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.

Sophomore Year

We moved Eric back into his dorm this morning.  He has the exact same room as last year so he knew exactly how he wanted to set up. He and Mario got the room all organized by the time I returned from running a couple errands with the boys.  I cried the whole day last year when he moved in.  This year, I shed a few tears as Eric and I sat in his room for a few minutes alone.  But other than that, I'm doing much better than last year.  I will miss him but I'm optimistic that we will see him often and if not often enough, I'll start bribing him with steak dinners if he'll come home or lunch dates to his favorite restaurants.

Can you spot the photo of me and Eric in one of the pictures below?

His roommate, Ryan, decorated the living room before he got there.  Eric thought it looked more like a girls' dorm but at least it's comfortable and done.  Ryan made lots of crafty type things to put on the walls to go with his theme which I think is the beach.  We'll see if any of the other guys make some changes to his design.

Jeanne's Lake

Our last weekend before school started again was spent in Missouri at Jeanne's lake.  Josh's mom is so generous to share her home with our family everytime we go to see my sister and her family.  It ranks right up there with going to Florida as their favorite vacation spot. 

It's fun for the four boys to run wild in the woods and swim and fish all day.  Lately, Zach has been obsessed with fishing so he spent most of his time fishing while the other three boys swam and explored.  He caught quite a few bass on this last trip so he was pretty excited.  

I was excited to have Mario and Eric join us.  Work tends to keep them back in Omaha while the boys and I go to play.  But they both took time off to go last weekend.

I love the peace I feel being out in the woods away from the craziness of life.  I love spending that time with Melissa and her family.

Unfortunately I only got pictures of Zach fishing this time and not all the cousins together.  Maybe Melissa has some better pictures she can send me so I can add to these pictures.