New Callings

Well, Dave and I have new callings now. I will be leaving the primary as chorister (though I will probably stay and help out until after the program is over in a couple of weeks) and Dave will be leaving the young men. We have both been called as cub scout leaders. So, we will be working together a lot now on this. There are a total of 8 cub scouts. There are 3 Wolfs, 4 Bears and 1 Weblos. So, we will have to see how we are going to separate them and who will be doing what. Jonathan is very excited for this. He is a little bummed that we are not having scouts this evening.

Life has been so busy lately. We went on a trip to CO, UT and ID a bit ago for my grandpa's funeral services. It was a long trip and we figured that we drove equivalent of 7-8 hours a day during the 7 days that we drove. It was a trip full of business, but we were glad to have the chance to see everyone. I met some of my cousins for the first or second time. I saw family that I haven't seen in years. We saw my sister's grave that I haven't seen in years. We also were able to spend a day with Dave's Mom for her birthday, and visit his Grandpa's grave. We went to visit BYU and bought some lovely shirts from the bookstore. We spent time with Curtis (my brother) as he showed us around his work (he does some pretty cool stuff), and my little sister, Brittany. We also spent time with Dave's brother, Daniel.

It was a nice trip, but I'm glad to be home. We did too much stuff in too short a time! Now I am still trying to get back into the swing of things at home. It seems like it's harder to catch up after a trip like that. I had to do a bunch of canning when we got home and I still have more of it to do. I have a bunch of pears in the fridge that I need to take care of. I will probably can some and make jam out of the rest.

I feel that I am now coming down with a cold. Probably because of all this running around and stuff. A couple of the girls have a cold now too. I think Dave might also be getting a bit sick. But, a runny/stuffy nose is better than other things, so we are still doing really well.

Buggy bug

We've been doing a lot of work out in the yard for the past several weeks. We have chopped down about 8 or so dead trees and still have 3-4 left to do. We have also been weeding our flower beds and planting some flowers. Not to mention planting some grass seeds and keeping up with the mowing. There's also picking tomatoes and peppers too.

Well, when we were out weeding and planting on Thursday evening, little Lizzie got really excited and started saying "buggy bug! buggy bug!" Then she brought it over to me. She had captured the cute little lady bug and was so proud of it. She took it around to all of us and showed it to us. She has been picking up on words so fast. I didn't even know that she knew what a lady bug was. My kids never cease to amaze me.

Rachel is doing really well with homeschool. She knows how to read, write and spell most of the three letter words with an a in them (bat, hat, map, pan, man, lap, and even mass and pass). She is very proud of herself. She also knows all of the +1 math facts and many of the +2s as well.

Hannah is getting to be really good at coloring (since that is what she does for school mostly). She is not quite ready for writing the letters yet since she's only 3, but she can write a nice capital H and tries really hard on the A and N so that she can write her name.

Matthew and Jonathan are doing well at school. Matthew has a great memory for vocabulary words and things like that (and he doesn't forget them after the test like I would). Jonathan is a reader and has read a lot this year. They are both doing well in math and spelling too.

We are all doing quite well and I find that I don't have much time to use the computer any more, so the posts are a little less frequent. Some of that is due to not having a television.... I will let the kids watch a movie on the computer (we only have one that works right now) and find that it would be the perfect time to be on the computer, so I end up not getting on it. When I am on it and they are "playing," I usually get interrupted and have to quit before I get done with things. Even now I can hear all the kids making a mess in the other room. I guess it is time to go read to them and put them to bed.

Reading and Canning

Jonathan has been reading like crazy these past few weeks. He picked up the Harry Potter books and has started reading those. He read the first one in 6 days. He read the second one in 4 days. Now, after having it for the weekend, he is half way done with the third book. He is totally loving them. He has wanted to read them for a long time now, but I wouldn't let him. I still think he should wait longer, but he is very excited about reading them and checks them out from the school library. I am suprised that he has so much time at school to read. From the time he leaves in the morning until he gets home in the afternoon, he has read 50 or more pages in the book. That's a lot of time for reading, especially those books. But, according to the "Teacher's Creed" at the school, "We will use each day to the fullest, finding minutes lost would be tough." So, they are not wasting time in the class room, but somehow he still manages to read 50+ pages of the Harry Potter books each day there. Hmmmm.

This last weekend I did a lot of canning. Saturday, we went with some good friends to pick apples from another friend's house. After we picked the apples, we went and made applesauce and canned it. We got 16 quarts a piece. Then, Sunday I got a bunch of pears from the same friend that let us pick her apples. So, Monday I invited Cheryl over to can pears. We got 9 quarts a piece of those. Also, yesterday I canned a bunch of peppers (so we can enjoy them on sandwiches and salads) and made pickles too. Our tomatoes are starting to ripen, so I will be starting to can tomatoes soon too. I was really bummed that I didn't get any beans this year. I had planted a lot, but then the weeds wouldn't give me a break and they choked out a lot of the beans and then the water wasn't getting to them, and the critters were probably getting at them too. But, I am now hoping the tomatoes continue to look as good as they do now.

Tomato Vines

I was out pruning my tomato plants yesterday in hopes that what I have read and heard about pruning them will really help produce a larger crop of bigger tomatoes. Tomato plants are a vine, of course, and can get very large and cumbersome. They can get so large that it almost feels like going through a jungle to try and find the ripe tomatoes. Most of what is on a tomato plant doesn’t even grow tomatoes. There are “branches” off of the main vine that grow nothing but leaves. These are the parts of the plant that I prune off.

As I was looking at the tomato plants and what I was cutting off, I thought about how similar these tomato plants are to our own lives. There are so many things happening in all of our lives. These can be things like, church callings, taking care of our children, hanging out with friends, making dinner, going out to the movies, soccer practices, reading the scriptures, watching TV, working on a talent, reading books, exercising, using the computer, shopping, taking a nap, playing games, and the list goes on and on. With everything that we do and feel we need to do, our lives can easily feel like that jungle of tomato vines that is hard to get though to find the fruits.

On the tomato vines, I was taking off many of the unneeded parts of the plant. The parts that perhaps take the nutrients from the tomatoes. I realized that I could try to take the unneeded things out of my own life to make it easier for me to see what I need to be doing and to see where I am going. There are many things we all do in any given day that we probably don’t need to do or could have done differently. Maybe I would decide that watching TV needs to be pruned so that I have more time/nutrients for reading the scriptures or something. Maybe I am just feeling overwhelmed and decide that it would be best to prune out the soccer practices, so I am not running all over the place all the time. Pruning out the things that make our lives more complicated than they might need to be can do a lot to help us feel better about ourselves. And, maybe it will be easier for us to notice what kinds of fruits we are producing. Sometimes it is hard to know what part we are supposed to prune. Reading books usually isn’t bad to do, but if it takes the place of reading Scriptures or taking care of our families and responsibilities, then it is. In a case like this, we might not want to take it completely out of our lives. It is a good thing to do, but maybe moderating it is a better solution than taking it out completely.

There are times when I prune the tomato vines, that I accidentally prune the wrong part. I cut off a part of the plant that could have grown and produced wonderful tomatoes for me. There’s no replacing it and it is gone. In this, we do differ from a tomato plant. In our lives, if we accidentally prune out something that is important to our development, we can grow it back. We have been given the wonderful gifts of repentance and forgiveness. Say we unknowingly prune out Scripture study from our lives. It is not gone forever. We can repent and try to make it right again by studying our Scriptures again. Some of these wrong prunings might be a lot harder to repair than others, but they can be done. People generally have a hard time coming back to church if they have pruned it out of their lives. It takes a lot of work, repentance, and humility to come back. It would be a lot easier to not prune the important things out.

Well, these were my ponderings of the day. I can now start to work on pruning my life a little bit better to make sure the important things get the attention they need.

School has started

Well, school started last week. I do miss my boys. It is nice that they are away, but I'm not sure I like the cost of them being away. The schools here are not good at all and it makes me really sad that I have to send my kids there. I am keeping Rachel home this year. She is Kindergarten age, so we are doing Kindergarten at home. I bought a curriculum for her and she is doing great. She can read most 3 letter words. She has been able to do this for a while now, so we will be expanding to larger words soon. I love hearing her sound out the words. It is really cute. Hannah has joined in the fun and wants to do school every day. Lizzie even needs to have a book to color in or write in with us. It's really cute.

It only takes about an hour to do school, so I am finding that I need to find more things to do with my time. I am having a lot of fun doing fun things with the girls. We are planning on doing a fun field trip type thing a few times a month with some friends who homeschool their kids. So far it is going really well.

I have started giving piano lessons to a girl in the ward. I am starting off with a "trial period" to see if we all like it since I don't really know what I am doing (since I didn't take many lessons myself.) So far they are going well and it is fun to do. The student and her mom seem to be happy with it too. I probably should learn a bit more myself too. I don't know the scales and things like that. I can look at a note and play it, that's about it. So, I could do with learning a lot myself. I have become a lot better of a player since I have been called as the ward organist and have to practice a lot. It has been a really big growing experience for me. The Lord really does bless those who are willing to serve. I am a strong believer in the scripture, Philipians 4:13, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." This hapened to be the theme of our Stake last year, and I learned to personalize it. I have noticed this strength coming to all sorts of places and not only to my piano playing abilities. If we have faith anything is possible!!!

Food Storage

I am happy to announce that we finally have a year's supply of food! We do not have all the grains (since they didn't have them at the cannery when we were there the other day), but that's calculated for 7 adults, and we are not that yet. So, I think we have made it. I still plan on getting the other 250 pounds of wheat at the next opportunity. We now can start adding more of the other things, like carrots and apples and such.

I heard on Sunday that if we want to get to the cannery in the next 4-6 months, we need to schedule a time now since they are full for the next few months. Something must be going on!!! A couple of Sundays ago, there was a man giving a talk and he mentioned how he is a Home Teacher to someone who works in the cannery. The brother that works in the cannery had told him that if he doesn't have his year's supply now, he probably will not be able to get it. I don't think it will be because they will run out of food, but because it will be too hard to get in enough to get what you need. It took us at least 4 trips to get all that we have, and we spent a lot of money each time. This last time, they did not have all that we ordered there at the time. They have plenty of wheat (so there's not too much need for panic) but it is being stored in the silos. It needs to be put into bags and shipped to the canneries, and that takes time.

If you don't have much by way of grains and beans, I suggest looking into local farmers. I heard that a group of women here got into contact with a local farmer and are buying a few bushels of wheat from him. You can store this in the 5 gallon buckets, and if you use dry ice (and do it the right way with the super sealer lid) it will store like that for a long time. I am thinking that I might need to do that to get my last 250 pounds of grains. I might even try to find some corn tat I can turn into corn meal when I want to use it.

I urge all of you who do not have it, to try to get your food storage in order. If you can not make it to the cannery, then at least buy a few extra cans of goods at the grocery store and start storing that stuff. You should probably have about a 3 months supply of those kinds of foods if you can. I don't know if we do or not, but we have a lot. I have also been stocking up on the shortening and oils, since those are important. I also have a good supply of things like baking powder, salt, baking soda, yeast, etc. that are important for cooking/baking. These are things that aren't too hard to stock up on if you buy three after you use one. The checkers look at me funny when buy 6 cans of baking powder, 5 cans of salt and 4 boxes of baking soda. I even get comments like, "You doing a lot of baking?" I just say, "Yeah," and smile. That is what I plan on doing with it, though not all today! hehehe.

Summer's Ending and Service

Well, swimming lessons are over for the summer. Jonathan and Matthew learned a lot. Hannah will now put her whole body under the water and likes doing it too. Rachel seemed to have regressed during the last session. I think she needs a little more one on one time with this stuff. I think I could have taught Hannah, Rachel ad Matthew what they learned if we had a pool. It would have cost as much or even less to buy one of those "cheap" above ground pools and swim every day this summer in our own back yard. Something to think about for the future I guess.

The summer is almost over, but the heat isn't. The past two weeks have been in the high 90s to 100s, plus humidity. It sure is a nice thing that we have air conditioning, though we still keep it a bit warm in the house, but it feels a lot better than outside. Plus, the humidity is lessened greatly because of the A/C. So that helps a lot.

The garden is doing great! I was out there earlier today and I saw flowers on my bean plants, green tomatoes, little tiny peppers, a baby yellow squash and a couple of baby zucchinis. I am really excited about it. I now need to try and get a hold of some canning jars so I will be ready to can when I need to. Our winter squash plants are thriving as well. And, we have onions and carrots too. I hope to have enough carrots to can a few this year. My kids love cooked carrots, so do I.

Last week I took the kids to meet Dave at the house of a couple in our ward. They have this really big garden and were not able to do all of the harvesting, so we helped with some other members of the ward. We picked okra, black eyed peas, green beans and tomatoes. There may have been more, but I can't think of them right now. Matthew and Jonathan loved picking the okra. Dave was up to his neck in the tomato plants (he loves the smell of them) and I was being reminded of growing up and picking beans. I picked black eyed peas for a long time, then got to the green beans when most of the people thought the gardening was done. I spotted them and decided that they should be picked as well. This lovely sister was telling me that she was so happy to have the help because that is what they live off of all year. If everyone who was there hadn't helped, it would have gone to waste. I was so glad that I was able to help and let my kids have the experience of serving others. I think it is an important thing for my kids to learn, so when I see an oportunity like that, I try to take advantage of it.

The Savior's live was all service. If we are to try and be like Him, we should try to serve each other as often as we possibly can, if not always. I think it is easy to get into the mode of self-service, or making sure we are happy or satisfied, that we often forget to think about others. When this happens, we tend to be unhappy or unsatisfied. It is easy to feel alone, unloved and unwanted. When we change our priorities and put service to others a bit higher on the list of things to do, we will be happier and those sad feelings will go away. Doing service for others, whether it is a family member, a member of the ward, a friend, or a stranger, will only bring you happiness and joy.