8 April 2018

 Hi everybody!

   Heidi's birthday is on Tuesday!  Happy birthday, dear Heidi, we all love you so much! 

   It's been raining here for two days now. Moose and I went for a walk yesterday evening during a slight let up, but I don't think there will be a time like that today. Tonight, Dad and I will be going to dinner with all his sibs, their spouses, and Grandma. It's to recognize the two year anniversary of Grandpa's passing (April 5th).

   Well, Conference last weekend was just amazing, huh?! One of my counselors, Mari Ann Birch (Susan Crapo's sister) had heard or read a quote from President Nelson's wife, Wendy, in the 2 weeks before Conference. She had said of the upcoming conference, "don't miss a session!" Boy, she was right; each session was wonderful and sometimes downright amazing! Ministering is really just a name change, but it really does better fit the purpose of what we're trying to do. Our RS presidency had been talking for a few weeks about how helpful it would be to have the YW go visiting teaching with the RS sisters. The Tuesday evening (Mar 27) before general conference, I took the idea to Jed Stoddard (1st counselor in the Stake Presidency) when I had a meeting with him. I asked him if we could start doing that in our Stake. He said, "why haven't we been doing that all along?! I'll run it past President Moon and get back to you asap." President Moon was on the Senior trip with his son, Branson. Anyhow, now he won't have to run it past him! :)

   President Nelson seemed to hit the ground running in his new calling! He has definitely been prepared to be our Prophet at this time. It makes me look at Elders Uchtdorf, Bednar, Cook, Christofferson, Andersen, Rasband, Stevenson, Renlund, Gong, and Soares, and wonder which ones of them are being prepared to be the Prophet in later times. It will be exciting to see what happens in the future. I'm really looking forward to it!

   I gave blood on the 30th. Dad has been teaching a lot of 4H shooting sports classes. This next week he'll be teaching Hunters Safety. The classes fill up as soon as he posts them! 

  On Easter evening, we had our new neighbors, Spencer, Shalisa, and their kids, Oaklynn (3), and Carson (4 mo), over for dinner. It was nice to get to know them all better.  Oaklynn studied our big family picture (from New Years) for quite a while, and then said, "why am I not in that picture?" She knows we're related and thought she ought to be in it too! She's quite a talker, she'll be 4 in June. I think she, Macy, Alida, and Stella will get along quite well someday when they meet. Carson was born Dec 1st; he looks just like his daddy. Spencer is doing well; he seems to be trying hard to be a good husband and father. He went through some rough years, but he's making good choices now. 

    . . . Dad and I went to dinner with the family, all but Uncle Kerry came. It was really nice, but such a noisy place, we weren't really able to visit. Next time we'll meet at Beth's and Kerry's place. While we were there, Jake Zundel and his family came in. He and Shaliece (sp?) have a girl 7 and a boy 3. Jake took a picture of our group for us. 

   Then on the way home, we stopped at Albertson's and Mr. Smith came up and talked to us. He had been Heidi's and Dixie's driver's ed teacher. It's always nice to talk with someone who remembers any of you kids. 

   I've included the picture Jake took, a picture of an egg I cooked yesterday morning, which turned into a heart shape when I broke the yolk, and a picture of an article in my newest HGTV magazine, about a new show starting later this month . . . based in Boise!

   Well, love to you all.

   Mom/Johanna/Nana

Hi all!

I'm finally going to respond, and tell you all about Mom's birthday present! Hopefully, you will have just received an email inviting you to contribute to a blog called Humphries Family History. It's our family history, recorded through these emails. I still need to tweek it a little, to make it easier to find certain times you might want to read about. If any of you want to jump in and do that, go right ahead! Otherwise, I'll try to get to it after we get back from our trip. It is completely private right, so we are the only ones that can see it. We'll just keep adding our emails as they come, and we'll have an awesome family history put together. So thank you again, Mom, for getting this started. The hardest part in putting all our emails into the blog was wanting to stop and read every single one. It was so fun to go back and read them! You should try it!!

General Conference was so amazing! I loved the talks, I am so excited for our two new Apostles, I am excited for new Temples in so many places around the world, all the changes were inspired and inspiring, and I loved receiving that confirmation that Russel M. Nelson is called by the Lord to be our prophet today. The coolest thing, to me, was at the very end of Conference, as the choir was singing Let Us All Press On. It was just us at home, but I felt so unified with members of the church all over the world. I can't really describe it in any other way. I just felt like I was part of this unified brother and sisterhood and we were all working together to be able to get as many of us back to Heavenly Father as we possibly can.

Today we had Stake Conference, so all the Old Elder's Quorum presidencies and High Priest group leadership members in the Stake were released and all new Elder's Quorum Presidencies were called. It was pretty cool. Mom, our new Elder's Quorum President is Bob Kendrick. His 2nd councilor is James Moberly, a fairly new member of our ward. When they called his name, my James thought they had said James Mobley. The look on his face was pretty good! There has been a bit of confusion between the two. In fact, I talked to Sister Moberly this afternoon (her name is Sharea, thankfully nothing close to Aimee) and she said that when the call was extended to her husband to be in the new presidency, he had to clarify that they really wanted him and not James Mobley.

Oh, I've been forgetting to tell you that Smokey Mountain Pizza, the place where Annie worked, has closed. Annie had actually quit about 6 weeks before they closed. She was sent home early from her last few shifts because things were just so slow. And they were all weekend shifts so they should have been pretty busy. Kind of sad, we liked that restaurant.

I can't think of much else to share. I'm sure there must be more...but, oh well. I hope you all have a good week!

Lots of love to all of you!!

Hey everyone-

 

Mom – thanks for the email and pics – it was great to see the pic of everyone at dinner. Wish I could have been there to say hello to Jake – I don’t think I’ve seen him in at least 15 years or so now. Please tell him I said hello next time you cross paths with him.

 

Aimee- thanks for your email, and thanks for putting together the family history blog – very good idea! I’ve looked around in it a little bit, but need to figure out how to navigate thru it a little better I think – I’m sort of a rookie when it comes to all things blogging related. We’re all excited for you guys and your D.C. trip – please be sure to send pics and quick updates throughout your adventure to the Capital City.

 

Things have been generally good for us. Bradley was out for spring (March 23^rd thru April 2^nd) break so we had several days together as a complete family. We spent a lot of time at home reading books, playing games, watched some movies, and of course, we were able to watch almost all of General Conference together. It was a very good/historical/inspiring conference – I’m so pleased we were able to view it together. Bradley tuned in more than he ever has in the past, and the girls even seemed to pay a little closer attention. It will be very neat to witness the impact of these new changes in the coming weeks and months.

 

Brad and I were able to work on the Bishop’s Storehouse truck on Saturday the 24^th. I didn’t plan too well here – Brad’s flight got in the night before at 11:30pm and then we had the truck the next morning. After the truck, we went to Home Depot to get new electrical parts for the kitchen, as we had just done our back splash the week prior, and wanted to put in new and fresh switches, receptacles, and cover plates. Brad helped me install all the new stuff – he likes to see things taken apart. Her is a pic of the backsplash…

 

 

On Monday Natalie took all the kids to the zoo before they all went to work Monday night. I hear the bird show is still a highlight at the zoo. Brad and I got a nice full body work out in from about 5-6:30, and then it was Maddie’s date night – we went to Culver’s and the dollar store.

 

  

 

On Tuesday, I met Natalie and the kids at the dentist for Brad’s check-up and cleaning - he is going on strong with a clean record of no cavities! Nat and the girls went grocery shopping while Brad and I went to my friend Daniel Miglior’s house to help move some trusses for his wood shop he is building behind his house. We had to walk the trusses about 100 yards from where they were stacked in front of his house to the shop behind his house. Six of us lifted each of them together, and it was still a VERY tough job walking thru the mud and snow. Brad did great – didn’t quit once – below is a pic of all the trusses staged and ready to be hoisted into place by the boom truck. My friend Daniel is up on the ladder leaning against the stack of (18) trusses.

 

 

The kids had various play dates on Wednesday after Natalie got off work – Brad got dropped off at the Lewis’ house and Maddie picked up her friend, Sophia to come to our house and play. I picked Brad up on my way home from work so he could have dinner with us and the Templin Family, who would be coming over at 6pm for taco bar. Some of you might not know, but the family that purchased our Honda have the last name of Templin, so we thought it would be nice to have them over to compare family history notes. It doesn’t appear we are from the same line that immigrated from Germany, but both our line, and his line, did immigrate from Germany, so there is a chance of a connection further back in Germany- probably into the 1700’s.  Anyway, we had a nice evening visiting with the Templin Family, and it was awesome to see our (old) van. Brad left right after dinner to go to Scouts – they were doing the Chess Merit Badge.

 

Brad spent the whole day with me at work on Thursday. We spent most of the day in the field looking at (Brooklyn Park – Walgreens and Cub Foods - Mankato) various jobs, but he did sit in my office for about two hours during some meetings and conference calls I had scheduled – it was a nice way to spend the day working as well as have some time with Brad. I’d like to think he came away with a very real idea of what I do for work – I think he enjoyed it. We made it home from Mankato by about 5pm – had dinner, and then watched one of our favorite movie classics, Giant. The girls don’t stay put thru the whole thing yet, but they will come around…

 

Our Branch observes Good Friday, as a paid holiday, so I had Friday off. Seeing how it was Spring Break, we thought it was appropriate to splurge a little and have some family fun! We spent the whole day riding rides at the Mall of America, and then went to the movies that night to see The Greatest Showman. It was a good movie – the girls especially enjoyed it. I’m sure most of you have seen it already, seeing we have a few musical lovers in this group. Bradley and Maddie were tall enough to ride all the rides they could handle, while Macy and Alida had some restrictions due to height. All four of them had a lot of fun tho – as you can see from the pics – there were some sort of tense moments….haha! Oh yeah, on the way to the movies we wandered into the airport and found this really neat “Aircraft Viewing” area almost dead center between Lindbergh and Humphrey terminals – it brings you right up close to a couple of the busier run ways.  

 

    

 

We watched a lot of conference on Saturday and even were able to attend a baptism in between sessions. Our friends, the Lewis Family has a daughter, Aunika that was getting baptized – it was nice to attend that.  Brad and I joined Austin Lewis and his son Laif Lewis and about 20 other brethren from the ward at Pizza Ranch before the Priesthood session Saturday evening. Brad isn’t 12 yet, but I thought he would like to view the Priesthood session with me at the chapel instead of at home – we had a great time.

 

Sunday we went over to our friends house, The Anderson’s, for both sessions of conference. We invited Keaton Prisbrey to join us as well, so he came to our house and then rode over with us to the Anderson’s place. I think he enjoyed being around nice people and good food on Easter/Conference Sunday. Keaton’s internship with Mortenson Construction will be wrapping up later this month and will be returning to Rexburg to finish his degree.  

 

The girls went back to school Monday and Brad’s flight was at 2pm Monday – he started school again on Tuesday. Believe it or not, our girls had a snow day on Tuesday – this whole winter thing just doesn’t want to end, up here in Minnesota. This is the latest we’ve ever had this much continued snow coverage – it’s time for spring to arrive! We are supposed to get into the 50’s later this week – we will see….

 

That’s all I have for now. Hope everyone is happy and healthy!

 

 

 

 

Samuel Humphries

Branch Manager

 

2960 Judicial Road Ste: 120

Burnsville,MN, 55337

O: 952-656-6068 C: 303-944-4451 F: 866-213-1626

Samuel.Humphries@sbdinc.com I www.stanleysecurity.com