WOW!

I think I can officially claim the title of the Biggest Slacker Blogger! Sorry. I will try to do better. I will spend hours catching up on all the things we have done in the last 6 months. But not now. Now it is 4:30 am and I am not sleeping. I have been up for hours. On the bright side, I have caught up on reading everyone's blogs. Now if I could only find the strength to post the millions of pictures I have taken and explain what is happening in them. It is a little overwhelming. Kind of like the mountains of laundry the seem to accumulate after a vacation or the piles of papers that the kids bring home from school and then put in strange places. I will do it...later. But, just so you know, we are all still alive.

Big News!!!

This was announced at 4:00 this afternoon. The new temple site is about 10 minutes from our house and we are sooooooooo excited! I think this means a change in family night plans. Maybe a little field trip to the temple site?



A new temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is to be built in Payson, Utah, it was announced today by Church President Thomas S. Monson.

The new temple will help meet the needs of a growing Church membership in the area and will ease the heavy use of the Provo temple, which is one of the busiest in the Church. The Payson temple will bring to 15 the number of operating and announced temples in Utah.



The property for the Payson temple is located on gently sloping ground at approximately 930 West and 1550 South on the southwest side of Payson, a mile from the 800 South I-15 interchange. The property offers scenic views of the area as well as easy access to the freeway.

The new temple will serve approximately 22 stakes from Spanish Fork to Nephi comprising approximately 78,000 Church members. Temple-going members have been driving to Provo or Manti for temple services.

Artists’ renderings, the size of the temple, groundbreaking dates and other information will be released as they become available.

“Temples answer those soul-searching questions of the purpose of life, of why we are here and where we are going. They are sanctuaries from the storms of life and bless the lives of members of the Church who worship within their sacred walls,” said President Monson.

Latter-day Saint temples provide a place where Church members make promises and commitments to God and where the highest sacraments of the faith occur such as the marriage of couples for eternity. Temples differ from the tens of thousands of local meetinghouses where members typically meet for Sunday worship services and midweek social activities.

The practice of temple building is rooted in both the Old and New Testaments, and from its historical beginnings to the present day the Church has constructed temples.







The first temple was built by the Church in Kirtland, Ohio. The first Utah temple was completed in St. George in 1877, followed by Logan in 1884, Manti in 1888, and Salt Lake City in 1893.

The Payson temple will bring the total number of temples worldwide already in operation or in the planning and construction phases to 152. A letter was sent to local Church leaders today regarding the new temple.

Mike's ABC Book

Last month Mike had to write an autobiography for school. This wasn't just a plain autobiography, but an ABC autobiography. He had to write something about himself that started with each letter of the alphabet. I thought this was hilarious. Hope you enjoy it!

My ABC Book
By Mike Abbott

A is for art. I like to draw. I especially like to draw birds. It all started when I found my dad's How to Draw Birds book upstairs in our bookcase.

B is for birds. Some of my first memories have to do with birds. I have had a bird since I was in preschool. They have all slept next to my bed.

C is for cockatiel, my favorite kind of bird. Besides pigeons and doves, it is the only type of bird I have had. For a while I had the same two birds but then one died then the next year the other one died. But now I have a new bird that likes me more than any other animal I have ever seen.

D is for dog. We got a dog last spring. It's supposed to be a toy poodle but I think it is a cross between a bichon and a teacup poodle. It's nice to have a dog but I hate having to take it out to go potty in my pajamas when it is 7* outside.

E is for emergency. One time when I was little I drank bleach. I know Eating bleach is an Emergency. But you have to understand. I was about 4 years old and I was thirsty, it looked like water in a cup. So I drank it.

F is for flight simulator. I like flight simulators. My favorite three are Google Earth, Flight simulator X, and one in Michigan where if you do a flip the machine makes you do a flip.

G is for gum. When I chew gum I hate to loose flavor. So when I chew I continually add sticks of gum until I get gargantuan gooey globs of gum.

H is for help. I have had to help my brother with some odd thing like today for example. I had to help my brother find his salamander (but the thing is, when I left it was still missing).

I is for icicle. One time when it was getting close to Christmas we had a huge icicle on the outside of our house. It was Massive! It was about 3 feet in diameter. So my dad climbed out the window and hit it off with the broom.

J is for jack-o-lantern. I made the coolest jack-o-lantern for Halloween. It had three coyotes in the desert howling at the moon. But unfortunately a deer ate it Halloween night.

K is for keyboarding. This year just like every other kid in 6th grade. I left the class typing at forty-one words per minute.

L is for Lucky. The name of one of my first birds. It was kind of interesting because when I first got the birds Bucky was mean and Lucky was nice. But when they died Bucky was kind of timid and Lucky would bite your finger off.

M is for Mike. My name. The thing I go by. I know 2 people named Mike. My dad's boss and some kid I met when I was little.

N is for nacho cheese. My dad puts nacho cheese on the weirdest things. He puts it on macaroni and pancakes. I think he even puts it on his hot dogs.

O is for octopi. Octopi is one of those weird plural nouns. They drive me insane. For example: rhombi, octopi, cacti, die and all those words.

P is for poll. When I take polls I fill out the weirdest answer. For example: I took a poll that asked whet I thought the moon was made out of and I answered moldy potatoes.

Q is for quilt. When I was in first grade my mom was making a quilt and I thought she was giving it to someone for Christmas or something. But in the end she gave it to me for my birthday and now it is my thickest quilt.

R is for reading. I like to read a lot. On a good day I get 2 hours of reading. I started Harry Potter 4 in first grade. I was sounding out in preschool and reading is one of my favorite things to do.

S is for scar. I have a weird tiny round scar on my right hand. It has been there for a really long time and I don't know how it got there.

T is for time. If I had one superpower it would be to stop time. For example when I got hungry at church I would go get something to eat and then walk back. Same thing with school. Or if I had to go clean I would do it then unstop time.

U is for university. I want to go to B.Y.U. for college because it is a really good school and they accept only the best students.

V is for violin. I don't want to learn how to play the violin. In my opinion knowing how to play one instrument is enough.

W is for world. When the guy from the Clark Planetarium came he changed my perspective on how small our planet is compared to our sun. Then he showed us how puny our sun was compared to the biggest star.

X is for Flight simulator X. It is my favorite flight simulator of all because you can pick your plane and it has all these cool features like you can see the landing gear come down and you can watch your flight from the nearest tower and you can see inside the cockpit.

Y is for yellow. I like yellow smiley faces but in other places it drives me crazy.

Z is for Zebra. You know how a lot of people say "is a zebra white with black stripes or black with white stripes?" Well when I was in first grade I noticed that zebras have white bellies so I think they are white with black stripes. So what do you think?

The End

The Mouse Is Gone!!!

For those of you who don't know, we have had an unwanted visitor in our house for the last couple of weeks. I discovered this on the Saturday before Christmas when I pulled out a pan to make breakfast. Inside the pan I found that lovely sign that tells you that you have a mouse living in your cupboard. You know what I'm talking about, mouse poop. I know it hadn't been there too long because I am in these cupboards regularly and it wasn't there before. Anyway, after that I started finding more of it the more I looked, and believe me, I was looking everywhere to try and figure out the extent of our problem. Luckily, the mouse seemed to be staying in the kitchen and only in the lower cupboards and underneath the stove. So we started setting traps. We put regular traps in the cupboards under the sink and next to the dishwasher where we found most of the poop and glue traps with a little bit of peanut butter on them under the stove where the regular traps couldn't fit and function. On Christmas Eve we had our first hit. Unfortunately I wouldn't call it successful. We keep our cute little dog Millie kennelled at night. On Christmas Eve morning I slept in and asked the kids to take Millie out to go potty. Normally this would not be a problem, however, during the night this sneaky little mouse found the glue trap and decided to escape rather than meet a cruel death. He dragged the glue trap out from under the stove and then when he figured he had no other option, he chewed his own leg off to break free. Since I was not up and in the kitchen like I normally would be, I did not see this problem. Millie did. She quickly found the glue trap with the very enticing peanut butter that was sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor and thought she had hit the mother load. I had to cut all of the glue out of her fur. It was not pretty. The kids were disgusted by the fact that Millie was that close to a chewed off mouse foot and refused to get too close to her until she had a bath later that day. After this incident we named our unwanted friend Tripod for obvious reasons. About 2 weeks later tripod found the glue trap again and escaped again leaving a good portion of his fur behind. Luckily I discovered the glue trap in the middle of the kitchen floor before we let Millie out. On Saturday morning Nelson was having a hard time getting the bottom drawer in the kitchen to close so he thought that maybe something had fallen back behind the drawer so he took it out and made quite an interesting discovery. The mouse had hidden almost a half a bag of dog food behind the drawer. I thought it was rather weird that Millie had been eating more food lately and then I found out that I wasn't the only one who had been filling the dog bowl. We spent most of the day Saturday pulling out the fridge and the stove and everything in the lower cupboards. I don't think my kitchen has been this clean since the day we moved in. Mike had the brilliant idea of setting the glue traps around Millie's food when we go to bed and then moving it in the morning. We did this on Saturday & Sunday night with no success. Today was another story. After we were done with family scripture study Nelson went to move the glue traps so that we could let Millie out for the day. He was a little bewildered when we discovered that they had been moved. Then he counted them and noticed that one of them was missing. We were looking everywhere for it. When we couldn't see it in the kitchen, Nelson and I started looking elsewhere around the house when we heard the loudest screams we have ever heard. Morgan and Josh found the mouse. They kept saying it was in plain sight right underneath the hooks in the kitchen. Nelson kept looking and couldn't find it. He even moved the coat that was in the way and still couldn't see it. He asked Morgan and Josh to come and show him, but they were still screaming and refused to come anywhere near the kitchen. I discovered the mouse stuck to glue trap and still very much alive hiding under the coat. Every time Nelson moved the coat out of the way he was also pushing the mouse out of the way.
Upon further inspection, we are pretty sure that tripod is the only unwanted guest. He had 3 legs and fur missing from most of his body. I was very glad that today was garbage day. He was carefully wrapped up in a plastic bag and deposited in the garbage can that was already out at the curb. The garbage man has been by and the mouse is officially gone!! While we are pretty sure that we only had one mouse here, we will continue to set the glue traps around the dog food for the next week or so just to make sure.