Dull Wednesday

It’s been a dull week. I’ve almost finished sanding a dresser/changing table for Susie. I’m hoping to stain it tonight. Meanwhile Alice is going to a seminar this afternoon at the University of North Texas for those student that are interested in getting a degree in General Studies. Since Alice has changed majors several times, this would be the quickest way for her to get a degree. Unfortunately she has decided that she would like to teach 6th grade math and she may need to do something different in order to so this. After graduated she has been planning on attending Region 10 to get her teaching certificate. Heather has a friend that has just graduated with a general studies degree and is really struggling to find a teaching position. So Alice needs to get more info.
Heather starts her new job tomorrow. We are very excited to have her start this job. Susie started her new job yesterday; again we are happy, happy. Sarah called last night and she starts her new job in Escondido as an employee at the YMCA. All the kids and wife are gainfully employed; maybe a I can start putting money back into savings.

Buzy Saturday, quiet Suday morning

It’s early Sunday morning and very quiet. We had a very full Saturday. We had a garage sale in the morning. After 30 years of marriage the only thing we still fight about is all the crap that get’s thrown in the garage and stacked on my workbench. I’m more than a little possessive about the garage. This is where I go to do projects and work with my hands. Since I work with engineering software all day everyday, I need sometimes to see something get accomplished. I enjoy making things and seeing things get made. Perhaps this is why I’m a manufacturing engineer by trade. At any rate we successfully cleaned out the garage, including getting rid of the lawnmower and weed whacker. Last year Dale hired a lawn guy to take care of the lawn. It has worked out well. We still plant the gardens and planters, but leave the dull tasks to him. Dale arranged this last year when I was traveling quite a bit and she grew weary of me coming home on Friday nights and spending Saturday mornings doing yard work. With my increased travel schedule this year, this has been great.
While Dale and girls ran the garage sale I got to spend a lot of time on a refinishing project that I’m working on. We bought an old beat up dresser last year for Heather to use in her apartment. It had the distressed look and she liked it. Now I’m stripping off all the paint (3 layers) and will stain it. The paint was being really stubborn to the paint stripper so I bought a new belt sander and it really speeded up the project. All the drawers (6) have some more intricate details in them that require that I sand them by hand with flexible sandpaper. My dad came over to help and he spent most of the morning with me sanding. We have about 95 % of the paint removed, only about 80% of the time used to do it, as the rest is all hand sanding. I’m hoping that next Saturday I’ll be able to stain it. After sanding, I’ll need to build a new top for it and build a small fence around the pad since this will be used as both a dresser and a baby changing table for Susie’s baby, due in December.
About 1:00 we took all the garage sale leftovers to the Goodwill and bought some more flexible sandpaper. We then gave away a dryer to the Roney’s daughter Connie. This was in the storage unit, so I had to drive across town, but it was worth it to get something else out of the storage unit, making room to get more things out of the garage. Late in the afternoon my dad and I went to see “Swing Vote” with Kevin Kostner. It was pretty good and really pointed out our civic responsibility in a humorous way. It was better than expected. For the first half of the movie I really thought that Bill Engval would have been more appropriate for the movie that Kevin Kostner, but It turned more serious and I’m pretty sure that Bill Engval could not have pulled it off.
Dale, Heather and I went out to out favorite Italian restaurant in McKinney, Amados (misspelled, I’m just sure). It was delicious and we ate more and spent more than we should of. Anyway maybe I’ll get back to this later today. Saturday was busy but we accomplished a lot.

mid week musings

I don’t have much to talk about today. Not much new since Sunday. Susie (19 year old married, pregnant daughter) has moved home. The farm house she lives in has some mold problem that is making her nauseous. Since her husband is gone all week working construction, she’ll just spend the weekends with him at the Oklahoma farm house. Should be fun, now have 3 of my 4 daughters back home. It appears that the empty nest is still a ways off. Heather got a job with McKinney ISD as a teacher’s aide in a special needs class room. She’ll be working with the same teacher that Dale worked with. She is a talented teacher and knows Heather very well. We are very excited. She starts next week.
Sarah is looking for a new job in Escondido. We are keeping her in our prayers as well. Dale found out that she is starting 5 days later than expected. I’ve never seen someone so happy about losing 5 days pay. Meanwhile, I’m glad she got some more time off. After 3 weeks in San Diego, two weeks’ vacation, and a 4 day visit to Orem, UT for her foster dad’s 90th birthday. She’s been working like crazy to get her house organized and cleaned to her satisfaction.
Any way that’s about it.

2000 stripling warriors

Today we taught the story about 2000 stripling warriors from the Book of Mormon to our 11-12 year old primary class. As I did some last minute preparations I learned something that I had never considered before. One of the great points of this story is that these young men didn’t have a personal testimony of Christ and his teachings, but they all knew that their mother’s knew. They had faith in their mothers. They performed with exactness all of the things that Helaman asked them to do. They were therefore obedient. At the end of Alma Chapter 58 the epistle ends with a comment that his sons (2060 warriors) had faith in the prophecies. This indicated to be these young men had gained their own personal testimonies by being obedient to their leaders and remembering the teachings of their mothers. Since the Book of Mormon is written for us in lour day. I think that a parallel can be drawn between the physical battles that they fought and the spiritual battles that our young people battle today. Since most of them will be battered with an onslaught of evils by Satan before most of them can or will gain their own personal testimony they must rely on their mother’s (parents) testimony until they get one of their own. They do however need to have faith in their mothers (parents) in order for them to be successful. While everyone of the 2000 stripling warriors survive the battles, they all were wounded to one degree or another. Most of our children today suffer spiritual wounds of varying degrees of severity.
Meanwhile Heather has decided not to return to camp Summit this week, a wise decision. Now she can spend time finding a real job.

home again home again

Dale and I drove home from San Antonio thru the Hill Country. It was a little dry, but beautiful anyway. We as usual got a chance to visit uninterrupted and to talk about things we would like to still accomplish this year. We are also talked a little about where to settle down when we retire. We don't love the weather here in Texas, but since our oldest lives in Phoenix, the summers are perhaps a little better here. The rest of the year we would probably enjoy AZ. One of the twins is in Escondido right now and we lived there before. It's nice, but a little pricey for retirement.
Maybe accross the border in OK. It's a lot cheaper to live there and one of the twins is there right now. We'll see how that turns out.
Anyway, after we got home Susie and husband J.J., Heather, my parents and Dale and I went to Buffallo Wild Wings for dinner. I like wings and theirs are pretty good. It was nice to have some of the family together for a while.
Tonight I'm perparing my primary lesson (Dale and I teach the 11-12 year olds). I've already done some of it, but I need to finish it off. The lesson covers the 2000 stripling warriors, one of the great stories of faith, obeidience and courage in the Book of Mormon. We have about 6-9 kids who come most weeks. It's been a lot of fun and I look forward to teaching them every week.
Spending so much toime with my wife over the past month ahs been by far the highlight of my year.

day in San Antonio

My wife and I drove down to San Antonio from Dallas yesterday. I had a presentation this morning with a customer. It was very sucessful and now we have the rest of the day to play. we are planning on going to shlitterbahn for the late afternoon. Tomorrow we'll drive thru the hill country to get home. We really enjoy road trips as we get a lot of time to talk and decompress a little. As our children age we keep thinking that our life will slow down, but now so. we do have less ballgames, scouting, concerts, etc. on the other hand we spend a lot fo time moving them, helping them get into various schools around the country, helping them keep cafre of their homes and of course visiting grand kids that live 1100 miles away.
on the drive down yesterday we spent almost all of it visiting about our children and what is going on in their lives. we are very concerned about some of them as they seem to ocntinue to make unwise decisions. like most parents we want was is the best for our children, unfortuantely we can't make their decision for them. we know that in the long run they are better off my making their decisons, but it's hard to watch them make mistakes.
we love all of our children, no matter the deciisons that they mkae.
we just returned two weeks ago from a two week vacation. The first week was very busy, doing all the fun things to do in southern California. The second week was m uch more relaxing as we spen time laying around a pool in Phoenix and playing with the grandkids in the evenings. gotta go.

July 30

For my first post I'll share a Little about myself. For thirty years my wife has been trying to get me to write in a journal. Maybe this will work for me.
I’m one of two children. I have a sister. My mother passed a few years ago, but my dad is still around and pretty active for his age. He remarried after my mom passed. His new wife was a girl that he dated in high school. She unlike the rest of us is very musically inclined. She has four children.
My wife and I were married in the Salt Lake City Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We lived in Escondido, California for about 18 months before returning to BYU. Our first two children were born while I attended school. I worked for Albertson’s to support my family while attending college. After school we returned to Escondido where I worked at several different jobs until I landed in a factory. Since then I’ve been a Production Control Specialist, Manufacturing supervisor, Tool Room Supervisor, Production Manager, Manufacturing Engineer and NC programmer. Half way through my 14 years in the manufacturing environment I transferred to Grand Junction, Colorado. This was a great place to live.
We spent many weekends’ trout fishing, camping and hunting. Our family loved living in western Colorado, but I needed a change so I took a job with an engineering software company and have been with them for the past 9 years.
My children are in chronological order:
R.J. married to a lovely girl, Cindy a great mother to their children: A boy almost 3 and a girl just 1 year old. They live in Arizona.
Alice almost through college and engaged to be married to Justin next March.
Heather, who has a gift to work with special needs children, particularly Children with Autism.
Susie married to J.J., a farmer in Oklahoma. They are expecting their first child, a girl. We are very excited to have a grandchild close.
Sarah is living with my sister in Escondido and attending college there.