What's Up, Crowell's?: November 2008

Saturday, November 29, 2008

End of Nov

>Where has the month gone!!!!!!! Today is Saturday I worked at the temple on the morning shift and Paul is working on the afternoon shift. The original purpose was so that I could get more things done in the afternoon than the short morning, but today is a little blah!! It has been raining since last night so when I came home it was really quiet. Originally I was going with some of the neighbor ladies to get gifts for children whom we picked from names for our ward service project. But we did not go as one sister is sick and the other sister broke her toe!!

On Monday we went to a small town called Warm Springs. It is where Franklin D Roosevelt went to have therapy for his polio. It became quite popular when he began going there and a lot of people went for treatment in the warm pools. He built a small home there it was called the Little Whitehouse. There is a picture below. Also a couple of other pictures.

From left to right Dr Hamilton, Terry Abplanalp, Nancy Abplanalp, Suzanne Hartley, Bonnie Carrigan , me,m paul, Sylvia and Fred Fickenworth.

The center of town Warm Springs

We toured the area and shopped through the little town. I took some pretty cute pictures. One I call old men with Geese. I was able to have all the brothers who went with us to Warm Springs pose for me with some of the neighboring geese! It was a fun town and quaint, many antique shops and curio stores. I found a beautiful nativity set that was from Thomas Kinkade but I talked myself out of buying it, after all how would I get that one home!

At the memorial they had a path with different rocks that each of the states are famous for. This is a picture of Paul and me at the Utah flag. Our stone was like the granite they used in the temple.

We are looking pretty good right! We have both been working out Paul goes 6 days a week and I am good to go 4. He has been pretty discouraged because he has not lost any weight, but I looked at him in his Sunday shirt the other day and I truly think he has lost an inch around his neck. So I tell him muscle weighs more than fat but you know Dad he is not sure that is true. I have not lost weight either but I know that my clothes are getting a little looser. I will take that.
It is too bad that Thanksgiving has happened. We forgot to watch what we ate. Can you believe we not only had dinner on Thursday we also had it again on Friday night. Our Thanksgiving was great, an interesting thing happened though my friend went to get the turkey out of the fridge at about 12:20 and it was gone. You guessed it. Someone came in to our apartment complex and took our turkeys. We never found them. We only hope that whoever got them needed them more than we did. Dad and I went to Wall-mar(the only open store) and bought another one so we were able to eat at about 5:00. There was way to much food. But we enjoyed it anyway and ate like there was no tommorrow. But there is always exercise on Monday!!!!!
We are so blessed to have all that we do, I hope that we always remember to give thanks to our Father in Heaven for all of our blessings.

Today is Sunday and tommorrow is the 1st of December. Wow I cannot believe it. Paul reminded me that we will have been out 3 months tommorrow. It has gone by so quickly.

I am sure that everyone is getting ready for Christmas, I am singing in the ward choir and they are doing their program in 2 weeks, I wondered why and they said a lot of people go home or away for Christmas, hope they have a program when we are there!! Dad and I will be shopping at all a dollar for a tree this year hopefully one that can fit on our dining room table. Dad did find a door decoration at a yard sale at the senior center so we do have a wreath, I guess I will never keep him away from garage sales will I>>>>>

Well best I prepare for the rest of the day and get off of the computer, we are going to the Methodist church tonight for a concert it is supposed to be really good. Have a good time preparing for the upcoming holiday yall.

Just a reminder this month is Sarah's and Amber's birthdays. Sarah on the 5th and Amber on the 27th.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Nov 14Th

These pictures are from a drive that dad and I took after church last Sunday, the 8th with our friends the Carrigans, they also are on a family history mission and making digital documents. They are really fun.

Pictures on the drive up to the falls.

Here it is the middle of Nov. already. The past few weeks have flown by so fast. It is definetly fall here. The leaves have all changed or are just about all fallen. Today the sky is pretty grey and the past two days it has been raining off and on. But what do you expect in the fall????

Life here is moving along quite quickly I would say. We still are working in the temple. We have met with our supervisor, who from now on I will call Tony, which is simpler than spelling out supervisor. He is a great man and so is his wife. We went to lunch at their house two weeks ago with the Carrigans and we found out that we are going to be doing some work in a little town called Elberton.

We have been back and forth to his home the past week and have been preparing our camera and retraining - really need to as we have forgotten what we learned in the MTC. We will go there again on Monday and we probably will work for two days a week. Elberton is 2 hours drive from here in Sandy Springs so we will go on Tueseay and Thursday to break it up and work at the temple the rest of the time. It will be good to have a variety. We are excited to do both. The documents we will be copying begin in the 1700's so that should be pretty challenging.

We have very much enjoyed our time in the temple and are glad to continue doing that.

15 Nov. We just got back from playing cards it was fun. We have some great people that we have gotten to know in this apartment. We have taught them how to play wizard. It is fun but not quite like being with our old friends, but fun.

Nov 16th today was Sunday we had a great meeting. President Parker spoke, he is one of the first Black Stake Presidents in the country. He gave an awesome talk, on his meeting with President Monson. He spoke to the Relief Society. He talked about how we need to be faithful and follow our prophet and read scriptures. You know mostly the usual that you hear but for some reason it really hit me today. He said that we need to focus more on the people and principles not the programs. Because not all of the world has programs like we do it depends on the area. If you think about that it is true. They will not have all the extras that we may have in our area, it is just principles that our ture. He stressed that we teachprinciples, eliminate guilt, allocate our resources, time, energy and income. We need to divide the work so that all can share in the blessings. And best of all he said we need to balance our lives with 1. Faith, 2. Family, 3. Career, 4. Finances. That is a good suggestion especially for my family who are busy with careers, families and all the other things. You need to look at what is most important and then go from there.

I remember at a time when I thought I had to do it all and that is so not true. You need to know what is important. First Jesus Christ then the Family and the rest will come in to proper place.

The gospel is true, Jesus Christ is our brother and knows each of us individually, if we remember that we will never go wrong.

This mission is great.