I get up early every morning between 4 and 5 o'clock. I go into the office, sit down on the love seat, put my feet in our Moroccan foot warmer. encase myself in the wonderful quilt that Marjorie made for me, put my lapboard on my lap, get my writing materials ready, and then I pray. When I have an idea to write about, I'm excited, and the Holy Ghost is always there to inspire my thoughts. Writing there in that setting is the most fun thing that I do. I'm creating something that has never existed before, and the Holy Ghost is my tangible helper.

As I went through that preparation routine the other morning, I focused in on that Moroccan foot warmer. It's just a big slipper, big enough for both feet. It was made from an inside-out sheepskin. We bought it in Morocco 55 years ago. The wool is on the inside of the foot warmer, and it keeps our feet toasty warm. I love it. We've used it all these years, and it still looks like it did when we bought it.

I commented to Marjorie that the foot warmer is one of the best purchases that I ever made.

Another would be Marjorie's piano. I graduated from Brigham Young University in April 1974. I was anxious to get home. We didn't even stick around to participate in my graduation exercises. We were going to get to buy this place (another of my best purchases). We settled into this same house where we've lived ever since. At lunch one day that summer the radio was on, and an advertisement was playing about a piano that had been repossessed in the area. The company didn't want to take it back to Boise, and was offering it for $500. That sounded like a great price, so I called the number, and it was delivered within the hour.

Marjorie needed a piano. She was an expert pianist, and having a piano was a necessity. She has spent thousands of hours seated at that piano. A great portion of that time in the early years was spent sitting there playing while a child sat on her lap, with another on either side of her. and one or two more standing behind her. She taught them all how to sing harmony, and she also taught most of them how to play it. That piano is one of the best things that ever happened to our family.

That family of children is another of my best purchases. The first one cost us $500. The tenth one cost $5,000. That was inflation. I have the account book wherein my mother kept the records of all the family household and farm expenses for 1947. The entry for 3 April 1947 says, "hospital bill, $133.50." That was for my birth. The entry for 24 April 1947 says, "Dr. bill, $50." That's all I was worth: A total of $183.50.

We bought the North 40 for $16,000. That was the carrot that my mother held out to me if I'd come back to the ranch after my graduation. That is the same price she paid several years earlier when she bought the 40 acres from Virgil Spence. The rest of the place we purchased from the ranch corporation a couple of years later. We paid $18,000 for the house, and $100,000 for the rest of the place. The house plus the North 40 plus the rest amounted to 462 acres, and cost a total of $134,000. The 60 acres below the house was purchased by my father the year that I was born: 1947. He paid $200 per acre for it, and was told that he was crazy for doing so: he would never be able to pay for it.