Letter - Nov. 10, 2013

Sunday, November 10, 2013

8:58am

Last Sunday night the Bryant Spencer and Tilly were dancing to “What does the Fox say?”  They were very silly and kind of funny.  Has that song invaded your home yet?  It’s kind of funny, but it’s very catchy so it gets played and sung a LOT and gets old quickly.

Monday I paid the bills and started preparing for Christmas shopping by making a list of those I get to buy presents for this year and I had each of the kids write a letter to Santa.  Spencer wrote one for Tilly.  That evening Josh called me and passed off the scripture of the month.  Way to go Josh!!!

 

While I was paying the bills Marlee called to me and said, "Mom, help I'm stuck."  Of course I had to get a picture before I got her out.  Ha, Ha.

Tilly decided she wanted a picture too.

On our way to the store on Monday I noticed Marlee brought her doll with her.  She loves dolls.

Here are several of Marlee's pictures with her dolls this year.

 

Tuesday Marlee finished memorizing the scripture of the month and passed it off.  I hoed the garden that afternoon.  I have a lot of nice lettuce in my garden this year, four varieties.  Puring’s discussion was canceled.  The elders were “having some difficulties.”  Not sure what that entails.  I took Puring a print out of the Articles of Faith in Tagalog that day.  I pulled them up on lds.org they have several languages for several different items like that online.  She read the Articles of Faith and likes them. 

Wednesday I had a nice day in the temple.  I did an endowment session since Brenda was kind enough to keep my kids longer than usual for Grammy Days.  I took one of the family names that Chad and I have been working on from his side of the family.  Trigger called and passed of the scripture of the month that evening.  Good job Trigger.  I’ll send Josh and Trigger their prizes this week.  I might have to send money for them to buy a little treat because it was kind of expensive to mail a treat.  Chad won his city of Gilbert basketball tournament Wednesday night.  He had to work late and missed all but about four minutes of the first game.  Then they had an hour break while two other teams played.  Then they played for Championship, but Chad didn’t realize it was the Championship game.  He thought they had to play one more game.  I got to watch his last game and got a nice little video of it--Chad had a three point shot and a cool steal within the first minute.  I sure love to watch Chad play basketball.  Spencer did a good job babysitting while I went to the game.  Before I left at 8:20pm, I got Karalee and Marlee down to sleep and then left Spencer to babysit Tilly and rock her to sleep and make sure that Bryant got to bed on time.  Spencer did a great job babysitting and all the kids, except for him of course, were asleep in bed when I got home.  I’m so blessed that Spencer is so good with his younger brother and sisters.  

 

Marlee took some pictures of me teaching Spencer a piano lesson on Wednesday.

I had to include this picture too even though it's blurry cause it reminds me how Tilly always comes up and needs to be part of the piano lesson too.

 

Thursday morning Chad had a call from his boss that was scary for the first couple minutes.  His boss was using phrases like, “the market is slowing down” and “we need to make some changes with management”.  But it ended up that they let a different lending manager go and have consolidated her area into Chad’s and another lending manager’s area.  That’s a relief.  However, I’m reconsidering wanting to spend money on a sport court now.  We’ve been putting all our extra money towards paying off our house but have considered using some of Chad’s quarterly bonus from this quarter to put in a sport court.  We’ll see.  Puring came for a visit Thursday afternoon.  The Elder’s stopped by earlier that day after visiting with Puring and asked me to help her decide who she would like to perform her baptism and confirmation, give a talk on the Holy Ghost, choose a hymn for the closing song, and say the closing prayer. (They will be combining her baptism with another convert baptism in another ward so she gets to plan the second half of the program.)  She said she wants Chad to baptize and confirm her and for me to give the talk.  I kind of feel badly that the missionaries won’t get do it, but she wanted Chad because he’s big and she’s going to need a lot of help in the water.  Our Elders are kind of short and I guess she doesn’t think they can hold her up as well.  She’s tiny though and I’m sure they could have handled it.  Bryant has agreed to sing “Gethsemane” at the baptism for the special musical number.  I think it will be a nice addition to the baptism service.

Friday Bryant got a crochet hook at school at his school swap meet and came home and said Mom look what I bought for $900 Malfitano dollars, a stick with a hook.  I saw it and said Bryant that’s a crochet hook.  I have some of those.  He bought it so he could use it to make the rubber band bracelets that are so popular right now.  He has lots of his teacher’s Malfitano dollars for good behavior.  I was proud of him because he said he shared lots of his Malfitano money with his friends who didn’t have enough to buy anything at their class swap meet.  All afternoon he couldn’t remember the name of the crochet hook and he kept calling it a clicheing hook or a croquet hook.  It was really funny.  When I showed him my crochet hooks and a blanket that I started making like four years ago and never finished he wanted learn how to crochet too.  He started making a blanket for Tilly, but quickly decided to do a scarf instead when he saw how long it was going to take.  I’ll be surprised if he even finishes the scarf.  For our date on Friday evening, Chad and I went out to eat at In and Out, then watched the new Thor movie, which we both liked, then went to get ice cream at Cold Stone cause I had a partially used gift card that I wanted to use up.  It was a nice date.

Yesterday we had a long day at the soccer fields, 9:30am – 2:30pm.  All three kids had games and they were 1 ½ hours apart.  Yesterday afternoon I did a project I’ve wanted to do for a while.  I made a sign to hang by our front door out of an old patio table I saw in someone’s bulk trash a couple months ago.  When I drove by that pile of trash I saw the table and thought, I can make something cute out of that.  Yesterday I finally got around to making it.  I’m happy with how it turned out.

 

Spencer's on defense in the bacground

Tilly is really good at the soccer games.  Very easy toddler.

 

Here's by sign that I made out of an old patio table.  I bought the letter S pre-decorated at Hobby Lobby for $10.  It was 50% off.

 

I’m missing Hayden’s farewell talk right now and the family gathering that will take place afterwards.  I’m sad, but I am looking forward to my kids’ primary program in our ward today. 

My quote for today is from a “classic” conference talk.  While I was walking on Monday morning this week I ran into my 78 year old friend from my ward Bro. Dan Kleinman (His wife Delight is a sister to Helen Melzer and Jana Mills.) and he asked we what I was listening too.  I told him I was listening to the conference talks.  He recommended I listen to some classic conference talks, one of which was Profile of a Prophet, by Elder Hugh B. Brown.  So on Thursday while I was cleaning my bathroom I listened to that talk and I thought wow Elder Brown is like Elder Holland on steroids.  It is a very powerful talk.  If you have interest in the talk I suggest listening to it instead of reading it.  It is more powerful that way.  Anyway here’s my quote. “Although these evidences and many others that could be cited may have the effect of giving one an intellectual conviction, only by the whisperings of the Holy Spirit can one come to know the things of God.  By those whisperings I say I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God.”

How did your week go?  I’d love to hear from you!! 

Love,

Mindy