10/4/17 Cub Scout Games

Today Heidi taught the boys to play some pioneer games. Here I am doing the stick pull with two cub scouts.

The boys also did Indian leg wrestling, arm wrestling and a balance game.

To help the boys practice team work we had the boys do this web game where they need to use each of the holes in the web only once. The first time through they failed and had to start over. It gave them a chance to think things through and practice listening to one another.

10/3/17 Grocery Shopping with Peter

Peter fell asleep on the way to the grocery store. Heidi had the idea to use the puppet bag as a pillow for him. He slept well and Heidi and I had a pleasant grocery shopping trip.

10/2/17 On Hold and FHE with the Shirts Family

     This morning our top priority task was to sit on hold with Intuit and try to resolve a tax issue. It was anxiety inducing and boring at the same time. In the end we found a solution that will probably be good enough. It was not very satisfying but at least we can move forward.
      This evening we got to have the Shirts family join us for Family Home Evening. John is a former bishop from another ward and now is one of David's assistant scoutmasters. He works as a financial analyst. Mindy is an energetic Mom of four. Her kids say that she loves to talk and tell stories. Jaqlyn is 16 and on the swim team. Turley is 14 and also on the swim team with his sister. Rushton is David's age and they are good friends. He and his younger brother Johnson are both being home schooled. We thought is was neat that they do orchestra at a public school that offers electives for home-schoolers.
     We had a lesson where we talked about answers that we found for our conference questions. Then we played games. David took some kids down stairs and show them the projector. The older kids and parents played ImagineIf. I find that it's a fun game for learning what other people think about each other.
Here are some of the answers that we heard to our questions:

Conference Questions

How can we balance our time?

Put Spiritual things first

How can we have less stress?

     We should remember that we are sons and daughters of God.

How can we strengthen family relationships?

Spend real time with each other (as opposed to virtual time with technological devices)

How can we involve older people in Gospel activities?

     Give service

How is the church helping with the natural disasters?

Helping hands, donations, lose yourselves in service (Oscarson)

How can we be better missionaries?

     Welcome and embrace everyone on the journey (Ballard)

How can we be better friends?

Ask yourself "who needs me today?"

give service

What are some ways we can avoid problems in media?

Don't compare other's apparently perfect lives on social media with our own.

Put down phone and find someone to serve (Oscarson)

Wear gospel glasses

How can we think of good questions?

How can I share my testimony with my friends?

     Service

     Invite them to activities

Pleeeeeese? - Peter

       As you can see we didn't write down answers to every question but I do think that having questions helped us listen more attentively to Conference. We will definitely continue this tradition next year.

10/1/17 Sunday Sessions

Today was day 2 this weekend of General Conference. We love the messages and, above all, the feelings that conference brings into our home. Contrary to what it may look like in this picture we actually did pretty well at staying awake today. We even put some more answers up to our conference questions list from FHE.

During the break between sessions we decided to help the kids get their wiggles out by walking down to the park. Joseph decided that he was the "statue of writing" because he had a pen rather than a torch like the statue of liberty. Sarah has a great smile in this shot as well.

Peter was happy in this picture, Heidi assures me. He really did seem to have fun throwing the disk around.

David had fun using his boomerang. He actually had a few throws that almost hit him. So we are making progress on the how to throw the thing front.

Rebecca had some success helping Sarah fly her butterfly kite.

After the last session of conference Peter was wiped. Heidi and I swung by the Stake Center and helped put away projectors. Ray, Clyde, Richard and one other guy also came to help. Many hands made for light work and we were done shortly thereafter.

9/30/17 General Conference

Today we enjoyed three sessions of General Conference. One of our conference traditions is cinnamon rolls. Above you see TJ helping his mom make them from scratch for tomorrow's breakfast.

Sarah also pitched in her help.

Rebecca, ever the big helper also lent a  hand. Joseph and Peter were there for quality assurance.

Joseph was sure to take a selfie along the way.

In addition to cinnamon rolls we also started trimming the palm tree in front of our house. Our ladder was too short so we borrowed one from the Mickelsons down the street. When we finally got to cutting I accidentally dropped a tree branch on Heidi and Papa's heads. I felt really badly about it. They were tough. Unfortunately the battery in our cutting tool died before we could finish so we'll have to come back to the task again later.

Another big task was collection day 2 of David's Eagle project. He gathered more than 20 more small appliances for refugees. He has now surpassed his goal of 70. We are proud of the hard work that he has been putting in.

9/29/17 Munchies with Mister, Temple and Bigfoot

This morning Mesa Academy hosted a time for Dads to be able to visit with their kids and have a little snack. It was called "Munchies with your Mister". I learned that Sarah and Rebecca both enjoy PE class the most. Rebecca says that her Social Studies class is the most interesting. Sarah says her Chinese class interests her the most.

After the event with the girls Papa and I went to the Temple together. We did an endowment session.

Peter has been having a rough few days so I wanted to be sure to include this picture of him with a big smile.

After the temple Papa wanted to test the turn signals when the Saturn is hooked up to the motor-home. It's still getting into the high 90s in the afternoon in Arizona so it was warm. The good news is the lights all work as intended. That's one more box that needed to be checked before our trip.

9/28/17 Humanitarian and Meetings

        Today Heidi got to help out at Humanitarian. Peter has had a fever off and on so I stayed home with him. In the afternoon I had a meeting with Michael about a possible system design for a potential client. In the evening Heidi went to unit commissioner meeting. The kids and I watched part of Superman III. It was pretty silly.