Yankees!

Yesterday, my favorite baseball team won the world championship! The New York Yankees defeated the Philadelphia Phillies 4-2 in the best-of-seven World Series to win their 27th world championship.

You can criticize me all you want for choosing the Yankees as my favorite team. But as far as I'm concerned, I'm a baseball fan free agent, seeing as there is no Major League Baseball team in Salt Lake City. The Yanks have the biggest payroll and offered me the best chance at happiness, so I signed a contract with them. I give them my allegiance, and they give me a bunch of championships.

I hope that this breaks open the floodgates for my other favorite teams to win championships. But I am afraid that my efforts at cheering for the Utah Jazz are ultimately fruitless.

At any rate, I post a link today honoring the popular folk song "Yankee Doodle." I particularly enjoyed seeing how many verses there actually are. It would take ten minutes to sing this song. Here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_Doodle

To make this song even more special for me, I oftentimes sing it to my 10-month-old son Parker, but I change it to sing "Parky Doodle" or "Sparky Doodle" . I am not exactly sure why I do this, but I do it all the time.

I do the same thing to my 2-year-old son Hayden, only I sing his name to the "Banana-Fana" song. Again, I don't know why this has almost become a daily habit.

First Live Session

Yesterday evening, my wife Jessica and I went to do a session at the Salt Lake Temple. I had previously done baptisms for the dead there, as well as sealings. And, of course, I was married there. But until yesterday I had never done a session downtown. Joining us were my parents-in-law Theron and Cathy, and Jessica's sister Rebecca and her husband Lance.

This was also the first time I had done a live session, where temple workers "act out" the roles instead of having the temple attendees watch a video presentation. I laughed to myself a couple of times as I watched these old temple workers do their job.

Overall it was a very pleasant and spiritual experience, and I enjoyed it very much. There is a special spirit around this temple. I love walking around Temple Square, looking at the gardens, the buildings, the sculptures, the visitors' center. Everything. It is one of my favorite places in the world.

In other downtown news, I had a couple of other recent 'firsts':

1. I stepped foot in the Church Office Building for the first time a couple of weeks ago. The company I work for--Utah Educational Savings Plan--was invited to participate in the Church's benefits fair. While up there on the 26th floor or whatever it was, I had the chance to go to the observation porch up there, and it is a great view of Salt Lake City and the entire valley.

2. As part of my new calling as the Assistant Scoutmaster, I accompanied the Boy Scouts to the Utah State Capitol for the first time in my life tonight. That is an amazing structure. I enjoyed and appreciated all of the artwork and murals that were preserved. It is amazing how much Mormon history there is in the state of Utah, and how much it is celebrated. When they decided to renovate the Capitol, it would have been easy for them to eliminate the Mormon ties there and make it much more "politically correct." But they maintained the reflection of the true history of the state, which was awesome.

Finally, a new temple has been announced for the state of Utah! In last October's General Conference, President Thomas S. Monson announced a new temple to be built in Brigham City. This city is snugly positioned between the Ogden and Logan Temple districts, and now they get one of their own. I believe this will be the 14th temple in Utah. I imagine that I'll be taking my family to the open house when it is completed, which should still leave Ogden and Vernal as the only two Utah temples that I have not been to. Maybe I'll go to Ogden's on the way up to the open house in Brigham City.

When they announced it, I couldn't help but think that my Grandma Davis's sister Aunt Bev and her husband Uncle Len were smiling up in heaven. They lived in Brigham City and we visited them a few times when I was younger. I really looked up to them and am happy for them and their children and grandchildren who all have very strong ties to that area.

Other temples were also announced last month for Concepcion Chile; Fort Lauderdale Florida; Fortaleza Brazil; and Sapporo Japan. I don't know if I'll ever visit these temples in my lifetime, but I guess nobody ever knows.