We survived

This week the state of Maryland has experienced an earthquake, a tornado, and a hurricane!

And we survived them all. We were shaken up after the earthquake, literally and figuratively. The tornado happened one night while we were sleeping and we were oblivious to it. And after much fanfare, the hurricane blew by talking only our electricity with it.

Our power was out for about ten hours. Many others, including dad and Laura and boys, were without power for much longer. (In fact, last I talked to dad, he was still powerless.)

But we are all safe, thank heavens!

Family Re(n)union Option

I looked into some housing possibilities here in the springs. This link takes you to Farish, the campgrounds owned by the Academy. It is more expensive than what we were planning on in Washington. Click on the links on the bottom left hand side to see prices and maps of the area. I'll look and see if there are other lodges available...and I'll update this post if I find anything worth reporting on.

Here are the lodging arrangements we propose

Click Here

Jess' Travel Plans

I am flying out to Colorado Thursday morning, arrive there right about noon. I have a rental car. I leave there Monday just before noon.

Mandy and Nathan are flying in Thursday night and out Sunday afternoon. She and I will probably share a hotel room so she can have privacy with Nathan.

I can help with rides if needed and we would be happy to have company in our hotel room if anyone wants to stay with us.

Jason's Final

Jason has his last test for nursing school tomorrow!! Please keep him in your prayers.

Then he spends the next three weeks working one on one with a nurse in the ER for his practicum. He will be done with school August 8, but doesn't graduate officially until August 23. Then he will take his state boards the first week of September. We will ask for more prayers then!!

Mom,

My bathrooms need cleaning again... when are you coming back!?!

Happy Birthday Mom!!

Yeah, I know it's a little late now, but we did celebrate Mom's birthday while she was here.

Happy Birthday Mom!!

Becca Graduated!

Rebecca graduated on Thursday night from Nathan Hale High School. Time seems to go by so fast, it seems like she just started high school and here she is done. I will post more pictures on our blog if you would like to see more.

HE'S STILL NOT HERE!!! I NEED HIM TO COME!!!

WHO REMEMBERS THIS HOUSE?

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.