President Hinckley

Since the passing of the beloved LDS Prophet Gordon B. Hinckley, I have been reflecting about how he changed my life for good.

I remember a video clip I saw years ago with President Hinckley surrounded by children as he sang “I am a Mormon Boy.” He loved his faith, children, and the family. In many of his conference talks, he encouraged the Saints to strengthen their family ties by talking softer, being kinder, and spending quality time with their families.

His witty humor and wise advise encouraged me to be a softer, kinder, mother and wife, and to always “Do the very best I can—Gordon B. Hinckley”

Teens Cutting Hair?

There are times when all I can do is sit back and laugh, this is definitely one of these times. Eric came into the front room with cape and buzzers in hand to say he needed a haircut and wanted Jennifer and Adam to do it. Wide eyed, I sat back and observed the reaction. Jennifer immediately ran to the other room, to get away from her fathers bazaar request while Adam reluctantly took the buzzers from his dad's hand and turned them on. With Buzzers on Adam shaved his dads hair, giggling almost the whole time. Jennifer finally decided this was too funny to pass up so she joined the fun teasing her dad about all the mistakes they "could" make. I am still not sure why Eric wanted them to cut his hair, he hasn't let me cut his hair in almost 10 years, but it sure added some great comic relief to our day.

Can't Stop Laughing

Remember John Edwards $400 hair cut?

Brotherly Love

Adam absolutely loves his little brother.

Learning From the Little Ones

Rachel needed some new casual dresses to play around the house in, her old ones were getting very worn. I have tried to find cute, modest, casual dresses in the stores but could never find ones she liked, so I finally decided I would attempt to make a couple dresses for her myself, I have never sown using a pattern before but it did say EASY in big black letters on the package. So, with pattern in one hand and Rachel in the other we braved the holiday traffic and made our way to the fabric store to take on this new project.
Rachel loved seeing all the people and had to say hi to everyone we saw, a few people were even kind enough to say hi back. We wondered around the store gathering all our supplies for about an hour then grabbed our number and stood in line waiting for our turn. When our number was called we put our fabric on the counter and I told the lady how much fabric I needed. She measured and started cutting when Rachel began talking to the woman, "Hi my name is Rachel, I like your scissors". She just giggled a little and told her she could have some just like it when she got older. Rachel of course liked that idea. After a couple minutes of silence Rachel leaned up on the counter, looked at the women and said with her big toothy smile, "you know, you are really doing a great job with that". The woman stood up a little taller, smiled real big, and said, "thank you I haven't heard that in a long time".
I just stood back and watched this woman's face light up with this sincere, simple complement. It really made me think how I need to say thank you more often for the simple things people do for me. What would the world be like if more people gave sincere compliments on the little things that are done in life? Wow, wouldn't that be a great place to live. I can see why the Savior tells us to be like the little children, humble and sincere. I learn so many important lessons from raising my children, their pure hearts are such a blessing to me. :)

Christmas

Christmas is my other favorite holiday. We don't spend much time on the big Santa thing, we still do presents but we work as a family to concentrate on the Saviors birth and serving others. We started the months out making service chains. Our whole family made their own paper count down to Christmas chain. On each chain we all wrote down a secret act of service we would do for a member of the family. It really changed the mood of our house because everyday 6 people were doing nice things for each other, it was great. Around the middle of the month we made our own Christmas tree, the kids had a great time doing that. On Christmas Eve, after the little kids were asleep, Jennifer and Adam helped put together Rachel and Joseph's presents and on Christmas morning everyone woke up around 9:00 a.m.. Eric and I made our traditional Pumpkin Pancakes with Apple syrup and we all ate and talked. After breakfast we all sat down and opened presents, it was very relaxing morning.
In the evening we had the missionariess and a newly baptised family over for dinner, we had a great time laughing and enjoying each others company. Here are a couple pictures of our friends. The missionary posing with his hand on his chin is Elder Jenkins and the other is Elder Stanger. Our Friend sitting by Jennifer is Luz Calone and let me tell you she kept us in stitches all evening, she is a hoot. Luz also has a 9-year-old daughter but she was in the other room with Rachel. We love them all and were so thankful for friends to spend the holidays with. We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. :)

What can you make with old telephone and jewelery wire?

Our Christmas tree didn't make it to Florida. Our moving van was stuffed to the brim so Eric kinda, gave it away. We planned on buying a live tree for Christmas but then we saw the prices of trees and all we could afford was a Charley Brown tree and the kids really didn't like that. So, I thought we would make a tree, I figured it would be a very good bonding family activity. So Eric got some old telephone wire and I grabbed my jewelry wire. We molded the telephone wire into a spiral shape and used the jewelery wire for support along the sides of the loops. We thought it would be a quick project but it was a lot more difficult than we thought it would be. It took us two days to get our tree to kind of hang right but the kids were now really excited about the idea of making a tree so we kept plugging along. We figured it didn't need to look perfect they just wanted something that resembled a Christmas tree so Eric ran to the store and grabbed some green garland and lights so we could wire it to our tree. We were so happy when we finished and hung it up. The kids love it because they worked so hard to create it. It also is very nice because when we take it down it will collapse and fit into a pizza box :) that's Eric's favorite part.

First Word

Jacob loves to babble, he is constantly trying to communicate with those around him. We have noticed he says one sound blend a lot "daddy" at first we were thinking it was just his favorite blend but then we noticed when Jacob wants Eric's attention he cruises over to him, pats his leg, and says daddy until Eric gives him attention. It is so much fun watching him learn to communicate.
It's interesting, all but one of our children have said some form of daddy as their first word and Joseph's first word was Adam. Adam thought that was the greatest thing in the world. :)

Jennifers 15th Birthday

Our Greatest Treasures

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Leaping Lizards

We have counted four different types of lizards that inhabit our yard. The kids love to go out side and try to catch them. They seem to be pretty friendly unless provoked, just kidding. :)Adam says they don't bite hard. The kids play with the lizards for hours and since there are at least fifty in our backyard when one gets away it isn't too hard for them to find another one.

We have had about five of these little creatures sneak into our house, thank heavens the kids are fast and very good at rushing them back out side. I really don't mind them, they are fun to watch running all around but I just don't want them in my house.

Thanksgiving

This years Thanksgiving was absolutely wonderful!!! A couple years ago we made a tradition of inviting the missionaries over for holiday dinners. This year the kids quickly reminded me of our tradition and the missionaries happily excepted our invitation, they then asked if we wouldn't mind having a family join us that was investigating the Church. We of course said yes, the more the merrier has always been our motto. So the planning began, both Jennifer and Adam had there own things they had to have for Thanksgiving, chocolate eggnog and pumpkin cake was at the top of their list.
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays and as the kids get older I love it even more. This year we made everything from scratch just because I didn't want to brave the traffic. I was a little worried about getting everything done in time but it all worked out and I had so much fun cooking all that food.
Because the weather was so awesome we ate outside on our covered patio, we all had a great time. Then one of the elders asked if we could do something he has done for years, he went on to instruct us to each say something we were thankful for. It was really fun to hear what everyone was thankful for and to hear wonderful testimony born.
After dinner we all sat on our couch to let our food settle so we could have pie later. Our new friend, who is investigating the church, saw our Book of Mormon for latter-day-saint families on our coffee table she picked it up and started asking more questions about the people in it. She then opened the book asking the missionaries to read a couple verses. She had turned to the story of Ammon when he cut off all the soldiers arms and brought them to the king. We each took turns reading the story. The spirit was so strong as the missionaries reviewed one of the discussions they had given her just the day before using this story. We all had a wonderful time reading and discussing the truths of the Book of Mormon.
I saw my new friend at church today and she told me her and her daughter will be baptized in a couple weeks. I am so excited for her and we all look forward to attending her baptism.
I am truly thankful for this wonderful gospel and great missionaries who devote their time and effort to spreading the good news.

I Love These Trees.

This is a Banyan tree. They are so cool because many of their roots grow from their tall branches and eventually attach themselves to the ground below to add to the ever expanding trunk. You can actually go inside this tree because it's large trunk is made up of descending branches. The kids love to weave their way in and out of the branches.

Here is a picture of our house. It is pretty nice, all tile, four bedrooms. It suits our family very well but there is one thing we have a hard time with, the bars on all the windows. We noticed that many of the homes in our neighborhood, which is considered to be a very good neighborhood, have bars on their windows and some houses even have tall motorized cast iron fences to protect their properties.
When we first moved in it felt weird to look out the window just to see the bars that secured us tightly inside. But then we thought, it was less likely someone could harm us inside. I think the psychology of the whole thing messes with a persons mind, especially someone who has always lived in a bar free community. Eric and I both started to worry more about break ins and then we began to think about other problems that could arise with having a house with all but two of the exits barred securely shut. A fire was my biggest concern, how could we get five kids out, eek, sleepless nights ensued.
There is one barred exit, a sliding door, that we could get out of if we had a key but our land-lord had that key so we called and wrote letters asking for her to please send us the key. After waiting for two months she finally had someone bring it to us. I immediately opened the gate to see the outside world without bars obstructing my view.
It really is amazing how free that made me feel. I close and lock the gate at night, so we are safe from all the riff-raff of Miami and open it first thing in the morning so I can see outside without the bars closing me in. I now feel drawn to that door so I can see an unobstructed view of the outside world. I guess if I would have grow up in an area where the crime is higher the bars on windows would have helped me feel safer from the outside world. But I tend to like windows without bars.

Life

I feel like I am just now finding the time and energy to stop and blog a bit. Moving to Florida really was quite the ordeal for me. I didn't realise how different everything would be. We all had some serious culture shock but things are getting better now. Our new ward is so awesome, the people are so friendly and happy to have us here, I think the friendliness of our ward has given balance to the rest and made our short stay tolerable. The kids are all making new friends.
Adam received the priesthood a couple weeks ago. I love being able to see him pass the sacrament. My parents were able to come up and see him ordained a Deacon and it was so wonderful having them here, I really think it boosted the moral at our house.
When my parents were here we were able to briefly see the Everglades but we quickly figured out why the park was so empty, it was the wet session and the misquotes were horrible but it was fun to drive down to the very tip of Florida and look out into the ocean, even though we could only tolerate it for about five minutes. We were all a little bummed though because we weren't able to see any real, live crocks but Eric and I are going to take the kids back in December during Eric's school break. Hopefully we will see some crocks then.

Tornado

For the first time in the three years I have lived in Lansing a tornado hit. The kids and I were having a great time painting the front room while listening to music. The rain and wind were pretty heavy but I didn't think too much about it, we get a lot of heavy rain and wind here, but then through the beat of the music I heard the faint sound of the tornado sirens and it wasn't the first Saturday of the month when they test them. It was the real 'get in your basement now' tornado siren! The bigger kids grabbed their travel buddy, Jennifer with Joseph, Adam with Rachel and me with the baby and we quickly went down to our basement and turned on the Lansing news. We sat riveted to the television as they reported high damaging winds, flooding, power outages, and cloud rotation in Lansing. We waited glued to the reporters every word and watched as the severe storm moved across the radar screen, then the confirmation, a tornado had touched down in Lansing only a few miles from my home. Later learned it was a F3 tornado. The last time a tornado that big hit Lansing was 1977.
Thank heavens there were no fatalities or serious injuries but roofs were taken off houses, tall metal polls that held business signs were bent clean over, a bill board had been torn off an sent flying through a restaurant window, and many large old trees were uprooted and some had crashed through homes.
What really amazed me, is when it was all over and we came upstairs, it was so quiet. There was no rain, wind, or noise. I never would have known, by how it looked at that moment, the weather had been so violent and had done so much damage to places not to far from where I live. My prayers are with all the families who have lost so much to all the Midwest storms.

What Are The Chances?

I can hardly believe it. Our three years in Michigan are almost over. It truely feels like it has just started. I will miss Michigan, the people here have been so great. I love the green and the squirrels but I do look forward to more sunshine. It is pretty cloudy in Michigan
I took Eric to the airport on Aug 19th. He began his LLM classes the very next day. He says Miami is HUGE. I am quite nervous about living there. I am deffinately a small town girl.
One of Jennifer's leaders at camp has a son in-law who is working on his LLM in tax at the University of Miami. He e-mailed us about a month ago introducing himself and we e-mailed back and forth for a while. His wife had offered some great advice on safe places to live and we were so thankful for the help. We didn't have any contact with them for a couple weeks because I was waiting for Eric to get to Florida so he could look at houses.
Eric's first day of school was pretty nerve racking for him. Miami does a lot of stuff different including parking at the University. Eric, being the out going guy he is thought he would start asking people how to park, without getting a ticket. The first person he asked was just as new and frazzled as Eric but the second man invited him to pull around and he would help him. The first words out of the strangers mouth was he could tell Eric was a fellow member of the Church. How he could tell that we still don't know but, get this, it ended up being the same man we had been e-mailing back and forth with--what are the chances. Eric felt pretty good and made an instant friend. Eric has had constant contact with this man since he got to Miami and now this wonderful family has invited him to stay with them while Eric works to find a home for us. I feel so blessed that Eric and this man were at the right place at the right time.
I look forward to Sept 1st when Eric flies back to Michigan to move us all to Florida and I can meet this family.

I feel so loved.

My son, Adam, who will be 12 at the end of August drew this picture for me. He knows how much I love pictures of Christ and this is one of my favorite paintings. He is now working on drawing the Salt Lake temple for me. I feel so loved.
It is wonderful to watch his progress in this area. He started out drawing Japanese animation and just recently decided to work on more life like drawings. I think it is pretty cool. He is also working on a picture of Mitt Romney for his dad. :)

BIG Squirrels!

The squirrels in Michigan have always amazed me, they are so huge. Being from Utah wildlife seems to be much smaller there. When we first moved to Michigan Adam saw a squirrel and thought it was a beaver, we all had a good laugh. We all love to watch the squirrels chase each other around the yard, jump tree to tree--never missing their target, and run effortlessly across the power lines. The squirrels have given us countless hours of entertainment.

Kids and Ducklings

We had a garage sale last Saturday and Adam found and caught a cute little duckling wattling close to our house. It was so cute and all the kids wanted to keep it but we couldn't because we are hopefully moving to Miami soon.
I felt some anxiety because I have heard some birds will not accept their baby if it has a humans sent on it so I felt very concerned about this baby duck because my kids had held it for a couple hours. Jennifer being the wonderful researcher she is got on the Internet and researched all we needed to know about ducklings. She found out the mother would take her baby back with no problems so Jennifer, Adam, and Rachel went to a pond, near our house, where there are quite a few ducks and their babies and let it go. They all had to check on the baby a couple times but were soon comforted enough to stay home.