brief news and a few great quotes

Another quiet week for us. 

Hannah is almost done with tennis. This next Tuesday is her last home game. She's won some and she's lost some. And she still doesn't want us to attend her games (we make her nervous), so we haven't seen any of these wins and losses for ourselves. She now has a part-time job that takes just a few hours a week, which is perfect since she is so busy. She is cleaning the office of our optometrists.

Alex is currently working on a merit badge that is new in the scouting realm--Game Design. Alex, and his cousins Ben and Thomas, and another boy have been designing their own board and card games. He's designed his game. Now he just needs to make it and play test it--and name it. Too much fun.

Eric writes that, since next week is General Conference, they don't get their normal p-day next Saturday. Yesterday they had to grocery shop for 2 weeks and he will email on Friday. The work seems a bit slow...they give him a project, he finishes it, and then indexes because his project is done.

Now, for a few quotes that I love:


My dear sisters, YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER LOVES YOU — EACH OF YOU. That love never changes. It is not influenced by your appearance, by your possessions, or by the amount of money you have in your bank account. It is not changed by your talents and abilities. It is simply there. It is there for you when you are sad or happy, discouraged or hopeful. God’s love is there for you whether or not you deserve love. It is simply always there.”

- Thomas S. Monson


"Experience in one field does not automatically create expertise in another field. Expertise in religion comes from personal righteousness and revelation...Why, oh, why do people think they can fathom the most complex spiritual depths without the necessary laboratory work accompanied by the laws that govern it?" 

~Spencer W. Kimball


Obedience brings blessings. Exact obedience brings miracles.

~Greg Koenig (quoting Sis. Nelson who was quoting someone else)


If you find yourself a bit irritated or overwhelmed, it's a sign that you are spending less time with God and more time with this world.

garden, scouting, accidents on our corner, and my missionaries

Garden report--we didn't garden in our regular spot as it was overrun by salt grass. Glen has been poisoning and burning the salt grass. We hope next year the situation will be better. What we did was plant some tomato, eggplant, lettuce, and bell pepper plants that I started from seed at the end of our back yard next to the fence. They were eaten by what we figure were rabbits. Glen then replanted and it was late in the season. In the end, we have a few tomato plants (regular, roma, and cherry), one zucchini, and one yellow crookneck squash growing.

As of today, we have only harvested 2 zucchini, 1 crookneck, 2 small tomatoes, and about a pint of cherry tomatoes. We have not gone without homegrown goods, however, thanks to Uncle Jim and to David and Jackie. We've enjoyed tomatoes, zucchini, cantaloupe, and crookneck from their gardens.

I hope next year goes better.

this year's garden

we hope our regular spot will be useable again next year

There was a Scouting Court of Honor this week. Alex received 4 merit badges, bringing his number of badges earned to 5 (first aid being his other one). This time around he earned his Emergency Preparedness, Environmental Science, Leather Work, and Wilderness Survival.

For the Wilderness Survival, one of the requirements was to sleep out of doors and not in your tent. The night Alex slept out there was a big rain storm. Other boys were sleeping out, too. The scoutmaster ran around at 2 am trying to help the boys who were getting rained on. He found Alex dry and still sleeping because he had chosen a good spot for his bag--under a table which was under a good tarp. The other boys were under a tarp that was kind of holey, so the rain was dripping through.

Of course, I forgot my camera so I don't have him in his uniform, but here he is with his new badges that he earned at scout camp.

We used to have accidents on the corner in front of our house half-way often. Then the corner was redesigned many years ago, and we haven't had any trouble for quite a while. In a period of 11 days, we've now had 3 accidents.

The first was on Tuesday the 3rd, probably in the late morning. I was in Reno that day with Hannah (who was getting her braces off). I don't think the driver was injured.

Then I heard a funny noise at 5:20 am on Saturday morning the 14th--I thought something had happened over at the dairy barn (mini-explosion in a piece of equipment is what my sleepy mind pictured), but a guy had "missed" the corner and plowed through the arrow signs that showed that the road curved. His car wound up in the little ditch. He wasn't injured and supposedly alcohol was involved.

That same evening around 10:30 a woman coming from the opposite direction "missed" the corner, wound up in the same little ditch, and alcohol was also a factor. Luckily, she wasn't injured either. On Monday, NDOT came out to fix the mangled signs from Saturday morning.

That's the end of our driveway

We've been getting short letters from our 2 missionaries lately, but they seem to be doing well.

Ryan is mentioning teaching real investigators for the first time. It was transfer week this past week, and for the first time he isn't moving to a new area. He's been in Louisiana 4 months now and is already in his 3rd area, so we didn't think he'd be transferred, but you never know. It looks like he is happy and gets along well with his companion, Elder Deaver.

Oh, yeah. Ryan is teaching himself Braille. He bought himself a Braille Book of Mormon for $3.30. This is what he said:  "Yeah, I'm going to read Braille. I already knew the alphabet, but during this last week I've learned most of the symbols they have for certain combinations of letters and the punctuation. I'm also getting a lot better at being able to read it with my fingers. It was hard to do that at first. It takes me about 15 min to read a verse." Amazing.

James Taylor had a concert last weekend with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on Temple Square. Turns out, Eric was able to go. This is what he said:

"I got to go [in the] standby line to [see] the James Taylor performance on the 7th. He did "Carolina in My Mind" and "Fire and Rain" and initially I was kind of disappointed he didn't do "Sweet Baby James," but sure enough he did it last second as an "impromptu" encore, just not in the program.

So, yeah, I'm surrounded by greatness here, all the time. It's great."

Part of the greatness he's referring to deals with the fact that Comic-Con was recently held in Salt Lake and a lot of famous people were running around. I don't think he saw any of them personally, but he was thrilled by all the big names (Adam West, Burt Ward, "William Shatner, Lou Ferrigno, David Prowse, Kevin Sorbo... Peter Mayhew... A whole bunch of big names, is the point. And the giant head of Chuck Norris.").

There was also a special event at the Church History Museum where a "bunch of professional artists just did their thing, in front of you, and you could go around and watch them and ask questions. Mostly painters, but there was a paper cutter and a few carpenters, and potter/novelist Ben Behunin was down on the main level. Probably my favorite there was Emily C McPhie; the C stands for Christensen like James, her father." Eric and I love the artwork of James C. Christensen. To see what he does, go to his site: http://www.jameschristensenart.com/

So, Eric seems happy. I wonder how his assignment is going, though...

I start a long-term sub job on Tuesday. It'll be for 3-6 weeks for a resource (= special ed) math teacher at the high school. She does all inclusion classes, so I have co-teachers. It should be a good job as her co-teachers are all wonderful and I love math.

Happy Fall!

my weekly installment + an essential oils report

Apparently I failed to post photos from August 26th, the first day of school. So here they are now:

Glen starting his 25th year teaching; Hannah starting her senior year

Alex starting 7th grade

This past Tuesday, Hannah got her braces off (no photo yet, though)!

I've had some time to work on some family history this week. Every so often it's good to recheck the internet as new sources and databases are being added all the time. I was able to make some headway with some cousins, so that was good. Sometimes working on cousins helps me to find new info on our common ancestors. I was able to find the full birth and death date for Mary Elizabeth Pinner Russ and where she and her husband are buried! They are my great-great grandparents. I am looking for proof that who I'm sure are her parents, really are. Still working on that. But any success is heartening.


Saturday I got a called from Pres. Wadsworth asking me to bear my testimony in Saturday night's session of our Stake Conference at church. Since they gave me a heads up last conference but then didn't call on me, I wasn't too surprised that it was going to happen this time around. On the one hand, it was a great experience in that I really felt the Spirit as I was pondering what I might say. That's always the best.

But then, of course, I was called on and had to actually get up and speak. That's kind of no fun as I prefer to stay in the background. I don't know that I gave them what they were expecting--I was asked because I have 2 sons on missions and another one that was just married in the temple-- and I didn't even mention those things. I also told Glen ahead of time that I loved him and appreciated him since I usually don't say those kind of things from the pulpit and a lot of people do.

I mentioned some things that I feel deeply. One of which is what I heard in a sacrament meeting in Provo a few weeks ago. The Lord loves us and doesn't point an accusing finger at us for what we might have done wrong, but He has His arms open wide and says to us, "Come, unto me, all ye that are burdened and heavy laden." I really like that image--full of love.

Since I spoke first, I was able to sit back and enjoy the rest of stake conference. As always, it was inspirational.

Now, for a little report on my use of essential oils. I seriously doubt a lot of the claims that the companies make, but I have had some success with a few oils that I use.

toothaches:
Clove oil has really helped take away toothache pain for me several times. I recommend it.

allergies:
This is one I really think helps, but I can't swear to it as it isn't as quick to take effect as the clove oil is.  It might be working or I might just be having a mild allergy season. August is my allergy month. I read where you take 3 drops each of lavender, lemon, and peppermint oils 3 times a day for allergies. I put them in empty gel caplets I bought at the health food store as I don't like tasting them. I started only taking it twice a day and it really seemed to help. A friend said she only used lavender and it works for her. I'm now down to taking it just in the morning and I don't put the lemon in it.

gingivitis:
The jury is still out on this and I won't know until my next dental cleaning in a few months, but I put one drop of melaleuca (tea tree) oil on my toothbrush at night. I don't have gingivitis yet, but I do have a little bit of trouble with my gums being "puffier" than they should, and it's been an ongoing problem. I hope the anti-biotic properties of melaleuca will help with my inflammation.

stuffy nose:
It should be no big surprise that the eucalyptus oil really helps with that.

stomach and intestinal problems:
DigestZen is a specific blend sold by DoTerra, but other companies have similar blends. It really seems to work. You can rub it on your belly, but I prefer to put a drop in a capsule and take it with 1/2 a glass of water. There have been numerous times where it's made my stomach feel almost instantly better.

headaches:
I've had mixed results using peppermint for headaches, so I usually just take advil now.