Full week of Seminary

Nice Sunset over Newcastle from last night.

This week was our first full week of Seminary. By Friday night we are so tired. We’ve been trying to get to bed earlier to get a full eight hours of sleep but no luck so far. Seven is the most we’ve been able to get. Not sure why that isn’t enough. Hopefully, we’ll get used to it soon enough. I tell the kids, you aren’t suffering alone on this getting up early stuff. It has been enjoyable though - but there’s always one of us preparing a lesson every day. I’ve said it before, thank goodness Walt has taken on teaching twice a week. Not sure how someone does this alone. It does give us even more of an opportunity to study our scriptures, not just read them. With the Sunday school classes studying the New Testament and getting to studying in the four Gospels for seminary is great for getting to do our favorite part of the Bible twice. We love studying the Savior’s life, His teachings, His example and His words.

Monday, Walt got a call from the Bishop about a member of our ward needing help putting in a new water heater. The Bishop has learned how handy Walt is. So we went over that afternoon to see what tools would be needed and such. This family’s father was recently in the hospital and unable to do it himself. Wednesday we scheduled to do the work with the family and they would have some friends come over to help with the lifting. We had set it up for about 2:30. We were there until 7 pm. It didn’t take long to get the hot water heater in the trailer, although it did take a long time to drain it. Also the water valve was under the trailer - lucky Walt. Once in, Walt finds a pin hole leak, elsewhere in the copper pipes and goes to the hardware store to get what he needs to fix it. Then after fixing that leak, there’s another leak. He fixes that one the best he can, and it only leaks a tiny bit now. These pipes are so old, they are about to break apart. They might have to get a professional plumber for any more work done.

Leaking and old pipe on water heater

Tuesday, was a trip to Gillette. Our missionary meeting was moved to Monday, but due to already scheduled appts, we weren’t able to attend. We still needed groceries and also found a place to get the family with the water heater problem, a shower chair for the husband. A thrift store there had one for $35, brand new in the box, and was a large one. We had dinner with the Smith’s on the way home. They made beef brisket (so yummy). I brought an eclair cake for dessert. None of them had tried that before. It was a hit - everyone got seconds. It was a productive but long day,

This cow wanted to go the other way. See video on my Facebook.

Never get tired of seeing a herd of cows

Windy day! Walt has been wanting to get a selfie with the Tin man!

While Walt was fixing the water heater on Wednesday, I just talked with the wife and the friends that came to help. The mosquitos were so bad! We still can’t get used to having mosquitos around all day and night. It really puts a damper on being able to be outside. Walt was still working and I had asked Kay if she needed a ride to the youth activity. She did, so I went and picked her up. I went inside to see if someone could give her a ride home. They were having a “pig out.” New experience for me - all the youth sat at tables with a garbage bag with a hole for their head as a bib. They couldn’t use their hands to eat. There were also cute pig noses cut out of paper cups to wear- some wore them some didn’t. I stayed long enough to take pictures of them eating their salads. When I was leaving, the spaghetti was being brought in for their next course. They seemed to really have fun with it.

Youth "Pig out"

Kay always up for a pose. Pig nose on her head

Eating salad without hands! Hold the dressing please!

Every Thursday from the end of June through the end of September, there is a farmer’s market at the Fair grounds. It took a while for there to be much produce, but any type of vendor can be there. We go every week for the corn and to socialize with people. The corn has not disappointed us yet. Sometimes, I think we eat too much, but it’s only once a year. We’ve got to enjoy it while it’s available. We had our usual Bingo and missionary meeting with the ward afterwards. The lady sitting beside me in Bingo had such poor vision, plus I don’t think she really understood the concept of the letters and numbers. It gave me a chance to play by helping her.

Fridays at seminary, we have decided to have breakfast food. I made a schedule for each family to take a turn. The Checketts were first since I did it alphabetically. She is such a good cook and always goes the extra mile. She brought breakfast burritos and sticky buns (paper products and juice as well). It was so delicious. Lucky us, got to take the leftovers home. The burritos went into the freezer for breakfast on Sunday. Then we were off to Gillette again!. Thursday when I got home from seminary, I went to change from sunglasses to regular ones and saw one of the temples (arm pieces) for the glasses had snapped off in the middle. We had to go back to the church to find it and found it in the parking lot. Of course, there were not any places in town that took our eye insurance. There were places in Gillette and they carried that line of frames (Silhouette). They are a pricer frame and some places just don’t carry them. I like them because of being rimless and flexible. So we got to travel to Gillette twice.

I was worried I hadn’t brought a spare pair of glasses with me. I checked and I had, but they were the pair that one of the arm pieces came loose from the frame. I took both pair with me; wearing the spares since the others wouldn’t stay in place. They were able to take the good piece from one pair and replace the broken one. Two broken frames became one good one. I did go ahead and update my prescription and order a new pair of glasses. I chose an eye doctor in Gillette because we go once a week. Convenient.

We saw the Smiths on the way home from that trip as well and shared a message about personal revelation and knowing how to tell when the Holy Ghost is prompting you versus just things you think of yourself. The basic answer came down to every thing good comes from God. One thing that stood out the most to me from this video (Elder and Sister Bednar) was how we don’t always receive an answer to our prayers all at once. Sometimes we get a little at a time. The whole family was able to watch it and each person shared one thing they learned from it. It was a good experience.

The Aylesworths came to our place for dinner that evening. They needed help with some computer things and trust our skills. (That’s what they said to us.). I actually served pork chops, green beans, and cake that we brought home from the Senior Center lunch on Wednesday. Whenever they have a lot of leftovers, they offer us some. There was enough of these items to have dinner for 4. It was nice to have an easy meal since there wasn’t much time to prepare it. The computer help turned out to take a lot longer than anticipated. It was something on her phone that she needed help with, but there wasn’t enough storage space to accommodate the app. So we were up much later than anticipated. We were able to help them with some things on their lap top though.

Mosquitos - thankfully on the outside of our window screen

We so enjoyed sleeping in on Saturday. It felt like a day where we weren’t just going and going from 5:45 am on. I still had a Sunday school lesson to prepare. (I got released from that this morning). Glad to have one less lesson to prepare every other week. So we worked on catching up with chores and such at home. That day was an activity in town called - Madness on Main Street. The list of activities was in the local paper. The ice cream social and pie eating contest sounded like fun. So we took a break and went to check it out. We literally live 2 minutes from downtown. The ice cream social was at the library. They gave out little cups of vanilla ice cream and gave a choice of toppings. We choose the chokecherry syrup. Something we don’t get at home. It’s pretty darn tasty. The pie eating contest was fun to watch. There were several rounds for various ages. We only watched a few. At the end of the street was a food truck. It’s owned/run by our friend from the Senior Center’s kitchen’s sister. Keisha is the head cook there and it’s her sister that owns the food truck. She offers southern cooking. We decided to try it out. We chose the shrimp and catfish with fries and fried green beans as the sides. I had never tasted fried green beans but was intrigued. They were pretty tasty. I even offered people waiting to order, a taste. Everyone loved them. So it is just battered and fried green beans. Not healthy but tasty. Walt enjoyed the meat dishes, I thought they were a little too salty.

Car Bashing

Fried Shrimp, catfish, fries and nearly gone green beans

Corn Hole tournament. These guys were pretty good

Pie eating contest in action

Pie eating contest. Girls 12 yrs old and younger category

Fire truck watering children.

One of the other big things at this event was the water balloon fight and spraying from the fire truck. With Main Street blocked off, it was a pretty large space. There was a barrel full of water balloons to start. All the kids were right there ready to enjoy it all. Then the fire truck blasted their water hose on the area. It was great to watch. It was a perfect day for it - nice and hot. I really wished I could have joined in. I can picture all our grandchildren out there racing around getting soaked. Some kids came prepared with their swimsuits on. My favorite look was one child wearing their swimsuit with cowboy boots.

Last night, we realized we needed some eggs and snuck in before the “food store” closed at 8 pm. Walt noticed a great sunset with the moon shining in the background. He got a decent picture.

Today was just an average Sunday. Both of us took naps today. I usually fight it, but today I just went for it right away. Now we are sitting on the shady front porch enjoying the breeze. With bug spray on of course. I did find one that doesn’t have a smell. We’re having a heat wave and with our other a/c still broken, being in the shade with a breeze is a bit cooler. The A/C in the bedroom still works; it just doesn’t cool but so far in the rest of the house. We are still waiting on the broken part to arrive, so Walt can fix it.

Big beautiful cloud I saw on the way home from dropping off Smith children

We’ve heard about Hurricane Dorian and pray for all of your safety. It’s that time of year and you never know what terrible storms it will bring. We are praying for those in the Bahamas. We love you all and always pray for your safety and peace.

One of the highlights of our week, was a package that arrived on Tuesday!! Each of the Monn/Wilson grandchildren wrote us a card. My grin just couldn’t be big enough. It came on such a perfect day - one that felt exhausting. We will be writing back to each of them!!