Brandon Moon

This last weekend my wife and I attended a family reunion on my mother’s side. Since my mom has been helping out at Brighton girls camp for years, we were able to use the facilities for our reunion. We’ve done this for a number of reunions in the past, but it’s always a lot of fun. They have a zipline and some other ropes-course activities. One was particularly fun, called the “perch.” Basically it’s a tall tree that you climb, then stand on top of. Oh, and the top rotates. You’re supposed to jump off and hit a bell that’s hanging just a little ways off. It was a lot of fun.

We got to drive up with my brother and his two adorable kids. One of them, Benson, always keeps us entertained with his antics. You can read more about them on my wife’s blog. He sure was excited to go camping.

I love going camping with my sweetheart! Even if said camping is really in a cabin, and said cabin is full of all of my family. Besides, my nieces and nephews are super cute. It’s funny to see my siblings trying to put them all to bed in the same cabin. Adri was quite distraught when I told her I was going to sleep in a bed next to my wife instead of next to her.

In short, it was a very fun weekend. I look forward to the next reunion in Bear Lake!

Last weekend, after the Lavender 5k Run, my wife and I headed up to Joe’s Valley by Fairview, UT where my brother’s in-laws own a cabin. We went to see my two twin nieces get baptized. It’s about a two hour drive, so we were rushing home from the 5k to get showered and back on the road, since the baptism was planned for 12:00. We were on the road just a bit after 10:00, but we seemed to be moving along OK and I wasn’t worried.

It was probably 11:00 or 11:15 when we pulled through Fairview and headed up the canyon. I figured we were doing great on time, but I was careful to check the map my brother had given me. He had described the next turn as a tricky one, so I wanted to make sure I got it right. I mentally added the distance to my trip meter and stored the number in my brain for future reference.

As we headed up the canyon and the my trip meter got close to the calculated distance, I started to look for a turn-off onto a dirt road, as described. All I found was this:

In case you can’t tell, that’s a small four-wheeler style road that goes through a creek and up a steep hill. Just pulling onto the road and up to the river was a steep enough decline to make it difficult for my car to reverse back up. And we were supposed to continue up this road for 13 miles?!

I figured this couldn’t be the road, but yet it was the only dirt road that came close to fitting the description at that distance up the road. It was supposed to be a tricky turn-off. Nobody told me I’d need a truck though! Why hadn’t anyone said anything?

We had no cell reception, so we couldn’t call anyone or look up any maps on our phone. All we could do was drive back and forth on that section of the road a couple times—to no avail. We even said a prayer for help. Eventually we turned back, figuring we’d done all we could.

When we reached Fairview again, I started to realize that we had come down that canyon fast for 18 miles. We had reception again once we got down there, so I pulled out my phone and looked at the map. Sure enough, we hadn’t gone far enough up the canyon. In my hasty arithmetic in my head, I had added 8 to my trip meter, instead of 18. We were way off!

By now it was 12:00, and we knew we’d already missed the baptism, but we headed up anyways, at least to be able to see our family and congratulate my nieces. Except for one small misdirected turn, we got there with no problems after that. The drive was amazing, and we couldn’t help but take some pictures.

We had a lot of fun in the short time we were up there. Benson amused us with his clever sayings and misunderstandings, we got to see the nieces and nephews ride horses (I can’t believe they let some of them ride by themselves!), and even got to see some baby birds! It was amazing.

I also want to congratulate my two nieces for getting baptized. In our church, baptism is a way that we promise God we will follow his commandments and always remember him. In return, He blesses us with his Holy Spirit, which can help us recognize right and wrong. We also believe that little children are innocent; they don’t need baptism until they turn eight and can understand and make that kind of commitment. That’s why I’m so proud of them: they’ve made the decision for themselves to follow Christ. And I know that He is the source of true happiness.

This last weekend, my wife and I got to run in the Lavender 5k Run. We weren’t able to practice much for it, so we didn’t go very fast. Our time was about 46 minutes.

Not having to compete with anybody made it a really enjoyable experience. We had a great time running through the beautiful lavender fields. I guess the lavender didn’t look as good as it could have because of all the rain, but I thought it was beautiful anyhow. And you could smell it for most of the run.

All along the run there were these funny little signs informing us of all the benefits of lavender, like “Lavender has been known to relieve allergy symptoms,” “Lavender can reduce the effects of scarring,” and the one below. It kinda reminded me of Noni Juice. Apparently they sell lavender oil and all sorts of wolfberry products, which are supposed to be healthy for you. We also got samples of these products in our bag of stuff they gave us when we showed up for the race. Wolfberries don’t taste that bad actually. But don’t spend $50 for their 1 liter of wolfberry juice, it ain’t worth it!

We had a really good time, and my wife and I are planning on finding another 5k to try. Hopefully we’ll be able to train better for this one!

(See more pictures here)

I love Tasha Moon because:

• She is so good at apologizing. Not like me, who says “sorry” for everything until it doesn’t really mean as much anymore. She knows when to say she’s sorry, and I’m amazed at how even the little things matter to her. It’s easy to see that she truly cares about you.
• She does not accept defeat easily. I have seen her work her tail off time and time again to conquer something that doesn’t come naturally to her. If she wants to learn how to do it, she doesn’t stop. She works hard to be the person she wants to be.
• She is very modest, and not just in the clothing way. She’s modest in her dress, in her attitude, in her performance, and in her desires. She will never make you feel inferior, nor is she ever prideful or haughty. And I love her for it.
• She is so good at writing. I love reading her blog posts, both on her own blog and on the BYU Women’s Services & Resources blog. I don’t know how she does it, or how she does it so effortlessly (seriously, this post took me forever to finish), but her words resonate with me, and I know they’ve touched the lives of many others.
• She is absolutely beautiful, inside and out. I love her attitude, I love her cute smile, and I love her sincere desire to be a good wife. She is such a good example to me. I cannot believe I am married to such a treasure.

Thank you honey for being the best wife ever! I love you!

My wife just posted this. I checked my blog, and I post once or twice a month. Heh, guess this just isn’t my thing…

Though if you check out my twitter stream, you’ll see that I’m actually pretty active online. I’m just a slow writer…