13 November 2016

Hi all!,
   Well, happy birthday to my Sweetie! We've had a nice weekend; we talked about going to a movie the other night, but ended up popping popcorn and watching TV instead. It was really nice to have a quiet evening at home! I need to thank Lynsey for helping me find a successful birthday gift for him. When I was in Denver last week, Lynsey took me to Dad's favorite camera store and I was able to get a 5 in 1 reflector accessory. He really likes it and has been experimenting with it several times. I love finding a gift for him that he'll really like!
    I spent last weekend, Friday to Monday at Ben's and Lynsey's house. It was a great weekend! My first night there they took me to Columbine High School's stage version of It's A Wonderful Life, which was just terrific! Thank you so much for taking me; that was so thoughtful! On Saturday we got to watch a tough soccer game for Joseph's team. We went for walks on two different days. Lynsey, Karen, Joseph and I went to IKEA, that was fun! Ben and Lynsey took me to a couple of used bookstores. On Sunday I went with them to a Regional broadcast from Salt Lake. What a wonderful meeting! Elder Soares (of the Presidency of the Seventy) conducted and spoke; then Brother Devin Durrant (of the Sunday School presidency) spoke; then Sister Bingham of the Primary presidency; and finally Elder Rasband of the Twelve Apostles spoke. I enjoyed every minute of it, but my favorite part was when Brother Durrant shared one of my favorite of his father's stories about a young man who gets in a habit of not being prepared for class; a girl sitting in front of him turned around one day and said "Why don't you get prepared?" Well, from then on, he was! Brother Durrant's father, George used to be one of my favorite devotional speakers back in my Ricks College days and his book, Someone Special, Starring You(th) is also a favorite of mine, and that story is in it. I shared that story in a Family Home Evening a few weeks before Grandpa passed away and he really enjoyed it.
   Brother and Sister, Craig and Gerry Curry and their 15 year old daughter, Madison, live in that Stake and Ben made sure that I got to see them. It was so nice and Madison is a lovely girl. They adopted her after they left Elmwood Lane Ward.
   Dad won the Sheriff's election of course...no one was foolish enough to run against him! This has been the nicest election year for us, ever!
   On Thursday, I got to go to South Fremont High School's Veteran's Day assembly. Emma and Jack were in the band and Emma was also in the choir. Dad was the main speaker. The Principal had asked him to speak on veterans and law enforcement. It was quite wonderful!
   Gary Bidwell, one of the local morticians passed away last week. He has been an active member of the St. Anthony community for ever! He is father-in-law to young Mr. Bennett at South Fremont and to Billy Bean. Billy and his wife live in Germany, where he is in the military, but they were able to make it for the funeral.
   I've been trying to have a better attitude recently. At work on Thursday, two of my co-workers had to leave early, about 2 o'clock and up until then things had been pretty quiet. Well as soon as they left things went crazy and I was the only one there to take care of things. Saturday was very similar; I was on call and went in to take care of discharges only to find out that the medication reconciliation person had called in sick. Both days I had a really bad attitude at first, but then was able to talk myself out of it. On Thursday I was able to be grateful that I knew what to do and my co-workers didn't have to change their plans and come back. On Saturday I was pretty grumpy at first, but then got myself turned around; I was grateful for all my years of experience doing medication reconciliation. I knew what I was doing and it all worked out just fine. But why did I have to get grumpy first, before turning it around? Wouldn't it be great if I could skip the grumpy part and go straight to being grateful? I'm going to be working on this.
   My attitude about our trip to Florida has been the same way; initially I was feeling sorry for myself because my plans had been changed and I didn't want to spend time with relatives I hardly know. But as I've been texting with two of my cousins, they have been wonderful, wanting to know what we like to eat, things we'd like to do, etcetara. So I'm trying to quite being silly; I'm going to be in Florida for a whole week for goodness sake! What is my problem? So I got my toenails painted; I'll pack my capri's and sandals; I'm going to quit being a whinner and have a great time and hopefully help everyone else have a great time too!
   I am looking forward to hearing all about the Mobley trip to Manti for Chris's wedding and how Ellen and Spencer enjoyed staying in Boise with cousins!
Grandma came over for birthday dinner and sends you all her love!
Sorry this is so long...love to you all! Mom/Johanna/Nana

Hi Everybody,

Thank you so much for your emails, Mom! I love hearing about all of it! I'm especially glad that you are excited about going to Florida. And congratulations to Dad!!! I'm so glad you were able to have a stress-free election year! And I'm glad you had a good birthday, with pumpkin pie! It was great to talk to you!

I'm afraid this is going to be super long because I wrote an email a couple of weeks ago and just didn't finish and send it, so I'm going to include it here. Sorry!

First, thank you so much for all the phone calls for my birthday! It was SO nice to talk to you guys!!! We have the most amazing family!!!

Mom, I do know Noleen. I had no idea she is Rhea's niece! She was actually in my class. She is not in our ward, but I do see her quite often. She goes to the same gym I do and we are usually in the same class on Tuesdays. I've been able to see her baby a couple of times now, but of course I can't remember his name at the moment. I'm thinking Henry? Or something like that. She told me that she and Jay decided they better hurry up and have a baby before they got much older. And they are loving being parents.

Life keeps going here. Nothing too crazy, but still busy. Stephen and Annie have been singing in a Stake Youth Choir for Stake Conference coming up on Nov. 13. They are both really enjoying it! Annie is in choir at school this year and had a concert last night. They did a good job. But Annie is missing band and I think is planning to switch to band at the semester. Noah is probably the busiest kid right now. Especially today. He has piano lessons, then flag football, then pack meeting. He is not enjoying football as much as he had hoped, but only has a couple of weeks left. They have only been able to play half of their scheduled games because of rain. We've had a very rainy fall! Much more like normal than the past two or three years.

Our Primary program was this last Sunday. Spencer's first! I wasn't sure what he would think about saying his part in front of the whole ward, but he did great! He stood right up there and said it. Brother and Sister Atkinson (Steven and Megan) are his teachers and he got to sit next to Brother Atkinson the whole time. He really loves Brother Atkinson!

Another spark plug popped out of the van yesterday. That's the third one in 6 months. James is getting lots of practice. Which he is not thrilled about, those spark plugs are in a really tight and awkward spot. I'm so thankful he is willing and able to take care of it!

On Tuesday, Naomi and I got to do Laughter Yoga for Activity Days. There is a brother in our ward who teaches Special Education at the university and also laughter yoga. He actually travels around the world teaching laughter yoga. It's a lot of fun! He taught us that kids laugh about 200 times a day but that adults only laugh 5-10 times a day. And our bodies don't care if we are laughing at something funny or just faking it. Fake laughter gives the same benefits and very quickly turns into real laughter. We're going to do it for family home evening soon! You should google it if you get the chance.

Now for this week!

James and I had a WONDERFUL trip to Utah! The wedding was very simple and lovely. I had never been to the Manti temple or a live session before and really enjoyed it. Definitely something I want to do again someday. And the temple was amazing! The whole time I just kept thinking about those pioneers working so hard to build that gorgeous temple. So incredible!! I especially loved the murals in the endowment rooms. And, I thought too about Gran and Grandaddy coming all the way to Manti from Tennessee with their three children to be sealed there, and how very, very thankful I am they did that!

Saturday evening we went to dinner with James' parents, his sister Hannah, and his Aunt and Uncle who live in Salt Lake. We got a hotel in Murray that night, then Sunday morning we took the train to Temple Square and went to Music and the Spoken Word. It was awesome! It was all patriotic music for Veteran's Day. We got there at 8:30, an hour before the actual broadcast, and I'm so glad we did! We got to watch the choir rehearse for a while, then they did a complete run-through of the broadcast, then they rehearsed some more, then the broadcast. It was kind of crazy to watch Mack Wilburg work with the choir and have them practice the same few measures over and over when it already sounded amazing. It was just SO COOL! After the broadcast, we walked around the rest of Temple Square. It was so nice to have that time for just James and I. Hopefully we don't wait another 7-10 years to make that happen again.

And, of course, we got to see Heidi and Dixie! Our visit was way too short, but it was so nice to see their houses and visit for a couple of hours. Ellen and Spencer had a great time. Spencer keeps talking about how he needs Calvin to come help him tackle the bad guys or other things like that. Nothing beats cousin time!

We had Stake Conference this weekend. Stephen and Annie sang in the youth choir and it was so good! There were around 70 youth in the choir. And we had two members of the Seventy there because we got a new Stake Presidency. Our new Stake President is our Bishop, Ryan Cook! He and his family live just down the street from us. James was his counselor for three years and they have become very dear friends to us. James and Stephen are their home teachers. And now he is the Stake President! He is pretty nervous, but willing. Such a great man! James and I went over to visit with them last night, which we often do, and had a great time laughing and talking. It had been a pretty emotional 18 hours for them, and they were glad to just relax and laugh. It was also pretty interesting to learn from them about how a new Stake President is chosen. It happens so quickly! Elder Von G. Keetch and Elder Robert M. Call, (area authority) briefly interviewed 37 brethren and their wives Saturday morning and President Cook was called at 2pm to be the new Stake President.

Sorry for such a crazy long email! I love you all so much!!!

Aimee

Sounds like there's potential for a Bishop Mobley in the future.... - Sam

He is actually a little concerned about that possibility.... - Aimee

No need for concern - your family would be amazing in that calling! - Sam

I forgot the pictures! Sorry for so much stuff!!!

A few of our pumpkins,

Naomi and her friend, Mona, were "smarty pants" for Halloween,

Noah was Davy Crockett and Spencer was Spider-Man because the Batman costume I had made could not be found anywhere,

Noah playing flag football,

The Manti Temple,

My new sister-in-law, Bonnie,