Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point

This has been a month of conferences. It started with the Women's session of General Conference on March 25th, followed by General Conference on April 1-2, then Stake Conference on April 14-15. Why does that matter? I'm the Stake Technology Specialist (STS) and we had to install a new satellite broadcast system in our stake to handle General Conference in three languages (English, Mandarin, and Korean) and broadcasting stake conference from the stake center since we didn't have access to the Logan Tabernacle. It has been a busy time.

In the movie "Support Your Local Sheriff " James Garner keeps reminding the town, "Remember, I'm on my way to Australia". Of course, he never gets there, but that is the way we feel. We are ready to move, but have no idea where. We continue with life but we are "on our way to Australia". On the Friday before General Conference we decided to attend a mission reunion for the Canada Toronto Mission held in Sandy. We stopped to look at houses in the Daybreak area of Salt Lake. We went on to look at houses in Saratoga Springs (where they announced a new temple) and Eagle Mountain on the west side of Utah Lake. All the houses seem to be too big and expensive for us or they are too small to fit the piano and organ. We finally made it to the missionary reunion, but only knew a few people.

Sister Wheeler with Sister Phillips

We really enjoyed General Conference. We got a message from Lincoln, our friend from Brazil. He is now the manager of ICS in Brazil and had training in Salt Lake. He said he would like to visit us in Logan for the Sunday morning session of conference. We warned him how far it was, but he came anyway. When he finally got here he agreed that it was quite a distance from Salt Lake. We really enjoyed his visit.

Lincoln in our home in Logan

Diane has been very busy with the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, (DUP) being an officer in both the company and the camp. She had a lesson this month on Pioneer Clothing. We both learned a lot as she prepared a PowerPoint on the subject. As part of the preparation we went to the DUP museum in Logan to see some of the pioneer clothing.

Pioneer dress

We have had a lot of change of weather this month, from rain and snow to cloudy and sunny skies. We had the chance to start working in the garden. One day I just had to get out so we took a hike (more like a walk) in Green Canyon. It was good to get out in nature.

Nature resting on the bench

Diane heard of a gluten-free fair that was being held in Orem on Saturday (April 15th) so we decided to make it an overnighter. We left on Friday morning and went as far as Payson, Utah - still looking for potential places to move. We still like Payson as a possibility to live. We saw the Peteetneet School, an art center  and museum named after Peteetneet, a chief of a band of Timpanogos Indians who lived in the area. On one occasion my GG-grandfather, George W. Bean found himself surrounded by about 40 hostile Ute Indians ready to kill him when "old Chief Peteetneet rushed to me on his horse, bent over me and shielded me, all the time pleading for my life".

Peteetneet School

 We drove through Elk Ridge where there are some new house developments. We also went to Woodland Hills, close to the mountains. There are some beautiful areas, but may be too expensive for us.

Orchard in bloom

Deer in Woodland Hills

Valley view

 We did look through some homes in Elk Ridge. We liked some of the floor plans, but each had an unfinished basement and was over our budget.

Model home with a loft

 On the way back we stopped at Krishna's Lotus Temple. It was an interesting building in beautiful southern Utah County.

Elephant guard

Krishna's Lotus Temple

 There were several animals in the back, including parrots and llamas (not the Dali Lama).

Parrot

Are we in the Andes?

The lotus arch

Hope she's not converted

 We returned to Provo via Spanish Fork and Springville. There must be a lot of wind in Spanish Fork.

Spanish Fork windmills

 We had a chance to walk around the BYU campus before the Easter Conference in the Joseph Smith auditorium. We met Steve and Lisa there for a two-hour devotional sponsored by the Religious Studies Department at BYU featuring three speakers, Hank Smith, Camille Fronk Olsen, and BYU president Kevin Worthen.

Easter egg hunt sponsored by the BYU choirs. Can you spot the egg?

Gem exhibit in the Eyring Science Center

 We stayed the night in the Fairfield Inn in south Provo. The next day we went to the gluten-free fair on the UVU campus in Orem. Deidra (Lisa's daughter) has a daughter with celiac disease so they went there too. There were a lot of free samples, some of them good.

Deidra, Lisa, and Diane at the fair 

On the way back we stopped by the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point. We had heard about it, but had no idea how grand it was. 

Two for tulips

Trail of grape hyacinth 

Girl in the stream

The rose garden

Pillars on the hill

In the Secret Garden

Time of repose

 Part of the gardens was "The Light of the World", a series of statues of the life of Christ. This was ideal for the day before Easter.

The woman at the well

Mary and Martha

Gethsemane

 They even had a Sacred Grove.

The First Vision

 It was a large garden with many different areas, such as a formal Italian garden.

The Italian garden 

Water cascade

 One area was a set of waterfalls. It wasn't as spectacular as Iguaçú Falls, but it was very nice.

The waterfalls

Above the falls

Origami for good luck

We really enjoyed our visit to the Tulip Festival.

Goodby tulips

We needed to rush back to Logan to prepare for stake conference. We were able to successfully distribute conference to several classrooms around the stake center and webcast the conference to another building in the stake.