If you love 'em~tell 'em!

Nate came into Sunday dinner tonight with his 'hot off the press' cub scout shirt and a fistful of patches to be sewn on. He will officially be a cub scout this week and will get baptized on the 27th.
My how time flies! That means that we have 5 grandchildren who have already been baptized and Nate and Sarah to receive this ordinance this year.
A few years ago, Elder Packer stated something to the effect that the older he gets, the thing that means the most to him is how his children treat his grandchildren. I know what he means.
So far you all are doing a wonderful job and we pray for you several times day.
There are a lot of challenges in this world for young people and they need fortification in the home.
The title of this post came from a song that a youth group sang several years ago in our stake and it has lots of meaning in just the title. If you love them ~and I know you do~tell them.
If they are makin' you crazy, stop for a minute and think of how much they mean to you and how they need every word of encouragement they can get. The world will never give them what they need in the way of positive reinforcement. They also need the strength that comes from keeping covenants~theirs and yours. Going to the Temple regularly is one of the best ways to protect your children.
I will close with a word of advice from President Dalton who knows and loves you all and prays for you. He has asked every family in our stake to work on turning the volume down in their homes so that the Spirit can penetrate. This not only means electronic devices but our voices and our passions. It is not easy but also not impossible.
Hang in there kids-you are doing a great work!
Love,
mabell

Perpetual Motion !

I had been wanting a pix of the Utah grandkids for sometime now to hang in a frame to go on the bedroom wall. It has the word 'grandkids' in black wooden letters and three pix frames hang down from it.

Becca's kids go in one and the pix above goes into another and then this one of the Utah kids.

Looks like Sarah, Wilford and Elias were trying to keep the babies company in the lower one.

This was during Sunday dinner at Beth's house.

In attendance were: G&G Bell, Lloyd and Annette,Craig and Peggy, Jennifer, Jessica and Kristofer all with dates, Katie and Mike and their family, Nick and Lindsey and Makenzie, Beth and Adam all all of their ninos, Joe and Heather Bell, Cory and April Jones, and Matt and Sarah Fowler and their 2 girls.

It was so much fun but definitely SRO!

Chip Off The Old Tree~!

This one was too funny to pass up! Dad and Reed were chewing the fat in a very manly type pose and Laynie did not want to be left out. Isn't it funny what children find interesting?

Reed's MBA

It is always a danger to get a new camera and forget to get the pix off the old one before you put it away. Thankfully, we did not give it away!

These pix are from last September when Reed had his graduation exercises from Babson College. It culminated the efforts of 2 years of hard work and deadlines and hard to work with study groups but really good professors and a wonderful opportunity to advance his education of somebody else's dime.

we are so thankful that our sons and sons'-in-law have been able to/are getting wonderful educational opportunities and that they use those to the benifit of their families.

CONGRATULATIONS REED!!

Yakima Adventure !!

On February 17, Lloyd and I had the opportunity to go to Yakima Washington to attend a pear ripening seminar.

Over the years when Lloyd worked in the banking industry we would attend conferences in New Orleans, New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles. When you are a farmer, I guess that you attend conferences in Yakima!! Yakima is in the heart of the central Washington~Oregon fruit growing country. The seminar was sponsored by Washington State University.

It was very fascinating but we were way out of our league. We just wanted to know how to get pears ripe and tell our customer how to do so. These guys were the big guns who represented big growers and big chains like Wal-Mart. They were kind enough to humor us and we made some good networking connections with the Pear Bureau of Oregon and scientists from UCDavis whose only field is to study pears and their diseases and habits.

As we have taken pix of our other conference locations over the years, we could not leave Yakima out. The most interesting thing that I could find on our way out of town was the courthouse across the street from the gas station~

Siding Party~January 16 2010

Lloyd has been planning the siding party for weeks~selecting team leaders and gathering supplies and having the siding delivered.

The big day was this last Saturday and he had about 16 guys there. He promised them they would only have to work from 8 am until noon and they almost made it. Those who could stay finished about 1 pm
Look at the dust from the siding cuts!

conferring and concurring

Brother Butterfield ,our HT, left his own home remodel to help us

Reed's friend, Matt

Blaine, Aaron and Jim

More of Reed's buddies

almost done

kw norris throwing out straw to help staunch the mud

Reed

OJ and David Bennett

looking good. it will eventually be red with white trim

a lot accomplished in 5 hours!!

Corrections

Hi guys,
I made several typos on the San Antone post and my apologies. The team at the Alamo Bowl was TTU (Texas Tech) and sorry for the other typos. I think that you can still get the gist of the story.
If there is a way to correct posts after they are posted, will somebody please fill me in?
thanx