October -Jared and Maren

Wow, as usually I'm behind on what's been going on!

 I'm not sure where October went, but it came and went fast!! 

Russ and I made a quick trip down to Utah for General Conference. We arrived late Friday night so  got a hotel close to temple square. We met Jacob, Janette, Jared and Maren the next morning at the 

Conference Center.

 

 Jacob and Janette came down for Jacob's mission reunion. We ran into his mission President, the Centers from Ohio, after conference. They are great people.

Tyrel and Lindsey and their family came down for Tyrel's mission reunion. After the morning session of conference the 10 of us went out to eat. It was so fun to see everyone, even if it was short!

Saturday afternoon we watched conference with my parents and spent the night.

Sunday morning we attended the morning session with Jared and Maren. 

We went and watched the Sunday afternoon session with Grandma Larsen and then flew home early that evening. I know it was a quick trip, but it was nice to get to know Maren better. She is so cute inside and out!!

Two days after we returned from Utah my parents flew up to see us. We had such a nice visit and I'm so glad they make the effort to do it. They are 81 and 88 now, so I never know how many more times they'll be up. We make the most of it though.

This is such a typical picture of my dad!! He loves to read and its always scriptures or some kind of church book. On the other hand my mom loves to be helpful so she was helping me with a big Humanitarian project I had coming up.

One day it was beautiful & Russ was off so I suggested we go to Lake Quinault. There were several waterfalls that were right off the main Hwy that we never knew about. It was nice because my parents could see them without walking too much.

Grandma & Grandpa Kendall (Robert & Christa) at Lake Quinault Lodge

We visited this Spruce Tree that is HUGE!!

After a long day my mom had a few complications from all the sitting and walking. She had a small surgery a few weeks prior. My dad is always so good to help her out with anything. I loved this little act of service!!

We've had a beautiful Fall! This is our private drive going to our house. I use it for my own track and I love jogging up and down it and seeing all the beautiful leaves.

 Check out these fuji apples we got off our tree this year!! They were really good and crisp and NO worms. One night Russ helped me make applesauce.

My dear friend, Holly moved into our ward 3 years ago. We've been VT companions since then, but more important, great friends. She turned 40 this past year and got engaged in July. This is her first time getting married. She is marrying James, who joined the church a couple of years ago in our ward. The amazing thing is James was Jared's cross-country and track coach in High School. 

They are getting married in the Kona Temple on Nov. 18th!! She agreed to let me give her a shower and we had a great turnout. Everyone loves Holly:) Her mom flew up from Colorado and her sister from Kansas to come to the shower. So cool!!

We had the ladies design wedding dresses out of toilet paper.

Holly

Robin

 There were 26 ladies at the shower and I was the only one who gave her lingerie!! My advice to her was to keep their physical relationship close! Holly is shy so her mom was glad I got her that, because she said she would never buy that for herself.

 I made this Tommy Bahama Pina Colada cake for the shower. I was a little nervous because you have to make a white chocolate mousse, and then fold in 4 C. of heavy cream whipped!! 

I also made some little sandwiches I got the recipe from Cari and everyone loved them.

Talking about engagements and marriage...on October 29th Jared and Maren got engaged!!! 

They were at her family's cabin in Kamas & Jared had some friends set these lanterns up for him in the woods.

I'm SOOOO happy for them and can't wait for Maren to be part of our family. The wedding is scheduled for Feb. 18th in Utah. They look pretty happy:)

 This past weekend we had a spiritual feast with Elder Sitati coming to our Stake Conference. He was originally going to stay in Olympia, but Russ talked to his secretary and told her how much easier it would be if he stayed with us. So we had a special house guest. He is a very simple and humble man!
On our way home from the airport Friday we decided to stop and have dinner to let the rush hour traffic die down. We went to the Bahama Breeze and shortly after receiving our dinner the power went out. It was around 5:00. After a while, the waitress came over and said the power would not be coming on again until around 8:00. She told us to enjoy our dinner and we could stay as long as we wanted, but we didn't have to pay because they had no way of doing transactions. Wow, that was unexpected. One nice thing was it cleared out pretty fast, because a lot of people hadn't ordered yet, so the noise level went way down. Russ insisted we stop in Olympia and get ice cream so we did that too. We even got a referral for the missionaries from a girl that worked there!!

All the talks at our conference were so good. We had a new young 17 year old girl who just joined the church that talked, a 9 year old girl on reading her scriptures, a Samoan sister who lost her 28 year old daughter in May and how the gospel helped her get through this hard time and a few others. Russ spoke about "Being Doers of the Word and Not Hearers Only" He spent weeks writing it and it went very well.

 Elder Sitati talked about several things. He talked about marriage and how we should totally consecrate our whole being to our spouse! Perfection starts in our marriage and then moves to others.  The real difficulty is overcoming ourselves. He told us his conversion story and several other stories about making Christ the center of our lives and the results we can have by doing this. If we truly center our lives around Jesus Christ we will be blessed beyond our expectations.

When Elder Sitati got up Saturday morning he gave me this book as a gift for staying with us.
What a thoughtful gesture!

It was a wonderful weekend and now I have to go back to real life...hopefully making changes from the things I learned.