Sunday March 23

Dear Family,

we are doubling our grandchildren by the end of the year. Our oldest daughter in Omaha, Rachael (and Seth Chappell) is expecting baby #4 in September and our next daughter Frances (and Marc Inman) is expecting baby #1 and #2 in October. Frances is a sonographer (gives people sonograms) so when she found out she was pregnant she had her tec friend give her a sonogram and found out there were two babies. Usually you don't know until you go to the Doctor at 12 weeks and are measured large, then they send you to receive a sonogram and you know you are expecting twins.

Caleb has been home from college for spring break. He did work for me every day (putting bookshelves together, yard work etc.) and in his spare time he and his cousin, Landon, made a silly short movie they will put on the Internet. He finished his papers for his mission and now has two more interviews before they are submitted officially. For his birthday, I made him an ice-cream cake (surprised?) and he had 6 friends over for hamburgers cooked on the outside grill. We gave him all seven seasons to "Star-Trek the Next Generation". Derrald already spoke to babysit them while Caleb is on his mission.

Easter:

Happy Easter, this year it came too quickly. Last year we watched a wonderful DVD (322 minutes) on the Life of Christ, "Jesus of Nazareth" by Franko Zeffirelli. We started a month before Easter and watched a segment every day. This year, we did... Nothing.

Jamon invited us to his in-law's Easter egg hunt. We have always had Easter Egg hunts but with Kay gone and just Janell, we went to theirs. Rachel is the 11Th of 14 children. It was a happy kaos. They had 5 dozen eggs hidden outside which all had to be accounted for because the last time they weren't accounted for, they found one (by stepping on it) in October and it stunk up the neighborhood. I visited with Rachel's 91 year old cute grandma and had a great time. Guess what was served for breakfast? Eggs.

For our past Easter Egg Hunts, we allowed anyone that wants to hunt a chance. The married kids even want to hunt. Jamon visited one year and called ours a "communist hunt", everyone hunts and we trade until everyone has one of each item/candy. The hard boiled eggs have codes on them that represent money. It makes the hard boiled decorated ones more desirable. You get so many and if you have too many, you give to others, but, you don't know the money value until they are divided up. Janell unfortunately gave her 20 dollar egg (she remembers it as 50 dollars) to Derrald and we will never hear the end of that hunt.

I am looking forward to our church Easter Program today. Love, Janae

Monday March 10th

For our youth fundraiser each youth needed to offer a service to be auctioned off in a silent auction. A silent auction is a table of things/services with a paper attached. Each bidder is given a number to bid with, they write their bids with their number. There may be a paper for raking leaves for 2 hours, mow a lawn, rolls delivered to your home 4 weeks in a row etc. I wanted the raking so I put my number down 102, and my bid price. If someone wanted that for more money they put their number down to up the bid. By the end of the night most papers have several bids on, at a certain time they close the bids and announce the winners. After you win something you contact the service person and arrange a time for them to do the service.

Janell needed to offer a service but doesn't like babysitting. I talked her into making whole wheat bread and bringing it there that evening. It was the only service not on a piece of paper.

She made bread for the first time by herself. I was in the room supervising. She made 3 loaves of bread. We put pretty cloth bows on the loaves and added small jams to the packages. The bread sold for $30,$20 and $20. The services averaged 20 dollars and hers fetched $70! We were excited... and she is done!!!! love Janae

Sunday March 9th

The word is out, Janell plays the flute. She played for a youth fundraiser dinner on Friday with her friend at the piano (did a great job) and just played on Sunday during sacrament meeting with the ward choir (I am a member). After the dinner she said she was so nervous her lips were shaking. Janell was wondering if I noticed. I did not. The following day was her debut at Sacrament Meeting with the ward choir. To prepare , she went to the pianist's home to practice and came three times to practice with the choir, arriving early to run through it with the pianist before the choir arrived. She had it down. Sometimes nerves get the best of you though...

She was really nervous, I prayed a silent prayer that her lips wouldn't shake. During the song guess whose lips started shaking? Mine. It was so weird, I was singing in the choir with shaking lips. I was anxious to ask how her lips fares. I said "I'll bet your lips didn't shake, because mine did!" I was right. Her knees still shook though (normal). Love, Janae

Wednesday march 5th

Dear Family,

I guess no one really wants to hear the gorey details but I have been sick the past 3 days, withering away on my couch, watching my TIVO with Oprah- I had 12 episodes to catch up on. Just me and Oprah and some honey water for rehydration.

Kay is back in Omaha and took his Nephew Ben Lusk. Ben returned home from Moscow Russia mission for the LDS church less than 2 weeks ago. What a cute guy he is. Kay all the sudden has seen the missionaries in Omaha and we called the mission office to offer a free apartment to the missionaries. They will come over on Friday to look, and need an apartment in the area so that is pretty exciting. Kay has offered many times but his apartments were in bad areas or they all ready had free housing so we hope they will take us up on this. We just happen to get blessings when we help the missionaries.

Kay asked me to call the Institute to see if Ben could take a religion class. They have lots of social events for young adults. I was talking to the director and mentioned my daughter lived there, he asked who she was. I said she had only been there less than 4 years so he probably wouldn't know her. He pressed me and he didn't know her. He asked if her husband was Seth, "everyone knows Seth." "The Real Estate Mogul of Omaha." The director knew what kind of truck Seth drove and what he was doing but admitted he had only met him once. Small world.

Caleb has called me to ask questions as he is putting his papers in soon for his mission. We are pretty excited about this great experience for him. He got to write where his parents and grandparents served, My parents made him look very global.

We signed up for a Christmas cruise- 17 day transatlantic from Genoa Italy to Florida on MSC Dec 16-Jan 2. This will be Jana's make up cruise (the niece who missed her flight because of a "series of unfortunate events".) It doesn't have kids programs but they have a hang out place for teens, Janell will be 17 and Jana 16. We ended up booking 1 room with a balcony when they told us kids under 17 were free instead of two inside rooms, saving us money (our favorite thing to do). This is a European cruise, a new experience for us. Love, Janae