I feel so fortunate that my oldest four boys have had the health, the means, and the desire to serve missions.  Now my fifth son, Everett, is going to serve!  Last Thursday I was in the Dallas airport, on my way to Baton Rouge to visit my oldest son and his family when I got a phone call from Everett.  He had just gotten home from school and found his mission call waiting in the mailbox.  He was so excited. He decided to open his call that night after I had arrived at my destination so we could join via Skype.  Lots of friends and relatives decided to join him. And he's going to the Armenia Yerevan Mission, speaking Armenian! It's another eastern Europe mission for our family.  Two other brothers served in this area, in Latvia and Ukraine.  These are all former Soviet bloc countries and my oldest son and his wife both served in the former East Germany, another former Soviet bloc country. He's very excited and I'm happy for him.  It will be v

You know that project sitting in your closet, the one that's been there for 15 years?  Mine just got finished! 15 years ago, I decided I wanted to make a jeans quilt, a quilt made out of old jeans.  So I collected them and collected them.  After a few years, I decided I had plenty and I needed to stop collecting.  So I cut up the jeans into squares.  Then several years later, I pieced them together into a quilt top.  I had the backing all ready to go...then my daughter saw that lovely piece of fabric and decided to cut a big square out of it.  Aaarrgh! I didn't let her use the square she cut out though. So finally, after a few more years, I decided to just sew that piece back on.  A few weeks ago after I bought some batting and spray-basted it on, we tied it!  This weekend I put on the binding and now it's done.  I'm so pleased. I'm excited to use it.  Maybe I'll make another one in 15 more years. I'd say the jeans squares look pretty authentical

Last week was spring break.  We mostly stayed home because my husband was teaching and feeling swamped at work.  I had a funeral on Monday to help with and other projects at home. But on Wednesday, I took the kids on a day trip to Vernal. We got an early start so we could make our 10:00 appointment at the Vernal LDS temple for the kids to do baptisms.  Vernal is about 2.5 hours away. The Vernal Temple was constructed from the old Vernal Tabernacle. Camille and Mindy couldn't go in so I stayed with them and we went to the Natural History Museum that has a dinosaur "garden" outside.  We had lunch all together at a nearby park and then we headed over to Dinosaur National Monument, which is about 25 minutes east of Vernal.  Part of the park is in Colorado.  We went to the visitors' center and then up to the Fossil Quarry.  Fossils of large dinosaur bones were discovered in this area about a hundred years ago, just sitting there, exposed on the si

Soon my 5th son will be putting in his application to serve a mission for our church.  He has completed the application and needs just one more interview before his application gets sent into church headquarters and he is assigned a field of service.  He's pretty excited. Missionaries are asked to pay about $400 a month for their support.  So a mission of two years costs about $10,000 plus the cost of the missionary clothing.  Some young men I know save enough to pay for their whole mission, but we ask our children to save $5000 and pay for about half of their mission, although they don't end up paying the full amount thanks to donations from other people. Saving half is very doable! Here are some things we do early on to help our children save: 1.  Require and encourage them to save.  From ages 4-16, my children receive a small allowance ($10-20 a month), sometimes tied to chores, sometimes not. They have to pay tithing (10%) and then I require them to save 20% in our