As soon as we got home and closed the garage door Isaac announced that: “I won the contest.” I asked him what contest he was talking about and he told me he won the contest with me about us going home.

Not to be outdone I decided to turn the tables on Isaac. (Yes, that’s dad, competing with his three year old in mind games.) I asked Isaac if the whole idea was to win the contest. He said that it was and so I asked if we could go back to church now that he had won the contest. He agreed. I quickly took the opportunity to put in my contacts (that I had forgotten before church) and then we went back to church before the chapel had even cleared from the meeting.

As we parked Isaac said that he wanted to go home and take a nap. I reminded him that he had already won the contest and had agreed to come back because of that so he went in and I took him to primary. I was feeling pretty proud of myself – I figured that I had won the contest after all – although I would not say such a thing to Isaac. Later I saw Laura in the hall between meetings and I explained how we had been able to come back to church so quickly because of Isaac winning the contest. After we got home from church Isaac announced to Laura that: “Dad won the contest.”

Apparently he recognized that he had been outmaneuvered even without me rubbing it in.

I was tasked with helping her get the job done. We started off very slowly as Mariah and I worked through a philosophical difference. I was trying to convince her to put shirts in one basket and pants in another etc. She wanted to put one outfit in one basket and another outfit in another basket etc. The final compromise was that she could place things together as outfits, but each basket would not be limited to a single outfit (not enough baskets). By the way, an outfit consisted of shirt, pants, socks, a jacket, underwear, and pajamas. Eventually she got bored of assembling the whole set so outfits became shirt and pants (the way I would have defined them).

As we got closer to finished Mariah discovered what I had been trying to tell her before, that she did not have the same number of shirts as pants. She discovered it when she had three shirts left and five pairs of pants to match them with. I was not sure how this situation would play out but Mariah had a great solution – she went to the buckets and pulled out two of the shirts and added them to the remaining shirts so that she had 5 shirts and 5 pairs of pants to form 5 more outfits.

After we got finished I told Laura the story and she insisted that I had to record this adventure with out little fashionista.

I hope you like your lunch. I packed it.

From Lyssa

To Dad

She left the note on top of the lunch in the fridge for me to find. It was a fabulous gift from a child with an amazing heart.

So without further ado, here is the whole family:

Enoch Miller

We had been expecting him for weeks since his two older siblings each came three weeks early – never again. My new motto is “be ready a month early and don’t plan on anything before the due date.” Enoch was not very late as he was due the last week of October, but he held on long enough to make it into November – boy month in our house since Dad, Isaac, and now Enoch all have November birthdays. Unfortunately siblings (under 14) can’t come to the hospital to visit so we can’t get a great little family picture like we had when Isaac was born. We’ll post the best we can get after Enoch gets home.

The day I was called was exceptionally exciting for me because I have so much respect for my stake president, President Taylor. To have the opportunity to sit with him and answer questions of worthiness and talk about spiritual things from the ward conference we had just had was thrilling. In the few minutes that we had before Laura joined the interview he learned that Laura had missed the stake conference where he was called as Stake President and President Eyring taught about the principle of gathering as well as missing the ward conference two weeks before our interview where President Taylor told of his experience when he was called and felt impressed that gathering was the message for our stake. When President Taylor learned that he volunteered to come to our house and teach our family personally that afternoon. We had been praying for President Taylor, Bishop Tueller, and the First Presidency and Apostles as a family ever since the ward conference (due to an impression I had felt at that meeting) and the children knew each of the people they were praying for except for President Taylor either because they had met them (Bishop) or through their pictures. They enjoyed meeting him so that they knew who they were praying for and Laura and I felt so much love as he taught us about gathering and actually gave us a copy of the talk he had been giving at ward conferences on the subject. What a great way to start our relationship with him as I will have more dealings with him through this calling than I could expect to have without it.

Anyway, I’m very excited to have this opportunity to serve. I have a great presidency with Wes Austin, Jon Nieman, and Alex Monson. Best of all I have an amazing quorum and get to work with a Bishop and Stake President that I really admire. Ever since I was first called I have begun to have greater feelings of respect and concern for the men in the quorum and I’m happy to be in a position where I will have the information which will enable me to reach out and help them in any way that they need it.

Laura made homemade hot chocolate in the late afternoon and we put it in a crock pot on “warm” sitting on a table just inside the front door. We placed an abundance of small paper cups there and then we went out for out round of trick-or-treating. I’m not sure we got it right this year, but the intent is for us to go early enough in the evening that we can catch the bulk of our neighbors home as we circle our block once – I imagine that over the years the kids will expand their range but for now once around that block in about an hour lets us see and talk to a bunch of people and is about enough for their attention. The hope is that this gets us home in time so that few if any local witches, ghouls, and goblins have come to our door before we return. Then we can see them (again in many cases) as they enjoy our warm offering as the evening gets colder. I can seriously envision having our children going out with friends and ending the evening with a hot chocolate party at our house.

I ask that my testimony of the Book of Mormon and all that it implies, given today under my own oath and office, be recorded by men on earth and angels in heaven. . . I want it absolutely clear when I stand before the judgment bar of God that I declared to the world, in the most straightforward language I could summon, that the Book of Mormon is true.

When I heard that I thought that I would be happy to stand with Elder Holland and declare, with much less public office, that I know for myself that the Book of Mormon is truly the word of the Lord tailor made for our day. I consider that to be absolutely public information recordable and repeatable by anyone who would care to record or repeat it. The message obviously touched others as it inspired Connor Boyack to create a website called Book of Mormon Witness where anyone may add their witness to that shared by Elder Holland. Hundreds of people have already added their names in the last three days since the site went live.

Let us tell you a few things about David Miller.

He’s wary of socialized healthcare. He’s in favour of weakening the federal government, and he also supports strict caps on income tax for individuals and corporations. Yeah, turns out David Miller’s a really conservative guy. How’d he ever get elected mayor of a city with such a strong lefty contingent? Oh, right. He didn’t.

Actually, he doesn’t even live in Canada.

David Miller of Bountiful, Utah, a conservative blogger (his site is actually a pretty good read), has politics very different from those of our own soon-to-depart Mayor Miller. But the two men do have one thing in common, aside from a name: they’re both active on Twitter, where Mayor Miller uses the handle @mayormiller, and David-from-Utah goes by @davidmiller.

This was how I was publicly introduced to the people of Toronto by the Torontoist. They picked up on the fact that I was being incorrectly linked in messages to/about the mayor of Toronto and thought it was funny enough that they asked me if they could do a story about it. It was a fun read – and I got a few random tweets out of it today – thought I’d share it here.

• 6 potatoes, cooked and grated or riced
• 1 can chili
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 cup shredded cheese

In a large bowl, combine potatoes, chili, sour ream, and cheese; spoon into a greased 9 X 13 pan. Sprinkle a light layer of cheese over the mixture and bake at 425° for 20 minutes, or until casserole is nicely browned.