Big scare

I was eating dinner when I get a phone call from my niece, April. Sherry (sister) had been in a bad accident. I had heard it come across the pager, but ignored it, it wasn't in our area. Her car was pinned under a semi-truck. Didn't know the extent of injuries or anything, other that she had called mom and dad and told them she was in an accident. I immediately took off for the hospital, listening to my ems radio, to find out which one they would transport her to. Diana calls on her way to the hospital. She is on the road where the accident happened. She finally arrives at it. Starts yelling across the road to the medics to let the driver know that her sister was there. Diana watched them extricate her from the, now unrecognizable car, and sat with her in the ambulance for a short time. Car is destroyed. She is doing well. Large laceration to her forehead, with a few stitches. Bumps, bruises and all around lots of sore spots. She was very lucky. The Dr.'s and nurses and medics told her that they have never seen someone in an accident like that walk away. They also told her that if she had had her seatbelt on it would have killed her. Apparently when she went under the truck, the impact threw her into the backseat. Saved her. The bed of the trailer hit her forehead, causing the cut. So lucky. They sent her home about an hour ago.

My niece, Lorrie said that March is a lucky month. Boy is she right. Never have so many prayers been said, so quickly. The ER was very good about letting us all go back to see her. There will be tons of prayers of gratitude this evening.

Sometimes we don't realize that after the prayers have been answered we need to get back down on those knees and give thanks for the answers. How grateful I am tonight for those answered prayers.

Love my hubby

It is always fun and special to get to spend the entire day with John. Because of schedules it just is so hard sometimes. When he got home Sunday evening I threw some clothes in a bag and we left home. Didn't tell anyone but John Jr. we were leaving. Didn't tell anyone where we went. Didn't matter. We just went. We came home yesterday evening after spending the day making several stops, eating, getting stuff for the kids and eating. It was nice to be able to just get away, if only for a day.

We enjoyed just getting to be together. It seems like there is always someone or something needing our attention, so this time is was just each other. Fun.

Our potatoes are planted. We did 3 rows this year. If we get as many as we did last year, we will have enough to feed our entire family for the winter. We planted the ones that sprouted from last year. I can't wait for the warm weather so that I can get more stuff in the ground. The beans, lettuce and cucumbers that I planted in my pots are doing very well in the living room window.

Tomorrow the herbs get planted and will be sitting in the kitchen window. Sure will smell good when they come up. My sage and thyme (in the garden from last year) are doing well this spring. The rhubarb is coming up nicely, as well as the strawberries.

Can't wait to taste all the yummy goodies.

How do you spell RELIEF???

The emergency preparedness fireside is OVER!!! Not a huge turnout, but I think it went well with those that were there. We presented the Ward Emergency plan, how it will work, when, etc. I tore apart my 72hr. kit so that everyone could get a good idea what needs to go in it and why. Bishop is really going to be pushing this kind of stuff for the next several months. Hopefully some more will get the bug and do something.

I attended a "Setting up an Emergency Shelter" workshop today at our local emergency management agency. Very imformative, especially before our fireside tonight. They asked several questions in the workshop about how long we should have food stored for and how. I was able to talk about 72hr kits. The kinds of things to put in your kit and told them all to check the church website for a chart about how much and what to store.

My next class will probably be a HAM radio class. The stake has asked that every ward have someone be a radio operator. The class will be in May and testing in June. I think there will be several of us from church willing to take it.

What will be my next adventure???? Only time will tell.

Success

Last night was the RS Birthday Celebration, "My Sister's Hands". It was a huge success. At least in the fact that we had 28 sisters there. We had a light dinner, program and worked on making baby quilts. We had a visit come and has been looking for something like this for years. She wants to donate several quilts for us to tie and donate. Yea!!! We will be donating the quilts to the Salvation Army shelter in Bellaire, Ohio. They told us that they always need baby items.

Our next service project is helping a local organization send jelly beans to the troops. They have set a goal of 5000 bags, and we are going to contribute. This is an easy one.

I am hoping that the sisters at the program took away a good feeling about being able to serve others. I love being able to do things for others. I guess that was hugely due to my childhood. My parents have always been huge advocates of serving others. Didn't matter if it was at home, church, or community, that is just they way it is supposed to be. Hopefully I have instilled that in my own kids. I think I have. When I watch them, I see them doing the same kinds of things that their father and I do, so it is very heartwarming.

Next on the agenda. . . prepare for the emergency preparedness fireside on Saturday. We are going to present our Ward plan and focus on 72hr kits. Hope it is as successful.

This has been the week of training.
On Tuesday evening we had fire training. Practicing for all the brush and grass fires we have been having. Also Tuesday evening was a conference call with the regional welfare director. What a great meeting. We are being admonished to make sure the RS sisters are being instructed in Self-Reliance. OK, something near to my heart. This six areas we are to focus on is: education, health, food storage, spiritual growth, employment, and finances. What a selection of topics, but much needed. We have actually been doing that already in our 1st Sunday lessons and in our enrichment meetings. We are doing this to help those in the Ward become more self-reliant, thus, not needing to depend on the Welfare of the church as much.

On Thursday evening we had our Stake Leadership meeting in Greentree. Again, the First Presidency has recently sent out a new DVD focusing on Welfare and Self-Reliance. Do you seen a theme here? Get with it. Are you doing all you can to continually become more Self-reliant? There will always be something pop up in our lives that we will need help with, but there are things that we can learn to do for ourselves, and not always expect someone else to pick us up. The DVD is great. We are to come up with a project/activity, involving majority of the sisters, document it, make a huge poster size display, and then display it at our next leadership meeting. Our RS birthday celebration is on Tuesday. Our theme: "My Sister's Hands". I have been collecting stories from different sisters about how they have witnessed other members giving service to the Ward, their families, and their community. I will put these together in a small booklet for that evening. We will have a small program; talks and music. Hopefully a DVD playing of different pictures of hands that I took over the last couple of weeks. Dinner of course will be served. Then, proof of all the work that we do as RS, we will work on baby quilts to send to SLC. My sister's hands are hard at work.

Birthday weekend

Everyone was here yesterday, after church. We had pizza, cake and ice cream for the birthdays. John turned 49 and Sarah turned the horrible 25.

She has been stressing for two weeks about this birthday. Oh, to be young and crazy. Everyone at church was giving her a hard time. Someday she will look back at this birthday and laugh about how silly she was.

John on the other hand turned '49'. Brian says next year will be the biggie. Thank goodness age doesn't seem to bother him.

It sure was nice to have everyone here. Schedules don't usually work out that way.

The weather has been great for the last couple of days. Temp up in the 60's and some sunshine. Today the wind has started again. It seems like we have had more of that than usual this year. As long as there are no more grass/brush fires (along with the wind) it should be a good week.

GREAT NEWS!!! Brother-in-law home.

After comparing new tests with old ones, things have not drastically changed. Not surgery is needed. They are back to saying he had a virus that caused most of the problem. Thank goodness for prayers.

Please keep my brother-in-law in your prayers. He broke his neck several years ago when wrestling as a high school student. He has had surgeries to correct it. He went in the hospital yesterday for some lower extremity weakness. After doing some tests that have discovered that one of the wires holding his neck together has come loose. He will be going to Morgantown, WV tomorrow to see the specialist. He will probably need surgery to correct the problem. We are just praying that this will take care of the problem and get him back up and running (wrestling) soon.

John is on midnight shift so the evenings are tooooo quiet around here. He enjoys the shift, but I simply cannot sleep when he is gone. The sleeplessness is just as hard on me. It stinks getting old. He has a birthday this week and will turn 49. Party year next year.

Sarah is having a tough time this week. She will turn 25 on Sunday and is just hating it. It didn't help that we were telling her she would be a quarter of a century old. She doesn't look or act it of course, so I'm not sure why it seems to aggravate her. Luckily, I haven't been bothered by any of my milestone birthdays, and there have been a few. As long as I don't feel my age and try not to act "too old" I am good.

Have a good week.