Well this week has gone fast because it has been very busy.  It was good to have the holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday.  We celebrated by sleeping in and resting some that day but we had lots of things to do.  Larry is working hard on keeping things up at the house and it has been so cold lately that he has had to get out and start his truck each morning so the battery doesn't die.  I am trying to keep up with the Family Search mission and find a job.

This is a picture of my kids when Maren was a baby.  Her
Baby, Max looks a lot like her

Tuesday we were busy with missions.  I worked in the morning on Family Search and we had to teach the final career workshop for this month on Tuesday evening.  During the day we went to the networking group at LDS Employment.  I got some good leads there for employment that I am trying to follow up on.

Wednesday I worked some on the mission but I spent the afternoon trying to find some sources to attach to Larry's family in the Sources class that I taught that evening at the Family Search Center.  My last sources class I could not get the internet to work so I was pleased to have this class go well.  The Family Search mission had  Sister Susan Anderson present on Sources at our Tuesday meeting and she had a great PowerPoint that she let me use and it really helped to make the class more organized and have a backup in case the internet did not work.  When I came home that night it was 9 degrees out.

Last Wednesday when we came home from the Career Workshop we were teaching in the evening I had some things drop out of the book we use to keep things in and one of them was the DVD that we use for examples.  I looked everywhere to find it because they are not producing them anymore and they are rare to find.  I took everything off my desk and could not find it.  I searched the desk three or four times but it was not there.  Today when I finished my mission meetings I looked down and there was the DVD right on the top of the desk upside down.  Some people might call it a coincidence but I believe it was a miracle sent from God, it was not there before.

Nathan's Son Isaac won first in den and First overall in the
Pinewood Derby this week

Thursday they had predicted snow but we woke up to what looked like dry streets.  However it was freezing rain!  We don't get freezing rain often, in fact this is the only time I remember being exposed to it.  We were able to get ready and leave for LDS Employment by 7:25 am with no incident except to listen to the traffic reports of all the accidents in Salt Lake City.  Later we learned that there was a 7 car pile up on the main street just below our house that blocked the entrance to DATC so they had to cancel some classes.   We went to lunch and everything was cleaned up and we expected to eat at home but the road that is a slight hill to our home was so icy that we had to turn around and go eat at Wendy's in town.  The road looked like an ice sheet.  We stopped at Kaysville City and mentioned that it needed some kind of salt or sand.  When we finished our mission we went home and put on warm clothes and did not plan to leave for the night.  The roads were better and starting to melt because it finally warmed up to 32 degrees.

David, Maggie, Sam, and Isaac at the Pinewood Derby

We always weigh in at Weight Watcher's on Thursday when we go to lunch.  I was thrilled because I lost 3.2 lbs and so I am below 200 lbs at 199.6.  I just have a lb. to go and I will have lost 10% of my weight.  Larry was also pleased because he lost 1.8 lbs.  He has lost 32 lbs now and it looking great and wearing smaller clothes.  The thing that is good though is he had been able to cut his insulin in half with the WW program.

We had planned to go to the Bountiful Temple with the ward and some of our children that live close on Thursday night but they decided to cancel the trip because of the ice. We had called the kids and said that we were canceling right after lunch.  Our boss at LDS Employment said they even closed Temple Square for the evening because it was so icy during the day.

It was lucky that we could stay home though.  Maren and Landon finally made it to Salt Lake City about 4:30 p.m. after their flight in California was canceled because of the Salt Lake City airport being closed for ice.  They were able to find another flight.  They came to our house about 7:00 p.m. It was fun to see them and play with the kids.  Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures so I will have to get some when they get back from Roosevelt.

Nathan talking to Maggie

Friday, Maren and Landon went to his cousin Lee's wedding in Sandy and we tended the kids.  We had a good time.  We watched Disney Jr. and read books and played hide-n-seek and Barbies and legos.  Max is a really good baby.  He played on the floor most of the time with the other kids and then he took about a three hour nap.  I was amazed because Larry and I had energy the whole time to work with them and I even fix homemade mac and cheese for dinner.  I forgot to take my 2:00 pm medicine and still felt good until just after they left then I started feeling it.  They went to Kirsten's to see the new puppies and we were going to go but then I needed to find some sources for another class on Saturday morning and I was hurting so we called and excused ourselves.  I was shocked that I had been able to go for 12 hours without needing my pills.

Maggie is the Cheerleader

Yesterday we went to the Family Search Center and I gave my class.  Again things went well and the internet worked well until the class was over.  Larry and I stayed there for our shift and went home and had lunch.  I decided to work on my mission from 2-5 because I had not been able to work Friday.  Larry started working on some plugs that needed replacing or updating.  When I went to my computer I could not get any of the programs to come up that I use for my mission.  On Monday or Wednesday I had run some scans for my computer so I assumed that it had deleted those mission programs.  I asked how I was to deal with this on the Computer Tips and Tricks site on Skype and they told me to uninstall and then reinstall the programs.  I spent about 3 hours doing that and then went to do something else on the computer and realized that nothing was opening on my desktop.  So I decided to shut it down and restart.  When it restarted it was doing all these things probably related to the scans that needed to be updated.  When it finished everything was working on my computer so I think I wasted 3 hours doing all the uninstalling and reinstalling if I had just thought to restart my computer earlier.  Larry also felt like he had wasted the afternoon because it took him about 3 hours and a trip to the store to fix one plug.  So we complained to each other.

Last night and today were Stake Conference in our Stake.  We had a visiting General Authority Warren Tait and his wife here.  Last night we had the temple president for the Bountiful Temple there also.  They had lots of good talks.  We were challenged to find one name on our own to take to the temple from our family this year.  We were also challenged to read the Book of Mormon three times and underline everything in the Book of Mormon that tells the purpose of the Book of Mormon the first time.  Then we were challenged to underline the 2nd time with red everything that has to do with the atonement of Christ.  And the third time we were challenged to underline everything that seemed like it was talking to us in Blue.  He challenged us to do this in 30 day increments for each time but he said that we could take longer if we needed to.  We are contemplating how to do this as we have already mapped out how to read the Doctrine and Covenants and Church History materials for Sunday School.

This morning he challenged all of us to follow the Prophet and find a way to serve a mission.  I think we have that one covered.  He also challenged us to read the Book of Mormon again but not so specifically.  He promised us that we would grow spiritually if we would do that.  The challenge of the entire meeting was to lift ourselves a little higher.

Gauge, Brinlie, Jada, Ellie, Daxton, Mckinley  Maren's children
with their cousins

I am so grateful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the things I learn being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  I know that it is true.  I see miracle everyday that help me to know that Heavenly Father loves me and is there for me.  I hope that I can be a good example to all of the truths that I believe so they might have the desire to know more and be a member of the Church at this time on earth.  I hope that you will all take the challenge to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it as you read.  He will reveal the truth of it to you if you do.  I know because he has done that for me.

Well it started snowing as soon as we left the Regional Center where we have Stake Conference.  It is beginning to be a winter wonderland and it shows no sign or stopping soon.  Guess I will curl up and make some phone calls.