Movie night! We watched the movie 17 Miracles about the early LDS Saints that traveled to the Salt Lake Valley. Really good movie! We also made my mom's famous Krazy Korn! Yummy! It was a great movie to watch with our kids. Jaron was able to go on our Pasco Stake Youth Trek and pull a handcart. He came away from watching the movie saying that he thought his Trek was difficult.....but not anymore after watching what the early pioneers came through. We talked about some of our family ancestors that were pioneers from my side of the family that pulled handcarts into Salt Lake. How both sets of my grandparents were pioneers in settling the Columbia Basin by farming and raising families in an area that was just beginning. And for Toby's family in other ways.....Toby's family came to America not very long ago - his great grandfather Olaf Rasmussen left Denmark when he was only 12 years old -after which he came to America. He was a merchant marine for quite some time, and only sailed under canvas and was fluent in 5 different languages. He married, and had 11 children with his wife Constance-in New York and settled in New Jersey. One of their sons Robert is Toby's grandfather. Toby's father Michael was born in New Jersey. I have seen video of Toby's grandfather talking in a thick New Jersey accent - They were not members of the church, but he was a pioneer in Toby's family to come to America, and later Toby's father and mother joined the church. And I thank Heavenly Father for Toby's ancestor's every day for him to have parents that joined the church and to have had the courage to come to America and for Toby's parent's to have had the courage to join the church after they were married and had already started their family. Toby's dad grew up in New Jersey, and later moved to California, married Toby's mom in California and joined the church 10 years later and then moved to Colorado - where Toby was born. We talked about the importance of honoring our ancestors for their sacrifices on our behalf, and for their faith and desire to follow the Lord. To take pride in their last name RASMUSSEN - and live their lives to honor our family heritage and our God. To thank Heavenly Father every day for the privileges and blessings we have to live in America, and have the Gospel in our lives, and to never take it for granted. We have tried to tell our children stories of their ancestors, and to have an appreciation for their sacrifices. To live our lives in a way to honor them, and our own family and our Heavenly Father. We talked about how we are required today to make sacrifices for our own family and for our Heavenly Father, and how we should be aware of our choices and actions - and how we live our lives; because our choices and actions not only affect ourselves, but our family and those we love. We talked about how we want our ancestors after us to remember us - that our daily choices add up to a legacy in the long run, and we don't have that much time on earth, and how important it is to spend our time where it matters the most. Toby and I have done a lot of genealogy work for his side of the family. We have researched and submitted more than 200 names to the temple and we along with some of his family members and friends have done all of the baptisms, endowments, and also sealed Toby's father to his parents-and sealed both sets of his grandparents to one another. We have families to seal together now. It has been a wonderful experience for us. Most of his family comes from Denmark, and his mom's side comes from Norway. There are some Irish ancestors as well. We went back to the early 1700's.
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