Three Grandchildren on the Way!

As I have already posted, Seth and Janette, and Isaac and Rachel are each having baby girls in July.

Then a couple of weeks ago, Adam and Tiffany announced they will be having a baby in late November!

They made us keep it a secret for awhile, so I forgot to post it here after they announced it publicly.  But we are very very excited for them!

What's new

We are curious to know what Wayne's next church calling will be, now that he has been released from the bishopric.

I still haven't gotten Zac's Eagle Scout final paperwork turned in to the scout office.  Every time we think we are done, we find one more thing that needs to be signed or completed.  I am totally sick of it.

I have been on the South Beach diet again, and have lost 4 pounds in 8 days.  I really like the South Beach diet, I always have good results with it.

Only one month from today, Zac will fly away to New York to be on the work crew of the Hill Cumorah pageant.  He is so excited to do that.

I have a new assignment from the bishop, in addition to my calling as Provident Living specialist.  Now I am the Youth Conference specialist.  I get to do all the emails and communication between the stake and the ward, and also inside the ward, for all the Youth Conference details.

Our ward created this position because they said last year they were completely run ragged by all the emails coming from the stake Young Men and the stake Young Women and the stake YC housing coordinator and the stake YC food chairman.  It made them insane to get so many requests.  So now I get to receive all the emails and then make the assignments to various people in my ward.

John Williams- Hyperinflation and the Dollar Collapse

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/5/20_John_Williams_Exclusive_-_Hyperinflation_%26_US_Dollar_Collapse.html

Wayne got released!

The bishopric of the University Ward was released today, so my husband will be sitting with me in church again!  


Wayne has been the 2nd counselor there for 3 years, so I attended the Morrisville Ward with Tara and Zac, while Wayne attended the University Ward.  Most people in my ward probably thought I was single or had a non-member husband.


I am very excited to be in the same ward with him again.  We are actually planning to join the ward choir together!

Installing Rapture

INSTALLING RAPTURE.
███████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 44% DONE.
Install delayed....please wait.
Installation failed. Please try again. 404 error: Rapture not found.
EVENT "Rapture" cannot be located. The rapture you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.

His Clothes Had Vanished

An ingenious example of speech and politics occurred recently in the United Nations Assembly and made the world community smile.

A representative from Israel began: 'Before beginning my talk I want to tell you something about Moses: When he struck the rock and it brought forth water, he thought, "What a good opportunity to have a bath!"

Moses removed his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water. When he got out and wanted to dress, his clothes had vanished. A Palestinian had stolen them!

The Palestinian representative at the UN jumped up furiously and shouted, "What are you talking about? The Palestinians weren't there then."

The Israeli representative smiled and said, "And now that we have made that clear, I will begin my speech."

(I have no idea if this really happened at the United Nations.  Nevertheless, it is a good joke.)

The Rapture is Today!

Isn't it so exciting, Harold Camping said that the Rapture will be today!   At 6:00 pm.  Want to go?

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/05/19/rapture-movement-predicts-end-world-saturday/?test=latestnews

Personally, I don't believe it, but I wrote it on my calendar just in case.

I want to read the news articles tomorrow, when they interview the people and hear their excuses of why they think their predictions didn't come true.

Class on Internet Safety- What I learned

Brother West came to our ward to give a class on internet safety.

He taught us to set our Facebook so that all our personal information was hidden from strangers.  He said to treat everyone you don't know as a stranger.  Don't give them any personal info unless you know them in real life, and they were someone you would tell that knowledge to.

The catch with that is that every time Facebook changes its page, it wipes out your privacy settings.  They are in business to help their advertisers get information, so they try in every way to allow their advertisers to see all the demographics of their users.  Therefore, this is their way of opening up the information.

 He told the story of helping his 18 yr old daughter to set up her privacy settings, so you couldn't see anything but her name.  So he was teaching an internet safety conference to policemen, and used her Facebook page as an example because he knew they wouldn't be able to see anything.

Facebook had reset everything, they could see her birthday, phone number, address, everything.  It made him very angry.

The message is:  Check your privacy settings weekly or at least monthly to see that Facebook doesn't reset them to non-private.

Picnic at Duke Gardens, Another video from Peter Schiff

I tried to post this last week, but somehow there was a computer glitch and it didn't post.

 Wayne, his mom, and Tara sitting on a bench at Duke Gardens.  Tiffany was our "tour guide."

Tara, sitting on a very interesting crookedy wooden bridge in the Asian Garden section of Duke Gardens.  I told Wayne I want a bridge like this at our mansion in heaven.  He and his dad can build it for me.


(Change of subject)
Here is a video interview with Peter Schiff from Tues. May 17, 2011.  http://www.rtr.org/videos/2/20013

A quote from the video:

Interviewer: Geitner is continuing to threaten that delaying a vote [saying that if Congress doesn't raise the debt ceiling], would create even more instability.  What are your thoughts on that?

Peter Schiff:  We're going to have the instability eventually, why not have it now when we can deal with it, why make the problem worse and then have even greater instability later.

Because the real threat is not that we fail to raise the debt ceiling, but that we raise it again.

Interviewer:  So by raising it again, all we are doing is just delaying this inevitable super collapse which is on the horizon?

Peter Schiff:  Absolutely.  So let's deal with it now on our own terms before we are dealing with it on our creditor's terms.

Because remember, the debt limit is a self-imposed limit on borrowing.  At some point we will have a limit imposed by our creditors, by the rest of the world.

It won't be that we don't want to borrow.  It will be that nobody wants to lend, and that is a much deeper crisis that we are heading for.

How to get your Priesthood Line of Authority

I just read this from someone whose son works in the Church History Dept. 





If you email to lineofauthority@ldschurch.org and ask for a form to request the line of authority, they'll email the form back to you. You fill it out and then they will mail you a copy.







Make sure to put PLA in the subject line. The process is automated and will return the form requested as long as PLA is entered.

She likes to read Mormon housewife blogs

Here is an interesting link to an article written by a non-Mormon.
SATURDAY, JAN 15, 2011 16:01 ET

Why I can't stop reading Mormon housewife blogs

I'm a young, feminist atheist who can't bake a cupcake. Why am I addicted to the shiny, happy lives of these women?

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/01/15/feminist_obsessed_with_mormon_blogs

Some mighty cute baby shoes and how to make them

http://www.fleetingthing.com/handmade/baby-gifts/the-mila-baby-shoe-tutorial/&2_10_12

Thanks, Tiffany, for showing me this.

Solar Shower

I happened to buy this Solar Shower for $6 at Walmart the other day, to put in my preparedness supplies.  Coincidentally, the next day we lost our water for 24 hours.  I ended up using the solar shower (I hung it inside my bathroom shower), and it was wonderful.  In fact, the water got so hot I had to add a bunch of cold water to it because it was burning me.

I decided to go back to Walmart and buy several more, to give to all my kids.  I went back and in three days, the price had gone up from $6 to $6.80.  These are plastic, so they are made of petroleum, so they are only going to get more expensive.

The box says that these are not food grade plastic, so you are not supposed to drink the water from them.  But I am going to buy several for myself, so that when we don't have power we will have hot water for doing dishes and for doing laundry.

Camping out, of my own free will

Last night I volunteered to go with Wayne to the Raleigh University Ward's camp out, which coincidentally was held the same night as several other wards had their Father-and-Son's camp outs.  We were at Falls Lake.

This was the first time in my life I actually asked to go camping.  And it turned out fine.

We had practiced setting up our tent and cots a few weeks ago in our living room, so I was able to do that all by myself (with a little help from some ward members) while Wayne was setting up dining flies with some other people.

We got the dining flies and the tent set up only minutes before a huge cloudburst.  I was glad I had gotten all the bedding inside the tent before that.

Because everyone else had eaten while we were setting up camp, when I finally went to get some food all that was left was a cold baked potato and some potato salad.  And some warm soda pop.  And then to top it off I ate a whole package of Peeps.  Ah, the joys of camping.

Butterfly Crochet

While we were at Wayne's brother's house, I saw an item on the wall that I hadn't thought about for years:  this butterfly crocheted doily.

 I took it off the wall and went to show it to JoAnne. "JoAnne, did you know that this was the only thing I ever crocheted from a pattern?"

She didn't know, she had assumed I had purchased it.  I was stunned that she still had it on her wall after all those years.  I had given it to her for Christmas long long ago.

In Layton, Utah when I was a young mother, we learned to crochet in a Homemaking class, where we learned to use that pattern.

My Other Blog

http://gottawannaneedagettaprepared.blogspot.com/

Please read my other blog, it is all about food storage and preparedness.  I post things there almost every day.

Discovering Duke Chapel and Duke Gardens

We brought Wayne's mother back home with us after we went to his nephew's wedding in Atlanta.  We decided to go on an outing with her to see Duke Chapel and Duke Gardens with Tiffany and Tara.

I'm sorry it took me 23 years to finally go tour those locations, they were both lovely.

Rob's Wedding

Wayne and I just returned from his nephew's wedding in the Atlanta Temple.  

The temple was only rededicated a week ago, and was just beautiful.

They took all the old chandeliers and melted them down and created all new stained glass windows using the glass.  

They changed the floor plan a little.  The waiting area (for those who don't have a temple recommend) has been expanded, and took up the area that previously held the cafeteria and clothing rental.  Someone there told me that many of the bigger temples have recently gotten rid of their cafeterias and clothing rental, I had no idea those were  being discontinued.  

Wayne saw his old friend Brother Adams, who was one of his leaders as a youth.  Brother Adams was one of the two men, outside of his family, who had the most influence on Wayne's life.  They had a lot of fun talking to each other.  (That is Linda G's father.)

IBM is 100 years old

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39jtNUGgmd4
We are SO THANKFUL that Wayne has worked for IBM for 30 years this month.
Here is a video showing the whole history of IBM, I was amazed at all their inventions.

Bryce's internship

Yesterday Bryce called and said he just got hired on an internship in

Las Vegas!  He is very excited, it pays well, and he will now have all sorts of interesting experiences like trying to find some LDS roommates to share an apartment with,  and moving all his possession there in his car.

I want him to go to the strip and see the Donny and Marie show.

What Else the Plumber Said

After working on our upstairs toilet, the plumber came downstairs.  Wayne was working in his home office, I was in the kitchen.   The plumber said to both of us, "So...which one of you is a doctor?"

I started laughing and said, "Neither one of us.  What gave you that idea?"

He said he had seen some Harvard Medical textbooks on the bookshelves upstairs, and he saw our formal portraits on the wall and thought that the pictures were taken at some fancy physician's convention.

I explained that I bought the books at the Wake County library book sale, for preparedness, and that the photos were from our cruise.

If he hadn't asked us, I can just imagine him going home to his wife, "Wow, honey, I worked in a doctor's house today and it was really middle class and cluttered and not decorated at all."

Nope, I don't think anyone else would ever mistake us for doctors.

What the Plumber Said

The plumber came this morning, and we found out that it wasn't a broken pipe.

We found out that one of our children, who shall remain nameless (but is a girl) had let water get on the floor during her rather lengthy shower and the water ran under the baseboards and through the ceiling and dripped on the kitchen floor.

So we paid the guy to also fix a toilet, since he was here anyway.

Now we have to put siliconized caulk all around the bathtub and all around the baseboards.  We should have done that already.  This was an expensive lesson.


Also, we found out how to determine whether you have a broken pipe.  The plumber turned our water main back on.  Then, with all the faucets and appliances off, he watched the water meter.  The meter didn't move.  In that way he knew that there were no pipes leaking, and that it had to be something else.

Water Pipe broke in ceiling

This morning just before we left for church, we found water dripping from the ceiling onto the kitchen floor.  We turned off the water main to the house and it slowed down.  I took the computer out of the kitchen (so no water would drip on it) and then went to church.

When we came back from church, there was no additional water dripping but we have not turned the water back on.  (We hope to get a plumber here on Monday.)  We had to figure out how to live with no running water the rest of the day.  We cooked, handwashed the dirty dishes that were in the dishwasher, flushed toilets, some people in the family took "washcloth baths", all with tap water I had stored in juice bottles all around the house.

So far we have used 28   1/2 gallon juice bottles full of water.   That equals 14 gallons.  For 4 people, we have used 3.5 gallons each in one day.

After the water pipe broke, we did not take real showers, we hardly ever flushed the toilets, and we did NO laundry.  Just the bare necessities for one day.

The church recommends storing 1 gallon per person per day as your emergency supply.

I say that is not enough for comfort.  That is the bare minimum for survival, but not comfort.

So please get it through your heads, you will want to have more than 1 gallon per day.  Believe me.