Spiritual
We had a good Sacrament Meeting. Two of our youth spoke and then Vivian Bellison shared about her one year family history mission. Dad helped me in Primary on Sunday. Class went well. We spent the rest of the day quietly reading, studying and Dad visited with Grandma on the phone.
We were able to attend the temple this week on Wednesday evening and perform sealing ordinances.
My daily morning foundation of General Conference talk(s), prayer, scripture study and Come Follow Me study continues each day.
I have indexed 49, 210 records and reviewed 19,308 records so far this year.
Family
The Wilkins Family
The Ethan Rice Family
No news from this family.
The Doran Rice Family
No news from this family.
Morgan
On Saturday, Cassie was involved in a serious accident on her ebike. Morgan took her to Flagstaff Hospital where they found both her upper and lower jaws are broken and surgery was necessary. However there were no surgeons available so he got her some meds, they stitched up her chin, and returned home to come back hopefully tomorrow.
Kayty
Kayty had a good week at work.
The Nathan Rice Family
Annie called me on Friday to complete a school assignment. She then read aloud to me a chapter of Harry Potter. What an amazing reader she has become!! They had a wonderful trip to the Arkansas Railroad Museum.
Dad's Garden
Someone gave us her chicken manure (five large feedbags full) so dad has been working that into every garden bed. The weather will finally be below 100 next week so he will begin planting: lettuce, cabbage, collards, snow and snap peas and his root vegetables.
Other highlights
As the months go on, I am so thankful Mom prepared financially so that we could afford this nice place for her to live in. I have learned so much about retirement, savings, and the costs we don't know about. Mom's monthly care is $4500 a month. That is reasonable from my research. She has the money from her house sale as well as savings from her many years working. Her monthly social security amounts to $2000 and since she is on hospice, she encounters no costs for medicare. Had she not made these preparations, Sharynn Scott and I would have had to find the money on our own to pay for her nicer level of care. The other option is to have placed her in a facility that accepts medicare assignment once all her savings and resources were gone. Those places are not as nice, though follow laws.
Dad and I have learned a lot as we delve into social security and medicare. Dad will get $3000 per month. Out of that will come medicare costs...and yes medicare costs and if you don't get on a prescription plan you are penalized financially. I do not qualify for full social security since I didn't have a job. So when I am at the retirement age (for dad that was 66.5 and for me it's 67) I can get half of what his social security is, $1500. Dad will get a retirement monthly but not much money. So we have lived frugally and saved for many years so we will never be a burden to our kids. Now that everyone lives far away, we have to do things by ourselves and we are frugal in our expenses. We hope that the proposed tax on unrealized gain proposed and supported by Kamala Harris will not come into being. We paid 85,000 for our home and it's now worth over 700,000 and the taxes on that will force us to sell.
Just so you all know we are trying our best to not burden you. We keep on and don't share much. My hearing is not what it used to be and I miss much in phone conversations. Dad's phone has bad reception and so while his ears are good, his phone is not. And once he leaves Honeywell we will be sharing my phone. We are in good health and try our best to eat well, stay away from doctors and vaccines of any sort, and keep active.
With weather a bit cooler, our yard work has ramped up. Goal this Winter is to cut concrete sidewalk and dig to locate a broken pressure reducer that has kept our individual plants in both the front and back yard from getting any water other than by hose.
We set out on Wednesday to get the brittle brush bushes in control. The first one was the one near the pool. I clipped and pulled and dad raked and bagged. We found inside that bush two baseballs, a kick ball and a soccer ball. We completed hauling out to the front pile the next morning. Back and arms ached but the view out the kitchen window looks happier to me. Next job is to remove the brittle bush on the hill. Next day Dad chopped up one on the back hill. We got that picked up and out to the pile. Dad also had to prune back the rosemary in the lower courtyard. The pool needed a lot of attention so he spent time cleaning out filters while I skimmed off leaves. Saturday we removed three more bushes. It was a bit scary for a moment when dad was hauling a wheelbarrow down the backyard hill backwards, and ended up falling backwards. We were blessed to have him fall in a bush that cushioned his fall.
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