The JST

It's been a while since anyone reported on what they've been reading, so I thought I would give it a stab. I just finisehd reading a book that was a collection of presentations/articles on the Joseph Smith Translation (JST). It was interesting most of the time. There were parts that I felt I had to drag myself through. I learned/was reminded of some things, like: A large portion of our doctrine came as a result of the translation--Joseph would read something and have a question about it or about the revision he was given and the answer would come as a revelation with new doctrine. Another thing I learned--I had no idea that the church was against using the JST for a large portion of it's history and that it's only been since the 1960's that the church has warmed up to it. I also didn't know that our footnotes and exerpts still don't include the entirety of the JST.

I'm finally getting back to the comprehensive history of the church. I'm on volume 5 now. What has everyone else been reading?

New TV

Hey all!!

I am looking to you smart techie people to tell me the difference between LCD, LED and plasma TVs. What do we want? Why would we want it, etc. It is time for us to update and replace but we know next to nothing about what to get in this modern world. If you know "stuff", please share it!

Thanks!

Senior Project

As a graduation requirement I have to do a senior project. For the senior project we are required to do something that benefits the community. I thought that collecting items to put into care packages for soldiers over seas would be a project that would be a great way to help 25 or more soldiers.

These are the items that I am collecting to put into the packages:

• Wet Wipes in individual packages

• Gum

• Lip balm/ Chap stick

• Pens

• Books with games in them (cross word puzzles, word searches, etc.)

• Boxed snacks (Wheat Thins, Triskets, crackers, etc…)

• Lollipops

• Sewing Kits

• Small First Aid Kits (band aids, etc.)

• Room Fresheners

• Hard Candy

• Individual snacks (Peanuts, fruit snacks, granola bars, etc…)

Also money would help so that I can go and purchase some of these items as well.

I would like to have all of the items together by Sunday, April 24th so I can get the packages together and sent by the middle of May.

Thank you for all of your help.

Becca

Do you want to help?

Laura's aunt Mariluz is going to have surgery on her birthday, April 6th. She is having one of her kidneys removed.

Please keep her in your prayers.

Her insurance is covering the hospital stay, but won't cover the procedure itself. She will have to pay about 5,000 Argentine pesos, or 1,250 dollars. Among Mariluz's friends and family, they've put together about 2,000 pesos. If anyone would like to contribute, let us know.

Thanks.

Your son and brother graduated with his masters yesterday. He's awesome.

Snow day!!

I can't believe it!! We were awakened this morning at 5:48am with phone call from the school district. NO SCHOOL!!!! This is miraculous! We send our kids to school in blizzards, in -40 degree wind chills, there is no closing of the Bismarck Public Schools! Then, lest we think it was a dream, we got another call at 6:20am with the same recorded message. Of course the kids all got up at their normal time, with out being woken up for scripture time. Why is it that on school days we have to drag them out of bed but on non school days they wake up early on their own???

Anyway, just had to mark this miraculous day for you all to know about. We got 6-8 inches since yesterday of wet heavy snow, all the trees are hanging low, covered in snow. We are are still under winter advisory until 7pm tonight. I suppose that means the pinewood derby and New Beginnings will be canceled, along with the school program last night. Oh how I love living in this crazy cold nasty place... at least I keep telling myself that.

For those of you enjoying 70 degree, please enjoy it for us, too!

Home efficiencies

I've been reading a book called "The All New Square Foot Garden". The guy's plan seems pretty good. He was a civil engineer and an efficiency expert before he retired and took up gardening. He was surprised by how inefficient the typical methods were, that he decided to change them all. His method reduces or completely eliminates the need to plow/turn/till the soil, fertilizer, weed, and significantly reduces the amount of water you need to use. He's essentially removed the all the unnecessary steps in gardening. I'm excited to try his method when we get out to Colorado.

The book got me thinking about home efficiencies. The thing that I've been thinking about most is laundry. I don't like to do the laundry. Well, what I really don't like is to fold. I think folding is just a silly thing to do. I think that just more of my clothes will make things a lot more efficient. So, I ma going to start hanging all of my clothes except my socks and underwear. If it works well, I'll hang the boys clothes when we get to Colorado. I'll report on how it all goes.

Also, when we get to Colorado, I'll see if I can't chronicle my square foot garden so you all can see how it works.

Non-food storage list

I've been considering what non-food items I want to include in my storage. Here's my list. Any thoughts?

Kitchen Stuff

Salt

Dog Food

dish soap

aluminum foil

plastic wrap

ziplocks

garbage bags

paper plates

plastic utensils

Other

matches

laundry detergent

fabric softener

stain remover

fuel

contacts

contact solution

diapers

wipes

Bathroom Stuff

tooth paste

soap

shampoo

conditioner

toilet paper

birth control

pads/tampons

tooth brushes

deodorant

razors

lotion

hand soap

floss

First Aid

bandages

tape

gauze

antiseptic

tylenol/ibuprofen

anti-histamine

alkaseltzer/antacid

cold medicine

cough drops

cotton swabs

sun block

aloe

hand sanitizer

I plan on having all this stuff in our storage along with all the canned and dried foods that we normally eat. I intend to guess how much of that stuff we use in a year, buy some portion of that, and then keep track of how much we actually use for a number of months to refine my year's estimate. We'll keep with a print-out of the list on a clip-board with all the items in a column on the left and then columns for each month on the rest of the page. We'll put hash marks in the current month every time we take an item so I can estimate at first from one month's use, then two, and so on. It should give me a pretty good estimate.

I also plan on setting up my shelves so that you can access the front and the back to make FIFO easier. I've considered getting some of these shelves. They're pretty expensive, but look like they'd work really well--and I wouldn't need access to the back. We'll see how my initial plan works.

Finally, we're going to do better at storing water when we move. We've done pretty well at filling our empty juice containers with water, but we never rotate them. The plan is to have a number of shelves devoted to water. We'll rotate the water by always having a "fill" shelf and a pull shelf. The idea is that you pull from one shelf, drink that water, fill the container and replace it in the fill shelf. Once the pull shelf is empty, it becomes the fill shelf, and the next oldest shelf becomes the pull shelf. I think we'll be able to make this work. We'll see.

New background

Just in case you didn't notice, I changed the background. I was bored... Feel free to change it again. I was able to get the text and post title colors darker but not the date and other stuff. Maybe someone else knows how to do this.

On another note, Jake has invented a new word: amn't

"I amn't throwing things in the living room."

This summer

Okay, so just so I am sure...who is planning on coming to the family reunion?

Michael, do you have any better insight about your summer situation?

Andy, I hear that you are going away? Is that true? What about your family? Where will Laura and the boys be?


I am excited to see everyone this summer, but will be so sad to miss part of the family. I think that if there are definite NO's from anyone, we may want to talk about postponing the reunion.


PLEASE, share your thoughts.

Family Reunion

Hey people. Do we want to start planning activities, foods, etc for the reunion soon, or is this to early for some peoples?

Parenting stinks!!

Went to the dollar store this morning with Jake, after a frustrating trip to walmart, were he kicked and hit and screamed at me because after he ran off several times, I made him sit in the car.

Jake found a horn and started blowing it. I took it away and put it back on the shelf. I heard the cashier talking to another customer about how unsanitary it was that someone was putting germs on a toy. She came over and told me that, too. I told her that is why I had taken it away from him. She told me she should remove it from the shelf and not sell it. I told her that was her choice. She told me I was his parent... Duh! I told her if she was that concerned she shouldn't sell the dumb horn at her store. I dropped all my things on the floor, grabbed my screaming child and left the store.

Now he is in his room, not falling asleep as I had hoped. I have given up on parenting, so if anyone would like to take over for me, I would be happy to send my kids your way.

Oh, and we probably shouldn't go back to the dollar store for a while...

Hey all!  Thanks for all the phone calls on my birthday.  I am happy that you all like me!

Guess what my family gave me?!?!  A kindle!!!  It's so cool!  I downloaded a bunch of books from amazon for free already!! 

Anyone know if you can get the scriptures for free?  I found one site, but it didn't work for me.

Thanks family!!!

Old Navy

Just a little FYI...

Old Navy is currently offering an additional 40% off their clearance prices.  I was able to get a few things for our family.  Nothing amazing, but some good deals.

Laura, Andy, Nick and Noah family New Years Card

We have been getting Christmas cards for the last few weeks. Thank you to all those who'f sent them. Our card will be in the form of a blog post. In fact, this very blog post.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

As you can see, Nick and Noah where EXTATIC to sit for our little photo shoot. Maybe some year, we'll have kids who pose and smile. I hope your (whoever reads this) Christmas was great, and your new year what you wish it to be.

Andy, Laura, Nick, and Noah

Just a book idea...

I just finished a book that I thought you all might enjoy. It is a biography, not too long and lots of good stuff to learn from it. It's called The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch. You can find info about it here http://thelastlecture.com/. I especially thought of Mike R. while reading it. He would like it.

Also, I recently found out that you can order emergency/food storage like freeze dried foods from Sam's club and Costco. I thought you might be interested in hearing that.

Lastly, I did not get around to Christmas cards this year. It's just not happening, but wanted you all to know that we love each of you dearly and wish we could see each other more often. Mikayla and I were scrap booking some photos from our family reunion, yes I know it was 2 years ago, but I'm a bit behind in my scrapbook. We had so much fun together and loved playing in the backyard and the wii and everything else. We are so looking forward to getting together this summer. I hope it works so we can all be there!
Anyway....

Merry Christmas!!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

A few weeks ago we were trying to get family pictures taken for Christmas cards. I looked up from trying to get the camera ready and the children had taken this pose. They are sillies! You should all be getting Christmas cards from us in the mail eventually. Some have even been mailed already, but not all. I ran out of stamps...
We are excited for this Christmas season. We are frequently reminding the children of the real meaning of Christmas. I made Austin change his letter to Santa where he wrote X-mas. We talked about how important it is to keep "Christ" in Christmas.
We love you all and pray that you will have a wonderful Christmas!

Finally getting to our meal plan...

Here's what we've had for the past two weeks and what we've got planned for this coming week:

Hoagies
BBQ Meatballs w/mashed potatoes
Creamy White Chili
Steak (really sliced up, marinated and grilled roast pieces) salad
Italian vegetable soup (was not very good)
Mexican lasagna
Cheesy potato soup
Creamy italian chicken
Pizza
Spaghetti
Breakfast Casserole
Stroganoff
7-spice chicken
Home made mac and cheese
Cheesy chicken and rice
Alice springs chicken
southwest egg rolls
meatloaf

We had leftovers a few times in there...

Menu Plan

Mike and I were chatting about what we were having for dinner this week. I thought it would be fun to share what we have planned and would love to hear what you are having.
I try to plan out a month long menu. I buy all the staples at first and then purchase fresher ingredients as needed.
I tried to put this on the calendar below, but this old computer doesn't allow that kind of new fangled stuff.

Chicken Parmesan, Noodles, veges
Breakfast Burritos, fruit, muffins
Drumsticks, rice, corn
Tacos, chips, salsa
French Dip, pasta salad, fruit
Chili, corn bread
Chicken Fajitas, chips, salsa
Lasagna, salad, jello
Chicken Roll Ring, fruit/veges
Beef Stroganoff, rolls, salad
Enchiladas, chips, salsa, beans
Pizza, carrot sticks
Omlets, muffins, fruit
Bacon Cheeseburgers, chips, fresh veges
Bacon/sage chicken, pasta, salad
Rsmry Pork chops, mashed potatoes, veges
Chick thigh w/ mustard sauce, rice, green beans
Canned soup, bread
Turkey
Leftovers
Chinese chicken, egg rolls
Meatloaf , baked potatoes, corn, rolls
Tacos/Burritos, chips, salsa
Beef Stroganoff, MIKAYLA' S BDAY!!!!

You should know that I had this all spaced out like a calendar and tried to make it look nice, then when I posted it made a big mess of it. That is why it's just in a list now.

Share what you are having this month/week!!! By the way, I just realized we are having bacon two days in a row... may have to fix that.

Visit to Hyde Park text

I had a meeting last week at West Point where I am a member of the Board of advisors for the Geology and Environmental Engineering Progeam, and Mom went with me. We visited Franklin D. Roosevelt's home and libreary and one of the 43 van der Bilt mansions (the smallest one, actually), both located in Hyde Park, NY, about an hour from West Point. We had a great time. Unfortunately, my camera battery was almost dead, and I forgot to bring a charger, so I didn't get many pictures, but the leaf colors were gorgeous! They told us the peak color day occurred the day before we arrived, and the day we were there was cloudy and rainy but they were still pretty. The pictures don't do them justice. See the trees reflecting in the Hudson River, the Roosevelt house, and the Mansion in the pictures (posted before this without text, due to technical difficulties). The mansion reminded us of the opulence of Crazy Ludwig's Linderhoff Castle in Germany. The guide told us the mansion was representative of the Gilded Age in America. There was no real Royalty in the US, but the van der Bilts and others of their ilk felt that they were the substitute for it in the US, and they lived like it. The mansion was amazingly ornate and oozed wealth, being furnished with antiques from all over Europe. The mansion had electricity before the town of Hyde Park, and the townsfolk would come out in droves on Friday evenings and party along the road and fence line at dusk to watch the electric lights come on in the mansion and on the mansion grounds.