Saturday, August 3, 2019

Week of July 28 - August 3, 2019

Highlights:
While much of the time I am not a fan of social media, I took a moment to listen to a five-minute fireside presentation by one of the Historians of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as she spoke about a strong woman early in church history, Mary Fielding Smith. During this, she shared that while we all go through difficulties that sometimes make us feel alone, we are given blessings to attend us in our difficulties. Be mindful of those blessings, those moments when Heavenly Father actually helps, or sends others to help, and then be grateful. The historian shared the following quote from Thomas S. Monson:

“To express gratitude is gracious and honorable, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live with gratitude ever in our hearts is to touch heaven” .

Spiritual
We had great speakers in Sacrament Meeting. My great, and now former ministering sister, Marena Hales and her husband spoke. They used to live in Flagstaff but have finally totally moved here. He is a retired spinal surgeon and she is a retired airline pilot. They both spoke about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and repentance. I taught primary as a sub and Dad taught the deacon's quorum.

I performed initiatory ordinances at the temple on Tuesday morning and Dad attended sessions on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoon.

I am continuing listening to General Conference every morning and my Book of Mormon reading.

I have indexed 15002 records and reviewed 34045 records so far this year.

Family

The Wilkins Family
From the Wilkins Family Blog...
We're in the midst of temple shutdown here.

Which means I work earlier doing things like carpet cleaning stairwells for four hours straight.

And though I tend to exaggerate from time to time, that is not an exaggeration. It takes four hours to clean a stairwell properly. And I've done four of them in the past two weeks.

We also do a lot of upholstery cleaning during the shutdown. Every chair/couch/cushion gets cleaned.

It's hard and exhausting, and I tell myself I'm going to quit every time.

But, I don't, because not only do I get to be in the temple five nights a week, I have made two of the best friends I could ever ask for and I feel so darned blessed.

Temple shutdown January 2018

This next week is volunteers week, which means I work much earlier than usual AND Josh has Cub Scout Day Camp all week AND Grace will be gone at Girls Camp.

It's going to be a crazy one, but we will survive!

The temple re-opens in early August for a month and then closes for two and a half months.

I won't be working for most of that, so I have an interview this week (because the week wasn't busy enough) to help during that time.


It's temple shut down and I'm tired and way busy, so a quick recap of the week:

Another flat tire. Seriously. We have had a spare on our car (in different positions) a ridiculous amount of times in the past several months.

Every Saturday night we have Pizza and a Movie night. More often than not, I give everyone a small ball of dough and let them go to town and make their own. Sam opted to make a bunny-turned-Pikachu pizza this week with Grace's help.

A little Christmas in July celebration with The Grinch and hot cocoa.

Grace and I love a good dinner salad. We usually can't get these boys on board, but since she's leaving for Girls Camp soon, we made this on Sunday and the boys didn't complain (too much).

You can't tell, so goodness knows why I am posting this picture, BUT, our wet winter and cool spring has made it perfect for hoards of grasshoppers to fly into Las Vegas. It's horrific. They love the big lights on the temple. When I leave at night, there are thousands and thousands on the temple, in the sky above and on the ground. It's so crazy.


The Ethan Rice Family
Last weekend, Ethan had to interview someone in Alabama, so they took advantage of the Saturday interview to travel to the United States Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.


















Meeting the teacher and haircuts before school starts.

First day of first grade for Kaylee.

The Doran Rice Family
Kooper and Kelsie met their new school teachers this week.



On Saturday, they had fun building a rocket pencil box at Home Depot





Morgan
Morgan and Aimee had a good time fishing. Aimee is quite the fisherperson...

Emileigh started school this week too.


Morgan found this.


It was the speech that would have been given by President Richard M. Nixon in the event that the first men to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, were unable to take off from the moon and return to the orbiting spaceship, instead to remain until they died. It also included instructions for the protocol, when the speech should be given, and clergy instructions. I was 9 and in California at my grandparents house when my mom called us in from playing outside to see the men walk on the moon. I do remember being quite upset and complaining about who would want to see men on the moon, but I went inside and watched. Kids are crazy sometimes and I am grateful for my mom making us come in.

Kayty
Kayty had a good work week. She also spent Wednesday celebrating the birthday of Harry Potter. She made a cake on Tuesday night and I made Shepherd's Pie for her dinner.




The Nathan Rice Family
We visited with Nathan, Jessica, and the girls as they came by on Sunday evening. Early Monday morning, Nathan called asking for me to come down and watch the girls while they took Emma to Phoenix Children's Hospital with a high fever. They did check her out but it was nothing serious, thank goodness and the girls and I had fun reading books and playing hide and seek. It took a few days but she is recovering. The girls came by on Friday so Nathan, Jess, and Emma could enjoy a date night. I love it when I hear a small a tiny knock at the door and in walks a small girl with a rainbow sparkled skirt, a rainbow Minnie Mouse shirt, sparkly pink sandals wearing a pretty necklace with a toy cell phone in her hand followed by a taller Snow White costumed princess, full of smiles and ready to play. On Saturday, they helped Uncle Josh with his brakes and then ventured to a splash pad in Tempe. 

Dad's Garden
Palm trees still hanging on.

Christmas in July was a success, and I continue to work on my nativity project part 2 so Christmas in August continues. I paint and on Saturday we watched Home Alone 1 and 2 while it was 114 degrees outside. 

Other highlights
We had rain this week, which meant one day under 100 degrees.

On August first, as I walked I saw Orion...and his belt...for the first time! My favorite sign that Fall will be coming. I almost yelled, but it was dark, and very, very early!

I worked this week trying to calm Nano about not being able to get on her email. It is so sad that in six short days, she has totally forgotten how to get on. Scott has a friend that will work to get an icon on her desktop so she can access that way. 

New parts for the swingset arrived and now we need to get the pipe and remove the old cement supports from the ground.

Saturday morning, very early, Dad and I filled up the bulk trash pile with limbs from the pine tree and the mesquite trees.

This was an interesting find this week. I am currently a member of the Vintage Phoenix facebook page. My dad was once the Advertising Manager for Yellow Front stores and would put together their weekly newspaper ads. It was quite a process that involved an Exacto knife, rubber cement, and trips to the Arizona Republic late at night downtown. I got to go a couple of times. Anyway, on the group, someone posted an old ad, and I am pretty sure my dad worked on it.




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