MIlestones

Baby blessings. Baptisms. Birthdays. Being set apart. Ordinations. Sustainings. Housewarmings. Baby showers. Bridal showers. Wedding receptions. Courts of honor. Young womanhood recognition. Reaching dating age. Missionary calling opening/farewell/homecomings. Each one of these is an important and hallowed Mormon milestone, complete with accompanying unofficial (official) ceremonies.

Baby blessing? Consider it your license to ditch the block schedule after Sacrament meeting to have a family get together at your home completely consequence free. Reaching dating age? That first date is set up weeks in advance, followed by a spirited group romp to Scandia/Trafalga and a nice big high five to end the night. Ice blocking is a nearly free and perfectly acceptable alternative to go-carts and mini-golf. Getting married, are you? First, plan an elaborate and hopefully videotaped proposal so that you'll have something to post on YouTube, then, go register at Target or Wal-Mart. Ladies, remember to register for that KitchenAid or Bosch you've had your eye on ever since the first time you helped your mom in the kitchen. Gentlemen, shoot for the moon; register for that Xbox 360, you probably have a cool group of friends who will all go in on it. You'll have to sneak the scanner away from your fiancee, however. What should you do if you're opening your mission call? This one nearly plans itself. Grab the family camcorder, record the prospective Missionary reading the call verbatim, and then find the little known city/country where the mission is located on a globe or atlas. When it's time for that farewell (even though there really aren't farewells anymore) you have earned carte blanche to either try to sound way more spiritual than you really are, or to throw your talk together 10 minutes before since you went on your last official date the previous evening.

Perhaps one of the least mentioned milestones is recognizing the arrival of large, even numbers in a Mormon blog's hit count. While most Mormons will explain that their blog is just a fun little way to keep loved ones in the loop, secretly, every Mormon knows that their little corner of the internet is the coolest thing ever, and they take their hit count very seriously. It is an unspoken competition among Mormons, and Relief Society sisters will often troll other sister's blogs to get a feel for who has the most happening blog on the block.

Whenever a large, even number is hit (100, 1,000, 10,000) a Mormon has two options, to either show true class and let it pass unnoticed, or write a self-congratulatory post which most people will shrug off.