Of Good Report

Over the course of the past few weeks we have had several small earthquakes. Some of them imperceptible, others were enough to wake us up. While there has been no damage or anything that is overly concerning to me--check out Facebook to find plenty of people who feel otherwise--I felt like it was time to revisit our 72 hour emergency kits. It was a good thing I did. The clothes that were in the backpacks for the kids would have fit no one. Even Spencer's would not have fit Sarah. We had clothes ranging in sizes from 3-8. Sarah is a 12. The food and medication had expired years ago. The glow sticks had lost their illumination and the coloring pages are no longer relevant.  I threw away the unusable items and compiled the rest for redistribution. I made a couple trips to the store to replace the discarded items and planned to have a FHE to assemble them and to talk about an action plan should we ever need one.  Last night we set up everything assembly line style and everyone...

Emma has struggled with friends for the past several years. Some of her childhood friends either moved away or moved on. Some friends did not have the same standards she did and  so they drifted apart. For about a year she has been almost friendless. She has friends at church and she would talk to kids at school, but she had no one she could hang out with on the weekends. I had been praying for her for quite some time, but a couple of months ago we decided to fast and pray together.  In December she started a job at "Chubby's" it is a local burger and shake joint. It has pretty good food and is close by. Spencer worked there for a few months when he was in high school. The owners are cool, they are closed on Sundays, and the kids are home by 10 on weeknights. Those are all pluses to this job.  When I dropped Emma off for her first shift. Ashlynn was also walking in the door. Ashlynn is a girl who became somewhat of a friend at the end of ninth grade, but they didn...