A Quiet Sunday Afternoon

Hello Everybody,

So this quiet Sunday afternoon began by trying to get Dad on Facebook.  He wants to have Facebook be so that only the notifications come up that he wants to read and not anything else.  Hah!  So here's a question.  Since all the Brethren are on Facebook is everything they say the mind and will of the Lord?  Just wondering.  My second wondering is if they have a Facebook secretary?  We're going to dinner tonight at one of Dad's old student's homes.  He was an undergraduate at BYU many years ago (yes many) and is now on the faculty at Cornell.  It's nice to go somewhere to eat when I don't have to do the cooking! 

We love the pictures and the e-mails and snail mails that come our way!  We promise to write Cade and Carlee EVERY WEEK while they're on their missions!!  Something usually comes on a day that we're feeling sorry for ourselves because we're missing concerts and games and track meets and dance recitals and especially the temple and anything and everything else that's happening and will happen while we're gone.  Just one thing about the weather and then we won't give you any more weather reports in these e-mails.  Wednesday we had 87 degree temperatures and Friday night we had to turn on the furnace!  We had an amazing storm that dumped more rain than we've seen at one time since our Iowa days when the window wells filled up and water ran in the house.  We had our own waterfall right in front of our bedroom window.  The rain gutter was either plugged or unattached and it was literally a waterfall....a big waterfall.  But boy is it green here....so green we almost have to wear our sunglasses.

For not supposing to be a busy week, it was a busy week.  Monday night the YSA crammed into our little apartment to watch Elder Ballard's CES talk.  It was great and we cooked and they ate 80 scones!! We're killing the healthy eating lifestyles of these kids!  The last one of these great young single adults went home at 12:45 a.m.!! All of our undergraduates have left for the summer and we'll miss them.  They're good kids.  We also had training this week with our CES supervisor and all the seminary teachers in our stake which happens once a month.  They're preparing for Seminary graduation which will unfortunately take place while we're back in Utah for Jordon's wedding.  Bet you can't guess which one we'd rather go to!  But we're going to visit all the early morning seminary classes these next 2 weeks and put in a plug for Institute wherever the high school seniors will be (Several are going to BYU).  With the exception of the Seminary right here in Ithaca, the rest of them are an hour or longer away and they start at 6:30 a.m. so we'll have some very early mornings.  Ugh!!  We said goodbye to 2 missionaries finishing their missions and 2 getting transferred and that was hard.  They're great young men.  The area in Owego will only have 2 sisters now because there aren't enough missionaries so one of their areas had to be temporarily closed.  Will be glad when the numbers come up again.  We got a brand new fresh from the MTC missionary and he's awesome and awesomely homesick but he knows he's out doing the Lord's work and so he works on..  He'll get to be part of the 4 baptisms coming up from this area in just a few weeks.  Dad's gone out with the Elders a few times but I don't go because it would be too many people to overwhelm the teachee.  Darn!  Then the one time I was invited along the woman cancelled just as we were getting to her home so that was a little disappointing.  The ideal is for the ward or branch members to go with the missionaries so people will have a friend that's going to be around for awhile.  We did spend some time this week doing the bulletin boards in the office and at the Church.  That was fun and I had a valid excuse to go to Hobby Lobby again!  One of the highlights of the week was helping with and attending a pasta dinner sponsored by the Congregational Church but held at our building to raise money for the Feed My Children initiative.  We had just sat down to eat and a nice couple about our age came to sit by us. We visited during the meal about our families and where we all lived and liked to do and then the man happened to mention that he had been to BYU several times as a consultant to the group that fund raises for the University.  So we discovered that this modest, unassuming man was a  retired big shot from Cornell who has traveled all over teaching universities the best way to get the wealthy to cough up the big bucks for the schools.  He knew Bruce Snow who was the director of BYU and the Church's Philanthropy Office....and who I went to elementary school with and Dad played basketball against in high school.  Anyway as we were leaving the dinner, he asked to exchange business cards and he gave us his card and Dad couldn't find the ones he usually carries in his wallet and all he had to write on was a pass-along-card so he wrote his info on that card.....wasn't by design but maybe by divine providence??

Well....this is short this week.  We think of all sorts of things we want to tell you during the week and then they leave our old brains by the time Sunday comes and this is one of those days.  Maybe we'll tack on a PS tonight or something.

Love and XOXOXOXOXO      Dad, Mom, Grandpa, Grandma, ect.