Relief Effort Service from Carrollton Ward

The Powder Springs Georgia stake of the LDS church is like many other stakes around the southeast region, in that we were asked if we could go and give service to those in nearby areas that suffered from the disastrous tornadoes back on April 27th. Generally, the men were asked to render this service, but our stake president did not turn down any women who wished to assist also. Because of my calling in emergency preparedness and my ham radio license and connections, I was contacted and asked to be a part of it if possible. So this past weekend, like many others in our area, Tommy and I with our son Manti went to Bessemer Alabama to see what we could offer.

We saw nothing along the interstate to indicate there had been a problem, other than a couple signs down. We arrived at the Bessemer stake center and saw nothing to indicate storms there. We went inside and were given t-shirts to identify as a volunteer worker and told to get with our "group"...which normally meant to join up with other members of our ward, but in some cases we were split up. So Tommy and I happened to see Richard Davis across the hallway and he had us join up with him. We rode with him and his father, Bishop Davis in Douglasville, over to the location of our first work order. It was the most winding route you ever saw! Every road was numbered, and to get 11th Street, we had to go down 11th Way and cross 11th Court and 11th Avenue!

Our area was a community called Pleasant Grove. It's actually the same community where my mother and aunt were little girls, and 2 of my uncles and another aunt were born there. So for me, this was an opportunity to take care of my roots. To enter any of the streets that led to the devastated neighborhoods, you had to have a pass on your windshield (and it was best to have a yellow t-shirt too!) that identified you as either a resident or a volunteer associated with a specific group. If you didn't, the National Guard wouldn't let you through. We had the necessary identifiers so we drove into the neighborhoods. Have a look at what we saw as we drove through looking for our assigned address...



We thought that looked pretty rough. I guess in reality, it could be looked at as an opportunity to mentally prepare for what there is still to see, but I didn't feel prepared like that. As we drove further in, I could only gasp and hold my breath.


So sad.
Now these pictures are small for load time reasons, but the reality of them is enormous.

We got to our first house and found Kevin Knox already had a crew working there. We jumped off the road and put on our gloves, getting right to work trying to find the driveway for this house. Trees were all over her backyard and front yard. We cut and piled limbs till about 11:30am Alabama time.



Look there on the right side. See that young girl? That's Sophia...hauling a TREE! Don't tell me girls ain't tough!

Off to our second work order address and look at the change in the neighborhood... gives me chills...





Our assignment didn't seem to have much problem in the front yard. Seeing all the other mess everywhere, we were puzzled for a second as to why we were sent to this one house. The homeowner was at the front door when we pulled up so we asked what we could do to help her. She sent us to the back yard. NOW we understood! This lady had been an avid gardener it seems. She had potted plants strewn all over. Her rose bushes no longer had leaves, and you couldn't see them! You could only feel them when they stabbed you as you pulled the tree limbs and roof shingles off of them. The house next door had lost part of its roof. We found it for them....in the yard WE were working in! We worked and worked for a few hours. We stopped for a lunch break during that, and visited the house across the street. Take a look....


It looks like Stanley is walking across the clear foundation- no floor, no walls, nothing. It's an illusion. This is actually the front porch.

You're right! There's no house attached to this porch!

If you stand on the porch and look down, this is the basement. Nice Snapper mower, huh? I hope the family comes and gets it! So where is the house?.....

It's the green/gray colored building you see Tom looking over at. It's knocked clean off the foundation and emptied completely. I didn't get a picture of it, but there is a closet underneath this cement porch I'm standing on for this picture. The door had blown off, but the contents were still intact. I hope the family (if they were home) hid inside there. It's the only place that wasn't demolished. This is dead center of the eye of this storm. You can tell it because the way the trees look. There is a path cut and all trees that the tornado engulfed look like this- no green, nearly no bark, and few limbs. Check out the neighborhood around this very same house....
Can you read that sign? It says "For Sale, Open Floor Plan"-- yeah, its ALL open floor!


So we finished up this location and went just a little ways down the road. We ended up at the sweetest lady's house! She was a widow lady, and had been saying her prayers pleading with the Lord to send us that day. Ten minutes later, we were knocking at her door. She was an older lady, and just as precious as you can imagine! She worried over us and watched us work.
We had gotten pretty tired, as you can imagine. The sillies started to show a little. As you look at our progress here, notice the antics. I think Barry Barton had something a little hinky in his lunch ;)



See? Maybe Laura will see this and pack his lunch FOR him next time!
I really DID do more than just take pictures...honestly!

At the end of this work order, we talked with the lady. She was so gracious and thanked us profusely. She had no idea how she would be able to pay someone to do that job. She was fighting tears as she talked. She told us about a lady who had been killed just down the road from her and how terrible the whole ordeal had been. She pulled on my heartstring, that's for sure!

When we finished the day, we went back to the church yard and camped out. I've never seen SO many people anxious to be in bed by 9pm in all my life! It was so quiet so fast!

At 6am, people were rolling out and packing up tents. At 6:30am Sunday morning, volunteers had come to the church and were cooking pancakes and bacon for us. We ate and were ushered into the chapel where the Bessemer stake president addressed us. We had a sacrament meeting and one speaker. They took pictures of the group and did a headcount. If we read their lips right, there were around 350 volunteers packed into the chapel and the overflow area. It was so wonderful! We heard there had been accidents too. One in particular we heard through the grapevine... a volunteer had gotten into the whole where a tree's root ball was. He was trying to use his chainsaw to cut the roots loose and when he cut through, the root ball fell on him, crushed him, and he died. He was only 30 years old.


We spent Mother's Day giving relief to others. I feel SO good about my efforts. We had 3 more places we visited, and all members of our ward worked together this time. We were so blessed, and I will never forget this.

We counted 34 members of our ward participating, but the blessings bestowed on all are countless!

A Family Temple Trip

The Atlanta Temple belongs to me. It's mine by inheritance as well as by natural claims and experiences. By inheritance, my parents paid an assessment back when I was little that went towards building this temple. That makes it mine too. I can claim it in other ways too. I attended the ground-breaking ceremony and saw President Kimball hold that shovel. I can even remember approximately where I sat on the ground while he did it and was able to point it out in the pictures on display at the temple. That experience allows me some claim on it too. And I was there when it was dedicated. That really makes it mine. But its also where I was sealed to Tommy. Nobody can tell me its not MY temple. So this experience has really affected me and I wanted to share it with at least my family since they are the only ones I'm fairly sure read this blog anyway...

So the temple has been renovated in a LARGE way. It is only familiar to me in a couple places...that's how different it is now. It feels smaller too, but that's ok. On Tuesday, Tommy and I and Manti went to be ushers for open house tours. We did two shifts each, and let me tell you- after 8 hours of standing on your feet,.... you are tired! But our younger children have never seen inside the temple before and neither has Manti (other than the baptistry), so we HAD to take them on the only day I had off to do it. So Wednesday we had reservations to take a tour and that's what we did. We drove up to Sandy Springs again and went through the temple as a family. Along the way, I whispered things to help the kids understand a little about what this place was and why it was so sacred. Jared wanted to look into every single mirror in the building. I think he found them all too! He was impressed that he could see so much in those mirrors. They must be special. Morgan was enthralled with the chandelier hanging in the Celestial Room. He thought it was a magnificent sight. Mesa was quite emotionally involved with the Sealing Room. (That's scary, right?) Manti was intrigued with Endowment rooms and is now anxious to go back.

I've been inside the temple before. I've been in several temples now, and each is just as awe-inspiring as the next, so I didn't expect any grand revelations to happen on Wednesday. And yet, they did. Instead of paying so much attention to the temple itself, I paid attention to my children and watched them as they experienced something that took their breath away. I stood in front of those mirrors and saw eternity with my babies in arms...and they were happy to be there. I held my husbands hand as we walked our children through an introduction to their eternity to be. It was an experience I can't describe. I just don't know how.

Afterward, we went back out to the front of the temple and took pictures.

A New Manti

From this...

to this in the blink of an eye, gasp of breath and a lot of tears.

Glad we bypassed THIS phase though!

The Fishermen

My little boys have never been fishing before. Our lives have not been supportive of fun activities like that for them because Tommy's health and my excess responsibilities. I've felt bad about that, but I can only do so much. So when I get a chance to do something fun for them, I really try hard to. I do this for the older kids too,...but their ideas of fun things has changed a lot and doesn't include me nearly as often anymore.
Being in cub scouts has put me in a better position to do some stuff with the little boys, but finances have still kept a cap on that somewhat. Then I was called as a cub scout den leader- which means I'm the one planning and scheduling cub scout activities for Morgan's age group. I decided to plan a fishing trip. It gets some cub scout credit for the boys and some fishing fun for my little ones.
Emanuel Reid was our guide. He has a friend that lives on a big lake. The friend took us all out on a small fishing pontoon and parked us right on a fishing hotspot. Those boys started reeling fish in as soon as bait touched water! A total of 26 fish were brought home. I saw probably 8 more fish thrown back for being a little too small! And because there few enough of the boys, Jared got to come too. It was a great day.. see for yourself...

"Hip Talk"

This week, the Relief Society had an activity combined with the Young Women. It was a mother/daughter focused activity where we shared ice cream, worked on trivia quizzes and enjoyed entertainment. The entertainment was secretly discussed ahead of time, and I was not directly asked to be involved, so my view of it was different. Mesa was asked if she and I would perform, and Mesa said yes. Then she tells me,...and I don't get the "gist" of it all. I emailed the girl who asked Mesa and asked what this was all about. She tells me they just want us to do anything we want and use up about 4 minutes.

No problem! They clearly didn't know my family when I was young!

I asked Mesa what she wanted to do. She asked if I wanted to sing with her. I said NO WAY JOSE! I asked if she wanted to hula with me. She said NO WAY JOSE! So we agreed to do a dance----a unique dance.

She and I sat down with her MP3 player and my great mind and together we thought up phrases out of songs we knew that we could combine to create a conversation between 2 people. Then I get hold of Jamie Davis and ask if he can merge these phrases to create a single song from them. He says he can, so we start downloading music and get it to him. He works magic in less than 24 hours! He calls me and brings me the newly formed song and doesn't ask for an arm and leg! He's a sweetie!

Mesa and I start goofing around with steps. We decide that they didn't say "TALENT show", so instead of doing some choreographed awesomeness, we acted out what the songs were saying. It was so funny to us!

It starts off with a rebellious daughter dressed in black head to toe, black make-up, blue paint in her hair and chains in her pockets.....I'm dressed very nicely with my hair up,...like a mom! The music comes on and Mesa is very cooperative and dances with me to the Chicken Dance. I don't think she smiled at all! Then the music changes and she pulls out a hat to put on her head and starts dancing in a way that doesn't make conservative mom proud. *The looks on my face make this clear.*

The movements Mesa makes are a little too sleezy, so the music changes and I hold my hand to the tune of "STOP in the name of love...." ... she covers her ears and then when I quit pointing my finger at her, she gets in my face with a song that tells me she's tired of being told what to do and that nothing she does is ever good enough. I shake my head and call her to me. She reluctantly comes to me and I put her head on my shoulder---she resists but I win. I pull her hat off and toss it away, then pat her head and rub her hair to the tune of LEAN ON ME. It takes her a second, but then she jerks away from me and acts like I'm crazy,...to the tune of Ozzy Osbournes Crazy Train. Well this mom doesn't take too kindly to being called crazy, and I tell her so by telling her she makes me want to SHOUT, kick my heels up, throw my hands up throw my head back and SHOUT. Then I fold my arms and turn away from her a bit, irritated obviously.

Remember the song Baloo the Bear sang in the movie Jungle Book that goes "oobie doo,...I wanna be like you" ? Well that's the next song and Mesa starts dancing similar to that bear and coming towards me with puppy dog eyes. She bumps up against me, pokes me in the arm to get my attention and my response is to pull the hair stick from my hair and act as though I'm writing while the song "Baby write this down, take a little note to remind you in case you didn't know, tell yourself I love you and I don't want you to go...." plays for her. I get hold of her arm and guide her back in to dancing like me for a couple steps. She (of course) has to think about this, so she side steps away to the tune of "Ice Ice Baby". After she's gotten a short distance, I dance a grapevine step towards, and then her towards me to the song "I start walking your way and you start walking mine. We meet in the middle 'neath that old Georgia pine..." We do a brief couple steps of line dancing together and then I lean towards her and lipsync "Babe I love the way we work it out" and she leans towards me and lipsyncs "Thats what love is all about".

So it looks like we've come to an understanding and are dancing towards our seats in the audience when all the sudden Mesa takes off to the right side while Cyndi Lauper sings that "Girls just wanna have fun". I look at her, shrug and have to agree. So I pull my hair down and dance just like her off stage to the left.

It was fun :)
I tried to upload the video of it all, but the file size is enormous!
I'll have to make a disk and get it to you Mama, and if anybody else wants it, it will be $9.99 plus S&H...BUT WAIT! Order now and get a second copy absolutely free! That's right! Two disks for the price of one and I'll throw in a frog face sticky note with a thank you printed in my own handwriting!

Mommilies

Several years ago, I gave my mother a book for Mother's Day. It was a book of "Mommilies"...which were a term the writer had given to the sayings and phrases you hear out of a mother.

Since then, my own mother has come out with Mommilies of her own,...and they are uniquely hers, I assure you (although a few of them have ended up such a part of my own household that even Mama doesn't remember that SHE invented them!)

Last week, Mama sent out an email to 3/4 of her children to let us know she was going to our baby sisters house to help with kids while Lee was having a baby. When she got there, she sent us another email making sure we knew what was going on,....I guess. She was using Lee's laptop, which is a small one. Mama is used to a very wide ergonomic keyboard on a big computer desk. Her fingers went into shock while trying to type her first email! You can see it too,...and it just gets funnier as the days go by. Of course, I did have to make fun of each and every single email she sent. How can anyone ignore such great Nita-Mommilies???? So I'm sharing. ENJOY!!

March 9th-

Just a note to let you know we will be leaving for Lee's this afternoon sometime and will be at her house until Aquanita comes. I will have the cell phone charged and hopefully hear it if it rings, so feel free to call me if necessary. If I'm driving, Daddy will try to figure out how to answer, so don't be surprised if no one picks up immediately. (Figuring out how to punch the green button can be a little difficult.) I'll let you know when we are coming home, but we hope it will be next Friday.

March 11th-

nothing yet but they need to get one soon ao I CAN GO HOME go my own compuger instead of thisw laptop ghinh

March 14th-

Lee made enough probgress lasg nighg ghag they could pug in the balloon and will soon start the pitocin. She is having some congractions on her own at the moment. Aquanita could be here today.

*NOTE* Aquanita is NOT the baby's name. It's the nickname Mama gave her.

March 14th-

Lee has bone go gher hospigal to hav e the ab y. Will let you khow when I hear someghinb. I hate lapgops.

She's here and everyone is fine, but I'll leg Lee gell you a lout ig. She can gype on one of these conrapions.

From me to all:
Anybody got a Urim & Thummim and can translate this? I think these emails are getting worse instead of better! Oh wait,...maybe Mama is speaking in tongues!!

March 14th-

The problem isn'g with me, it's ghis compusger. The keys are in gthe wronbg place, and it types g's e erfytime I grfy tgo tpye t or b. And igt has exgra spaces. Nagufally ghey lecg Douv's for me go use because it's ibbef, but ev ern if I could see, it doesn't type rivht,

From me to mama:
HAHAHAHAHA....it'll be ok Mama :D

March 15th-

Just got back from the hospital and seeing baby girl. The first thing Lee said was, "She looks like you, Mom," which is why I think she should have been named Aquanita, but instead she is Hannah Elizabeth, also known as HEBay. That hair is incredible. I'll send pictures when we get home. Lee will be released Thursday morning, and if we leave early Friday, we can be home Friday night and go to Sean's baptism on Saturday.

See, Marianna? I DO know how to spell. On this computer I have to watch each letter as I type it and then go back and correct every word a couple of times. It's all Doug's fault.

For inquiring minds that have not yet been notified, Lee's baby was born last night at 8:10 p.m. EDT and weigh 8 lbs. 10 oz. After Lee got to the hospital HEBay, who had finally moved from a horizontal position to the corect position, bergan to move again and went completely breech. Lee said they lcould trace her by listening to her heartberate, which travelled. And I lam not makinbv any more cofrecgions ecause I am out of llpatien e.

Mama, Niga, Banny, whoe er

I hate laptops.

March 15-

It is my goal for the remainder of my life to make my children happyy. If I give you a reason to laugh, you will all wang md go live wigh you insgead of puging m in a home when I ge old.

March 17th-

We are wighin minuges of laac inv cof home. Doug and ghe boys went go ghe drugstore, so we are sneakinb out. We plan go stop at Brushy Mountain bee farm omorrow, so we will bo as far as we can gonibhg and get home somegime gomofow. We will be ag ghe apgism, so have no fear! And after todeay you won't need a Urim and Thummin! I hage lapgops.

From me to all:
I'm going to have to relearn English now.

From Catherine to all:
Someone needs to lay off the sauce.

YSA Dance Pics

Manti and Mesa are fortunate enough to be a part of the Young Single Adults here. The kids are a blend of different young people testing the world to decide what kind of grown adults they'll be, and they have advisers that I really believe love these kids genuinely. It's SO good!

So recently the kids had a dance planned. It was a multi-stake dance, and it had a theme: 1930s-1940s. That's a little on the strange side in my opinion, but nobody asked me. We spent weeks trying to figure out what do about Mesa's hair so it would fit with the theme and then to find her something to wear!

I found a dress at the Salvation Army Store...of all places! Less than $10 and she was good to go! The dress is a long straight black dress- NOT fitted. It had a layer of brown lace on it also. It goes all the way to the ankles, so she wore black boots underneath because I cheaped out and didn't go shoe shopping for something like this. The dress had no sleeves, so we put a black tshirt underneath it. The hair was still hard to figure out though.

I had posted a note on facebook asking for ideas if anybody knew how to do a 1930s style hair-do. I got a few links to sites and youtubes and that led me to what I wanted to try. I told Mesa about it and she was game...even though I said the word "hairnet" in my explanation. I'm not great with hair,...I'm not bad, but I'm not great. Her hair could have looked better, it was my very best effort that day, and she's still very pretty I think. So here are the pictures of her...and Manti went also, dressed the part as well!

That's her hair in the back, all directions.

Just Mesa
Just Manti
My very nice looking children...
...I said nice looking children...

Anybody else getting suspicious?

Mesa, don't start anything you can't finish...
MANTI!!
I think he gets that from my Daddy!
Well, at least they LOOK pretty!