Project Rudolph

The kids painted Christmas ornaments and wrote out thank you Christmas cards to be delivered to Project Rudolph. The people at Project Rudolph then bag the homemade ornaments, cards, and a few other items and send it to soldiers who are overseas and away from their families during the holidays. It is an awesome organization started by the kids of someone in my parents Church ward in Oakley Idaho.

Check it out: http://www.projectrudolph.org/

By the way, this is awesome

Check out the link on lds.org to conference talks that are great for the youth to hear.

https://lds.org/youth/from-leaders?lang=eng

We have already used "God knows you" by Elder Uchtdorf, "Study the Book of Mormon" by Elder Eyring, and "Be a covenant keeper" By Elder Cook for Family Home Evening lessons. I can't wait to use them for more FHE lessons.

Yearly Fall leaves pile

In the Faith of Christ

I started to create a separate blog for this, but I kept creating posts and putting off the part where I made it public. Something didn't seem right to me about it, and I realized that my faith in Christ is part of my life and since I already have a blog that is my family's life it would only be right to include it here. I was going to call the blog In the Faith of Christ.

Anyway, it hit me one day while listening to a friend speak about her testimony (thank you Emily Wagner!...she probably doesn't even know that I am inspired by her--now she does!:)) that those who know me may not know that I have a testimony of Christ. They may not know that I hold that testimony as one of my greatest treasures. It made me realize that all of life is about choice. I can choose to speak of Christ and preach of Christ or I can choose not to. And choosing not to doesn't mean that I don't want to speak of Christ, for me it means that I am not taking every opportunity and making my own opportunities to do so. I know that all good things come because of our Heavenly Father and Savior Jesus Christ.

God lives. He is a perfect God and a God of order. He created a plan for us to return to live with Him again someday because He loves us. That plan is called the Great Plan of Salvation. It is also called the Great Plan of Happiness because by following it we can return to live with our Heavenly Father and Savior Jesus Christ and through that have eternal joy. I know this is true. I know that Jesus Christ is central to that plan. I know that He performed the atonement so that we can be forgiven of our sins and so that we can return to Heavenly Father clean and pure even though we make mistakes. This knowledge has gotten me through a near death experience, hard experiences as a child, disappointments in adulthood and many more trials in my life. I can still have peace even with trials because of my knowledge of and faith in Christ. This knowledge, this faith in Christ can bring the same peace to anyone.

I hope that as I post my feelings about Christ that others will be inspired to share their feelings about Christ as well. We can have great hope in our futures and in our lives through Christ.

This is a great article about God's plan for His children:
http://lds.org/general-conference/1997/10/the-plan-of-salvation-a-flight-plan-for-life?lang=eng&query=plan+salvation

Trevor's day

Trevor is home sick today. It is so sad because it is such a beautiful day outside and he is currently inside...playing the Wii. He threw up a few times yesterday but hasn't yet today! It makes me so sad when my kids are sick. All he's eaten since yesterday morning are a few saltine crackers. We've had lots of ginger ale and apple juice!

HALLOWEEN NIGHT

Our city sets a curfew for Halloween night. People (yes I purposefully put people, because there are more than just little kids out there trying to get candy!) usually start trick-or-treating around 6pm and then the police cars come and patrol and send everyone home at 7:30pm. That is plenty of time to get candy and still get back home to pour it all out and compare it with friends. :) We met up at the Call's house for some good Halloween fun. We had chili and bread sticks for dinner and hot chocolate and apple cider to drink. It was s fun night. But now I am ready for Christmas. :)

Trevor was Harry Potter, Ashlyn was Princess Peach and Corbin was a Dementor (yes I tried to talk him out of this--it's scary!--but he wouldn't budge and that's just fine by me. Dave joined us a little late for the party. He had to work until 7pm, but still made it for the end!














This house was amazingly decked out. Fog machine, spider webs, ghosts, halloween lights, hot apple cider, donuts and popcorn balls. We were laughing about how their neighbors must feel...there is no way anyone is going to be able to keep up with these Jones'!

Ashlyn's invites

Ashlyn made her own invites to a birthday party she was throwing for her webkinz. :) A webkinz is a stuffed animal and she is holding it in the picture below. She created about 10 invitations that all look the same and have a picture of her webkinz on it. She used pastels to draw them. She invited 10 other stuffed animals to come. lol! So funny and cute. Pictures and details of the party will be posted later.