Hodgepodge of Events

We don't want the brothers to feel left out of all the activities of home, so here are some of the things we've done in the past few weeks:

It's "Spirit of Elijah" week for our stake. A couple of weeks ago we went on the ward family baptism trip. It was really neat to see fathers baptizing their own children for their own ancestors. Tomorrow the kids will have to ride the bus home from school and eat frozen pizza for dinner (what a sacrifice!!) so Wayne and I can spend the whole day in Orlando. The week concludes with a ward sealing session on Saturday. And just this week I discovered the connection that takes one line back another generation, so the work continues.

Last week for Mutual we had a Court of Honor which was a lot of fun, complete with games and skits in addition to the merit badge and rank advancement awards. The young women were great cheerleaders! Steven's making progress on his final three merit badges and is open for suggestions for an Eagle project. He's spent a couple of recent Saturday mornings helping with other service projects so he'll be able to ask for support for his when he's ready.

Several weeks ago the sprinkler system was zapped by lightning. After replacing a couple of controls, it's working again. Oh, and the shed has been ordered and paid for and will be delivered in a couple of weeks. If your dad doesn't have enough free Saturdays to assemble it, guess what you get to do over Christmas break!

As if English projects and math league practice and dentist appointments and memorizing the table of elements and learning all about the Chinese dynasties while still waking up for seminary weren't enough, I asked Steven and Michelle to help me with menu planning. We're tried some good recipes in the past few weeks. Here's one Steven picked out from the Kraft Foods magazine:
Chocolate-Peanut Butter Candy Dessert



Finally, we've enjoyed relaxing Saturday afternoons watching college football on tv, wishing we could join Jeff and his cousins at a BYU game in person.