My New Ride

This is cocoa. Why do I call my new ride cocoa? Well, I like chocolate. Sometimes I even crave it. Since this car is a crv which sounds a lot like crave to me it just seemed logical. Okay so it's not logical, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Elder Fackrell

A dear sister in the ward where Sean serves sent this to me so I thought I would post it.

Another 15 Minutes of Fame

No description necessary right?!?

Notice who's in the middle front and center. Yup that's my darling little red head Bekah. This was in the Sun Newspaper this last week.

Cierra Thalia Rathjen

That's right Linda is having a girl. At least the technician was 85% sure that's what she saw. The baby was being very shy and we couldn't see very well any parts. The tech. also gave Linda a due date of January 13. That's according to what was seen on the sonogram. I'm excited about that. If you noticed they are keeping the tradition alive of having CTR for the initials. This is the name they have decided on for a girl. Granted Cierra is usually spelled with an "s", but "c" can sometimes sound like an "s" so it works. These are Cierra's first pictures.

Just Because

I just love those times when somebody does something nice for no reason, just because. The other day my DSH bought me a dozen roses. It probably helped that they were on sale at HyVee, but I'll take what I can get. I know the color isn't coming through well, but a majority of the blooms were a light purple. Seeing as how purple is my absolute favorite color it's a double bonus. Thanks Dear.

The cat is on guard. Don't mess with my flowers.

Sister Nun

I love this nickname Sean has given to this dear sweet sister. She was a former nun and got baptized this last week. Sean was really excited about it because he actually performed the baptism.

Where's My Mail

These are some recent pictures Sean sent home from Susanville. I think they are self-explanatory

It's a Pool Party

Three lovely ladies.

He needs two plate to hold all the cake he wants.

The little guy in this picture is CTR Junior's birthday buddy. He was born 2 hours after Charlie in the room next door.

The birthday boy

Palm trees get "palm" trees. Notice the leaves are handprints.

For CTR junior's birthday party Linda had a pool party. Lots of friends and family came and had fun.

CTR Jr Turns 1

I want some cake!

Dig in.

This one's too funny.

How in the world did he do this?

CTR sr. had to join in the fun.

Opening presents

My little CTR had his birthday today. What's a first birthday without a messy baby? No fun that's what and what a mess he was. It was fun celebrating with the birthday with just the family.

"Hope Endures"

“Hope Endures" was the theme for this year's Youth Conference for the Lenexa Stake.
The weekend started off with the kids gathering in the gym to introduce the theme,
then a dance and on to our host homes. While in this meeting, Pres. Chambers said that not everything would go right. Well he was right. My groups' host home didn't know we were coming. Luckily for me it was someone I know very well and she and her family were really good sports about being woken in the middle of the night. I don't think I would have been so gracious. My group of girls felt really bad about it though. I tried to play it down somewhat to ease their minds about it, but inside I was a bit angry.

The activities continued on Friday with visits to the Independence Visitor's Center, Richmond Missouri, and the Liberty Visitor's Center

Ending with a dance for the evening.

Saturday we went to Harvesters to do volunteer work.

We packaged about 1200 loaves of bread.

We finished the conference at Adam-Ondi-Ahman. One young man said it was lame, but I think what he meant was that it is simple. The beauty comes from the simplicity of this sacred place.

We were able to listen to a wonderful speaker telling us some of the history of the place and things that would be happening in the future. She also talked about the armor of God. The armor of God contains many pieces and one of those is a breast plate. Kamian gave 5 great ways this breast plate protects our heart and the kinds of hearts we need to protect. These are to have a searching heart, a prayerful heart, a cheerful heart, an obedient/faithful heart, and a repentant heart.

Faith or Knowledge

Is it better to have faith in something or a sure knowledge of something? As I was reading in Alma chapter 32, this is a question that came to my mind. Of course when one starts to ponder on something it seems that more questions come. Does having faith allow us more agency? Does knowledge allow us more? Probably is a stupid question, but I'm just wondering about that.

Going Home

Coming back home was fun as well. We had to make a stop, nothing unusual about that except some of the local wildlife were out in numbers. We had some pistachios and so we fed them.

I know, I know, don’t feed the animals, but they were just looking at us with those beady black eyes and how can a person say no?

Laura was even able to pet one, but there was no way I was going to do that. For a second or two I was afraid one of them was going to jump on me.

We also saw some really pretty rainbows. They were complete arcs, something I don’t see every day and very vivid. Course the battery in my camera was depleted so I had to take the picture with my phone and through the windshield. They turned out okay considering.

The final “vacation” thing for me was stopping in Buford, Wyoming. The sign says it all. One more thing checked off the “Bucket List” for Bubba aka Rebekah. For mine it was Thomas the Tank Engine, jk. Still it wasfun to see a life size replica.

Temple Square

While in Utah we toured the conference center in Salt Lake City. Of course nothing was going on this particular day so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. Well except of course all the missionaries that were giving tours. These are just random pictures that I took. We also spent some time at Temple Square.

This is the oldest picture hanging in the conference center.