We had our ultrasound this week and we are having a girl!  She has her eye on you in picture 3. We also started packing for our journey back to Houston next week. It's going to be a busy summer.

Helloooo, is anybody out there?

Restoration is Difficult to Counter

Quint and I were talking about how many people seem to be leaving the church and I thought of this article from the Deseret News tonight.  It is written by Daniel Peterson.  I think it is very interesting.

"As I see it, the single most persuasive secular argument for the authenticity of the founding events of the Restoration isn't actually a single argument or line of evidence at all.  It's the fact that no counterexplanation yet proposed for those events accounts for all the relevant data nearly as well as Joseph Smith's own story does.
If his claims aren't true, the fundamental question to be asked regarding Joseph is whether he thought they were or knew they weren't.  In other words, was he in some sense 'crazy' or was he consciously deceptive?
Let's take those two options in that order.
Joseph Smith might have been hallucinating.  That's conceivable.  However, raving lunacy scarcely seems to explain the lengthy, coherent and complex Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, the ordinances of the temple and creation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
More to the point here, though, is that many others - e.g., the three Witnesses, the Eight Witnesses, Sidney Rigdon, Mary Whitmer, Emma Smith, Lucy Mack Smith, his siblings William and Katharine, etc. - shared revelatory experiences with him, saw and 'hefted' the mysterious objects he possessed, and the like.  Were all of them mad too?  Or were they just lying?
Already, the notion that Mormonism can be explained simply as Joseph Smith's hallucination desperately needs one or more major supplements.
Moreover, abundant data about those other co-witnesses demonstrates them to have been sane, sincere, respected, and respectable, and though at considerable personal cost, faithful to their testimonies.  And there is no evidence - apart from his claimed revelatory encounters themselves - to indicate that Joseph Smith was prone to hallucination.  But to assume in advance that his revelations were hallucinatory is to smuggle into the evidence the very conclusion under dispute, which is a manifest case of what logicians call 'circular reasoning'
Suppose instead, that Joseph Smith was consciously lying.  How can this be squared with his surviving personal writings not intended for publication, including journal entries and letters to his wife and children, which breathe sincerity on every page?  How does it account for his willingness to suffer greatly (in Liberty Jail, for instance, and during Zion's Camp) and ultimately to die for his claims?
And again, how would Joseph's supposed dishonesty account for all of those co-witnesses?  How, exactly would it explain their experiences?
Let's suppose that he created bogus plates to fool the eight witnesses.  (There's not a shred of evidence for this.)  How would fake plates account for the other exotic objects seen by the Three Witnesses, let alone explain their vision of an angel and their hearing the confirming voice of God?
So let's assume, instead, that Joseph somehow induces hallucinations in the Three Witnesses.  How would their alleged visions account for mulch more matter-of-fact-mid-day experiences of the Eight Witnesses?
At least two very different explanations have to be invoked in order to explain the witness testimonies.  Joseph requires the skills of a cunning metalworker (his own, or those of a co-conspirator) and, at the same
 time, he must be capable either of creating remarkable special effects 150 years before George Lucas or of unerringly selecting people from his small rural community crazy enough to obediently see precisely the visions he needed them to see.
No evidence supports either idea.
While the Book of Mormon was still only a rumor, critics mocked what was sure to be a silly and obvious fraud produced by 'that spindle shanked ignoramus Joe Smith.'  But when the book actually came from the press and proved to be long, complex and remarkably dense, most soon shifted to confident assertions that its source manuscript had been stolen from the classically educated Solomon Spalding, a lapsed Congregationalist minister who had died in 1816.
A tortured historical narrative was fashioned, purported to explain how Sidney Rigdon, for whatever reason, stole the Spalding manuscript and used it to make Joseph Smith a 'prophet.'  Little or no evidence supports the story, quite a bit of evidence supports the story, quite a bit of evidence (including very sophisticated recent statistical analysis) renders it deeply improbable and only desperate necessity would ever have given rise to it in the first place.  But the Spalding theory nevertheless limps on in certain circles.
Even so, it doesn't even begin to explain the Witnesses, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and a host of other matters."

The big 0-5

We didn't have a party for Wyatt this year, so I wanted to make a special cake for our family celebration.  I came up with this idea for robot cupcakes based on something I saw online.  They're not perfect, but I think they came out pretty cute.

Wyatt liked them!

Wyatt did really well opening his gifts.  I only wrapped one, and after he tore right into it, I wished I hadn't put the others in bags!  He enjoyed opening sidewalk chalk, a couple of books and a bubble blower.

The weather was so nice, he got to take his bubble blower outside and play with it until it ran out of juice.

He also got a remote-controlled toy train which he loves to play with.  Wyatt did really well with everything until it came time to blow out the candles.  I thought he would blow them out himself this year, but he wanted some help.

Too much excitement this week

There has been a bit too much "excitement" going on at our house this week. First, I was eating a piece of roast and got some wedged between two of my teeth. When I used dental floss to get it out, my tooth also cracked. I went to see Dr. Theurer to get it fixed, and he had to do a fair amount of drilling to repair it. It still doesn't feel quite right, but it doesn't actually hurt anymore, and he said that he will re-check it next month when I go in for my regular check-up.

Then, today (Thursday the 16th), the twins were supposed to have a short day which means that they go to preschool an hour earlier than normal. I completely forgot, so they were an hour late to class. Turned out that while I was there dropping them off, Liam had an accident on the playground and fell from the slide and hurt his arm. The office called home and Scott told them that I was dropping off the twins, so the secretary came and found me. If you didn't know, Liam has quite a high pain threshold. So, for him to still be crying loudly when I got to the office close to 10 minutes after he fell told me that there was more to it than just a bump. I signed him out and took him to the Insta-Care. We had to wait a while to go back, and by then he had calmed down and was moving his arm without showing much pain. I began to wonder if I had over-reacted, but the doctor wanted to do x-rays anyway. Good thing, since it turns out that he had broken BOTH bones in his arm, about 1 1/2 inches from his wrist. They put him in a "soft" cast (essentially a splint) and told me to make him an appointment with an orthopedic specialist for consultation and casting. Hopefully, there won't have been any serious damage to the growth plates and 6 weeks in a cast will take care of the problem. We find out on Wednesday. I was annoyed that we have to wait nearly a full week, but apparently it needs to be long enough for some healing to have begun for them to tell if the growth plate was affected.

Fellowship #2

Remember how a couple of years ago, I posted an April fools day joke on the blog about Jake doing a second fellowship? Well, this ain't no joke! Jake has decided to do a second fellowship in pediatric cardiac anesthesia. He has interviewed at Stanford and will interview at Baylor tomorrow. Earlier tonight (while sitting in his hotel room prepping for his interview with Baylor) he got a phone call from the good people at Stanford offering him the fellowship position! He will see how things go in Houston before he makes any decisions, but getting the offer from Stanford is a huge thing for us! Congratulations, Jake!

Here's your perfectly normal pancakes, kids!

Have you seen this video?  I think it's hilarious!  A group of brothers reenact stories from their childhood - with their own kids as the narrators.  They have several videos, but I think this one is the funniest.  Enjoy!

Mama's Preachin'

Every once in a while I come across an article that I want to share and I think the blog might be the best place and way for me to do it. So, here goes. This is part of an article that appeared in the Deseret News in June. It was written by Greg Kratz and I like his thoughts. The title is "No vacation time? Trap family in a minivan and drive." His family took a 25 hour road trip to Houston, something Leigh & Jake are very familiar with.

"...As I drifted in and out of sleep, I pondered the fact that I always dread these long road trips while we're preparing for them. But I've also learned that, if you really want to break out of your work rut and get in touch with your family, there's nothing like spending 25 hours together in a vehicle hurtling across fairly barren countryside to help you reconnect. Here are some things I've discovered on our trips:

*Our children genuinely enjoy spending time with each other. They travel well, and they have a great time making up games, watching movies and singing along to the music on the radio. They also fight every now and then, and they sometimes get a bit whiney.

*Our children also enjoy spending time with their parents. During the hours at night as they drift off to sleep and in the morning as they start to wake, we're able to have quiet conversations with them. We are a captive audience, which is rare in our busy lives...it's a long trip and we're all in it together, so we take time to talk.

*I love talking with my wife. When all of the children are asleep, and we're trying to keep each other awake, we chat about all kinds of things. Over many years of road trips, we've made some major decisions during discussions by the dashboard lights. I wouldn't trade those conversations for anything.

*It's cool to watch your children sleep. I think all parents do this when their kids are babies, but it's amazing to watch them when they're older too...all peacefully resting next to each other, breathing softly, as the light of the moon streamed in through the windows of the van and gently touched their faces. It was a beautiful sight, the kind that makes you feel all is right with the world.

*Of course, you also learn practical things on long trips, such as: gas is really, really expensive; Twizzlers are good snacks for keeping you awake; satellite radio is a godsend when you're in eastern New Mexico and west Texas; it's OK to let your wife splash water on your face if you look drowsy while driving; at least one child will always decide he or she needs to go to the bathroom five minutes after your last stop; and nothing will put you in motion faster than hearing 'I think I'm going to throw up' as car sickness sets in at the end of a long day on the road.

*Most of all, you learn that it's OK to be in a remote location with your family-and without cell service-every now and then. Work will still be there when you get home. It always is. But the children will get older and leave some day, and you'll regret it if you missed such moments.

The fact is, work/life balance doesn't just happen. You've got to search for it. And if you look hard enough, sometimes you'll find it while sitting in a minivan, a box of doughnuts on your lap and your family snoozing all around you."

Hope you enjoyed this, love, Mom

Family Portrait

Wyatt needed a family picture for school and it turned out so well I thought I'd share.

Board Exam

Jake passed his board exam (you know, the one he took while we were in Utah?) and we couldn't be prouder. Next year he can take the oral boards and then he will be a board-certified anesthesiologist! Wa-hoo!