Sunday School

I know, finally a post!
I have to.
It's Sunday.
And it's Pioneer Day.
That's a pretty important day in my culture :).

Today we trekked to Woodward, OK and attended services there at their precious branch (very small congregation). Very nice people in Woodward. Very nice.
my mr. had a speaking assignment and he asked me and miss s to speak with him.
So my husband, I and our three children still living with us, made it there.
(miss h is having a very fun pioneer weekend in Utah!)
We left very early this morning with a picnic (to be eaten in the car) breakfast and lunch.
At about 154 miles, it took us about 2 1/2 hours.
If we were handcarting it, and we were going at a super good pace of 20 miles a day, that would have taken us over a week.
Isn't that incredible?

I would have melted.
I am thankful that we drove.
And I am thankful for air conditioning.
And I am thankful for the pioneers that went before me.
Very thankful.
Amen.

Can someone please give me kickstart?

I would be very grateful.
I've stayed up wayyy too late tonight in honor of the good old nights of last weekend.
This time it's Jerry Maguire's fault.
Dang tv.

And of course I didn't power down the machine and
kept telling myself, it's on the DVR-
but I was enjoying that Toyota facebook commercial with the girl who "mostly read an article" too much.

And then I walked by the office and the fan was on
and instead of turning it and the computer off,
I told myself that I could check just one thing online.

So here I am.
I checked more than one thing.
Dumb choice.

I have not been able to get myself into doing what I need to since end of the busyness of the past month.
I am hoping tomorrow will be the day.
I doubt it will, but it's good to hope.
Please kick me if you can.
Thanks.
And goodnight.

Tomorrow's to do list includes:
Picking up a prescription for miss s. (she's fine without it-it would make her life better if she had it, but I am totally acting like our tooth fairy with this errand-so sad.)
Picking up a picture I finally got framed from our trip to Hawaii in December (2010).
Picking up some transparency film.
Not going grocery shopping (because I did that today).
As always: laundry, cleaning, and the bills because those things just will not leave me alone, even though I have been doing my very, very best to avoid them.
Help my mr. with a couple of things.
Cleaning out this computer's hard drive so I can get this summer's (so far) pictures off my camera.

Sunday School - not really Sunday School - Just some Sunday ramblings

All right, so I am very tardy to Sunday School tonight.
But I wanted to check in with you and let you know that this weekend was a screaming success on all fronts.
The kids from our congregation rock. They had a great youth conference. I am so proud of them.
And my mr. hosted a most wonderful family reunion in another state.
My college girl talked to me on the phone for quite a long time tonight.
She chose to not go to a concert with her friends when she found out the ticket she bought was for a Sunday.
Good choice, miss h. I'm proud of you!
My high school girl's been hanging out and wanting to visit with me much.
She was sad that she didn't get a prominent part in Friday's production, but something better came up and I am so thankful.
I get to see my man and my boys at midnight Monday night-well, really Tuesday morning.
I slept over 12 hours (miss s says it was more like 13 or 14) last night and took a 3 hour nap today.
(There wasn't much sleeping Thurs & Fri nights.)
It's a very good day.

The only bummer is that - apparently - my old computer here is getting old and tired and needs a clean out.
I have to make space to download all the many pictures I have from this summer so far.
I really wanted to put some pics on here. They will come, I promise!

This Summer

Calendar image from here - it doesn't match what we have had going on, I just liked the visual.

The last week of May I started my first summer PACE (brain training) client.

T-ball started.

The first week of June I went to girls' camp with the awesome young women

and leaders from our ward.

The second week of June little mr. b, my mr. and a bunch of their scouting friends

went to scout camp.

And swim team started.

The third week of June my mr. went out of town for a bit.

And then the boys, miss h and I started out road trip.

At the end of that week,

miss h became an independent university girl.

And the boys and I went to a family reunion in Rupert, Id.

And they went back to Boise with my parents.

And I went back to Utah.

By myself.

And had a great time.

The forth week in June I drove to Colorado Springs for PACE Advanced training.

I'm glad I went.

On the last Saturday in June, I drove home.

The next Monday, I started with another very cute PACE client.

The last week of June, my mr. went out of town for work.

This first week of July, I will go to Youth Conference with the youth in our ward.

The second weekend of July, my mr will host

 family reunion in Boise.

He will pick up the boys.

Who have been having an incredible time in Idaho with both sets of grandparents.

On Thursday, July 14th, we are in charge of the treats and drinks after the t-ball game.

Someone gets to go to golf camp the third week of July.

And there's a swim meet.

The last week of July, miss s gets to go to San Antonio (lucky)

with a super fun friend to attend EFY.

And I think there is another swim meet and couple of t-ball games in there.

The first week of August little mr. b goes to soccer camp.

The second week of August brings "back to school" information day and

hopefully a visit from the university girl herself, miss h-

but only if that job she gets will allow her the time off,

right, miss h?

The third week of August brings eye doctor visits

and the first days back to school.

miss s has a full time "nanny type" position with two

very cute young ladies.

miss h was their "nanny type" last summer.

I think being a "nanny type" gives wonderful life lessons.

miss s has greatly enjoyed her one on one time with

both her father and me.

And so have we.

also if you are part of this group:

his "cousins' on his mom's side,"

please don't be alarmed.

my mr. has the reunion all under control.

We set the date for the reunion before we knew about the Youth Conference.

We didn't want to change it.

And lunch is fried chicken.

Yum!

But miss s will not be there to do the kids' events like we hoped.
(miss h gets to be there thanks to some wonderful "cousins' on his mom's side's" kindness.)

mr mr. was going to delegate, but I don't know if he did.

If he didn't, he might need some help in that department.

I am sorry.

But I know you all will have fun.

And I will miss seeing you.

Very much.

Happy Summer!

Another youth conference email

This one came at 10pm tonight.
It told us that we should tell the youth to bring a towel if they planned on using one.
It wasn't on the original packing list.
And if they plan on swimming they should bring a modest one piece bathing suit
and another towel.

I hope the kids get the message.

Sunday School

Looky here, we made the "Mormon Times' What's Happening" section.
Probably one of a handful of times cute little Oklahoma's been on that list.
So this is the culmination of the last half year's practices & activities that have eaten our lives that our youth and youth leaders have been focusing on.

There have been about a zillion emails marked URGENT, URGENT, READ NOW, LAST ONE, NO-SORRY NOT REALLY, READ THIS NOW.

There have been lots of forms to fill out and forms that required parents' signatures that we didn't know we needed to get.

There has been costume confusion and lots of not hearing what's been said.

And there's been one Sister the mrs. (adults are called by Sister and Brother and their last names by tradition in our church), a young women's president on the edge, who did NOT have a panic attack last Sunday and who DID have the beautiful thought while driving to church this morning that there will be no more of those emails. There can't be. There is not enough time to deal with things and get all the youth's costume stuff together like they asked by Thursday morning at 6:50am when we are meeting to travel down to the awesome Youth Conference that the performance is just a third of. By this time next Sunday it will all be over. And I was a little bit sad.

Yes, me, the mrs. has had a change of heart.

When I first heard about this whole thing, I was a little frustrated. They'd be taking away "our" time with the girls. It'd be a lot of work. I might have to sew something (eeekkkk & phew I didn't have to).

But, as the months have gone by, the three wards in our building joined forces to help our kids learn their dances and songs together.  And after a couple months of that, the stake started to have all the practices together as a stake - which was a huge blessing. I've met some wonderful women from those other wards that I don't think I would have met otherwise and I am thankful. The kids have learned their dances & had opportunities to get out of their normal lives a little bit.

It's been awesome to watch them practice a "Bollywood" number that is just so fun to do! It's been fun to watch the ones that chose to do the "Polka" practice with partners and without. It's been fun to listen to my miss s talk about her take on the whole thing.

But I think one of the big things that hit me happened yesterday.

miss s and 15 other kids from the choir for the show had the opportunity to go to a recording studio & record tracks that will play with two songs that the entire cast will be singing in the performance.  She asked me to come with her & of course I said yes.

There was a 14 year old girl at the studio- the studio owners daughter. She was so excited to see the kids there. I guess earlier in the month there had been another group there recording instrumentals for the performance. She told us that she had that music on a CD and was listening to it before bed because it was so beautiful. She helped her dad and hung out the whole time with us. (Well, I don't know what she did while some other moms and I went on a sandwich run to possibly the slowest Subway in Oklahoma or the entire USA.)

When we were serving up the sandwiches, the people in the room were talking about missionaries. Because I knew the young lady wasn't LDS, I whispered to her what a missionary was (in our church) and what the people were talking about. Somebody said something about being recently baptized and she said, "I want to do that. I need to get baptized." Wow.

Now I don't know if she meant baptized into our organization or just baptized in general, but I really think that all these LDS youth have made an impression on her and that she's felt the beautiful, peaceful spirit that comes through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The chaos of the past months slipped away.

I don't know what will come of it, but hopefully she will have the opportunity to learn and make a choice that will bless her live eternally.

And I will not let 24 out of 30 empty costume bags, URGENT emails and some missing signatures stress me out.
The picture is way bigger than that.
Way bigger.
_________________________________________________________________________

PS-The stake has really done the majority of the work on the costumes, they are awesome! We only have to collect a few items from the youth to add to their stake costume bags.
And 5 out of the 16 kids recording were from our ward. Pretty awesome.
And, as always, here's a link to mormon.org if you are curious or have any questions, or email me :).