OUR MISSIONARY FAMILY

You will have to bear with me while I try to figure out how to use this blog. I will get someone to show me how to put more than one picture per day. I'm amazed that I can even do this much now.

For Mother's Day, Brian made us a flag holder to hold the flags that represent the states or countries where we and each of our children and in-law children served their missions. I think this is a pretty impressive sight for one family. When our grandchildren start going on missions, he says that he will add a second layer to it. Mine and Tim's is in the middle and our children's flags are on one side of us and our 3 in-law children on the other side. Between Tim and I and our children we have gone to Florida, Japan, Brazil, England and Spain while our in-law children went to Japan, Tennessee and Venezuela.

OUR WINTER WONDERLAND HOME

We got a lot of snow this past week!

SNOW, SNOW, SNOW!!!

Tim spent a good portion of the morning on Friday snowblowing our driveway. He wanted to get a picture to put on his screensaver for our mission. He thinks it might help him get cool while in Florida.

OUR MISSIONARY FAREWELL

Today was our farewell. I couldn't believe I was standing at the pulpit actually speaking. It felt like I was talking at my own funeral. Of course I had to cry all the way through my talk. I started crying during the opening song when we sang "There is no peace on earth I said, for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, goodwill to men. Then pealed the bells more loud and sweet, God is not dead nor doth he sleep....." I totally lost it there. My talk was about how the Good Shepherd knows his sheep and we know his voice. Tim gave a great talk on "Our Savior, our friend". It felt so good when the meeting was over. We had a lot of family and friends who came to the house to eat afterwards. There were probably around 50 or so. We had tons of food left over. We had Carolyn & John Everton, Judy Robertson, Spence and Pat Ericksen and Mike and Rosalie Taylor drop by to say goodbye. Now we have this week to get the house cleaned and our bags packed for the MTC. It has been a very busy month. We are very tired but have enjoyed each event that has taken place.

Elder Tim & Sister Janet

We finally got our mission picture taken. It isn't the best but it is who we are.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL! We have had a very busy December - full of lots of excitement and fun as well as a lot of stress. Along with the usual Christmas, we celebrated (or will celebrate by Jan 3) 9 birthdays between my children (in-law children included)and grandchildren. That was one of the fun things. Our grandson Mitchell will get baptized on Jan 3 (another fun one). We have hosted 3 Christmas parties here (fun and stressful). Both of us ended our employment which was stressful. Neither of us are being replaced so we had to get all of our (or the little) knowledge we had, computer files and regular files to other people in our office so that it will be accessible at another time (very stressful). We had to prepare a talk for our farewell and then do food for those visiting us that day (fun and stressful). And THEN we are trying to get ready for our mission. We took our Christmas tree down on the evening of Dec 22 after our last Christmas party here so we could get ready for our farewell day so here it is Christmas Eve and it seems like Christmas was over last week. WE'RE EXHAUSTED!!!!!!! We have to give a huge thank you to our kids who have helped us through all of this.