Ho, Ho, Ho

This has been a fun Christmas season. I think it started with listening to the Messiah up and back from Jonathan and Kristy’s. We also had to put up the tree and decorations early because of Empty Nestor’s being at our house on Dec. 1^st. So lots of the hard work was done.

Tom and I ordered most gifts online—and while it took a lot of time deciding on the best gift at the best price, it was done in front of the computer. Since we had to mail off gifts, most of that was done early, too. The only thing left to do is Christmas cards.

I had really hoped to get this financial newsletter writing assignment done this week, but we went back and forth on what the offer would include and I had to wait for resource material, so I didn’t get it started until Friday. Sigh. Now I’d really like to get it finished before Deborah and crew comes and I don’t think that will happen.

Tuesday I went visiting teaching. Wednesday I drove Tom to Little Rock so he could fly out to Deborah’s. Deborah and Ian rented a 28 foot moving van and had it mostly packed by the time they picked up Tom from the airport. At least I think it was mostly packed.

Thursday they finished packing it and cleaned the house. Then Deborah and Ian signed the closing papers on their house. Friday they started driving across country. I guess kids and truck and van and drivers have done well. They have been blessed with good weather. They arrived at Miranda’s Sunday evening. They should unload the truck into storage in Springdale on Monday and be here sometime Monday night.

Thursday I wrote—sent off a few spec assignments and did some research on the writing assignment. I had a raindrop treatment. The treatment is less than an hour… the visiting… add another two. I enjoy visiting, but perhaps I should plan appointments when there’s someone coming behind me.

Friday I held my feet to the fire with a solid 4 hours of work in the morning.  Then I did some shopping and present wrapping. Saturday was more work, more gift wrapping and I mailed the last two packages at the post office. That evening there was a gathering for all bishops and wives at the stake president’s house. I went alone. We had a great dinner then the men divided off for a meeting. We women visited and had a great time getting to know each other better. We shared how we all ended up in Missouri/Arkansas.

Sunday we had good meetings. After church I wrote to grandkids and missionaries. Then I drove to Ava for a meeting about Just Serve—a new church program. I’m excited to be a part of it. Tonight I need to write up some information for my RS presidents about the program.

For part of the week I took the computer downstairs and snuggled in front of the fire.  Later in the week the weather has warmed up. Nights are 46-50, so I let the fire go out.  I'm sure it will get cold again.

Christmas Advent

Sunday they forecast icy weather for Monday.  We were supposed to host the Empty Nester’s Family Home Evening that night.  We got a light dusting of ice early Monday morning—mostly on our deck and steps.  The roads were clear. So we (read Tom) decided to hold the Empty Nesters and surprisingly 26 people came!  More than that, they all brought tasty goodies!  So it was a nice evening.

In early November I got my first job writing a win back series for a financial newsletter.  This is the niche I want to focus in. So I studied the product and wrote 4 emails designed to showcase the product and invite people to reorder the subscription.

I sent them off November 14^th…. And didn’t hear anything.  It was fine as we were at Jonathan’s and Kristy’s and having fun.  But no news. Did she like them? Hate them?  I send a few gentle nudges.  Nothing. After we got back from Iowa, I gave it another few days.  Then, I thought, I gotta call.  So I pulled up the emails to have them fresh in my mind, and also pulled up some edits a friend send me after I’d already submitted the emails.

She’d made some great suggestions.  So I changed the emails.  Then I send them saying, “I was planning on calling you today, but when I pulled up the emails to review them, I found things I could improve on.  So here are the revised emails, and I’ll call you tomorrow morning to discuss the status.”  I called late morning, her time.  She said, “I was thinking about you and waiting for your call.”  Bottom line—I needed to make 3 easy changes.  She liked my writing, and offered another assignment.

I had also followed up with some other newsletters and got responses back from three others—all expressing interest.  So I’m hopeful.

While we were gone, more leaves fell! Imagine that!  And we still have a few on the trees.  Tom did some blowing of them out of the flower gardens and some raking, but the big lawn is still covered in leaves.

As bishop, Tom has tithing settlement in December.  This is a chance for every member to declare their tithing status to the Lord.  Did they pay a full tithe, are they exempt or non-tithe payers.  They get to come and visit with Tom.  It’s basically a simple yes/no question, but Tom like it because he gets a chance to visit with so many people and see how they are doing. However, he’s gone Tues, Wed, Thurs evenings and also Sunday afternoons.

Tom has also been the main Santa this year.  He’s ordered presents, wrapped them and mailed them off.  It’s a little crazy with us mailing things to Andy and Kera and Kristy mailing Deborah’s things to us. And us mailing our gifts here… and some of Kera’s mailed directly to them… and Adam mailing to us… and…

Friday we went to Branson to finish Christmas shopping and to go to Silver Dollar City.  For some reason, this was an especially nice day at SDC.  It was raining and foggy and a bit chilly so there were not many people there.  We watched the musicals of “A Christmas Carol,”  “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and saw the living nativity which was really the Christmas story.  We listened to some Cajun Christmas music—not exactly our style—and a silly Western Christmas folly at the saloon.

It’s always fun to see the beautiful lights and the musical Christmas tree.

We stopped at IHOP for a Denny’s like dinner. Pretty good food.  Slow service. And got home about 10pm.

The ward decided to forgo the traditional Christmas dinner in favor of a service project.  So Saturday at 8am we went to the North West Arkansas Food bank. There were about 60 members that showed up—from ages 6-80. We had someone with only one hand.  The other was in a cast from recent surgery, and one with heart condition and an elderly widow with a cane.  All were able to help out.

Some of us took puffed wheat cereal from a 4’x5’ box and bagged it into one or two gallon Ziploc bags.  Some took cases of #10 cans and put labels on them—sliced peaches, diced peaches and fruit cocktail.  They had an assembly line-  open the box, remove the cans, tape on the labels, re-pack them in the boxes, tape the boxes closed, and put them on a new pallet.  It was fun to see people working happily together and doing something valuable. Some organized Christmas toys, some cleaned up and stacked cardboard for recycling.

He said that our 150 man hours saved him $1500 and was enough to free up money for 10,000 meals for people. A nice morning’s work.  Then Tom went to help someone move some things, and I went to clean the church.  Fortunately the carpets and floors had been professionally cleaned on Monday so we got to do what Nana called “a lick and a promise” cleaning.  That evening we had a baptism.

Today was Fast Sunday.  I’ve been reading about the promises of the fast and wanted to have a more meaningful fast.  I think it went better.  We did some home teaching and watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional.

All in all a good week.

Thanksgiving

We spent the week with Jonathan and Kristy and kids.  They are loving and welcoming and it was a nice time.  Isabelle is being home schooled, so she and three year old Zachary are home during the day.

Isabelle, David, and Emily are all in school. Monday and Tuesday it was COLD.  Like 2 degrees outside in the morning! I think it was Monday night that Tom and Jonathan went outside and chopped wood.  Jonathan has a neighbor that cuts down trees, so they had several logs to dispose of.

That night it snowed, so Tuesday, the kids had to dig in the snow to find the wood in the pile and carry it to stack against the fence.  They went outside and played and worked for several house.  Tom and I went out for a little bit... but didn't stay out all that long.

For us it was a low-key visit. Here are some of us napping before early morning scripture study.

I did a little writing and then got beguiled by Kristy's novels. We introduced them to the Granite Flats series on BYU TV and watched a couple of those sessions.  We shopped for deals and bought some stuff online.  Some of us had a little less relaxing time than others.

Wednesday we celebrated Kristy's birthday.  Jonathan and I made her cake,  I worked some on the mashed potatoes, while Jonathan cooked the steaks from their home-grown steer.  Here is the family at the gift unwapping part.

The cooking was sort of non-stop for two days. Jonathan pitched in and helped a lot.

Thursday's Thanksgiving dinner was AWESOME!  Yummy turkey, yams, potatoes, beans, rolls... all the good stuff.  And of course pies, truffle, and left over flourless chocolate cake-- which is like a wedge of fudgey-brownie.

The time passed too quickly.  Friday morning we left to return home.  Here is sunrise Friday morning.

The 9 hour trip stretched to about 12 as we stopped at Ikea and shopped for several hours.  Then we stopped at Trader Joe's and Aldi's.  Add in gas stops and changes of drivers.  But it was kind of fun to do Christmas shopping.

Before we left home, we'd started decorating the house for our Dec 1 Empty Nesters activity.  We came home to more to do.  Plus, all the leaves on the trees?  They didn't stay there.  I think 90% are down now-- blowing across the driveway, scattered on the lawn and piled against the fence lines.

We put the tree on a low table since we were going to have little children at the house around Christmas.

Saturday we did some cleaning, some gift wrapping, and... um... er... I had to finish the book I'd borrowed from Kristy.  We had soup for dinner and I invited our neighbor Barb over.

Today I went to West Plains for their ward conference.  I was supposed to go visiting afterwards, but some of the Relief Society presidency was sick or out of town... so there was no one to go with.

The weather has gone from frigid to balmy.  But they are predicting a cold snap.  It includes sleet on Monday night, so I think we will be moving our Empty Nesters FHE back a week. No one wants to be out driving in iffy weather.

House Hunting Week

Monday Tom and I drove to Springdale to look at houses for Deborah and Ian.  I had been worried about the weather.  They had forecast several inches of snow.  But it really didn’t materialize.  So we had clean roads on the way to Springdale.  We looked at 5 houses for them.  It was easy to see a ranking on the ones we viewed.  

But in my mind we came up with three real possibilities.  Each house we viewed improved in quality and neighborhood even though they were similar in price and size. The nicest one had an offer going in, so if Deborah and Ian wanted it, they needed to decide and put in an offer quickly.  They did put in an offer.  However the other offer was a cash offer, and they didn’t get that house.  So the next day they put in an offer on another very nice house.  Here is a picture of it.

It had been Ian’s favorite.  And it was accepted.  So they are moving along in their house selling and house buying and packing and moving plans. 

Tom will fly out on Dec 10^th to help with the final packing and help Deborah drive their stuff out.  Ian will need to work another 2 weeks or so.  Then he will drive to Arkansas shortly after Christmas.  Deborah will stay with us until the house closes in early Jan… or maybe at a timeshare if it’s cheap enough.  They already have plans for Tom to come and help them remodel a bathroom as soon as it closes.

We hope that Andy and Kera and Miranda and Dan will come for the week after Christmas.

The week started with bitter cold weather.  At night it got down into the low teens and in the days barely above freezing.  As the week progressed it warmed up.

My writing was pretty uneventful.  Mostly just more of the same. Tom helped neighbors and delved into the leaf raking.  Wow!  Did we have a generous abundance of leaves.  He burned a lot of them and we mulched some and spread them in the garden.  I had intended to get the weeds out before we covered them with leaves.  I was only sort of successful. And not all the leaves are off of the trees.

Thursday we prepared to go to visit Jonathan and Kirsty.  We had planned on looking at some houses for them, but they also decided to come down and check out houses.  So we went to Branson and did a little Christmas shopping.  Then we caught up with them after the 3^rd house and went and viewed another 6 or so.  While they were looking at a favorite house, they learned that an offer was coming in on the house.  So as they looked at the other houses, they compared it with the one with the offer.   That one was the one we thought they’d like the best.

They did decide to put an offer in on it.  Each house had some trade-offs, but that one seemed like the best—nice house, energy efficient, close to church, lovely barns and land.  However, the other offer (like Deborah and Ian’s) was a cash offer, and so the seller chose that offer.  So it’s back to house hunting for them.  Since they don’t plan on moving until summer, they are not rushed.

We spent the night with them in Bolivar, as they discussed an offered on the house.  Then Saturday we drove to Kansas City and went through the temple.  It was really great.  We did some sealings for a sister in our ward.  To kneel around the alter with a father, mother and 7 children created a very special spirit. We also did a session.  Then we stopped at 5 guys for a delicious late lunch and drove on to Jonathan and Kirsty’s.

They had stake conference.  So I watched children while Tom, Jonathan, Kristy and Isabelle went to the evening session.  Today we had a great Sunday Session.  Now it's raining, but we are snug inside.

Rinse, Repeat

It seems like we're doing the same things each week. Not all that exciting.

My writing is... well writing.  I've been working on the email newsletter renewal series.  Thank you brother Steve for your comments on them.

 I did finally start putting old missionary letters on a website I created for that. it's at www.LettersToMissionaries.com Since I write to missionaries and grandchildren each week... and mostly it's the same letter, I decided I should follow the counsel of the church and create a web presence.  I don't know that anyone will ever read them, but they are up there and represent some of my thoughts on gospel principles and life.  I know my African missionaries and returned missionaries appreciate getting them.  I started with the oldest first.  I finished 2012, I think and need to do 2013 and 14.

 Wednesday evening Miranda and Dan and family came to visit.  Dan left early Thursday to go do job stuff, but we had the pleasure of visiting with Miranda and her kiddies for a few days.  They are growing into such fun children.  I love to see them play happily together.  They are imaginative and creative and give good hugs. What more could you ask for?

Well, I suppose you could ask for pictures... but we didn't take any of them.  sigh.

Saturday and Sunday were Stake Conference. We drove up to West Plains early so we could look at a house for Jonathan and Kristy.  It was a nice house, lots of acreage, okay out buildings, but also pretty far out from town.  We finished in time to check into the hotel and change for the stake meetings.  Tom had a bishop's meeting at 2:30.  Dan Mc attended and taught about LDS Family Services kinds of things.

This time, I invited a ward to do the dinner between the leadership training and the Saturday evening session of conference.  Ava ward did a magnificent job!  It took so much pressure off me not having to worry if I'd made too much or too little-- I almost felt guilty.  They did have a lot left over.  Once again, some people weren't sure if they should or could eat or not.  They recommended sandwiches on time and soup another.  That would keep it simple and perhaps easier to deal with the leftovers.

During the time I would have been stressing about food, we were able to have a presidency meeting and get a lot accomplished in planning for our next event.

The meetings were great. We had new converts speak and new temple goers talk.  And we talked again about hastening the work.  The general authority spoke about conversion and how that is different from having a testimony.  He said that a testimony was knowing and doing.  When you are converted you are changed and become more Christ-like.  It is not a one-and-done thing, but an ongoing process.

I had been worried about the forecast of snow for the weekend.  Tom was kind enough to accommodate me and drive the 4-wheel drive truck.  We just had a little sleet and freezing rain Saturday evening.  Sunday nothing-- until we were close to home.  Then we got some light freezing rain.  It was warm enough, it didn't stick.  But now-- about 4:30, the snow has been falling long enough to coat the ground.

We still plan on driving to Springdale to look at houses for Deborah and Ian on Monday.

Progress and house shopping

We are excited that Deborah's house is under contract and that she and her family will be moving to Springdale, AR by the end of the year.  Ian is transferring to a postal position in Springdale.  We are so pleased.  It means moving and packing and finding a place.  But it's exciting to know the house is sold and dates to move are in place.

We had hoped that Dan and Miranda might also be moving to Fayetteville, AR-- in the NW corner close to Springdale.  But Dan's work decided to renew the lease on the building he has in Broken Arrow.  SIGH.  But they are not SSOOO far away.

I had decided to focus my copywriting on PLF launches and newsletter renewals. I think I mentioned that I got a short job for a PLF launch last week.  This week I got a job writing a renewal series for Newsmax. If it performs well, I may have a lot of work with them.  This is a nice step forward!

I had been meaning to create a web page for both the PLF copywriting and also for the letters I've been writing to missionaries.  I just thought if they were out there, others could use them to send to their missionaries.  They could be virtuous and also save time.  So I bought the domain name: LetterstoMissionaries.com and started putting the older letters up. It takes a little time to review the letter, clean it up if there are mistakes, and load it onto a web page.  I also was told that blogs with photos get viewed more, so I've been putting a picture with each blog post.

We learned that moving a designed book from the ideal design format to a Kindle format is not either cheap or easy. Bummer.  I thought a PDF would do it, but it will not.  You can view the PDF on a computer, but it does not size or scale larger or smaller on a hand held device. So my lovely little book will need to be mostly redone.  Fortunately I won't be doing it.

This week Tom played handyman at a few of the rentals. He helped the neighbor across the street (Ernie) get his trim painted. He finished chopping the wood and now the wood pile is much bigger.  He replaced some rotted posts in the horse corral.  And we both worked on pulling out the rest of the mostly-dead garden. Unfortunately many of the weeds are still alive.  We'll need to go back and get them pulled or roto-tilled.

Saturday we took another house vetting trip for Jonathan and Kristy.  We had beautiful fall weather on the way up.

This time we went to Mt. Vernon and the Springfield area of Missouri. We met with Dean, the Realtor.  He was very knowledgeable and we learned a lot as we traveled around.  We saw 6 houses and were gone 13 hours.  The first and 4th houses were our favorites.  One had a great house close to town with level pasture.  The other was further out with a smaller house, but fantastic rolling pastures and twice the land.  They became our measuring tape for evaluating all the other properties.

We finished the last house just as dusk.  When we drove up, we followed the GPS. It sent us down a new road "Z" and saved a good 10 minutes on the trip to Springfield.  So as we were leaving the last property, I saw we were on the next country road west of "Z".

We could have gone north a few miles and taken the freeway.  We SHOULD have gone north and taken the freeway, but no.  We decided to follow the GPS.  We went from narrow country road to gravel road to dirt road.  Then we came to a river.  I begged Tom to turn around.  But with the spirit adventure like a bit between his teeth, he had to measure the water flowing across the low water bridge. About 2 inches.  He insisted on taking the plunge...er, crossing.

We survived and drove on dirt roads for probably about 3 more miles before finding "Z" and continuing home.  While it was nearly dark during this adventure, it was not totally dark.  (Sort of like mostly dead.)  When we got to Ava, we stopped for dinner and then continued home.  It was about 350 miles round trip.

Today I took Nita, a member just down the road to church.  We sang as a choir and it turned out well, I think.  Nita got to feeling poorly mid Sunday school, so I ran her home and came back.  Tom had is bishops youth discussion here at the house just after church.  He seemed to have a good time with the youth.

All in all, a good week!

Fall has hit

This has been a good week.  I’ve been practicing my “focused four hours” work and that has gone pretty well. I’ve gotten a lot accomplished.  I finished my HVAC newsletter and got that schlepped off two weeks ahead of schedule.

I’ve been sending marketing samples to  the two groups I’m targeting—newsletters businesses in need of improved retention and renewal letters and Product Launch Formula members needing help converting their brilliant ideas to the perfect words. I received one request for more info from each niche.

One coach I’d had lunch with at PLF asked if I could do a quick turn around on some emails she was sending out and check out her opt in page.  I re-arranged my schedule and spent an afternoon on that.  She was pleased.  I hope it will lead to referrals and more work in the future.

I made pumpkin bread to give to my visiting teaching sisters.  I got it delivered to two of them….but… sigh...not the other two.  I guess I’d better eat it or it will go bad shortly.  I had been visiting a bed-ridden sister whose care-taker son was in the hospital.  He came home on Tuesday or Wednesday so then she asked us not to come by for a few days. I was happy to comply.

The leaves are turning and it's beautiful outside. The weather has turned cooler.  They predicted a freeze warning for Friday night.  I’d gotten out to the garden to prune back the dying asparagus fronds, but had not dealt with the dead bean and squash plants. Nor had I finished with the peppers and a few lingering tomato plants.  Friday evening we covered the peppers and tomato plants with tarps and sheets.  To no avail.  We should have just picked all the green fruit.  I hope the chickens like green mushy tomatoes.

Friday morning Tom and I left early… did I mention early?... to go to Ava to check out some houses for Jonathan and Kristy.  They have spread a net all over western Missouri in search of the perfect dwelling place and farm.  We were happy to oblige with some house reviews.  We checked out three farms—a no-go, a maybe, and a pretty sweet place.

No.  Musty, bad road

Maybe. Nice farm, smaller kitchen 

 Awesome! great floor plan and space, but home is pretty far from the barns.

We had a fun time taking pictures, assessing the things important to them and seeing the countryside.  We passed lovely fall foliage.  I had a 1pm web conference.  We got delayed at the last house, and I was not going to make it home for the gotowebinar. Gaak.  I tried to find the client’s phone number on Tom’s new phone.  But I think I told it to only go on the internet when Wi-Fi was available.  I could not connect to the web!  I finally called Kristy and she searched for and found the number.  I called and gave them a heads up.

When we got home I raced to the computer and logged on.  Fortunately one of the other members had also just arrived. All went well until the computer turned itself off due to inactivity.  Gaak Again!  I had to log off and log back on again. The good news was they didn’t know I’d left.  The bad news was that I had to ask what had happened while I was gone.  Then time ran out and we didn’t resolve anything. 

The whole purpose was to decide how to move forward on the big book I’d been writing with Mark for my client.  It had stalled for about 6 months. That left me free to finish the small book. Now we needed to get the show on the road for the big book.  We added another cook to the pot thinking one of the chiefs would bail. But he didn’t.  Now we may have too many cooks.  It will be interesting to see if we can mesh all the visions and get this book done well.

Friday night the ward had its Fall Festival.  They had a pot luck dinner and then trunk or treating outside.  Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun and I enjoyed visiting with people.  Tom and I got to judge the best trunk decoration. There were some nice ones, so we gave several honorable mentions.

Saturday Tom took his truck and trailer and joined another ward member with his truck and trailer to gather firewood from a members new homesite.  It was cut into 4 foot sections and easy to load since the  member had a tractor with front forks.  Between the two, it was estimated they had 6000-7000 pounds of firewood.  Tom helped Frank offload his wood and Frank helped offload ours. Then he proceeded to cut and split about half of the lumber that afternoon!  I think he got a cord stacked.  And there’s probably enough for another cord of firewood.  A cord is 4 feet by 4 feet by 8 feet of stacked wood.

I voted on Saturday while Tom was gone and did some shopping. (He voted Friday while I was on the call.)  And I spent time organizing photos and sketches and google map images to send to Kristy and Jonathan about the houses we viewed. We sent the clocks back and went to bed early.

Today was a great Sunday.  We had lots of people in choir.  One of whom forgot to set her clock back and wondered why no one was a church! So we invited her to choir practice. We had good testimonies and great Sunday school and Relief Society lessons.  I gained a greater appreciation for Isaiah today. 

I didn’t set the clock in my computer room back… so we broke our fast an hour early.  Tom didn’t complain. 

Hope your week was great.

Sandra/ Mom