October 22, 2017

Life has been busy! We just finished the first quarter of school.  I can't believe that much time has gone by!  Rachel made the HS volleyball team! It's been so great for her.  We've been so happy about it.  Her games are fun to watch, she has a great coach and she loves to belong to a team and be friends with girls she probably wouldn't have otherwise.  I encouraged her to try out because I wished I would have done that in high school, so I was pretty nervous for her.  I'm so glad it worked out!  School was a big adjustment for her because long volleyball practices and seminary started at the same time, but she's done awesome!

Danny got straight A's the first quarter! It's a miracle! Ha!  He has struggled since he started middle school with his grades.  Mostly because of lack of trying.  But we told him he won't drive if he doesn't have at least a 3.5 and he'll get a better car if he gets a 4.0.  That was the ticket! He switched his whole perspective and work ethic with school and has been doing great!

Aaron has been adjusting great to middle school.  He works hard and has lots of great friends.  He is playing the Trumpet in band and doing great at it.

Seth and Ruby have great teachers and have made good friends and are doing well.

Bob and I are taking the Personal Finance class with the new self reliance program.  We absolutely love it!  We were starting to feel a little under water and out of control with our finances.  And this has completely flipped us around.  I've always had a good budget, I just don't follow it.  I go over budget almost every month and I trade money around to different categories all the time to make it work. I learned both of these are definitely not in line with the principle of budgeting.  They talked about figuring out the financial blessings we want and then making sure we follow the principles that are associated with those blessings.  That was such a great way to look at it.  Some of the blessings we would like help with are being able to buy a car for the kids when Danny is 16 and being able to take our family to Japan. Last week we learned about getting out of debt.  I've never really worried about that much because the only debt we have is our house.  But while we were doing the lesson I really felt impressed that we should work on paying off that debt faster.  I knew that in my finite mind it didn't make that much sense, but I do have a testimony of the power of obedience. So when we came home that night and were talking and thinking about it, the phrase "prove me now herewith" came strongly to my mind.  It was so exciting.  I know He was telling me to be obedient to this principle and he would prove to me that he would open up blessings to our family in ways that didn't seem possible with my limited view of the future.  Bob and I created a plan to work on paying the mortgage off faster.  I know we will be blessed as we do.

I have been having such amazing strengthening and tutoring lessons from the Spirit in the last few month.  Mostly because of my health issues.  I need to write about it more, but we have home teachers coming soon.  So I'm putting this in here to remind me to write about it next time.