November Highlights

November highlights were definitely seeing all of our children and their families!!!

  We flew to Kansas to watch Kristy's kids while Wes and her took a fun trip to Philadelphia. I got there on a Wednesday, but Russ didn't fly in until Friday, as he had a church meeting he had to attend. Needless to say the kids were thrilled when papa arrived. Its always so fun to have one on one time with the grandkids. 

The kids love making puzzles and are so good and fast at them.

 Jazlyn showing us what she's learned on the viola.

 One day we took the kids up to Jamesport, Missouri. Its the coolest Amish town a couple hours from their house. They enjoyed this store where there was a lot of handmade toys and surprise contraptions that scared you when you'd turn a knob or something.

 They fell in love with this cat wandering around.

Kelston, Matsen, Shelten & Jazlyn and
an Amish "car" they liked trying out.

 Their farms are so beautiful and well kept. They made and sold cheese at this one.

 On Sunday we went to the visitor center in Independence, Missouri. We watched some more of the "Meet the Mormon" stories that weren't in the movie. They also have a lot of "hands on" activities for the kids there.

 CUTE kiddos!!

Here's the RLDS temple across the street from the Visitor Center or now called the Church of Christ.

This tree is in Kristy's front yard and was so beautiful with its Fall colors.

The weather was gorgeous while we were there. Clear and 60's everyday!!

Russ and I each got to go to the kids' school one day and help out. 

Kristy and Wes went to the Hershey factory and she sent me this quote by him. I love it!!

"One is only Happy in proportion as he makes others Feel Happy"

We missed seeing a play Jazlyn was in by a day or two, but got to practice her parts with her. She was a dog and had a solo. Wes videoed her solo and she did awesome!! I wish I was smart enough to put it on here so you could watch it. 

It was sad to go, but we had a fun week and the kids were so good for us:)

I was home a day or two and then Russ and I spent two nights in Seattle while he attended a dental meeting. We stayed right next to the temple. Friday night we did some baptisms for a few family members. I don't think I've done those since I was a youth. The next day we did the rest of the work for them. It was cool to do all the ordinances within 24 hours.

The next week Russ and I drove to Lindsey's house for Thanksgiving. We happened to arrive on her 29th birthday!! We went out for Mexican food and then had some delicious ice cream cake that Tyrel 

had made.

 We took a brisk walk one morning with the boys.

Did some shooting on their land.

We had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner!! My girls really know how to cook!!

 Tytyn gave a talk on Sunday and Russ practiced it with him. Unfortunately we had to leave Saturday so we didn't get to hear him in church, but Lindsey said he did great.

The day after Thanksgiving Lindsey and I got a whole day to ourselves to go shopping!! 

We met up at the Mall with Jacob and Janette to say hi.

 Janette's whole family came from Ca. to hang out with them.

 While we were shopping Russ, Tyrel and the boys went dirt biking?!?! I'm glad I didn't know about that before. Russ has never been before. They told me he only fell off twice!!

Quick picture with the cute kiddos before we had to leave:(

 Saturday we left Lindsey's and drove to Provo to meet Jared and Marin. We took them by Sherrie and Dave's house to meet them, but they were at their new house, so we sent them a picture.

Saturday evening we out to dinner with Maren's parents and had a really nice evening getting to know them. 

After spending the night with Jan and John & going to church with them we went to visit grandma.  Then Jan fixed us a tasty dinner!!

             We appreciate their hospitality.  They always make us feel so welcomed when we come.

We had a lovely drive home. We had some snow, but none on the roads!

So happy we could see so many of our loved ones over the past month!!

Days For Girls

I know many of you have been involved with Days For Girls, but I had to do a quick post for myself. DFG's has pretty much been my life off and on for the last couple of months.

 Our Stake RS has been looking for some kind of service project we could do. Last February when I visited Aunt Jan's ward they were publicizing DFG's kits. I knew right then that this was something our Stake could do. If you haven't heard of Days for Girls I encourage you to go to their website...daysforgirls.org

After meeting as a Stake RS Presidency, we decided our goal would be to make 300 DFG's kits. Over seeing the project made me realize I needed to know how to make each item in the kit. First, I had to purchase a serger!! This was a HUGE step for me as they have always scared me to death!! Just looking at threading them seemed like a nightmare. Good news, youtube had a video that goes through step by step instructions on how to thread it!! I LOVE it now:)

Since our Stake is so spread out we held a meeting to "kick off" what we were doing and had two women come from each Ward. Everyone was really excited about it. We started this whole process in June and then came together as a Stake in October. Most all of the Wards had one or multiple nights where they got together and started making items in the kits. We had a few woman in our Stake who were so excited about it I thought they were going to make all 300 kits themselves! 

Heather, our amazing Stake RS President:)

Laura Vance was so good about getting the 3 Shelton Wards together 3 times to work on the kits!

Rosalind has been a HUGE help in our DFG's!! She has made several hundred shields, and lots of liners and bags. She also helped cut out tons of fabric and PUL!! She's amazing!

Liners and fabric washed and cut out ready to go. 

I learned how to make the liners and the bags, but was a little intimidated about making the shields. We have ladies who love to make those, so I figure...go for it! I think myself, I have made around 500 liners and I still have a ways to go. When you think about 300 total kits, that's 2400 liners and 600 shields!! I did all the collecting of the soap, washcloths, underwear, etc. The cheapest place to get the underwear is on the DFG's website, but 3 pair in each pack of 12 are white. They don't want any white underwear so we had to tye dye them. I'm so thankful I was inspired to ask a good friend of mine, Miriam, who is in YW if the YW would be interested in tye dying them. She had a connection to get all the tye dye free!! The girls had a lot of fun doing them too. A couple of the girls used it for one of their 10 hour projects. They turned out great!!

Finally after months of planning and working on collecting everything, we met as a Stake on October 22nd. What a sight, to see the cultural hall full of women and YW sewing and working together for a great cause!! We had close to 100 there.

Sister Missionaries

Mona, our RS secretary, who just got released:( I'll miss working with her!!

So I have to say something about this little girl in the green shirt. She is a Beehive and she was SO excited about this project. You would have thought Christmas had come and she had got everything she asked for. It was so cute!!

Cheryl and Sylvia

Carol, the other counselor in the Stake RS. She took charge of the luncheon:)

Holly

When my parents were here my mom helped unpack and age all the  underwear & put them in the correct size boxes. Russ was a good sport too.

Two weeks ago on Nov. 16th, Heather, Kerry and I drove to Lynden, Wa. where the DFG's headquarters is. Celeste Morgan, in the green shirt is the founder of DFG's. We attended the all day training on what to teach the girls and woman you give the kits to.  It was a long day. We left at 4:45 am and got home at 10:00 pm as its close to a 4 hour drive each way, but it was worth it.

The 3 of us really want to go somewhere international and personally hand out the 300 kits our Stake has made. Celeste is going to Uganda the first part of May and invited us to go with her??? We're still thinking about it. It would be so cool to document where all the kits go that our Stake has worked so hard on!!!

I told Russ, that a bunch of Mormon women working on a service project, is like a stampede of cattle that you can't stop!! I'm so grateful for all those who have spent countless hours in this effort to make it successful!! RS is such a wonderful organization & I feel bad for those women who don't have a testimony of it:( 

I feel so blessed to be in the Stake RS for over 4 years, because I've met so many amazing women in our Stake!!