Lauren's Divine Nature Value Project

Last year during the basketball tournament one of the young women twisted her ankle and they didn't have any ice in the freezer at the stake center so she had to go outside in the cold and put her foot in the ice. After that incident Lauren decided that she wanted to make "snuggle socks" to keep in the freezers of the various units in our stake.

She decided she could do this for her Divine Nature Value Project. So once she was done with school we got the socks, rice, and ribbon and she made 12 snuggle socks. One for each unit in the stake.

This is what they looked like before she put the unit's name on the sock.

And here they all are with their names on them ready to be delivered to the various units. She did a great job. And hopefully the next time someone is injured and needs an ice pack these will be ready and waiting in the freezers of the various church buildings in the stake.

Strawberry Jam!

Last year I didn't make strawberry freezer jam because we still had a bunch in the freezer. And with fewer people living at home we just weren't going through it as fast as we used to. But we ran out of jam about a month before the strawberries were ready here. Lauren said that we could NEVER run out of strawberry jam again.

Making strawberry jam takes almost a whole day. We left at 8:15 am to go to the berry farm and pick our 12 quarts of strawberries. Yes, it was hot and muggy, and the berries were tiny. The farm worker said that they'd had a lot of people pick the day before and they'd gotten all the big berries, so that made it take a little longer than normal. That and the fact that we were down to just Lauren and I doing the picking. Then we had to go buy the sugar and pectin. Then it was home to cut up, mash, and make the strawberry jam. We made ten batches of jam. In the middle of making it Lauren had to leave to take a Regents exam so it took me a little longer to finish since I was working alone.

When Lauren got home from her exam around 2:30 pm she started helping again and we got done around 4:00 pm. On the counter you can see some of our 30+ jars of strawberry freezer jam. Justin happened to be here interviewing for a job, so we sent a couple jars back with him. One for them and one for Brett. It's truly a labor of love - of strawberry jam love, that is. Nothing tastes better!

It's Official!

Jared is officially a missionary for
The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints!
He left today for Utah and
and enters the MTC on Wednesday.

The Last Hurrah!

Today we went to Lake George to have one last day of fun
before Jared is a missionary. It was a beautiful day - the
temperature was in the mid 70s and it was nice and sunny!

We went mini golfing at the Pirate's Cove. It was fun. Glen had
the lowest score with 43. Lauren and I tied at 49, and Jared
got a whopping score of 59! Everyone got a hole-in-one but
Michelle. Glen even got two of them!

On the way home we stopped at the A&W to get root beer
floats. They were delicious. It really makes it feel like summer.

Tomorrow at 8:00 pm Jared will be set apart as a missionary
for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Then he
flies to Salt Lake City on Monday morning. He enters the MTC
on Wednesday, June 8th. We are all so excited for him!