Thanksgiving Weekend

Having four days off for Thanksgiving was great.  We visitied and spent time with family the entire time.  Thanksgiving we spent the day with John's sister Teresa and her family at Sam & Heidi's home.  We had an excellent meal, did a craft and had our annual family competition, which this year was a game of Pie in the Face.   Mikayla won for the kids and we got our very own Pie in the Face Game.

Friday we went up to Grandpa Billy's house and cut some logs for a church activity I am in charge of, helped him do some things around his yard, visited and the did a little target practice.

Saturday we had Thanksgiving dinner at my Mom's house with my brother and his family and my grandpa.  Sunday we spent the day at church and resting.

It would be so nice if every week was a three day work week and we spent the rest of the week enjoying our families and being thankful for our many blessings....just think how different the world may be????

 The kids playing Pie in the Face at my Mom's house.

Weekend Trip to the Cabin

It seems like it's been forever since we have been anywhere. Teresa and Dan offered to let us use the cabin for the weekend so we decided to take them up on their offer.  A nice, quick, weekend trip away after working 6-7 days a week straight for months was needed very much.  We relaxed at the cabin and went for a little drive, picnic and hike.

Mikayla sewed a maxi skirt

For mutual this week Mikayla sewed a Maxi Skirt.  She did a good job, it turned out great.

Halloween

The girls are getting too old for Halloween in my opinion, but the church was having a combined ward activity so we decided to go, which meant they needed to have a costume.  Here is what they came up with their costumes....there are lots of homeless people around town anymore which is both sad, upsetting and somewhat disgusting because nothing is being done about it, so they decided to look like homeless people.  They came up with their own signs and even made a sign for John.

The church activity didn't turn out as we planned so we ended up taking the girls and Nicole trick or treating for a while before going home.

Ingrown Toe Nails

Mikayla has had both of her big toes bothering her with ingrown toe nails, so instead of hoping that they would get better on their own with Epsom Salt Soaks, we decided to just go get them taken care of and end her suffering.
She chose to have the one that bothering her the most taken care of permanently, while having the other one done using the non-permanent method.  Let's hope the non-permanent method works and she doesn't have to go thru it again.

Relief Society "Souper Service" Activity

It's been a while since my committee has had to plan a Relief Society Activity.  We had a Garden Party planned in the summer, unfortunately the day of the activity it was 110 degrees so we cancelled the activity.

For this activity we decided to do a "Souper Service."  We used a fall theme, served Ham & Potato, Chicken Noodle, and Taco Soup along with homemade bread and cookies that looked like little apple pies.  Our activity for the evening was assembling bags for children who are patients at Valley Children's Hospital in Madera.  Our goal was to collect enough items (crayons, coloring books, puzzles, stuffed animals, puzzles, DVD's, games etc) to assemble 25 bags.  We surpassed our goal and assembled a total of 50 bags!  I also gave a talk on charity and service and we had a little game for them to play involving leaves and words from a couple of scriptures on service and charity.

Here are pictures from our activity.

Young Women's Evening of Excellence

Ashlee and mikayla shared their Personal Progress Projects at Evening of Excellence tonight.  Ashlee has spent the last year working on family history and sewing.  Mikayla completed one 10 hour volunteer project, went to girls camp, learned how to make jam and bread and completed some art projects.  These two girls work hard at everything they do.

Olivia, Mikayla, Ashlee, Savannah and Elle

Olivia, Hannah, Mikayla, Ashlee, Elle, Savannah, Nicole.  We have a very small group of young women in our ward.