Great Mother's Day!

May 10, 2015

Dear Sister Kristina,

That was just too fun being able to talk with you and see you. Seems like you were right here with us for just a brief period of time. It was a great Mother's Day present. You looked so pretty and sounded wonderful. I'm so proud of you and how you are just stepping right up and serving with your whole heart. I particularly appreciate the positive example you set for your sisters…not just your sisters, but all of us. Life is much sweeter when we see it through Heavenly Father's eyes.

As I told you, we are well here. Leah did a great job with her talk today. In fact, I'll send you a copy of all 3 of our talks. Leah had Nikki help her write it, so they ended up both writing the talk. I never helped one bit because Leah was asked to talk about me and that would be weird for me to write about myself. haha Leah was so nervous before her talk, she was physically shaking up on the stand and I was trying my best to calm her. After her talk, she was so calm and very proud of herself.

Dad did a great job with his talk speaking about all the different "moms" in his life, women who have made an impact in his life and told a little background story of each. It was great and he was very emotional telling the stories. Your dad has a tender heart.

Hey, did you ever get a chance to do a service project there in Santa Rosa over the weekend? I meant to ask you because remember I saw that project where they needed missionaries to help volunteer in Santa Rosa on the justserve.org website. Just curious. I'm on the stake committee here to help that get up and running in our area. We have to go around to local businesses and talk with them about posting on the site. I hope all they want to take advantage of this website. It would be great.

Hopefully, Kat is writing you today to tell you her mission news. She told me she wanted to tell you herself, so I couldn't say anything on facetime today. :(  but believe me I wanted to. :)

The girls are winding down at school which just means they are watching a lot of movies in class. Nikki has to take daily math next year like Leah does this year which I think will be really helpful for her, but she's not real happy about it because that means she gives up an elective which was going to be photography. Besides cooking, that's her second love. But she will be taking choir and is very excited about it. We're hoping to get her ears fixed this summer and that should help her be able to hear herself and her tone and pitch much better. I'm really happy that Leah has decided on her own that she wants to stick with choir for another year.

Leah is still struggling with the same things, but this past week she agreed to see a psychiatrist and we're really happy she did. He gave her a lot of hope, prescribed some medicine that should help her moods which she was happy about and told her she needs to start talking with a counselor because it will really help her learn how to deal with how she feels during the day. Leah is totally okay with all of this because she told me she's so tired of feeling depressed, blah and getting angry all the time. It meant a lot that she made that decision herself, because that's half the battle. I'll keep you posted on her progress.

I'm getting ready for Living the Legacy. Our presidency is going up again the end of this month, so we're meeting this week to go over what we're going to talk about, what game to play, what handout to give, etc. It was so fun having you and your friends there last year. I'm afraid I won't know very many of the girls this year.

We've been having such beautiful weather here lately. Dad and I sit out on the back porch, play games and talk and listen to the big frog in the fountain. I can still hear the frog right now as I type. haha I wonder if it's the same frog every year.

Have a great p-day. Take lots of pictures cuz I love seeing them and seeing where you are so I can picture it all when you write about it. 

Have a wonderful week and remember the blessings and privileges of being 'set apart' as a special disciple of Jesus Christ. I will be reading my patriarchal blessing every day this week.

Love you so much,

Mom xxoo