July Misc

 Just a few more pictures from July... the boys were excited to have Dad back to play board games...  Savannah and I took a selfie waiting for our family photos... Weston got a haircut just before family photos! 

Sacrament Meeting Talks

Sunday July 31st was the day that Nathan, his friend Shawn, Shawn's mom, and I spoke in sacrament meeting - the last talks before their missions.  It was hard to hold it together, but I didn't cry as much as I thought... Nathan and Shawn did really well speaking; they were calm, collected, and shared some great wisdom.  They're well prepared and ready for their missions!  Nathan made some parallels to basketball in his talk and shared some thoughts on the Book of Mormon.  Julie and I gave 3-5 minute talks, in which we shared how they have prepared for their missions and strengthened our faith.  

The youth sang the musical number "I'll Go Where You Want me to Go", which was really touching.  These youth ARE willing to go anywhere the Lord wants them to go.  Here's a picture of some of the young men - this is a great group of guys who have supported and strengthened each other.  

Here are the thoughts I gave for my talk:  

President Nelson has counseled us to keep on the covenant path, the path that leads us back to God.  He says, "Your commitment to follow the Savior by making covenants with Him and then keeping those covenants will open the door to every spiritual blessing and privilege available."  Our main commitment is to be obedient to God in all things.  By keeping on the covenant path, we can access God's power in our lives.  

I've seen Nathan, Shawn, Devan, and many of our youth make choices to stay on the path, and their examples have strengthened my own faith in the Savior and His power to help us in our lives.  It's been a joy to watch Nathan prepare for his mission.  He's been preparing for a long time.  He's had an enthusiasm for the gospel ever since he was little.  When he was about 3 years old, we made some friends at the library.  The first time we had them over to our house, Nathan pointed out a picture of the temple to his friend, wanted to sing "I am a Child of God", wanted to read "Helaman's Stripling Warriors" and pointed out Jesus in a picture book of the "Savior in America".  He was just excited to share things that were important to him.  

Nathan continued to show his commitment to the gospel by being baptized.  He sang a solo at his baptism - "I Will Follow God's Plan for Me".  We've watched his commitment to the gospel many other times - with notable times where he quickly turned to prayer - to find a camping spot, to get his homework done, or get his Senior Night basketball game moved from Sunday to another day.

We've seen him access the power of God through scripture study, family home evening, seminary, church, and temple attendance.  One of our family's "secrets to success" has been our commitment to monthly temple attendance.  When our kids were too young to go inside the temple, we took all of the kids with us, and Alex and I traded off doing temple work.  The kids benefited from seeing how important the temple is to us.  Nathan has visited about 27 different temple grounds.  We know the covenant path leads straight through the temple.  It hasn't been easy to keep our temple commitment.  We've had to make sacrifices.  We've faced opposition, with even recently getting Nathan to the temple for his endowment.  

We've watched Nathan make sacrifices too this summer.  Nathan and Jared decided to get up at 6:00am to do scripture study and work out.  We know that anything worth doing requires sacrifice but brings access to God's power, which moves us to do things we otherwise wouldn't do.  

The words to a Kenneth Cope song have been on my mind:  "I've never been the kind to testify.  I don't have the words His truth deserves.  But it's a simple thing He asks - a worthy heart and willing hands.  He says if I make the choice, He'll help me find my voice.  He calls me to serve and I cannot fail Him, the one who has given me all that I have.  How can I keep this gift to myself when I can lift somebody else?  I'll be a witness of His miracles and His mercy.  When I put my faith in Him, the truth begins to speak.  His power is real.  It moves me until I will not be still."  

This power allows us to do hard things and moves us to share this light with others.  I know that Jesus is our light and gives us power to return back to God.  We can do all things through Christ which strengthens us.  I'm grateful for Nathan and his willingness to serve.  He's a light to those around him and will be to the people in Ecuador.  I'm grateful to be on the covenant path alongside him for these last 18 years.  I know the Lord will be by his side as he willingly goes to serve. 

July Trips

 I didn't see Alex much this summer.  He went from one place to the next - 3 weeks in June to New Mexico, 1 week in July to Singapore, followed by 1 week in Oklahoma the last week of July.  Nathan and Alex flew to see Alex's parents in Oklahoma, so that they could see Nathan before he left for his mission.  They have a new dog named Buster that Nathan thought was really funny.  They also enjoyed Papa John's new popcorn maker and ate way too much popcorn.  They helped out a little bit with chores and mowing too.  I didn't see any other pictures from that week, so that's all I got.  I know they saw Aunt Jane too, but I don't know if there are any photos.  

After Alex and Nathan got back from OK, we had a day or so before my nephew Jaden arrived.  We did family pictures on Friday morning.  The last time we did professional family photos was in 2011, before Savannah was even around!  So we definitely needed a good family photo before Nathan left.  We did some indoor portraits in a JCPenney Studio (not the best professional photos, but we did get a few good ones).  On Friday afternoon, Alex and I headed to Morro Bay to sneak in a quick anniversary trip.  We only had one night there.  We had dinner at Tognazzini's Dockside Restaurant, with a nice view of the Bay from our window.  We watched some otters playing in the Bay, had some rich brownie cookie dessert bars, and watched a movie.  In the morning, we did a jog out along Morro Rock, wandered around the shops, had lunch, and then headed back home.  Happy 22 years!   

Youth Activities

Since June, I've been serving as 2nd Counselor in the Young Women's.  I particularly help oversee the planning of the activities.  There were other things such as Girls Camp and FSY in June, so I didn't really start doing activities until July.  The youth help plan the activities, so I'm not doing all the planning, but there were a few activities that I came up with and executed - making apple pies, balloon battleship, and the ice cream and inspirational messages night.  

Making pies turned into quite a lot of work - mostly trying to plan enough supplies and ingredients to make 20 pies!  We had plenty of apples on our tree, so they were fresh-off-the-tree apple pies.  I also had to experiment with making crust so that I would be able to teach them how to make crust from scratch.  We didn't have time to make the pies and bake them in the activity time frame, so we just prepared the pies to bake at home.  Each girl and leader were able to make a pie for her family.  Since we weren't baking the pies at the activity, I made a few pies beforehand that were done and ready to eat after they prepared their pies.  So, on Weston's birthday, I ended up making 4 apple pies!  It was a lot of work and a messy activity, but it was a lot of fun.  It was harder for the girls to peel the apples than I expected, but they did really well putting them together.  We did an apple pie with a bottom crust and an apple crisp topping - the best combination! 

The other activity that required quite a bit of work was water balloon battleship.  One of the other leaders found the idea and it sounded like fun.  I added a twist to the original game by adding a scripture trivia component.  Teams had to compete to answer scripture questions the fastest to earn the water balloons for their team to launch.  I came up with about 25 questions or so for 4 different rounds - Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Church History / Doctrine & Covenants.  As individuals from each team answered questions correctly, they earned balloons that would be used collectively as a team during the launch phase.  At the launch phase, balloons were distributed and people found a place to stand on their side of the grass, from which they couldn't move.  A sheet divider was hung on a volleyball net so that you couldn't see where the other team players were standing.  Then teams took turns launching the balloons over until all the balloons were gone for that round.  The team with the most "hits" on the other team won that round.  Pretty fun... they also enjoyed the free-for-all with the remaining balloons once we were almost out of time.  Thank goodness for the easy fill water balloons (although it still took some time filling 600 water balloons for the activity)!

Another activity I planned was ice cream sundaes and watching short inspirational church videos.  That one didn't require much planning, and the leaders all helped out with bringing ice cream and different toppings for the sundaes.  The girls each picked out a short 2-4 minute video they wanted to watch, and then one of the other leaders got all the videos lined up ready to watch.

I didn't do the planning for very many other activities this summer.  We do the first 2 activities with just the Young Women, the 3rd week's activity combined with the Young Men, and the 4th week's activity combined with all the youth from 2 different wards.  Those are the big ones... but we're only in charge once every 4 months on those. That was the water balloon activity for us.  We're in charge of the 3rd week activity every other month.  We had several pool parties or BBQ's this summer (I didn't take hardly any pictures at those).  One of the combined activities was a drawing competition, which was Disney themed.  They had 5-10 minutes to do a drawing based on a category and then all the pictures were judged.  Weston and Jared's drawings got chosen a couple times as top notch for that category.  

The Young Women just had a karaoke night, planned by one of the girls.  It turned out to be really fun.  They really got into the singing and dancing.  We've got a great group of youth!  

Weston's Birthday

Weston wanted French toast, eggs, bacon, and turkey bacon for breakfast.  He wanted spaghetti, broccoli, rolls, and apple pie for dinner and dessert.  After the youth activity that night, Alex and the boys went to see Thor in the theater.  Weston opened some presents on his birthday, but this time his main presents didn't arrive in time.  He got to open his Legos the next day.  He loved the K-State hoodie from Aunt Jane (which he wears all the time, even when the rest of us think it's too warm for a hoodie).  He got a pocketknife which we had picked up in the Grand Canyon.  He also got some Oreo socks from Owen, which he'd won at a party.  I gave him my Colorado Rockies hat that I found at the thrift store.  I originally was going to keep it for myself, because it reminds me of my grandpa, but then I thought that Weston would actually make more use of it.  It suits him well.  He got a folder for maps from Savannah, some shirts, a geography book, and some other books.  He also got some cute gift cards from Baba and Grandma.  I framed the pig card from Grandma to go in his room, along with the other new framed pig photo he received.  He still loves pigs!  He also still likes Oreos, Dr. Pepper, and Goldfish (some of the snacks he got).    He had a good day!

Get your Kicks!

We did Weston's birthday party on Saturday July 9th, just before his birthday.  We didn't have quite as many friends able to come as wanted, but we had 12 out of 26 people.  We started with about 2 hours of kickball, which Weston loved.  During one of his kicks, he lost his shoe and came in with one shoe in hand!  After kickball, we walked to our house for pizza, cake, and hanging out (for the next 2 hours of the party).  Each of the guests got to take home their own kickball!  He hadn't done a friend party since 2019, so it was nice to celebrate with friends again.

Temple Days

Nathan and Alex got to go to the temple 2 days in a row in July.  We went together on the Friday, not thinking that Alex and I would go the next day.  We did Weston's party on Saturday July 9th, so originally Alex was supposed to be there to help with the party.  I decided that Alex should go as well on Saturday, so they helped with the first part of the party and then took off.  Nathan's good friend Devan was receiving a special ordinance, his endowment, so they needed to be there for that.  There was a pretty good group of people that showed up to support Devan (he's the one pointing to the temple in the picture below).  Two nice days at the temple!