Just a little update...

I spoke with Nicole's husband, Dustin, on Friday and he said that Nicole would probably be going home this weekend. She has had to have a couple of transfusions but other than that she is doing well. I tried to get an update today but haven't been able to reach them. When I talked to Uncle Chuck about what happened, his face said it all. She is a walking miracle. Thanks to everyone who fasted and prayed for her!
Happy Mother's Day!

Mother's Day

Notice Lacey's vinyl handiwork on the cover!!!

They even started a Moscow University 6th Ward Blog

It has been a nice Mother's Day. I remembered and got Mom a card and gave it to her on time this morning. I think she was deeply moved.

Then we had a nice Mother's Day program at church. It was also graduation yesterday so we had a lot of families visiting. I had asked Dan and Gail Schoenberg to speak and we had the Primary kids sing, then a trio (Seth was one of them) sang (each one in his mission language - Seth-Slovenian, Doug-Korean, Ben-Russian) and finally the elders quorum sang Love at Home for the closing song. After the prayer we handed out a long stem rose to all the sister. It was a really nice meeting.

In Relief Society the elders all came in and lined up in the back of the room and Seth went to the front and called Mom and I up and gave us the notebook (see above pictures) from the ward with pages from the individual families. There were lots of nice comments and pictures of the individual families. I invited Mom to say a few words but she was crying. We found out later that Lacey and another sister had put it together and Lacey had been up late last night working on it. She was acting kind of strange (more so than usual) yesterday and I couldn't figure out why.

We hope you all had a nice day. We were cold but we made smores on the deck again tonight. Someday it will warm up (it's supposed to be in the 80's by Thursday).

Have a good week.

Fathers and Sons and Mothers (but no daughters)

Friday night we had our fathers and sons outing at a church-owned park about a half hour from Brant's house. We not only invited our ward, but four of the smaller wards in our stake. We had a decent turn out. I prepared a fireside for Friday night. I talked about the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood, the bishop said a few words, and then we sang some campfire songs: Oh I Wish I Were..., Boom Chica Boom, Paw Paw Patch, Bill Grogan's Goat, etc.
The rain started Friday night. When we woke up in the morning there was a layer of ice on our tent. A cold wind blew as we ate breakfast. People didn't stick around too long after that. We didn't stick around to shoot guns, but we did go for a short hike. Overall, it was good.
I spoke in church today about mothers. We have a few single sisters in our ward who do not enjoy Mothers' Day. I tried to focus on the mothers that we have, not on the fact of being a mother. Mom helped a lot with providing me some stories about her, Grandma Louise, and Grandma Ada.
Sorry, no stories about daughters. Good to hear that things in Utah and Idaho are going well. K.I.T.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day!

ZLY

Earlier this week, I came home just as our lawn was being mowed. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the workers of the day were three kids (ages 14, 12, and 10) and their father was running the weed eater. It took me back to the many days that we all spent mowing lawns after school and during the summer. I talked to the dad and he said they had just started the business this year to help pay for upcoming missions and college. He was happy to hear that we had done the same thing and even asked a few questions about how it all worked out. We compared stories of working in the dark in order to get everything done on a school day and watching the weather to see if it was going to rain. Talking with this guy brought back a lot fond memories like #5, our Toro mowers and freshly filleted snakes. Maybe I'll even start my own mowing business next time we move somewhere.