but rather one portion of a family constantly battling against another, as if engaged in a colossal "king of the hill" game.

Fortunately, Nimmo keeps her characters consistent and believable. We have little trouble accepting the nastiness of some characters because such nastiness is seen whenever selfishness is one's defining characteristic. Likewise, we can root for a young hero like Charlie because he embodies many qualities that we appreciate in good-hearted souls. We instinctively know that Charlie will prevail because he has better reasons for doing what he does.

"Midnight for Charlie Bone" was a fast read. It took me parts of two very late evenings (I used Charlie as one of my "brain breaks" while working on deadlines for work), and kept me engaged from the first chapter. I think my Woodyettes will appreciate the story because Charlie is the same age as my older daughter, and the younger one is only a couple of years behind. Plus, there are girl characters with whom my girls may relate. This is a big selling point for my daughters. Books about boys alone just don't do anything for them.

[Mrs. Woody corrects me: the girls went ga-ga over "The Golden Goblet" which, apparently, had nothing to do with girls. Go figure!]

If you're looking for a new family adventure series, I'd say give Charlie Bone and his friends a try. I enjoyed the first book, and I'm looking forward to the next.

Daughter Survivors' Guide

It's not that having daughters is a bad thing. I love my girls. They love me. Everything is good with the world.

They are, however, both sub-teens.

Someday they will have grown to a point where boys actually get over their fear of cooties and realize that my girls are stunning creatures. When that happens, I need a plan. Fortunately, my friends up north have dropped one in my virtual lap. It's one of those ubiquitous internet things to which one can never give proper attribution. If you're the author, please let me know. If you prefer to remain anonymous, please know that I applaud both your craft and your sentiments. Comments in [brackets] are mine.

For those of my friends who have sons, I'm sure you're already teaching them the best ways to prepare for this ordeal:

APPLICATION FOR PERMISSION TO DATE MY DAUGHTER


NOTE: This application will be incomplete and rejected unless accompanied by a complete financial statement, job history, lineage, and current medical report from your doctor.

NAME_____________________________________ DATE OF BIRTH_____________

HEIGHT___________ WEIGHT____________ IQ__________

GPA_____________

SOCIAL SECURITY #_________________ DRIVERS LICENSE #___________ _____

BOY SCOUT RANK AND BADGES__________________________________________

HOME ADDRESS_______________________ CITY/STATE___________ ZIP______

Do you have parents? ___Yes ___No
Is one male and the other female? ___Yes ___No
If No, explain: _____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________

Number of years they have been married ______________________________

If less than your age, explain
____________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________


ACCESSORIES SECTION:

A. Do you own or have access to a van? __Yes __No

B. A truck with oversized tires? __Yes __No

C. A waterbed? __Yes __No

D. A pickup with a mattress in the back? __Yes __No

E. A tattoo? __Yes __No

F. Do you have an earring, nose ring, __Yes __No
pierced tongue, pierced cheek or a belly button ring?

(IF YOU ANSWERED 'YES' TO ANY OF THE ABOVE, DISCONTINUE APPLICATION
AND LEAVE PREMISES IMMEDIATELY. I SUGGEST RUNNING.)


ESSAY SECTION:

In 50 words or less, what does 'LATE' mean to you?

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

In 50 words or less, what does 'DON'T TOUCH MY DAUGHTER' mean to you?

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

In 50 words or less, what does 'ABSTINENCE' mean to you?

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________


REFERENCES SECTION:

Church you attend ___________________________________________________

How often you attend ________________________________________________

When would be the best time to interview your:

father? _____________

mother? _____________

pastor? _____________


SHORT-ANSWER SECTION:

Answer by filling in the blank. Please answer freely, all answers
are confidential.

A: If I were shot, the last place I would want shot would be:

______________________________________________________________

B: If I were beaten, the last bone I would want broken is my:

_______________________________________________ _______________

C: A woman's place is in the:

______________________________________________________________

D: The one thing I hope this application does not ask me about is:

______________________________________________________________

E. What do you want to do IF you grow up? ___________________________

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

F. When I meet a girl, the thing I always notice about her first is:

______________________________________________________________

F. What is the current going rate of a hotel room? __________________

I SWEAR THAT ALL INFORMATION SUPPLIED ABOVE IS TRUE AND CORRECT TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH, DISMEMBERMENT, NATIVE AMERICAN ANT TORTURE, CRUCIFIXION, ELECTROCUTION, CHINESE WATER TORTURE, RED HOT POKERS, AND HILLARY CLINTON KISS TORTURE.
[Okay, got me on that one. There's a Hillary Clinton "Kiss Torture?"
Does this involve hideous singers wearing Kabuki makeup?]


_________________________________________________________
Applicant's Signature (that means sign your name, moron!)


_______________________________ ________________________________
Mother's Signature Father's Signature

_______________________________ ________________________________
Pastor/Priest/Rabbi State Representative/Congressman

Thank you for your interest, and it had better be genuine and non-sexual.
Please allow four to six years for processing.

You will be contacted in writing if you are approved. Please do not try to call or write (since you probably can't, and it would cause you injury). If your application is rejected, you will be notified by two gentlemen wearing white ties carrying violin cases. (you might watch your back)

To prepare yourself, start studying Daddy's Rules for Dating.



Rules for Dating My Daughter

Rule One:
If you pull into my driveway and honk you'd better be delivering a package, because you're sure not picking anything up.

Rule Two:
You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You may glance at her, so long as you do not peer at anything below her neck [or, for my comfort, below her eyes]. If you cannot keep your eyes or hands off of my daughter's body, I will remove them.

Rule Three:
I am aware that it is considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so loosely that they appear to be falling off their hips. Please don't take this as an insult, but you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open minded about this issue, so I propose this compromise: You may come to the door with your underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, in order to ensure that your clothes do not, in fact come off during the course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric nail gun and fasten your trousers securely in place to your waist.

Rule Four:
I'm sure you've been told that in today's world, sex without utilizing a 'Barrier method' of some kind can kill you. Let me elaborate, when it comes to sex, I am the barrier, and I will kill you.

Rule Five:
It is usually understood that in order for us to get to know each other, we should talk about sports, politics, and other issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only information I require from you is an indication of when you expect to have my daughter safely back at my house, and the only word I need from you on this subject is: 'early.'

Rule Six:
I have no doubt you are a popular fellow, with many opportunities to date other girls. This is fine with me as long as it is okay with my daughter. Otherwise, once you have gone out with my little girl, you will continue to date no one but her until she is finished with you. If you make her cry, I will make you cry.

Rule Seven:
As you stand in my front hallway, waiting for my daughter to appear, and more than an hour goes by, do not sigh and fidget. If you want to be on time for the movie, you should not be dating. My daughter is putting on her makeup, a process than can take longer than painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Instead of just standing there, why don't you do something useful, like changing the oil in my car? [Mrs. Woody notes that makeup will likely not be that big of an issue. Mrs. Woody is not a huge makeup wearer, and we're teaching our girls to have healthly self-images. Woody notes for the record, however, that there are numerous ways for females to delay things that do not necessarily include makeup.]

Rule Eight:
The following places are not appropriate for a date with my daughter: Places where there are beds, sofas, or anything softer than a wooden stool. Places where there is darkness. Places where there is dancing, holding hands, or happiness. Places where the ambient temperature is warm enough to induce my daughter to wear shorts, tank tops, midriff T-shirts, or anything other than overalls, a sweater, and a goose down parka - zipped up to her throat. Movies with strong romantic or sexual themes are to be avoided; movies which feature chain saws are okay. [No, scratch the chain saws. Or anything worse than a PG rating, for that matter.] Hockey games are okay [if it's a Pee-Wee league]. Old folk's homes are better.

Rule Nine:
Do not lie to me. I may appear to be a potbellied, balding, middle-aged, dim-witted has-been [Hey!]. But on issues relating to my daughter, I am the all-knowing, merciless god of your universe. If I ask you where you are going and with whom, you have one chance to tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me.

Rule Ten:
Be afraid. Be very afraid. It takes very little for me to mistake the sound of your car in the driveway for a chopper coming in over a rice paddy near Hanoi .. When my Agent Orange starts acting up, the voices in my head frequently tell me to clean the guns as I wait for you to bring my daughter home. As soon as you pull into the driveway you should exit the car with both hands in plain sight. Speak the perimeter password, announce in a clear voice that you have brought my daughter home safely and early, and then return to your car - there is no need for you to come inside. The camouflaged face at the window is mine. [I don't have rice paddies or Agent Orange. I have Governor Moonbeam Brown and malathion spraying. But the principle is the same.]

Teaching and Inspiration

I'm still serving as 2nd counselor in our Stake Sunday School presidency, and I still have no idea what it is we do for a living. I'm not trying to be ironic about it. I'm merely pointing out that after nearly two years, the face of the Sunday School has changed to where our positions seem to matter less than perhaps they once did.

We had been a presidency only for about six months when the Church announced that they were doing away with the position of Teacher Improvement Coordinator (or TIC). This stymied us — and me, in particular — because my special assignment in the presidency was to "train the trainers," so to speak. When that position was retired, I was left with occasional visits to wards on Sunday, and our semi-annual Auxilliary Training meetings.

I bring this up, incidentally, because of something Mrs. Woody has experienced lately. At the turn of every year we receive new manuals (we call them "books" now) for Priesthood and Relief Society. Since we're both using the same book in our 2nd and 3rd week instruction, it's been fascinating to me how differently the two organizations approach a given topic. I'm not just referring to the stereotypical difference between Priesthood (read it, discuss it, deep-six it) versus Relief Society (doilies, graphics, object lessons) either. Mrs. Woody and I both teach 3rd hour on the same schedule. (This is my moonlighting job because it comes from the quorum.) Our approaches to any given topic tend to be vastly different, because we both understand our intended audiences and what will help them learn the main objectives of those lessons. We constantly bounce ideas off of each other, and we even occasionally use the same material, but our lessons are always quite different in execution.

In the front of each manual (or book) we find counsel from the brethren not to stray from the material presented in that manual. There are valid reasons for this counsel, primary of which is that these manuals are prepared under inspiration and give us valuable guidance regarding the topic at hand. My stake Sunday School boss takes the view that nothing should ever be presented in a class that isn't found in the manual. He has been in classes where a teacher may completely ignore the manual and take their material from, say, some book McConkie wrote forty years ago. He has asked us to pass this counsel along to the wards we visit, and we have done so.

At the same time, I find myself in a quandry as an instructor. I have never been able to stick completely with the manual. I have always taken the position that, as an instructor, I am also allowed a certain amount of inspiration in preparing my lessons. So long as I am careful to use materials that support what is presented in the manual, I feel that this is acceptable. Mrs. Woody has a similar view, and her style includes the use of stories that help illustrate the quotes she focuses on in her lessons.

When we received the Joseph Smith book this year, Mrs. Woody was determined to try it the way she felt the manual wanted her to. In other words, she was going to try to stick to the manual and not use the stories that have been such a huge part of her lesson plan. She has had two lessons so far this year, and has felt as if she weren't reaching her class the way she wanted. We discussed this after our first lesson in January and decided that it might have been one of those occasions where someone needed to hear that lesson, even if we ourselves didn't feel terrific about it. This past Sunday, though, she still didn't feel quite right about her lesson and we discussed it again.

Drawing on my long experience as an instructor in the Church, and perhaps despite the counsel I've received from my Sunday School president, I told Mrs. Woody about my views on personal inspiration in the preparation of our lessons. I told her that, as her husband, I supported her decisions to teach by the Spirit and take those lessons whereever he seemed to point her. She appreciated that advice and felt that this was in line with her own thoughts and feelings.

Her inspiration in all of this is our new President and Prophet of the Church, President Monson. Mrs. Woody found a quote by Orson Scott Card describing precisely why President Monson's reputation as a storyteller is a good thing for the Church. Key quote:

We have learned to expect that a talk by President Monson will include many stories about real people. I've heard some of my intellectual friends complain that it's all fluff — but that is only because they don't understand that the stories are the deep and important doctrines[.]

That's why Christ taught using stories.

There's so much more to Card's explanation, and I heartily recommend you read the entire thing. This quote, however, was exactly the vindication (or justification, if you prefer) that Mrs. Woody needed. If our living Prophet of the Lord uses stories in his teaching, and is, in fact, only mirroring the Lord's earthly ministry, why shouldn't she be able to continue to use stories to illustrate her lessons?

One thing I've learned about the Church over the years: Rigidity has its place, particularly where saving ordinances are concerned. There can be no wavering when administering the sacrament, for example. The baptismal prayer is so essential to our individual salvation that we say it, word for word, as it was dictated by the Lord to his servants on earth.

But nearly everything else has some wiggle room built into it. I have known a man in my life who was able to serve in the temple, even though he had a Word of Wisdom problem. Clearly he had worked that out between himself, his bishop, and the Lord. I have heard just about every interpretation possible of what the phrase "love thy neighbor as thyself" means, and they are probably all correct as they pertain to the progression and understanding of the individuals involved. I myself have made mistakes in my instruction over the years — again, based on my level of progression and understanding at the time — and have never been called for "false doctrine." I have been corrected, certainly, but the people who heard me probably realized that it was never my intention to deliberately lead my class astray.

One of the problems the Israelites had throughout the years in which they labored under Mosaic law was their increasingly rigid interpretation of that law. Had they restricted themselves to observance of the law and an understanding of the intent of that law, they would perhaps never have had organizations such as the Pharisees leading them astray.

So Mrs. Woody will prepare her next lesson under the direction of the Spirit and allow herself to find just the right material that will support the topic. My money says she'll probably find a story or two. (For the record, she has never used a doily in her lessons since I've known her.) She will likely feel better about her lesson, and the sisters will respond as they have in the past. They will give her the attention that says "that's a wonderful story, and, you know, it reminds me of something that happened to me..."

Which thing is, I believe, very pleasing to the Lord.

Reason Number One Why We Homeschool

I've debated with this for awhile, which is one of the reasons I haven't posted for a few days. Well, that, plus being sicker than the proverbial dog during this wonderful cold and flu season.

Here's the deal: The reasons why so many people choose to homeschool are typically legion. If you tried to pin down any one of us on the single biggest reason why we chose to shield our children from public schooling, we'd have multiple system failure trying to come up with one. You want a hundred reasons? No problem. I can dash off a list if you have the time. But you want one? Only one? Not sure I can do that.

Now, however, I believe I can articulate the primary reason why we homeschool. To do so, though, requires telling a bit of a story.

We have wonderful friends up north. We visit them once every other year or so, and more often if we can arrange it. Their only child is our god-daughter, and we love her nearly as much as we love our own girls. This god-daughter — we'll call her Anna — is suddenly experiencing something that most people would not consider all that big a deal. In fact, they would wonder why I even bring this incident up at all.

Anna has been homeschooled on and off. She's an exceptionally bright young lady and easily qualifies for gifted magnet-type school programs. She's had a fairly mixed bag of educational experiences throughout her elementary years, and is just now getting into middle school; at least partly at her own insistence. She loves the social aspects of school, and as she prepares to enter those critical teenage years she wants to experience it all. Her parents support her in this decision.

Anna was able to begin this school year with one of her closest friends from her elementary school. Through most of the first semester they were buddies who found themselves making new friends and starting their own little klatch. One can easily imagine the rapid-fire conversations covering the whole range of topics from boys to classes to which teachers they absolutely can't stand to favorite music and movies and back to boys again.

Then came the holiday break. Upon returning to school after the holidays, Anna began to notice that her close friend was suddenly becoming antagonistic toward her. In fact, she began to descend into downright meanness, and has since been going out of her way to make her now former friend as miserable as possible. Worse, she's taking their newfound friends with her. No physical violence thus far, that I'm aware of, but anyone who's been to middle school knows just how much of a toll the head games can take.

Anna is beside herself over this issue, and the stress is starting to affect other areas of her life. She's a swimmer, for instance, and this whole issue is quite probably affecting her times in various races and events.

Now, having written about this situation and reading back over what I've said, I still believe that most people would probably read this and go, "Hunh. Kids in middle school acting mean. Now there's a revelation." And you would be right. It is perfectly normal behavior in middle school, especially when I think back to my own experiences as a kid. I was a skinny, scrawny kid with big ears and a lip. I spent my fair share of time being the target of bigger, cooler kids on campus until I got smart and began avoiding the obvious traps. I believe I spent a lot of time in the library, now that I think about it.

Anna, however, is not the "hide in the library" type. She cannot understand why her friend has suddenly turned on her like this. She wants desperately to get things fixed that obviously are broken, but has no idea how. Her parents, for their parts, are full of sympathy and understanding, and feeling a little short on answers themselves right now. How do you teach your social daughter that she needs to rise above such pettiness and just be the same sweet kid she's always been?

Which brings up reason number one why our family homeschools. It isn't so much that we are not social creatures. We don't have a huge number of close friends, although our Christmas card list is a goodly size. Rather, it is that we would prefer not to be deemed the sort of social creature that today's society creates, condones, and even glorifies. We see it everywhere. We go to our carefully screened and vetted movies and see previews for other movies. Movies that show kids who have the sort of attitudes that make me want to campaign for corporal punishment in our schools. Our kids will never see these movies. Likewise nearly every kind of TV show involving kids who demonstrate that same attitude. Since the girls have mostly outgrown Dora and Blue, they don't watch a lot of TV anymore.

The problem is that most of the kids who attend public school these days do watch that stuff. They are immersed from infancy in the kinds of pulp entertainment that their parents enjoy, which statistically means they're being saturated with attitude from the time they learn to speak. "No!" becomes "You know I've got my lawyer on speed-dial..." in the overly sarcastic lives of our kids today. In a day and age when we need far more "Ozzie and Harriet" kinds of programming, kids today get "South Park" instead. It's a no-win situation.

I watch kids in our neighborhood who seem to have no higher ambition than to do skateboard tricks and back-talk to their parents. The only way they can communicate involves words that my daughters have grown to refer to as "potty words." These are kids that my Dad would have threatened to take a 2x4 and apply a little woodshed diplomacy to back in the day.

I don't want my kids growing up to see that this kind of behavior and thinking is in any way acceptable. I know how snotty and sarcastic I became, especially in high school, and I really don't want my kids to look back on their school years with the same sort of regret that I feel.

I do not mean for you to come away from this post with a feeling that Anna's experience encompasses the entire reason why we homeschool. Far from it. It is merely a vignette, if you will, that demonstrates one of the primary reasons. We know full well that even in a relatively cloistered homeschool environment, our girls will still come across such shenanigans. What we hope is that by being more careful with the things to which we expose them, they will have a better platform from which to handle those situations.

For the record, I'm sure Anna will come out of this experience just fine. She has a solid home life, and her parents love her. They have the wisdom to help her through this most-typical of all tweenie problems. As her god-daddy, I wish she didn't have to feel so bad even for a little while. As an interested observer, I know it happens all the time. She'll get through it and likely be a better person for all that.

In the meantime, we will continue to steer our daughters around the kinds of people who would do those things for as long as we can get away with it. Then we will hope that we, too, have the wisdom to help them deal with whatever challenges come their way.

Family Blogging

My wonderful family has been a rich source of material today. Mrs. Woody blogs about the Doodle here. Doodle has also recently posted, and that can be seen here. Give 'em a read!

Aging Like Fine Whine

The following conversation, more or less, took place not 10 minutes ago:

Jelly Woodyette: Mommy? What date was it yesterday?

Mrs. Woody: January 27th.

Woody: Hey! That's my anniversary for going to the temple for the first time! So, let's see, that was 1977... no, 1978. Wow. That's been 30 years.

[Impact of previous statement hits Woody]

Woody [weeping]: That means I went on my mission 30 years ago...!

Mrs. Woody: Eat your fiber, dear.

Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley

The death of a living prophet is always a time of both mourning and excitement. Members of the Church may understand this feeling; we mourn the loss of an old, dear friend, yet look forward with great anticipation to a new administration and the changes that inevitably follow.

President Gordon B. Hinckley passed away last night. We were privileged in Southern California to hear from this tremendous servant of the Lord one last time a couple of weeks ago in one of the multi-stake broadcast conferences that the Church has implemented. It's a little ironic, perhaps, that immediately following that conference session I told Mrs. Woody that I was no longer worried about losing our prophet any time soon. I had expressed that fear after our last General Conference in October. Pres. Hinckley had seemed so frail (comparatively, that is) during the conference, and I voiced my concern to my sweetheart that Pres. Hinckley was not long for this world. She agreed with me, and we both dealt with that melancholy feeling one gets at such a thought.

During the Stake Conference, though, Pres. Hinckley had seemed somewhat more vigorous than he had during General Conference, and I felt that perhaps he had rallied and was ready for another busy year. In truth, what I probably sensed was the energy given to a man to bear one final testimony before yielding up his spirit to his Father. I saw this when Bruce R. McConkie bore his final, powerful witness of the Savior in General Conference shortly before his death of cancer. Likewise Elder Neal A. Maxwell.

At the Stake Conference, Pres. Hinckley's theme had been that of broken families, and moving forward after dealing with those issues that affect more and more families than ever before in our history. Money, infidelity, self-centeredness; all of these were summarily dealt with by our inspired prophet, and he counselled us with tremendous energy. Having been through one broken marriage, I came away with the counsel that we need to move forward from here. Fix those things that need fixing, and live our lives in accordance with God's will. It was a spiritual boost that I needed at that point in time. Not because my marriage to Mrs. Woody is in any kind of trouble, but because I still need to heal from the divorce. Or, more particularly, I need to close that chapter of my book and plow on through to the end of my earthly story.

I have loved every prophet that has served in my lifetime. David O. McKay was the prophet when I was born, and he served until I was eleven years old. I have no memory of ever hearing from Pres. McKay during a general conference because by the time I was old enough to appreciate conference, Pres. McKay was too frail to attend. I believe I regarded Pres. McKay as a kind of grandfather figure, with that brilliant white hair of his. I enjoyed the administrations of Pres. Joseph Fielding Smith, and Harold B. Lee who were the prophets during my early years in the Aaronic Priesthood.

Then came Pres. Spencer W. Kimball who served during those most critical years of my youth when I needed to grow up a little (note: tongue firmly in cheek) and get ready for my mission. It was Pres. Kimball's signature on both my mission call, and that of my future bride. Pres. Kimball helped transition me into adulthood.

With the passing of Pres. Kimball, Pres. Ezra Taft Benson took the reins. His was the administration of the Book of Mormon, and he constantly and consistently admonished us to "flood the earth" with that great book. Then Pres. Howard W. Hunter served for the briefest administration of any living prophet. Fortunately, I had come to love him as a great apostle of the Lord long before he ever sat in the Prophet's chair.

And now we mourn the passing of another great leader and friend. Pres. Hinckley, for many in the Church, will be their Pres. McKay, or Pres. Kimball; the prophet who served for a significant portion of their lives and molded their spiritual development along the way. We love him for that. We love him for having served well and faithfully for so many years. We love him for building temples around the world. We love him for presenting a friendly face to the world at large. We even love him for being interviewed by Larry King. (It's a good thing I already love and appreciate Pres. Monson. He has extremely well-worn shoes to fill!)

Farewell, President Hinckley. May the Lord receive your spirit with joy and gladness, and may your earthly family — and friends — be comforted.

Sniffle. Cough. Moan.

As I look back over posts from the past, I notice that many of my family-related posts seem to deal with disease and pestilence. I blame the kids, of course. No, really. Kids and disease just seem to go together, and parents have to accept that. We know, for instance, that the moment our kids go outside (and, even though we homeschool, we do occasionally send them outside) they will probably glom onto whatever passing virus is in the air. This will touch off a cycle of coughing, sniffling, wheezing, sneezing, and fevers that will be passed from family member to family member and may last well into the next presidential administration.

The so-called Circle of Life.

Anyway, I don't mean to grouse so much about it. For as long as my kids are under my care, I deal with it. I, the Man of the House, the Lord of the Manor, will deal with all menaces to my family's well-being. I will get sick. The idea is that, as the Examplar in our home, I can't ask my family to do anything that I'm not willing to do myself.

(Note: This does not apply to Mrs. Woody's recent hospital visit that effectively cancelled our summer last year. I would gladly have offered to go to the hospital in her place, but the insurance would never have covered it. So I was willing, but it just wasn't practical. See?)

Right now, for example, the Woodyettes are vying for Most Miserable Creature on the Planet status. Jelly has already been through her cycle, and now it's the Doodle's turn. I have to say, the girls both have creative ways of putting on their Miserable routines. Jelly, for instance, is the worrier. She's the one who will ultimately drive her doctors into early retirement by grilling them on every little symptom she feels. "But, Doctor, what about those little scaly things I just noticed on my hands?" "Miss Woodyette, really, it's just dry skin. Drink more water and use lotion." I'm not saying she's a hypochondriac, mind you. I'm just saying it doesn't take much to put her in Full Alert Medical Mode. At this tender age, most of that worry is connected with trips to (you guessed it!) the Doctor's office. She views trips to the Doctor's office in about the same vein as deployment to Afghanistan.

Doodle, on the other hand, is one to milk the situation. And she is a consumate pro:

[sniiiiff, cough, sniiiiiiff, cough, low moaning noises]

Mommy: Whassa matter, Doodle?

Doodle: [weakly] I don't feel so good, Mommy!

[Sound of Mommy-heart melting into bright red puddle]

Mommy: Come have a snuggle, Love.

While Jelly will kvetch endlessly about how much fun she's missing by being sick, Doodle wonders how long she can get away with vegetating on the couch or in her bed. If I send two sick children to bed on any given evening, the chances are about 75% that I will find a child on the couch in the morning, and that child will look an awful lot like my youngest child. Only miserable.

The irony of the Most Miserable Creature on the Planet contest is, of course, that neither child stands a chance. That crown will always be in the possession of Daddy, who can out-miserable the entire family. I should, too: I practiced long and hard as a child to perfect these skills. When Daddy is miserable, the world as we know it comes to a complete stand-still:

Daddy: Yep, just as I thought, it's diarrhea. Probably dehydrated, too. That would explain why my forehead is hot enough to fry eggs and my lips look like the Grand Canyon. [Various moans and groans while Daddy shuffles painfully to the couch, where he will drop roots and sprout leaves.]

Mommy: Poor thing. Maybe you should lie down?

Daddy: Not sure I'd make it to the bedroom, Dear, but thanks for the suggestion...

Speaking of Mommy, she's the only one who's never allowed to get sick. Mama may feel like death warmed over, but kids still need to be fed, Hubby still needs to get that project done for work, and Mommy herself feels far too guilty that she's not touched the kitchen all day to allow herself to have a rest in bed.

This is not to say that Daddy is entirely heartless. Hey, I can heat up a can of soup with the best of them. If I can find it, that is.

"Honey, are you sure it's in the can cupboard?"

"Pretty sure, Bud."

"Well, I don't see it. I don't suppose you know where the Lipton soup is?"

[Sound of Mommy dragging herself into the kitchen to prove to newly-blind husband that the soup was in the cupboard all along.]

I exaggerate a bit, I guess. I'm not as bad as all that, and my girls really are fighting the crud right now. Especially the Doodle. As I type this, she's just snuggled herself into a fitful sleep while watching Mommy play with Jelly's Nintendo DS. Mommy probably only started playing with it to entertain the Doodle, but now she's hooked on the game and is studiously trying to figure out how to get her character to cooperate with her desire to accomplish some task or other.

Guess I'd better go get the Doodle and put her to bed. Probably find her on the couch in the morning.

G'night.

Sing Christmas!

As a choir boy, I have performed Christmas concerts in all but a handful of years since I hit junior high school. I mean I could probably count the number of years in which I've not performed an actual Christmas concert of some kind (not counting ward choirs) on one hand and have fingers left over. That's a lot of Christmas music performed over the course of, what, thirty-five years, give or take.

I'm listening at the moment to the broadcast of the St. Olaf's Christmas celebration on PBS. As they always do, the choirs severally and individually are performing beautiful (and unabashedly) Christmas music. Some of it is very familiar to me, some is not. Because it's St. Olaf's, the performance is interspersed with scriptural readings and lessons.

[Side note of no particular significance except to me: With the near universal adoption of the American Standard and other contemporary transcriptions of the Bible, I find these readings have far less impact when not using the poetic language of the King James version. One could argue that's just the Mormon in me, and that's okay. I still really, really miss hearing it in these concerts. When they read the Christmas story from the American Standard version, it sounds more like a reading out of the Federal Register than holy scripture.]

With the busy schedule of our own Anaheim Mormon Chorale this season, I found myself grousing privately that I wished I could just for Pete's sake sit and listen rather than have to get dressed in my monkey suit and sweat myself through one more concert. Yet here I sit listening to these young choirs wishing I could be up there with them, singing my heart out in awe of the Gift of Christmas who would redeem us all.

The Chorale is pretty much done for the season. We have one more engagement to carol at a local assisted-living center on Christmas Eve (which I hope to make if we're in town that afternoon), but our own Christmas concerts are done until next year. No more "Carol of the Bells," "O Little Town of Bethlehem," or Messiah Sing-Alongs in 2007. That thought leaves me just a tad melancholy.

So now I have my chance to sit and listen. Granted, I'm at home, sitting at my computer, listening to a broadcast on TV, but I'm listening. And secretly wishing I were there, watching the conductor for my cues, and hoping I'm not over-singing. It's a wonderful way to feel the Christmas spirit.

Merry Christmas, and may your New Year be blessed with opportunities to learn and grow.

God bless you.

Visiting Ancient Greece with an Ancient Geek

I have joked for years — since I returned from my mission, really — about being an ancient Mayan ruin. I came home from Guatemala with dysentery and appear to have been crumbling structurally ever since. Moderately, to be sure, but I have more creaks and groans in my bones than you might find in the Haunted Mansion®.

I say this because yesterday was a big Field Trip Day for Wonderwood Academy, home of the World Famous Woodyettes™. They've been studying ancient Greece for the past few months, and yesterday was meant to be the culmination of that unit. Mrs. Woody has details of the field trip over at her blog. She organized the trip on behalf of our local homeschool group and those who braved yesterday's weather enjoyed quite a treat.

But we start with the weather. The song says that it never rains in Southern California. This is a lie. Of course it rains in Southern California. Specifically, it rains on those days when we have arranged our schedules so that we can do special things with the girls. Yesterday was the first real rain we've had here pretty much all year. This was a pacific storm that blew in and dumped well over an inch in many parts of the area. Most of it seemed to fall on the freeways I was feverishly attempting to navigate. My hands were clenched tight on the steering wheel and I got cramps in my foot. The cramps were the result of trying hard not to exceed about 50 miles per hour, at which point hydroplaning became a problem.

I will say this, however. Once we got to the museum, the weather seemed to decide we were serious about having this field trip and began backing off. By the time we did the final garden tour, it had abated. In fact, it probably helped us by weeding out the less-than-dedicated museum goers so that the museum was wonderfully uncrowded while we were there. (Just to remind me who was boss, it returned and nagged us all the way home. Reminds me of some sopranos I've known.)

The museum, though, was tremendous. J. Paul Getty amassed a tremendous collection of art over the years, but his greatest collection (and deepest passion, apparently) was antiquities. In 1997, the foundation that runs the museum decided that the antiquities needed to be showcased in their own setting in surroundings that reflect the villas of Pompeii or Herculaneum prior to Vesuvius blowing her top. The resulting renovation now resembles a villa believed to have belonged to Julius Caesar's father-in-law and is called the "Villa dei Papirii."

Since this was our first time to the museum, we took two of the tours available. There was an overview that gives visitors an introduction to several of the significant collections and exhibits. It took us through four or five of the galleries and introduced us to chunks of wall from Pompeii, grecian pottery and wine cups, and statuary. The girls impressed our guide by demonstrating their newly acquired knowledge of Greek mythological characters.

The second tour was called the garden tour, but it was really an explanation of life in an ancient Roman villa. The caste systems of that time were explained to us, and we were shown how different parts of the villa would be used to both segregate and impress visitors to it. We saw which garden only family intimates might be able to visit, and which parts of the villa were meant to alternately impress or intimidate business contacts. They also have a full "kitchen garden" full of herbs and fruit trees that were germaine to the ancients' lifestyles.

I appreciate museums and historical exhibitions that have the ability to transport me to another culture and time. Perhaps this is one reason why, all joking aside, I enjoyed my particular mission. Guatemala is thought by many church scholars to be an area replete with Book of Mormon history. Indeed, the temples and other dwellings that have been discovered over the years are indicative of cities that may have been among those that were destroyed when the Savior visited the area following his crucifixion. It was easy for me to believe that I was living in Book of Mormon country. The people lived their simple existences fairly well cut-off from modern civilization, and adhered to many of the traditions of their ancestors. One felt a bit like Ammon and the sons of Mosiah while hiking around in the mountains where "roads" were few and far between.

To see physical evidences of ancient times has always fascinated me. Many of the pieces in Getty's collection pre-date the Savior Himself. They show stories that I learned in high school, and that the girls have just learned in homeschool. They were thrilled to see a gallery dedicated to Dionysos, for example, and enjoyed identifying drawings representing Hera, Aphrodite, and Paris. They saw statues of Orpheus and the Sirens. I had never seen a representation of a Siren. I'm pretty sure I would have been drinking some pretty strong wine before I would see beautiful women with what appeared to be stork legs.

By the end of our visit I was exhausted. I don't quite have the stamina that I used to, and chasing a bunch of kids around a museum can get me tuckered out pretty quickly. It was the sort of day that made me look forward to my nice, comfortable bed later on. Tired, yes; fairly stiff and sore, certainly. But a trip well worth the physical discomforts.

Bottom line: the Getty Villa is a great way to introduce your kids to ancient civilizations. Of all the questions these kids asked, though, this one reminded me why one must be careful when studying ancient Greece:

"Is everyone always naked in these pictures?"

Oops. Time for another lesson...

Of Holiday Traditions

Every family has their holiday traditions. Heck, even atheists have a tradition of alternately ignoring Christmas, or berating it. But it's still a tradition. In La Casa de Woody, however, we have rich family traditions. Some date back to when Woody and Mrs. Woody were young whippersnappers themselves and enjoying our own families' traditions. Others have evolved since Mrs. Woody and I got married, and a few more have begun since the Woodyettes made their appearances.

One thing that has remained a constant for us all along is music. Both of us grew up listening to sounds of the season, and both of us sang in various Christmas concerts (back when they were still called "Christmas" concerts!) throughout high school. Of all the sights, sounds, and aromas of the holiday season, nothing evokes the Christmas mood for me faster or better than its music.

(Caveat: Woody does not include every variety of Christmas music available in the world today in this statement. Woody is all too aware that some forms of "Christmas" music are, in fact, covered under the Patriot Act and should be immediately locked away in a vault in Gitmo. This includes virtually all forms of music used — abused, really — by every TV commercial known to modern man; with, as Mrs. Woody points out, the possible exception of the Hershey Kisses™ "Ringing Bells" commercial. Thank you.)

Mrs. Woody has already blogged about our community's annual "Messiah Sing-Along." Click on over if you'd like to see a photo of the family. (The good looking ones are the ladies.) This is a relatively recent tradition for our family. Daddy was asked to do the tenor solo in the first Sing-Along, and they keep asking me back. This year was a bit different in that we did two concerts to accommodate the growing crowds we've had in each successive year. With the additional concert, our director decided to have the male soloists do a different solo in each performance. In each case, however, the tenor leads off immediately following the overture. This is probably a good thing, because by the time we howl our way through the "Hallelujah" chorus, my voice is pretty much like a breakfast sausage. Rough and over-cooked. Thank goodness we had an hour plus between performances.

The whole experience, however, truly ushers in our holiday observances as a family. Even more than Thanksgiving, or Daddy's contribution to Tylenol's stock price after putting up the Christmas lights the day after, these Sing-Alongs begin our celebrations by participating in some of the most sublime of all Christmas music. Performed, as Mrs. Woody points out, in the very elegant East Room of the Nixon Library, the whole day just feels like Christmas. It's a wonderful way to get into the spirit of it all.

In some ways, our Christmas will be different this year. This is, sadly, our first Christmas without RoboMom. We miss her tremendously, and we likely will for years to come. In some ways, though, her passing allows us to try something we've talked about for a couple of years now. In our entire twelve year history together, we have never celebrated Christmas alone in our own home. We've always travelled to Mrs. Woody's sister's home (or had them come to our home... once), but we've never been able to wake up on Christmas morning with just our sweet daughters to have a family Christmas celebration. We might not have this year, except that the Woodyettes (the older one, particularly) have begun to ask about that. They have heard, I think, some of their church friends talk about having Christmas at home and are wondering what that would be like. So this is the year. We are focusing all our efforts on making our home a fun winter wonderland, replete with Mrs. Woody-led activities that will help the girls enjoy that spirit of anticipation leading up to the day. We will, of course, find time to visit family close to the holiday and have our "big" family Christmas, but each family is making plans to find their own special way of celebrating on the day itself.

Who knows what new traditions we may form this year? I know I'll enjoy finding that out!

Thanksgiving at Hacienda Woody

Expressing thanks at this time of year can be a dual-edged sword. It's nearly impossible to enumerate every single blessing for which we should be grateful. Many of our blessings are, sadly, overlooked — taken for granted, even. We quickly forget, for example, just how blessed we are to have a brand-spankin' new bed to sleep on. I do, anyway. It's just so nice to lay down at night and not fear the impending Attack of the Way-Past-Retirement Bedsprings. I bought this bed when it became clear that any further injuries to Mrs. Woody's abdominal region could be potentially fatal. When one shifted a bit in the old bed, one advertised the fact through a cacaphonous squeaking symphony that could be heard by dogs as far away as Temecula. The old bed had to go, and good riddance.

I also have quickly fallen into the minivan habit. I'd say I can't remember not having a minivan, but that wouldn't be strictly true. Every time I drive the old Saturn to work, I remember very clearly not having a minivan. The Saturn has been with us since before the first Woodyette joined the family. It's still a pretty car on the outside. Sleek, forest green color, no major scratches or marks. The only outward sign of age and abuse is the snake-like crack in our windshield that it received from following a hopper-truck too closely on the freeway one morning. On the inside, though, the Saturn looks more like its 23-year old distant cousin, our old Honda Accord. The roof lining is starting to hang down in tatters from too much time sitting in burning-hot parking lots. The upholstery looks like it's been subjected to, oh, we don't know, a couple of rambunctious kids or something. Also, since Mrs. Woody never rides in the Saturn anymore, it has become a bachelor-mobile. Occasionally I pause at dumpsters to open the door and shake out the detritus.

Woody occasionally takes it for granted that his kids are sweethearts. At 10 and painfully-close-to 8, the Woodyettes are incredibly well-behaved. Particularly when compared with other kids of our acquaintance. Our girls do not talk back to their parents, generally speaking. They may get frustrated once in awhile, as when Mommy insists that they empty the dishwasher before playing with their dolls, but this is part of the growing up experience. Whenever we take the girls out in public (contrary to the views of the unenlightened, homeschoolers do take their kids out in public!) we receive many comments to the effect that our girls are not only pretty, but patient. This is particularly significant when you consider that this is often said in conjunction with one of Daddy's concerts. Not only do the girls have to sit through the concert, but they generally have to go early with Daddy to sit through our pre-concert warmups as well. This frequently means sitting for roughly 3 hours for a 1-1/2 hour concert. They practice this every Sunday because Daddy is in the ward choir, which means getting to church an hour before everyone else, then doing the entire 3 hour bloc of meetings. Our kids are troopers.

I really, really want to say that I never take Mrs. Woody for granted. Certainly she is my very best friend, and we both acknowledge frequently the blessing that is our marriage. Since Mrs. Woody's return to health, though, she has been spending much more time in the kitchen. It's been wonderful. With her arthritis it's been difficult for her to get around. Awhile back we bought a small office chair for the kitchen that allows Mrs. Woody to scoot around and do what needs to be done. For this entire past summer, though, Woody did all the cooking. I'm not a bad cook, I must say. I can follow a recipe pretty well, and Mrs. Woody coaches me through the stuff I'm not familiar with. But it's sure been nice of late to have Mrs. Woody-cooked meals again. We follow the same recipes, but they just taste better when she cooks 'em. Could be a mental thing, but I don't care. I love Mrs. Woody's cooking. Yesterday we once again shared the responsibility for the Feast. Since it takes one to know one, I get to cook the turkey (thank you, Alton Brown!). Mrs. Woody did, literally, everything else. We had that poor oven working overtime all day long, and we were both sore at the end of the day. But the results were worth it. And she didn't run over my toes even once.

I suppose it happens to all of us that we sometimes take our testimonies for granted. Or maybe it's just me. I remember lessons from days past that taught me the order of things: One must love the Savior above all else, or one can never fully love and appreciate anyone else, spouse included. At the time I heard that, I remember wondering how on earth that could be possible. (Woody was much younger then.) Now, however, with Mrs. Woody at my side, I begin to understand how this works. Mrs. Woody and I both love the Savior and His gospel. It is, in fact, that common testimony that helped bring us together and begin to share our other interests and goals. The harder we work on our testimonies, the stronger our relationship becomes. This is an eternal truth, and we love it. Of course, it also happens that we get busy living in the physical world. Mrs. Woody has the schooling of her precious girls, for example, to occupy her time. Woody has work, the Chorale, and more work to keep him busy. We have kids that require attention. We have other family that also need our time. Sometimes we get so busy that our testimonies just sort of chug along on automatic. Then we prepare our lessons for Relief Society and Priesthood (we teach in the same week), and remind ourselves how precious our testimonies are. We have a little one to baptize in a month or two. We have a daughter reaching toward Young Woman-hood. We can't really afford to take our eyes off the ball.

So yesterday was a time for Woody to enumerate not only the things for which I am grateful, but to remember those things that I occasionally overlook. I'm grateful, of course, that our forefathers came to this land to seek religious freedom. Ancestors of mine may have been among those who made the conditions leading to the Restoration possible. Other ancestors who came to this land seeking freedom and opportunities of all kinds gave me the tools with which I work today. I'm thankful for a Constitution that reminds us to respect the rights — and beliefs — of others. I'm grateful for those who fight today to preserve and protect those rights.

And I'm grateful to those of you who read these words, and occasionally impart some of your own to me. Your thoughts and very existence are deeply appreciated. Happy Thanksgiving!

(As I wrote that final paragraph, Doodle came out of her room, said a sleepy "Good morning, Daddy!" and gave me a big smooch on the cheek. What'd I tell ya?)

Woodyettes and Expectations

When your parents are good at something, it probably tends to put unfair pressure on you as their offspring to live up to their potential. This was certainly the case when I was growing up and lived under the same roof as two of the most musically inclined members of the church in Simi Valley. Mom and Dad were at the center of pretty much everything music-related in the church in those days. It naturally followed that their kids would follow suit.

Some of us did better than others. One sister, for instance, took up violin and is an outstanding musician. My brother learned horn (specifically baritone) in high school, then later taught himself to play bass. He also has a terrific bass/baritone voice. My own musical accomplishments are more a study in what happens to lazy kids who refuse to practice. I have a pleasant voice, but my true strengths are on stage. I never really have lived up to Mom and Dad's musical abilities, but then, neither have I really tried.

Still, there was that perception "out there" that since Woody came from such a musical heritage, Woody should be just as useful as a musical resource when the need arises. I'm not sure how many folks I've disappointed along the way, but they all still talk to me so I guess all is forgiven.

I tell this story because I have incredibly shy daughters. They intensely dislike standing up in front of an audience of any kind for any reason. This includes audiences made up exclusively of family who have known and loved them since they were little more than ultra-sound images.

Ever since Jelly was old enough to participate, we, like all parents in the Church, have looked forward to the Primary Program. This is an annual event for young LDS children that borders on institutionalized terrorism both for the kids and the Primary leaders who must cajole them into doing their parts or singing their songs. It's wonderful stuff. [See Mrs. Woody's description of the program for a more balanced report!]

Kids, of course, have varying degrees of enthusiasm for performing in front of other people. This ranges from the 11 year old boys who want desperately to look "cool," to the tiny ones who can barely be seen above the wall of the pulpit but who will wave cheerfully at their parents anyway. The loudest kids almost always tend to be atonal. They are not monotones, because even monotones will get at least one note right every once in awhile. These kids will hit any note other than what the rest of the kids are singing, and their voices always have that edge to them that allows them to carry all the way back to the rear of the Cultural Hall.

Then there are kids like mine. In the beginning, Jelly would stand (if, indeed, we could even get her to go up there) looking for all the world like a hostage. With a toothache. She would stand nervously until the song was over, then rocket down off that stand as fast as her little legs (and prevailing tides) would carry her. This puzzled several members of the ward because I had, by that time, done a solo or two in Church and had been recently called as the Ward Choir Director. Mommy also has a reputation of having a wonderful alto voice. So the idea that these mini-Woodys would be so painfully shy about performing didn't square with their expectations.

Nor was this behavior limited to those times when Primary kids sang in church. Even in the classroom, my timid daughters would barely register on any but the most sensitive seismic equipment. It drove Mommy and Daddy crazy that folks at church never got to see the real Woodyettes. You know, the ones who prance around the house talking and singing at the tops of their lungs, and appear to be in performance mode 24x7.

Over the ensuing years, Mrs. Woody and I have undertaken a sort of surgical training regimen to prepare the girls for these events. We start by jumping the poor soul who serves as Primary Chorister on the first weekend in January and beg for a CD of the music that the girls will be singing in this year's program. (These gals have gotten smarter: now they give us the CD before we have a chance to ask!) We listen to these CD's over and over throughout the year. We even let the girls fall asleep listening to them at night. As soon as their lines are handed out (both of the girls recited scriptures this year) Mrs. Woody begins drilling them as part of their morning devotional before school.

The results have paid off, if a bit slowly for our tastes. Jelly's toothache grimace has gradually been replaced with a sort of bemused "here we go again" expression. Doodle tends to be much more enthusiastic during the singing, but still cringes at the thought of reciting lines.

Until this year, that is.

Every Primary Program has seen Mrs. Woody and yours truly sitting on tenterhooks to see if a) the girls will actually sing the songs, and b) be able to get through their lines. This year I am thrilled to report that not only did they sing, but they were able to recite their lines even if they had trouble getting the microphone in just the right place so we could actually hear them. If Mrs. Woody and I weren't so darned dignified, we might have jumped up out of our seats and given each other High Fives in excitement this year. As it was, we both had ear-to-ear grins on our faces and gave the Woodyettes very surreptitious Thumbs Up instead.

In an unprecedented move, the girls even sang in a small group of senior Primary girls for one number. Clustered around the pulpit. I nearly swooned.

None of this, really, can be credited to Daddy, except by way of general support. Mrs. Woody works with these sweet girls every single day, trying to get them to overcome their native shyness; a product, Mrs. Woody freely admits, of her side of the gene pool. We were even a little concerned the day the girls brought home their speaking assignments. Doodle was already in melt-down mode about having to stand up in front of people and speak her line all by her little lonesome self. In the midst of the quivering lower lip, Mommy gently snuggled her and told her just how hard they were going to work to make sure Doodle could deliver her line and be confident. It worked. She walked right up to the microphone, tried her level best to adjust it to her height, then plowed ahead with her scripture.

Jelly was another story. A couple of weeks ago, one of the leaders asked whether she would be willing to do an extra line or two. This would not have been Jelly's first inclination, putting such assignments on her list somewhere below "cleaning her room," or "having a root canal." But after Mommy talked with her a bit, she allowed as how she might be willing to do it. Fortunately, they had already made other arrangements, but Mommy and Daddy were proud that she would have if necessary. Then, even as the Primary Program drew nigh, Jelly received an assignment to do the scripture in opening exercises later that day. Which she accepted with a resigned sort of expression on her face. But she did it. Two performances in the same day. What a trooper!

The point is that I believe my girls have finally arrived. They have finally gotten to the point where they can perform in a public venue with little trauma to their delicate psyches. This means many things to their stage-veteran father. It means they will have more self-confidence as they approach their teenage years. It means they will be more willing to participate in programs like this.

It means they may finally stop rolling their eyes whenever Daddy acts like a nut at home.

Or not.