Youth Temple Trip

On October 9th, the kids had a teacher work day. Our ward planned a temple trip for the youth to do baptism for the dead in Birmingham, Alabama since our temple will be closed for another 15 months. Jon went with Brenton and the youth and they were gone all day. The temple with no traffic is less than 3 hours away. Since the Birmingham temple is a small temple, they had to split our ward into two groups. They first group went while the other group waited in the church building right next to the temple. Then they switched. I'm glad our ward is still participating and making going to the temple a top priority even though our temple is closed. I think it is very important for these youth to participate in temple ordinances as often as they can.
While Jon and Brenton were at the temple I spent my morning at 3 parent teacher conferences and then I think just hung out with the kids at the house. I don't really remember doing anything other than that.

Crazy

Talmage had crazy hair day at school. He wanted to spray his hair blue and red. He wanted the top in a blue Mohawk and the rest of the hair red. He looked awesome. When he got home, he told us that lots of older boys were giving him high fives in the hallway because he looked so cool.

Science Expo

Kennedy along with one of her friends decided they wanted to participate in the Science Expo. Luckily for me, the friends mom helped the girls with their experiment so all I had to do was show up for the Expo. They did their project on Crystals and how they grow. They did a few different crystals and explained what they did and how they got them to grow. I forgot to bring my camera so I have no pictures of the night. This is the first time we have participated in this. The only reason we did this was because Kennedy's friend wanted her to do it with her. I don't get involved in the extra things at school unless they have to do it as part of their grade. I mean with all the homework I have to make sure is getting done and class projects, that is the last thing on my mind. Doing something just because they want to and don't have to not on the top of my list of things to do. Luckily my kids sort of think like me on this. Why add more work to my load if I don't have to. I guess if they really wanted to do one of these extra activities I would support them and help them. Kennedy had a great time and they are already talking about what they want to do next year.

Conference

The first week of October is always General Conference weekend. I love that we have BYU TV and can watch conference from the comfort of our own home. I usually have some sort of cooking or organizing thing to do while I'm watching conference. I have to be doing something to keep myself focused on the talks or else my mind will wander in a daze after listening to conf. for that many hours. This year I didn't do much cooking besides the normal lunch and dinner. Instead, I organized our closet/minibar in our family room. This has been on my list of things to organize for months. I thought since I am in this room for at least 4 hours on Saturday I might as well. It looks so nice now and will be easy to keep it clean and organized because now there is a place for everything. Jon only caught the last 45 minutes of the second session of conference. He was in charge of one of the day of service projects for our ward. Our stake as well as many others in our area were assigned to help out with clean up for the flood victims in Austell. Our ward had a great turn out especially since every General Conference in October our stake does a day of service in the morning before the conference starts. So there were already 3 service projects that had to be filled with people plus this flood assignment on top of that. Our ward members stayed together during the flood service project and were able to completely gut 2 houses. This is including taking out all the furniture, clothes, and other household items. All on top of removing the drywall, insulation, kitchen cabinets, appliances, counters and all that stuff.
On Sunday we make the kids watch conference with us. They did very well. We had a few activities to keep their mind focused on the talks. I love getting that extra boost every General Conference. It helps me refocus on the things that are most important in my life.

I'm cheap

Kennedy lost her second tooth a month ago. She turned 7 in Aug and has only lost 2 teeth. I'm not sure what it is about my kids but they take forever to loose their teeth. The first tooth she lost the tooth fairy gave her $5.00. The first tooth is always worth more in our family. Then with her second tooth she got $1.00. That morning Kennedy asked me if I was the one her gave her $1.00. Payton chims in and said, "of course it was mom if it was dad you would have gotten something like $20.00". Yeah they basically have us nailed mom is the cheap one while dad is the more fun one. Oh well, I guess that is what balances us out and makes us a good team.

This is a new one

All of the Atlanta area counties schools were closed on Tuesday September 22 due to some major flooding.


Federal officials: September's flood 'off the charts'By Mary Lou Pickel

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

If a 500-year flood is a cup of coffee, what Georgia got in September was the whole pot, the U.S. Geological Survey said Wednesday.

The Sept. 21 flood in Georgia was worse than what's statistically projected to happen once every 100 years -- even worse than every 500 years. It was "extremely rare", "epic" and so "stunning", the U.S. Geological Survey says the flood has defied its attempts to define it.

"This flood was off the charts," said Brian McCallum, assistant director for the U.S. Geological Survey's Georgia Water Science Center in Atlanta.

The Geological Survey does not quantify floods greater than a 500-year flood because the numbers begin to be too uncertain after that point, McCallum said.

According to the National Weather Service, some locations recorded up to 20 inches of rain from 8 p.m. Sept. 20 to 8 p.m. the following day.

"Normally we get just over 50 inches of rain in one year," McCallum said of metro Atlanta. "We got almost half our annual rainfall in one day in some places."

Scientists called the flooding in Atlanta one of the worst floods in the country in the last 100 years.

Flood waters washed away streamgages used to measure the water flow. In Douglas County, the Dog River flowed over the streamgage by 12 feet, roaring by at more than 448,000 gallons per second -- well beyond a 500-year flood, McCallum said.

All of that rain returned water levels in Lake Lanier and Allatoona Lake, to pre-drought levels. Lake Lanier rose by more than three feet after the flood and returned to full pool in October. Allatoona Lake rose to 13 feet over full pool.

"It takes a very large flood to end a very historic drought, and we certainly got that in September," McCallum said.


This was a new one to add to the list of school closing. Our house was dry excepted for a few leaks in the garage. Our garage is the lowest part of our house (basement level). We later found out why water was coming in. The people who built the house didn't put in the flashing where the deck meets the house. Jon has temporarily fixed it but we do have some wood rot that will need to be replaced in near future. We also got some major craters in our newly finished backyard from water traveling the same path for over a week. We did everything we were supposed to but with that much rain in a short time nothing could stop the craters from forming. We had to order a whole dump load of dirt to fill in the canyons. That is how much dirt we lost. Oh well out of 40 loads to level off the area one isn't too bad just time we don't want to spend shoveling dirt.

One of the dirt craters

The whole week leading up to the flooding was rainy everyday. The area we live in didn't get 20 inches in 24 hours but we did get at least 12". I was supposed to teach my first day of preschool.

Below are some pictures I got off the Internet of some harder hit areas.

Six Flags

Missionaries to dinner

On September 10th, we had the missionaries over for dinner. Since we finally got the missionary meal calendar in Primary I thought I better sign up because who knows when I will see it next. Almost two months later and haven't seen it again. Anyway, why is this such a big deal and worth noting. Well about 1 hour before the missionaries were to come over Jon gets a phone call from them asking if we had room for one more. Of course we said we did. I just made up a mess of Chili and cornbread and fruit and of course desert so there was plenty. Then we find out who it is yeah it's the mission president. I guess they had a zone conference that day and the pres was going to be hanging out with them the rest of the evening. Yikes. All I have to say is thanks for only telling me one hour in advance because any more notice and I would have been a touch bit more nervous. Luckily the kids well I mean Hayden only said poop a couple times at the dinner table the others were well behaved for them. It was a neat experience.

Preschool

I wasn't going to put Hayden into preschool this year. I was just going to do what I did with Payton, Kennedy, and Talmage and have them start school with Pre K a year before they start Kindergarten. Well that would be next year for Hayden. Last year wasn't bad at all because Talmage was in all day Pre K so it was just me and Hayden so I figured I would do the same thing as last year until I was approached by so ladies in my ward at church. They were interested in starting Joy School. Joy school is a preschool where the parents of the preschoolers rotate and teach the kids in their home. Our ward did this a few years back and someone held onto the lessons they ordered from the Mother Goose preschool series. So out of 9 three year olds in our ward, four of us have come together and are doing this. Of other 5 who didn't join in, one of the moms just had a baby, one mom works full time, one is already in preschool at a church, one doesn't live in our ward boundaries but comes to church with his Grandma, and one just turned 3 so the mom thought she might be a little to young.

We have 3 boys and 1 girl. Luckily the little girl has 3 brothers and no sisters so she feels right at home. We started on Tuesday September 8th and are having school every Tues. and Fridays. So with four of us in our group, we will be teaching one week a month. We are going from 9:30 am-12:30 pm with the kids bringing a lunch. Hayden really enjoys helping me pack his lunch to bring to school. So we have been doing this for 2 month now and I have been really pleased with it. When it is not my week to teach, I get to enjoy 6 hours each week to myself. So far I have had a great time with it. I try and keep the activities as short as possible and have a variety of them. The great thing about reusing the old Mother Goose preschool manuals is the amount of $$ we are saving because they are pretty pricey to purchase new ones. The not so great thing is you don't have all the craft materials because they have already been used up. So we do a lot of improvising and getting the items relatively close. Luckily, the month has lessons for Mon-Friday. So when it is our week, we get to pick and choose from 5 lessons because we only teach twice a week.

I have so far taught 2 weeks. One of the weeks worked out perfect because for 2 weeks the lessons focused on fire safety and since we live one house down and across the street to a fire station we were able to go over and have the fire chief talk to the kids and turned on the firetruck lights and sounded the siren. They kids loved it. They got a color book but no plastic fire hats these had to get cut from their budget.