Date Night

Last night I went to the NGS, FamilySearch, and LDS Church sponsored "Celebration of Family History" (http://www.familysearch.org/ngs2010/)with Tyson. We made it into a mommy/son date. Grandma Candee has been working on five short films that were shown during the concert for months and months. The films were wonderful; I cried through all but one of them (I know, me cry? Shocking!). It will probably be rebroadcast on KBYU this weekend if anyone is interested.

The real heart-wrencher was the film about a lady from Hawaii searching for her grandmother Emma. Emma had been sent away to a leper colony on an isolated island when she was 24 years old. There she met and fell in love with her husband. Together they had six children, all of whom were immediately taken from them for fear they would contract Leprosy. They never knew what happened to their children. This lady went to the island and searched the graveyard three times. It was this third time that she found the records and her grandparent's headstones.

Tyson's favorite was a film about a family who knew they had Scottish heritage, but were never really that into it. One day their seven year-old comes in and announces he wants to play the bagpipes! Of course he is horrible at first, but over time he becomes really good. They start delving into their history. The daughters take up Highland dancing, one learns Gaelic. It brings their family closer together. After the film the Mo Tab sang "Amazing Grace" accompanied by four bagpipers, the fourth being Jared McCloud (the former seven year old, who is married and has his own children now to pass their Scottish heritage onto). The audience loved it. Standing ovations all around!

President Eyring shared the cutest story about how a family history search resulted in him meeting his wife. David McCullough (author of John Adams and 1776) spoke and soapboxed. It was wonderful, if not a little too long for an eight year old who usually goes to bed around 7:30 pm. He loved "Grandma's movies," but resorted to reading his Jigsaw Jones book during Mr. McCullough's talk. He finally fell asleep against Grandma's shoulder about twenty minutes from the end. I took pictures of him asleep with my phone, but haven't a clue how to get them off.

All the people featured in the films were present for the concert. Over the course of filming them, Mom and Dad played host to a few. It was so neat to meet them and hear their stories. The lady from Hawaii was in love with Tyson's hair and decided he was the politest child ever! He makes a good impression, but wait until you get to know him! Evidently, he waited very patiently for her while she was in the bathroom and told her all about his spelling test today while they were waiting for Mom. He is the sweetest boy! We had such a fun time, but with the bad traffic and scary storm coming over the Point and through Highland, we didn't get home until almost 11:00. Totally worth it to hang with Tys for a night!