Happy New Year, Pioneer Girls!  We hope your 2016 is off to a great start.

Have you set goals this year, made resolutions, chosen things you want to accomplish?  I have goals for the next few months — not anything I would call a “resolution” at all, but things I’m hoping for and working toward.

A couple friends in my circle have foregone the traditional resolution setting in favor of a simplified “One Word” focus for the year.  Because of their posts and discussions online, the idea has been rattling around in my head.  Then, this week, I saw this image in the Pioneer Girls Facebook feed:

“…the joys and glories of creation.”  I love it!

I’ve finally done all I can do on my own to the Emma manuscript and have sent it out to pre-readers for notes and edits.  While they’re working, I’m continuing to compile notes and different perspectives on the real events that Emma experienced on her grand adventure.  And while all that is percolating, I’m doing research for the next book I want to write.

All these things are happening in my life at the beginning of a new year, and then this lovely quote pops up in my feed.  And my #OneWord for the year distills in my mind: CREATE.

How about you, Pioneer Girls?  What is your theme for this year?

Have you ever just been reading along, enjoying your novel, and been confronted with a profound truth?  That’s one of my favorite things.  Here’s one I found recently that I wanted to share with you.

Precious looked at the house.   It was not very large and she wondered how everybody could fit inside.  But she did not want to say anything about that, as people are usually proud of their houses and do not like other people (and that means us) to point out that their houses are too small, or too uncomfortable, or the wrong shape.

And so she said, “That’s a nice house, Teb.”

That was not a lie.  It is not a lie to say something nice to somebody.  You have to remember that you can usually find something good to say about anything if you look hard enough.  And it’s kind too, and Precious Ramotswe was a kind girl, as everybody knew.

Alexander McCall Smith
The Mystery of Meerkat Hill, p.24

Today our Pioneer Boy learned how to make envelopes in Kindergarten. He came home with this envelope all folded up and glued and ready to carry a note to someone.

He got a piece of paper from me and some markers and pens from the crafting cabinet and headed for the kitchen table.  After a few minutes and a few “how do you spell…” questions, he came for a piece of tape so he could have this note ready to give to his sister when she gets home from school this afternoon.

What warms a mother’s heart more than seeing this?

I think we’re going to have a happy Pioneer Girl on our hands this afternoon.

We woke this morning around 9:30am in “Fancy Kansas.” We’re still rocking West Coast time, which means we travel late and wake up late, which is great for our purposes. Hotel blackout curtains are super helpful.

Once the car was packed up, we headed across state lines into Kansas City, Missouri, to Arthur Bryants Barbecue — for breakfast.

We opened the place up at 11am and beat the crowd (family motto), including getting in before the busload of Kansas City Barbecue Tourists. It’s a real thing, and the tour guide wears a shirt with a pig on the back. I love the idea, but I don’t know how much barbecue I could eat in one day. Especially after pigging out at whatever the first stop was, I’m sure. But if you can pace yourself I’m sure it’s a delight.

After barbecue breakfast we went to Independence, Missouri, where the early Saints created a community of faith for about two years beginning in 1831, until the Missourians ran them out of the county and then the state for “disturbing the peace,” “treason,” and other unlikely offenses. The LDS visitors center there is lovely, with an imagination-play children’s area that kept us busy for a full hour. The people were only lulled away by the promise of an outdoor park and ice cream.

While the children were playing Pioneer in the basement of the visitors center, the dad of the family took a few quiet moments to go over to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library a few blocks away. I kept the pioneers busy for him so I can’t talk about how great it was, but we’ll just say the presidential history-buff was impressed.

On our way to the park we stopped in to the temple of the Community of Christ. They have a small museum with artifcats from the lives of Joseph and Emma Smith, and the boy especially enjoyed testing the accoustics of their seashell-shaped sanctuary.

After snacks and a few minutes at the Independence park, we hit the road again bound for Liberty, Missouri. The Church has recreated Liberty Jail in a visitors center there, where Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum and three other church leaders were falsely imprisoned for four torturous winter months in 1834-1835. Revelations recorded in Doctrine and Covenants Sections 121-123 were received there, and it was a life-altering experience for the prophet. Seeing a life-size representation of the conditions he and his followers lived in during that time was very moving.

While we were in the area I thought a lot about my own family from that era. Emma Higbee was born in 1836 near the Missouri River in Caldwell County, just to the north, and her family was forced to leave Missouri with the Saints two years later. She recounted the story of their crossing the river and going to Quincy, Illinois many times to her children and grandchildren. It was very interesting to be in these peaceful little towns, both of them with churches of every denomination on every other corner, and recall the frontier atmosphere and complete turmoil that her family lived in during those days. It would have been so very different from what we see here now, though the landscape I’m sure hasn’t changed much at all.

After Liberty we wanted to make one more stop, to see the Kansas City temple recently built by the Church. The grounds were lovely and peaceful, and it was reassuring to know that even after the history in this area, the gospel is thriving here and temple work is being done by faithful men and women.

After that peaceful moment it was time to leave the KCMO area and put down some more miles. We took I-70 east out of town, passing traffic for the afternoon’s Royals game, and crossed “the wide Missouri” a few times as we headed for St. Louis.

Missouri River, Missouri

We stopped for the night in a suburb and let the kids burn some energy in the hotel pool before getting everyone to bed… at 11pm. Another busy day tomorrow!

After 12 travel hours, a carsick cleanup stop and a late lunch in Albuquerque, we have made it to Texas!  Our Pioneer Boy was born in Houston five years ago, so although he’s a solid day’s travel from his birthplace, he still feels at home.  Number one priority today: Find a size-five tshirt with an outline of Texas on it for our Texas boy.  Also, we might have to buy some kids their first umbrellas.

We saw the countryside change a lot today.  We left Phoenix’s “Valley of the Sun” in the heart of the Sonoran Desert and climbed through the ponderosa pine forest of northeastern Arizona until we reached I-40 in Holbrook.  We passed the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Parks (which we have visited on previous trips and highly recommend if you’re in the area).

Four Peaks, northeast of Phoenix

This person is the reason they invented Dramamine.

I-40 east of Holbrook, Arizona

It took us about 4 hours to get through that part of Arizona.  We crossed into New Mexico and drove 373.51 miles on I-40, watching the landscape change from the high deserts of the Navajo Nation to the Llano Estacado, the beginning of the Great Plains.  At sunset we passed through Tucumcari, a town famous in the Route 66 days for having more hotel rooms than residents.

State Two of #thirteenstates!

“T” on the butte at Tucumcari, New Mexico

As we traveled east toward the Texas state line, the weather changed.  The puffy white clouds and blue skies of the deserts gave way to menacing clouds.  We even saw a tiny piece of rainbow

Llano Estacado near Tucumcari, NM

We’ve safely arrived in Texas.  Amarillo greeted us with a lightning show and thunderstorm.  We were a bit too late to see Cadillac Ranch, but we’re hoping to run over this morning and take a peek before we continue east into Oklahoma.

Welcome to Texas, state three of #thirteenstates

We’d love you to follow along in real-ish time as we visit sites and post photos on Facebook.  We’re posting at Facebook.com/PioneerGirls, under the hashtags #PioneerGirls and #ThirteenStates.  Drop by and comment on and share your favorite photos, or give us recommendations on things to do and see in areas you’re familiar with.  We’re always up for an adventure!

This week I attended a church group talent show featuring five girls between the ages of 8 and 11.  It was a wonderful hour celebrating their talents and hard work over the last year.  One girl performed a piano solo and then a duet with her mother, and another girl displayed a beautiful painting she had made.  We enjoyed a fun fairy tale story written and read by another girl. My Pioneer Girl and her friend sang and danced along to one of their favorite songs — with Miss Pickle rapping the good parts, too.

The girls’ teacher opened the evening with a story about talents from The Friend magazine.  You should click over and read it, but it’s about Lacy, a little girl on her way home from a talent show much like the one we were watching, and how she felt less talented than those who danced and sang and had a “family band.”  But with her mother’s encouragement, over the course of the next week Lacy realized that she had a special talent for welcoming and comforting the foster children who came to stay with her family.

Brittany knelt by her bed. It amazed Lacy how easily all her sisters and brothers learned to pray. With a little prompting, Brittany began. “Dear Hebenly Father, please bless Lacy. She loves me. Amen.”

Tears stung Lacy’s eyes. A million thoughts flashed through her mind. She knew a little about each of the children who had joined her family before they came. All of them had suffered more than Lacy could imagine. Each had brought her or his own special spirit into her family, and Lacy loved them all. She enjoyed helping to care for them. She read to them and played games with them. She helped them to dress and did their hair. Most of all, she tried to help them to be happy, to feel safe, and to know that Heavenly Father loved them.

Lacy hugged Brittany as she tucked her in. “I really do love you, Brittany. You’re a wonderful sister.”

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I loved this story because Lacy took some time to find a talent that God had given her, and she really thought about what she was good at.  And I love that the talent that she found was caring for children who needed her in a tough moment.

Pioneer Girls look for ways they can bless the lives of those around them, just like Lacy did.  They search for their personal talents and develop them through dedication and practice, and use them to make the world a better place for themselves, their families, and everyone around them.