Hutch

My parents gave us some furniture when we first got married. This hutch is one of the last pieces we have left. In fact, it had a top on it but the glass got broken in a move awhile back so we got rid of it and just kept the bottom for the sentimental value.

Mario decided to paint it this year. I think he did a great job. It is now a beautiful piece of furniture in our living room. What a difference paint and new hardware make!Now I want him to paint the rest of our furniture.

Homemade Ornaments

I'm so thankful for my friendship with Sharon Dryer. She is super crafty and she's kind enough to invite me over to teach me new things all the time. She's the one that taught Erin and I how to quilt so she is extra special to me.

This past week, Sharon taught me how to take those plain glass balls you buy at the craft store and turn them into beautiful ornaments.









- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Erin's Quilts

I decided that maybe I could honor Erin by making a quilt each Christmas for a young woman that is suffering in the same ways Erin was suffering. This year I chose my friend, Michelle's daughter, Aly. She is 13 years old and just a beautiful girl inside and out like Erin. Her favorite colors are black and white. So this is the quilt I plan to give her this weekend before I leave for Florida. I hope she likes it. I enjoyed making it for her. It brought back memories of quilting with Erin. What a wonderful time we had together learning how to quilt. I will always treasure those memories.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Thanksgiving

Michael and Rose came up for Thanksgiving again this year. It was a long drive and they didn't have much time off from work so they couldn't stay long, but it was a nice treat to see them again. Michael plans to retire in the next few years and then move to Thailand. It sounds intriguing. We could retire really well there on Mario's military pension but the cost to travel back and forth to see my kids would be just too high. So I don't see moving to Thailand in my future. But I'd love to visit one day.

Eric and I continued our Black Friday shopping tradition and hit the outlet mall with my friends late Thursday night. I didn't buy anything except a pair of boots for him for Christmas. But I love that tradition with him that we started back in Tucson when he was looking for a lego set for Nathan at Toys R Us. We have gone out shopping every year since I think. Of course, we miss Erin shopping with us, but she is never far from our thoughts. In fact, I'm pretty certain she is with us much more than we know. How I'm grateful for my daughter and all she has taught me in her short life, I look forward to a joyous reunion one day. For now, I can just be thankful for that knowledge that we will have that reunion one day. What a glorious day that will be.









- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Happy 13th Birthday Nate and Zach

Well, it's official. We now have 2 more teenagers in the house! These boys are so full of energy but also so full of love. We went all out for this big birthday milestone and they were both so appreciative of all the work that went into making it special.

A year ago, I began making them t-shirt quilts from Erin's old t-shirts and artwork. This week I finally finished them up and they loved them. They are more lap size, but they like to sleep with them.






Nathan got a Santa and reindeer lego set and Zach got a new fishing pole from me and Mario. Eric and Nicole (Eric's new girlfriend) got Nate a magic trick kit and puzzle and Zach some fishing gear. We had homemade donuts and scones for breakfast and went out to Pie 5 for dinner.










On Friday night, we had an Escape Room birthday party for the boys at our house. I found an idea on line and added to it to make a great Zombie Apocalypse room. The boys had to make a vaccine to save themselves from the zombies. They had 45 minutes to do it before the zombies invaded and both groups did it in exactly 30 minutes. It was a lot of work putting the room together but it was worth it. All ten boys had a great time and all were very appreciative. One thing that has always impressed me is that all my kids seem to have the nicest friends. What a great group of young men! They all worked together really well in their groups. Nathan invited Griffin, Kaden Mellars, Xavier Walker, and Christopher Kosmicki. Zach invited Liam Webber, Ian, Blak Thorpe, and Ethan Yorgeson.















Now wish me luck as we embark on the teen years with these two awesome boys! I'm so glad they have each other and a great big brother to help them navigate through these tough years.

Chicken Pincushions

Nate and I sewed up a couple pincushions during our "Mom and Nate Time" today. The first one we tried was a fail, but these two came out well. Bet you can't guess which one Nathan made!






Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

English Class Follow-up

Zachary asked me if I remembered how hard he worked on his last sentences/paper for English class. I responded that yes I did remember. I mean, how could I forget?!They won't let me forget! Then he showed me his grade that he just received. I was prepared for another C. But to my surprise, he had a perfect score with a note from the teacher asking if she could use his for a future example. I did notice a couple mistakes that the teacher missed but apparently she wasn't taking off for those kind of mistakes anyway. Nate got an almost perfect score on his but wouldn't allow me to share it on my blog. I'm so proud of the progress they have made and I'm grateful for a teacher that makes them work hard.





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Girls' Weekend in Minnesota

Tessie Snow invited several of us to come visit her at her house in Minneapolis. Four of us loaded up the van on Thursday at noon and left for her house. Britany Dicus had moved to Texas last year so she flew up to Minnesota Thursday morning.

We had a lot of fun talking, laughing, shopping, and eating. When Tessie suggested a trapeze class, I volunteered to be the photographer. Jennie quickly said she'd join me. I wouldn't have even made it up the ladder let alone fly thru the air. We also visited a mansion museum, IKEA, and a waterfall park. Tessie drove the Jennie's minivan and accidentally went the wrong direction on the on-ramp for the highway. It was pretty scary when we saw headlights coming at us. She quickly jumped the curb and got us onto the proper road.  Things got a little heated when someone brought up politics because Tessie is a liberal.  So we tried to avoid that topic.  We did well, for the most part.

We will be talking about that trip for years.

Me, Jennie Hendrix, Kathleen Lindseth, Tessie Snow, Britany Dicus, Lindsey Anderson

Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

English Teacher

Almost everyday, the boys hop in my car after school complaining about one person, their English teacher.  I listen to their complaints and then laugh as I think about how I should email her and thank her for helping my kids get into a good college one day.  But I don't want to email her because she would probably critique my awful writing since I didn't have a teacher like her when I was in middle school.

At the very beginning of the year, she handed them each a single jelly bean and asked them to write 12 sentences about that jelly bean.  I think tears were shed when they found out that they would have to revise those 12 sentences about 5 times to take out "insanely boring words" like do, get, give, have, take, make, etc. Then they have to take out "dead words"

like great, small, sad, nice, and happy.  Then they have to rewrite sentences that start with I, the, or an.  

They also have to memorize a helping verb song.  After all this work last week, they were both disappointed to receive only a "progressing" or a "C" on their work.  They are hoping for a higher grade this week.  They spent hours last night rewriting sentences and then woke up at 6 am this morning to continue working.  I love it!

Zach's First Sacrament Meeting Talk

I was asked to speak about finding happiness so I based my talk on  the Quest for happiness by Elder Jeffery R. Holland. In this article he spoke on four different ways to find true happiness. Here are some of the things he says.

 I do not think God in his glory or the angels of heaven or the prophets on earth intended to make us happy all the time, every day in every way, given the testing and trial this earthly realm is intended to provide. As President James E. Faust (1920–2007) once phrased it: “Happiness is not given to us in a package that we can just open up and consume. Nobody is ever happy 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”1 But my reassurance to you today is that in God’s plan we can do very much to find the happiness we do desire. We can take certain steps, we can form certain habits, we can do certain things that God and history tell us lead to happiness.
In short, your best chance for being happy is to do the things that happy people do. Live the way happy people live. Walk the path that happy people walk. If you do, your chance to find joy in unexpected moments, to find peace in unexpected places, to find the help of angels when you didn’t even know they knew you existed, improves exponentially. Here are at least a few ideas about how one might live “after the manner of happiness.”

1.  Live the gospel of Jesus Christ
Above all else, ultimate happiness, true peace, and anything even remotely close to scriptural joy are found first, foremost, and forever in living the gospel of Jesus Christ.

2. Choose to Be Happy.
Learn as quickly as you can that so much of your happiness is in your hands, not in events or circumstances or fortune or misfortune. That is part of what the battle for agency was over in the premortal councils of heaven.

3. Don’t Be Negative, Mean, or Angry.
You can never, worlds without end, build your happiness on someone else’s unhappiness. That is what bullying is. That is what catty remarks are. That is what arrogance and superficiality and exclusiveness are. Perhaps we think if we are negative enough, or cynical enough, or just plain mean enough, then expectations won’t be too high; we can keep everyone down to a flaw-filled level and therefore our flaws won’t be so glaring. Happy people aren’t negative or cynical or mean, so don’t plan on that being part of the “manner” of happiness. 

4.Work Hard and Study.
One last suggestion when there are so many others we should consider: Nephi said that in an effort to find happiness in their new land after their 30 years of trouble, “I, Nephi, did cause my people to be industrious, and to labor with their hands” . By contrast, those from whom they fled “became an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety” .
Christ is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6)—no one comes to true happiness except by Him.
If you want to be happy in school, or on a mission, or in a marriage—work at it. Learn to work. Serve diligently. 

God Wants You to Be Happy.

The Book of Mormon teaches many powerful, provocative truths. One of them is that the nature of God is synonymous with the nature of happiness (see Alma 41:11). It also teaches, therefore, that “wickedness never was happiness” (Alma 41:10). So I ask you to reject transgression in order to live consistent with the nature of God, which is the nature of true happiness. I encourage you and applaud you in pursuing the path that leads to happiness. You can’t find it any other way. Christ is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6)—no one comes to true happiness except by Him.


I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Homemade Escape Rooms

Mario and I made the boys an escape room at our house on Saturday.  They loved it.  So they made Mario and I one today.  I loved their props.  They tied Mario's hand to my hand to make it extra tricky but they left the key to untie ourselves in an easy location and we totally missed it.  It was supposed to be the first key we found.  Ha ha!  

I'm grateful to Melissa because she is the one that introduced us to this fun game.

Christmas in Florida (Continued)

I'm sitting here starting the preliminary plans for our trip to Florida for Christmas.  It is a tradition I started a couple years back that Mario didn't like at first but now he's on board and even insisting that we go even though he is getting low on use or lose leave.  As I was thinking about this trip coming up in a few months, Irealized that I never got around to posting pictures from the second week of our Florida vacation last year. That was the week we got to spend with grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins.  It was by far our favorite week.  Also, Eric got to join us for the second week, so that made it even better.

We spent a lot of time at the beach and on the boat with Billy and his family and having so much fun with Henry at his house.  As you can tell from the last couple pictures, we weren't excited about leaving Florida to come back to Nebraska.