Just a little bragging...

Gwen, Heather and Rachel all got progress reports recently. Woo-hoo!

General Conference Saturday

This is one of my favorite weekends of the year - one of the Semi-annual General Conferences of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I was inspired by so many things today. President Monson's announcement about missionary service is so exciting! Elder Oaks said so well something I have been feeling very strongly, especially as I think about the upcoming elections and choose candidates. So much of our culture is centered on selfish adult priorities and all too frequently it is innocent children unable to speak up for themselves that suffer.

I was also particularly inspired by Elder Ballard's talk and made up this page to print out and help me remember as I say my prayers. You can download a pdf here.

I am looking forward to tomorrow and more conference :)

20 Years

This past July, Stan and I celebrated our 20th anniversary. Neither of us had ever been to Catalina Island, so we decided that would be a good place to go. Unless you have your own yacht (we don't - surprise!) there are two ways to get to Catalina - a ferry, or a helicopter. Stan has gone in a helicopter a few times for work and I've been jealous every time, so I told him that was all I wanted for an anniversary gift :)

It was SO FUN. We even saw a BLUE WHALE from the air!!!! Can you tell it was really exciting? 

We lay around on the beach, slept in, went out to dinner, shopped for sunglasses, and pretty much relaxed sans kids. It was great :) The other splurge we indulged in besides the helicopter flight was going Snuba diving, a cross between scuba and snorkeling. 

It was fun taking underwater pictures of the wildlife...

...the kelp forest...

...and each other!

Daughters in My Kingdom Study Guide

Here is something we used in our Relief Society to deepen our study of the wonderful book, Daughters in My Kingdom. I am putting it on my blog because I looked all over the internet and, at least while I was trying, I couldn't find a study guide. Feel free to link to it, print it out and copy it as much as you would like.
                                               ***UPDATE***
I was contacted (see the comments) by Sandra López from Mujer Mormona and she has translated the guide I wrote into Spanish and posted it here. I think that is so nifty :) Thanks, Sister Lopez!

To put these together, I printed the first seven pages of the document, then flipped them over, reinserted them in my printer face up, and printed the next seven pages. Then I was able to fold them into a booklet and the pages were in order. You may have to do a little trial and error, in case your printer does things differently than mine.

Then, I had them copied at a print shop, where they even folded them for me, which was nice. I also could have had them stapled, but instead I conscripted a couple of my kids and we sewed them all with baker's twine using a pamphlet stitch, which I thought was much nicer than scratchy metal staples.

If you are going to stitch them, I'd recommend five hole pamphlet stitch because of the size. Jeannine Stein has a nice tutorial for the stitch. Scroll down for the five hole instructions.

Natalie and David come to visit.

While Rachel and Heather were in St. George going to EFY in July, my niece and nephew, Natalie and David came to stay with us. We took them into LA one day. Our first stop was the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Grauman's Chinese Theater. I'm not that impressed with the stars in the sidewalk, but I do get a kick out of the hand and footprints.

Can you tell which star's shoe prints my kids wanted their picture with? 

 

After Hollywood, we headed to Chinatown where we got a rockin' hot deal ($1 each) on some boba mango smoothies. Yum. They hit the spot on a summer day.

Gwen and Natalie couldn't resist the piano sitting and waiting to be played. They each took a turn and finished with a duet. 

Rachel's New Bob

This past summer, Rachel got her "college girl" haircut a year early.

Still here...slightly alive!

Inigo Montoya: He's dead. He can't talk.

Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.

Yes, we are still here and alive. I haven't blogged for a LONG time and I dearly miss it, so I am using a week I have at home recovering from a doctor's appt. to catch up.

There are two reasons I haven't been on here for a while. One, I got a new calling that is busier than Nursery Leader. I am the Relief Society President in our ward. It is hard for me to give myself permission to blog when my RS stuff is in a big pile that needs organized :)

The second reason is because once I fall behind, I fell like I need to catch up on EVERYTHING I have missed before I start blogging about what is going on today. Forget that! I will never catch up. I hope the kids forgive me for missing a bunch of their birthdays.

So, for the next while, I will post about stuff from the past nine months or so, or maybe I won't, we'll see...

Anyway, today, I have a treat for you, and it is dedicated to Summer, who when I told her I was going to try to blog today, said, "Oh, good, I love it when you blog, as long as I am not home for you to blog about me."