Week of July 23 - 29, 2017

Highlights:

Spiritual
Sunday was very busy for me. I kept getting calls to substitute and assist. I was chorister in Sacrament Meeting, gave the Sacrament Meeting opening prayer, and participated in giving part of the Relief Society lesson. It was a very good Sunday with much valuable instruction in all our meetings.

I completed my visiting teaching on Monday with a visit to one sister, and a text to an out of town sister. Dad completed his home teaching on Sunday night.

Dad tried twice to go to the temple but the sessions were very full. It surely doesn't happen all of the time, but its good to see it does happen.

I had a meeting with Angie, my co cub scout leader, and we planned our scout meetings for the next couple of months.

I am in 2 Nephi 16 in my Book of Mormon reading.

I have indexed 22710 records so far this year. The Washington marriage records seem to have run out, and I am testing out trying new projects, which makes it slow going. Once you get the hang of doing a type of record, it goes faster. Those first trials are slow and tedious.


Family

The Wilkins Family
Sam made the best of playing basket ball this week.

Grace has been a super breakfast chef too!!

 And to top it off, notice she served on silver platters!

Adam got new clothes for school, including this shirt...


The Ethan Rice Family
Good and busy week for this family. We got to see a cute video of Kaylee and Wade racing in the upstairs hall: Kaylee on Rhodee, and Wade "walking" and pushing a stand up toy. He was doing pretty well, too.

The Doran Rice Family
Doran, Amber and family are doing well. Both jobs are going well and Amber is getting a raise. They are getting things ready for Kelsie to go to school, and Kooper to go to preschool. Amber was part of the Saturday morning news broadcast...

Doran even got to be on...

Morgan
Morgan is staying with us temporarily. He moved out from his apartment on Wednesday. Work is still going well and he spends his spare time fishing.

Kayty
Kayty started up her old/new job this week, though it still is very slow. She stays her full 40 hours. She dressed up like Poppy the Troll for Crazy Hair Day.

She kindly transported Morgan home from work twice this week at 2:30 am. Her health has been good.

The Nathan Rice Family
This family celebrated a last family home evening on Monday with Jessica's brother and sister in law, Josh and Cynthia. Nate came over much later to weld and complete the receiver hitch project. He worked more on Tuesday as well, though it was a struggle with all the tools he was using either catching fire or breaking. He got it done and installed on Friday evening. He completed his internship and they took him out to lunch at Garcia's and gave him great accolades for the work he did while there. They are preparing an offer to present to him to work after graduation in four semesters. Jessica went to the doctor and was concerned Elisabeth was measuring smaller than she should be. The Arizona and Idaho doctors consulted and she will see her doctor at home as soon as she gets there and they will determine what is going on. They got everything packed up and spent the weekend loading up. We had them over for Chinese on Saturday. Nathan stayed late to cast bullets and we took him home after he was done.  I looked at all that had happened in these last nearly four months. It has been the best to become so well acquainted with Annalee. It's hard in just a few moments of a visit, or even on FaceTime when they are small. Nate welded Dad's wok table, got us a new shower head for the bathroom, and worked on lots of projects. I got tons of sand moved to make a place for Nate's truck to move here, but that will have to happen when we figure out how to move it. I am grateful we had this time. Four more semesters, graduation, and they choose where to settle and where to work.

Christmas in July
I repurposed another house...

Painting stuff is all put away for the year. 

It wasn't a super Christmas in July this year. I just was busy hauling sand, cleaning up yard stuff, keeping up with the house, and extra family helping that was oh so needed. 

Dad's Garden
Dad's date palm has a good crop this year. We had to figure out how to cover these huge heavy bundles to protect from birds, so we worked Friday and covered one big bunch with two large pillow cases and one bunch with a Power Rangers sheet.

Year of the House Part 2
Nothing this week. We reserved any spare time for helping Nate and Jess if they needed it.

Other highlights
Good and sweaty jogs this week, and even got to jog to the temple on Saturday.

Lots of yard clean up this week. I finished hauling sand and there is plenty of room for Nathan's truck to be here. We just have to figure out how to get it here. We also raked mesquite beans (it's not too bad knowing it's the final crop of the year), and Dad blew tons of pine needles and leaves from the neighbor's trees (we did get ahold of the subdivision HOA president and the had their people trim some of the trees. We will need to re assess in a month and see if they need to trim higher on the trees. There are high branches very much over our yard.

Monsoon cooler weather at times. Such a nice break.

Not so highlights
A dear friend in our ward, Audrey, had breast cancer surgery last week. The final pathologies are in. Tumor size of softball (curious since she had a mammogram in February)- deemed Stage 3, cancer in lymph nodes. She will begin chemotherapy in two weeks and radiation as soon as they do a PET scan. We live in a ward full of very strong, faithful, temple attending members. They home teach, they care for their callings. The youth are amazing. And yet, at this time, my prayers include April, Audrey, and Carol who were diagnosed within the last few months with cancer, Doug and Cassie who are having heart troubles, Linda and Shannon who both lost husbands unexpectedly this year. Trials come to all. I am just trying to be thankful for every moment.