Heat Wave

We have had a pretty mild summer; in fact July was one of the 'coolest' in years, averaging about 73 degrees.  But this week is trying to make up for that. Most days have been about 100 degrees and no rain.   The grass is drying out.  Some of our garden is shriveling up.  I think that may be due to bugs and pestilence as much as the heat.

Sunday I had a lovely time in Ava at their ward conference. This is a ward that really has it together, so we were able to train on a higher level.  We taught about ward councils, music in Relief Society, and the Relief Society’s responsibilities in disaster preparedness.  I gave about a 10 minute talk in Relief Society.  After the meetings we went and visited a lively sister and her husband.  We arrived back to the building in time for a 3pm Stake Council meeting.  It went well.

I learned that if you google Relative Finder the first thing you’ll see is a roots-byu.edu address. If you click on that and sign in with your lds account name and password, or your Family Search password, you can see who you are related to.  You can check famous Americans, prophets, famous people, royalty, handcart companies and other groups of people.  The amazing thing is that we really are related to the people around us.

They created a westplainsstake group and just those of us in the room put in our names.  We found out that we were related to each other—13^th cousin twice removed… or more… but related.  It’s really fun.  You should try it.  Joshua spent time on Monday finding out he’s related to prophets and kings (a 12^th great- grandson through the Magee side).

My meeting got out about 5pm, just about the time Tom arrived to go to a seminary meeting for the youth in our ward and stake.  Our ward had a great turnout of youth and their parents!  However, there was a lady at the ward who had two carloads of apples she was giving away. So I scored two bags full! Yahoo!

I had hoped to have my book to the book designer on Monday.  No book back. Throughout the week I sent small emails to the client, encouraging her to finish reviewing the book and send it back to me. I know she works from like 6am to 10pm and never has any time—literally.  So I didn’t know when or how she’d review it if it wasn’t over a weekend. Even then she’s booked.  She finally said she’d try to review it this weekend on her trip to Omaha.  She also enlisted the help of Beth, the reviewer I’d been working with, to try and finish it.  So finally on Saturday I got another revision back. It’s hard to finish when the client is really the only one with the knowledge and expertise to resolve some of the issues.

Tuesday I’d planned to make applesauce, but the air conditioning went out the night before. So we tried to not use the kitchen that day.  The temperature got up to 86 in the house.  It was getting a bit uncomfortable when the repairman showed up.  Good news: simple fix.  I think it was a capacitor.  But it took a while to get the heat out of the house.   So the Applesauce making got moved to Wednesday… and Thursday morning.

Tom shifted gears this week and went to work at Deborah’s house.   One of the single moms in the church wants to rent it and go on HUD.  They have strict rules.  The house did need painting on the exterior… perhaps not this moment… but it needed it.  So we went ahead and had it done.  Tom fixed some electrical and painted some trim, replaced a door and did some other stuff.  Inspection is this Tuesday and I hope it passes the first time.

Wednesday I ran and bought more paint and went to admire their work. I also had an RS presidency meeting that we decided to do by phone.  That worked out pretty well.  I’ve lost my RS notebook with all the notes I take at meetings and writing down thoughts and ideas.  I feel adrift without it.  I’ll need to start recreating things as I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find it.

Thursday Tom stopped work early and we went to see Guardians of the Galaxy. I had heard good reviews.  It was okay, but not thrilling.  I liked the animated characters the best.

 Friday we went to Silver Dollar City.

 Our first stop was at the bakery.  Joshua is downing a HUGE eclair.  Others got giant cupcakes, pecan rolls and cinnamon rolls.  They looked delicious and tasted pretty good.

 The girls checked out the map and directed us to the merry-go-round.  I'm the wincing one in the floating the lost river ride.  Tom is on dry ground taking the picture.

 It was still stinkin hot, but we took plenty of water and lots of sunscreen.  This is the first time I’ve WANTED to go on the water rides.  Yup.  Got soaked.  And it was okay.  The kids had a good time.  We had “dinner” at Andy’s Frozen Custard and got home about 7pm.

I had tried to activate the Sprint phone while in Branson, but was not successful. We decided to try to go on Adam’s Framily (friends and family) plan and don’t have good Sprint coverage here.  We’ll see if there’s a work around.

While much of the garden is winding down, the beans and the peppers are producing enthusiastically.  I’ve been freezing some and giving a lot away. We had home and visiting teachers come by and they took home a load on Saturday.  We also went to a farewell for a young man going into the Navy.

Today it felt sad to think that this was the last Sunday Rebecca and family would be at church with us. We have so enjoyed having her here.  After church we had delicious taco salad and Wendy Maple and family came over.  They ate and got home taught.