Daddy Day

June 19, 2011

Dear Elder Alex,

I can't wait to hear how your week went in your new area. We've got you all pinned up on the map in your new area. Looks like you went south of Nashville this time. I actually have heard quite a bit about Franklin. Lots of times when I've mentioned Nashville, people tell me that the place to live is Franklin and that they have good strong wards there too. If it's one of the wealthiest places around, you may have your work cut out for you as far as investigators, but maybe the members will be a big help to you.

Dad had to work last night, so his Father's Day has been full of drifting in and out of consciousness. He said Mel Hugentobler had to wake him in High Priests cuz he was making too much noise. :) The girls and I managed to smuggle a brand new grill onto the back porch last night so he was loving cooking steaks for dinner today.

I've been driving myself crazy trying to figure out a way to convert a ppt into a dvd so I can just take the disc and play it on the tv at church. It's all because I made a ppt with music and so it won't convert everything over. I'm going to just play the ppt which I burned onto the dvd and play the music from my ipod in the background. Good enough! I have a meeting with the ward humanitarian leaders on Tuesday, so I just wanted to let them see my vision for our stake having a humanitarian work day once a month on a stake level. I'm hoping to get them excited about the project and the music is key. We'll see how it goes. BTW, my big old antique iPod died a couple weeks ago. So then I thought, I'll just borrow Alex's iTouch until he gets home. But then I remembered that my speakers don't charge it, so that was a pain. So then I bought new speakers that charge it, and if it's okay, I'm using your iTouch in my quilt room. I just can't enjoy quilting, etc without music and I only put 1 playlist (maybe 2) on your iTouch.

We heard from Kirk earlier. He's been busy meeting with an optometrist and a dentist and will be setting up an eye clinic with a tooth clinic. This next week he has to meet with groups and ask for money. That's probably hard in Uganda. He went whitewater rafting down the Nile last week, so he's obviously having a lot of fun too.

Sean starts summer semester tomorrow. He had dinner with G&G Thompson and Charmaine today. He finally took out the niece of the Cameron's last week. He said he had a fun time, but she's leaving for China for a month to teach, so I guess any second date will have to wait.

Kristina had a great time at girls' camp last week. Here are a few pics from her adventures. Their theme was Hidden Treasures and they did all their activities helping the girls find their hidden gifts and talents and abilities. They even rappelled down a 120' rock cliff and Kristina was the first one off. There were lots of rattlesnakes there too and they even killed one, skinned it, cooked it and ate it. Kristina is the one on the left just about to go down.

Leah and Nikki finished their first week of tennis and they love it! They have lessons next week too and now they want to sign up for more tennis throughout the summer. I'm pretty sure they'll be ready to take you on by the time you get home. Leah also finished her week of art lessons. She says she still wants to be an art teacher when she grows up.

I forgot to tell you a funny story from last week. During the last week of school, the elementary school had a field day and one of the events was a strength event. Nikki signed up for it. She said she didn't really know what it was going to be. The kids were asked to carry buckets on each arm and the teacher added weights to them. Then they had to carry them around a track. Slowly each kid dropped out with the amount of weight, but no, not Nikki. They just kept adding more and more weight until she had 50 lbs in each hand and she walked around the track 4 times. The kids started yelling for her to stop so she did, but she said she could have kept going forever. Nikki won the contest as the strongest person in the elementary school! She's so funny.

I loved your Mustang story last week and grandpa got a kick out of it too. It was great to hear that Ifeanyi got baptized. Sounds like he'll be a great member.

In our RS lesson today, we talked about obedience. Susan Madsen gave a great lesson. I know that we can't expect miracles in our lives if we are not willing to obey with exactness. Russell M. Nelson said, "obedience brings blessings and exact obedience brings miracles". This was from a devotional he gave at the MTC recently and I thought you might like the quote.

Have a great week. We will be in Utah the end of this week taking Kristina to EFY. She's been practicing a dance with Mallory all week for the talent show. They're very excited. So we'll take pictures and write you from the road.

Thank you for bringing such a powerful spirit into our home. You're always in my prayers and thoughts.

love you much,

Mom xxoo