As the Army of Helaman

Sacrament meetng was packed today. The most I have seen since we lived here. We ran out of sacrament. They must have heard Sean was singing today. The young men, all 5 of them, sang, Bring the World His Truth. They were so good. You could really fill the spirit. Needless to say, a lot of moist eyes in the congregation. Sean had a small solo and did great. He didn't even sound nervous. The young men impressed a lot of people today.

Page got a lot of positive feedback for putting on the Harvest Festival yesterday. It was a lot of fun. All the kids and most of the adults dressed up in costume. We had lots of chili and baked goods. My chili wasn't good at all, so no glory and no win in the cook-off. I made some chocolate/peanut butter cupcakes that didn't win either- they were a Paula Deen recipe. I noticed the judges didn't even try them because after the judging was done my cupcakes were untouched. What's up with that? But it was a successful party.

Page was a hoot in her costume. She wore this funky red PJs with a blond wig full of ringlets, and a large pink feather hat, with pink, diamond studed glasses. Sean wore a lot of "bling", top hat and cane, and I was dracula. I forgot my camera or you would have seen us on the blog. Oh well....

Friday Night Lights

High School football is huge in Texas. Sean and I went to the last home game of his high school's football team. They are undefeated. They were playing a team that was also undeafeated in Division, so the winner would be the Division Champions. We won 42-17. It is so funny to see the difference compared to his old school in Montana. The stadium is 50 times bigger, and its packed in Texas. The band marches, with drill teams. All pagentry. In Montana, nothing.

During the day, Sean went to a Regional Tennis Tournament with the varisty team to Conroe. He came back with a medal. Winner of the consolation bracket. He only lost one match against varsity players. He is actually on JV, but filled in for some missing varsity players. I think it's time for the coach to put him on varsity, don't you?

Tonight we have our Ward Harvest Festival. Page is in charge. Will be fun. I made spicy chili and Sean made choco-chip cookies. Fun.

Sean can fly! Sean at a recent varsity tennis match in Houston. His coach has asked him to play in a tournament this Friday. I love to watch Sean play. He is a natural.

Here is Sean's cool shirt as he celebrates Mole Day. Can you believe he wore this to school?

Lacey- you look great! I love this pic. (Lacey is in orange shirt). Fall hasn't hit Texas yet.

Mole Day

Did you know today was Mole Day? I sure never heard of it, but it has to do with Chemestry. Sean had to make a shirt and wear it on Friday at school. Can you imagine hundreds of students walking around with homemade shirts with moles on them? Crazy.

Lacey has some really funny pictures on her Xanga site today. Looking good, Lacey! I love the picture with you and your friends in the leaves.

I made monte cristo sandwiches today after church and they turned out really good, but something tells me I should lay off the fried foods.... I have no will power. I love anything fried.

Our landlord finally got the fence up yesterday. It is so HIGH. 8 feet high to be exact. It looks like we are in a fort. I guess the neighbors behind us were tired of looking at us (even though we are boring and nothing exciting to see). Anyway, now we only have to get the hot tub fixed and we are good to go.

Sleeping Beauty?

I don't know what got into me last night. I got home at 5:15 p.m., and was so tired, I went to lay down for a few minutes. 3 hours later I wake up! I think the only thing that got my eyes open was the delicious smell of chili-ghetti that Page made. So had to get up and eat. Of course, now I'm wide awake, so I watched Sister Act II and the end of the Astro-Cardinals game. I couldn't believe it. In 9th inning, at one point, the Astros were only 1 stike away from the world series, and ended up losing the game. But my team are the LA Angels, and they lost already to White Sox. And I'm still on a high from the USC - Notre Dame game.

We put up a scarecrow and pumpkins up in the yard for Halloween. Gotta come by and see them.

USC WINS !!!

If you missed the USC - Notre Dame game on Saturday, you missed one of the best college football games in history. USC wins 34 - 31, but only with 3 seconds left. The last 2 minutes of the game were unbelievable. USC looks out with 4th and 9, but Matt baby hits Jared for a 61 yard play, which sets us up for a chance to score. Matt runs to the end zone and gets hit at the 1 yard line and the ball flies out of his hands out of bounds. The clock ticks to zero. ND fans go nuts, storm the field, but wait! The ball went out of bounds and they didn't stop the clock, so have to put on 7 seconds. Thats all we need. Next play, Matt pushes into the end zone and we WIN !!!! This is a game that will become a classic between this great rivalry.

Sean and I couldn't believe it. We started going nuts in our livingroom and screaming our heads off. Page walks in the house right at the moment from shopping and thinks we are nuts. What a great day.

Sean and I caught the end of the Minnesota-Wisconsin game too and saw MN lose it with 35 seconds left. We felt so bad for the MN fans. Page said, why do you care? I said because I lived in MN before. Again, she thought I was crazy. If we only moved to Ashland.... (we would have cheered WI).. o.k., inside joke- right Page?!

USC is still ranked #1

Neutered Dame

Big game this weekend. My beloved USC Trojans against the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. Playing in South Bend, think it will be a good game. However, would love to see a USC blowout. I miss going to the USC/ND games with Brent. Those were good times, well they started to get better once we started beating ND. I really miss my season tickets. I remember the year we beat ND in OT. Was Holtz last year as ND Coach. How sweet was that!

Angels won last night against Yankees too. So move onto Chicagoa against the White Sox tonite. Hope they have the endurance.

Hey Lacey, last sunday at church we sang, Precious Savior, Dear Redeemer. I thought about you- and how good y'all sang that song at the BYU concert. One more month until you visit

Sean and Page got back late from Shreveport last night. While they were gone, I broke in our new electric skillet by frying up some chicken. Used Paula Deen's receipe (I LOVE HER) and it turned out pretty good. Now we have some good southern fried chicken to snack on.

We still have no fence in the backyard since the Hurricane. The neighbor said within 10 days we should have one. I hope so. The dogs need to get out more, especially with the great weather we have been experiencing. It was about 81 degrees yesterday. A lot warmer than Montana.

We left Sean in Coushatta, LA for the night. Page will pick him up in Shreveport tomorrow after these boys go to a big party at Tia Landrum's house. The poor Casons- hope they get some sleep tonight. Have fun: Brett, Sean, Kyle, Shane and Eric.

Just got back from taking Sean to Coushatta to see the Anderson twins, visiting from Mississippi. Eating gumbo at the Casons. L to R: Sean, Kyle Anderson, Shane Cason, Eric Goletz and Brett Anderson.

Here are the Ward Youth that went to the Dallas Temple on Saturday. Sean is the good looking kid in the middle back..... It was neat to be back in the Dallas Temple again. Just like old times.

Stormin Mormons

Saturday morning, Sean and I got up before the sun and headed out to the church by 5:30 a.m. When we arrived, we saw about 100 men from the Longview Stake ready to go to work. We had been asked to go down to assist the people of Jasper and Tyler counties that have been hit hard from the Hurricane. A week later, and these people still don't have electricity, gas or water. FEMA is just now starting to get into these rural areas. 1/3 of the group went to Woodville, 1/3 went to Jasper and the rest of us went to Buna. Almost two hours down the highway to get to Buna. In that time we saw so much devastation. Houses destroyed, towns not functioning, and 1 million and 8 fallen trees. Yes, I counted them! I realized how lucky we really were in Lufkin. If we were 100 miles farther south we would have had a lot more damage. They say power won't be back up for 2 months. When we got to Buna we meet up at the Bishop's house. They were so grateful we came to help. They have been trying to help all the church members for a week and still so much to do. Sean and I went with a team to three members homes across town. When we got there we could see where they had to cut through the trees to open up the road. We heard that just happened on Wednesday. We cut up fallen trees with chain saws and dragged them to the curb. We worked on 3 houses, with 17 fallen trees. It was in the 90s and it felt hot and humid. It was hard work. One of the houses was actual a motor home attached to a metal shed. One tree was on the motor home, one was on the shed. There was an old lady and a small girl living in the motor home when the tree fell, and they were still living in it with the tree on it. We did what we could to clear the area. The church members there were very grateful and fed us lunch with chicken they had received from the local subway which was trying to get rid of their food before it went bad. The Sonic gave all their meat away to the fire department there and they were feeding people who needed food. FEMA showed up on Saturday too with food, water and ice. The town looked like a scene from the movie Twister. Trees on houses, roads, electrical and telephone wires and poles laying across the roads. Our power was only out for 2 hours- they are already a week without power. Sean was the only young man from our group to go volunteer. He is always so willing to do what is asked. I'm proud of him.

We got back in time to attend the priesthood session of general conference. The prophet thanked all the work teams that are going out to help New Orleans and Texas. Sean was excited that he was talking about us. Our church is sending out about 4000 men every weekend to help in the clean up effort. It's amazing what the church has done. It has donated money, supplies, and thousands of hours of manpower to help. This is what it's all about.... helping one another.

USC also won a close game against Arizona State. We are 4-0 !!! I hope we go all the way to the Rose Bowl this year.

Today I got to hear from our Prophet at General Conference. I am thankful we have a living prophet on the earth today, just as in olden times. It was a very tiring weekend, but one where I felt we really did some good and lived what we believed.

It took us all day to remove trees from three houses. Over 17 trees fell among the three properties. There was so much devastation everywhere.  

Sean and I helped clear fallen trees for church members in Buna. The house across the street lost its roof. A tree had fallen on it.