The Grocery-Bike Adventure

Ben's bike adventure:  With his new bike he rode to his bus stop, popped the bike on the bus racks, and headed out to the places he needed to go.  After his things were done at Journey House, he decided to ride his bike to a nearby grocery store to buy a new bus pass for the month of October.  Thing went perfect, found the store, bought the pass and then decided it would be convenient to do his week shopping that night.  Good idea and seemed doable at the time.

He put some in his backpack and then tied the rest of the groceries onto a flat rack over his back tire.  Riding home by bike rather than taking the bus.......something happened.  No one is sure exactly what but the grocery sack got caught in the spokes and then the tire popped into large pieces which also got stuck in the spokes and gears.  Ben handled it himself by carrying his bike with his grocery tied on the last mile to him.  Good job for him....not so good for the bike!

His bike is now sporting a basket. He enjoys using a bike to get to and from the bus stops and for short errands.  It is tack weed season right now so he has had to deal with flats as well.

Fall Games 2012

We spent the weekend after conference (in between all of that sewing and getting the final Personal Progress things done) in Salt Lake City for the Fall Games for Special Olympics.  We spent the night so that we didn't have to travel back and forth for the two days of activities and so Jena could attend the evening activities and dance.  However I ended up feeling sick so we just hung out in the hotel between swimming on Friday and basketball skills on Saturday.  Fun times as usually.  Jena enjoys being with friends and her Comet team members are some of her favorites.  She got a first place in backstroke and ribbons in her other events.  It was a fun weekend despite not feeling well.

the start

Gary took this pictures from the bleachers as I was helping coach.
This is after her backstroke--she was a happy but wet girl!  Very close race!

All of these weekend activities are seriously getting in the way of yard work plans....my friend said, "Let it go".  It is too cold to worry any more about the yard...that is her plan and she is sticking with it.  I don't think I will get the windows washed or the window wells cleaned out this year.  Oh, well, there is always next year.  There are a few more things I do want to get done so I hope we have a few more good days when I have some free time  (a tricky combination).

Jena's Personal Progress

The week after conference found Jena and I busy with another one of her Personal Progress goals (Faith).  A couple of years ago, Jena said that she wanted to make a quilt for one of her projects.  This was a big challenge for her so we didn't even start until May or so of this year, although we had made the plan probably a year before.  It took her five months but she DID it!

This was Jena's first sewing project on my machine.
She had done a bit of sewing at school in 7th grade but not much since then.
I think she learned "eyes on the needle" the best as I must have said that alot!
No sewn fingers though!

She chose the bright color versions of the eight value colors to make
the rows of blocks--
 

 

She designed a pattern for the lettering
and then colored them on this center piece.

She added some buttons--1- because I thought they
were cute and 2-it seemed like a good time to
practice sewing buttons.

Here we are working together to tie the quilt.



The final product!!!!
She is very happy about it.

Speaking of Personal Progress, she is done with everything now and had her interviews with the YW President and the bishop.  She will receive her medallion tomorrow at our ward's Night in Excellence program for the young women.

Dad's visit

One of the other highlights of conference was that my dad spent the day with us on Sunday and Monday.  His wife, Karla, was out of town on her annual friend trip so dad spent some time with us--watching conference, eating, and doing some genealogy stuff.

He also had told me once after reading one of my posts about my Jenson Pond morning walk that he wanted to do that walk with me.  So Monday morning we did.  It was a nice fall day and a nice walk.  Here is Dad on the bridge over the pond.

Another thing that happened that weekend was that I was called to be my ward's emergency prep person....not something I know a lot about but I am learning.  I am sure you will hear more about this in the months ahead.  I was sustained the following Sunday.  So anything you know or that works for your ward....LET ME KNOW!!!!!

Conference Weekend--Oct. 7th and 8th

I love conference weekend and one of the nice things about living in Utah is being able to watch all of the sessions of conference (except for the Priesthood session) on our own TV.  This was a sweet conference because Jena watched all four sessions with us and took notes as part of her Personal Progress project for Divine Nature.  I love reviewing her notes.  She is very particular about writing the speaker's name exactly as shown on the screen.  I often leave out the initials and she doesn't like that.  She sometimes copies my notes and other times she just writes the words or statements that she picks up.  She understands the most important things--that her Heavenly Father and Jesus love us and that the modern day prophet and leaders teach us what we should do.  Perfect.

It was amazing to hear the change of ages for young men and young women wanting to serve full time missions.  You can see some of the wisdom of the whole thing and of course, accept that it is part of our Heavenly Father's plan.  Most exciting was to watch and hear about the responses on social media as young men and women began to talk about their decisions to serve at these early ages.  It is awesome.

Conference messages:  Be kind and nice to others.  Love them and God.  Serve, serve and serve.

Highlights can be found at the link below.

http://www.lds.org/prophets-and-apostles/unto-all-the-world/apostles-speak-october-2012?lang=eng