I have a new hero in the blogging world.  Shannon over at The Redheaded Hostess has helped me immensely  in my calling at church.  She is a serious scriptorian and has quite the history in teaching youth in our church a love of the scriptures.  With our new curriculum for the young women (to use on our Sunday young women lessons), she came out with a lovely little book to help me keep all of my thoughts, notes and research straight.   With my memory being pretty spotty at best, this book helps me keep track of everything I study so I can seem a little less ditzy during class.

This past Sunday I was in charge of teaching a lesson to all of our young women.  (Normally, I am just teaching the 16-18 year olds, but this included the 12-18 year olds)  Our topic for the month is the Plan of Salvation and my first instinct was to skip over the basic lesson that teaches the nitty gritty of our fabulous Plan of Happiness, but I kept feeling like I needed to be teaching this lesson.  I used Shannon's outline that she had used over and over in seminary, allowing the girls to break up into partners and to teach each other the Plan of Salvation, writing down questions they came across as they did this.  I don't think many of them wrote down questions, but I walked around helping them a bit and came to find out that there were a whole heck of a lot of girls  that weren't very familiar with the Plan of Salvation.  It is foundational knowledge and even my mini scriptorian of a daughter said that she felt like it hadn't been covered in church much as a teenager.  (And she isn't one to not pay attention or forget!)  I am glad that the Holy Ghost nudged me (over and over) until I listened so that we could cover this more in depth.  I didn't feel like my lesson went crazy well but I do feel like the girls left being able to explain the Plan of Salvation, which I will take as a win.

family history friday

My dad and I were having a little chat on the phone when we came up with a little bit of brilliance.  I was remarking that I don't have much to blog about, my dad was saying that I should blog about family history and I pointed out that he is the one with the great family history stories....which evolved into us both committing to do a family history post each Friday.  I have found that my parents, grandparents, great aunts, etc... have much more valuable information than they think they do.  Once I sit down with them and just ask a few questions, they have these little tidbits of info that give us a glimpse into their lives and the personalities of our difference ancestors.

An example of this would be my Great Grandpa, Guy Dudley Tunnell.  I have a black and white picture of him when he was older, with his arms crossed and what could be translated as a grumpy expression on his face.   After talking to my dad and my grandma, my image of him changed completely.  First of all, he was blind as he got older.   (that explains his distant look in the picture!)  He also dyed his hair bright orange until the day he died. (Oh, the downfalls of black and white photography)  But it is the next two stories that I love the most.  When some of my grandma's kids were younger, they lived farther away from their Grandpa Tunnell.  He knew he would need some warming up to win a place in their hearts so he always made sure he had gum in his shirt pocket.  It didn't take long for my Aunt to discover that her Grandpa always had a treat for her in his pocket and that she would have to come to him to get it!  While they lived far away, my Grandma and Grandpa (his son) would write weekly letters to his parents.  My great grandma and grandpa always were very consistent about writing back, also.  If my grandma every slacked on her letter writing, my great grandpa would always inquire about her broken hand.  :)   And up above, he is with his second wife.  (his first wife ran off, leaving him with 3 small boys.)  After moving back in with his mother, he met our great grandma, Linnie Sylva Lee. (she lived next door)

(a totally unrelated picture)

I am already out of things to blog about?  Two posts and I've said everything that needs saying?  I'm digging for something, really.  :)

This year I am attempting to slowly ease myself back into the scrapbooking world.  I used to be quite the avid (or addicted, I guess) scrapbooker.  As the years have passed, I have turned more to digital scrapbooking just out of convenience. (And because, quite frankly, I don't spend a fraction of the time that I used to on crafts in general)  The sad part is that the girls really don't enjoy the digital books nearly as much as they do the "old fashioned" scrapbooks.  They are always pulling out the big and clunky books to look through and they barely touch the new ones.  In an effort to try to make something more personable for them to enjoy, I am attempting to do the Project Life album this year that I already told you guys about.  I say attempting because I've already missed several days.  And it is only January. BUT I have been journaling at least a little every night AND I have found myself taking pictures of everyday goodness instead of just pulling out the camera here and there.  So I might be cheating here and there, not having genuine pictures from everyday of the year, but we will have a much more thorough depiction of this year.  In theory, right?

Lilly's cute quote of the day:  After getting a smiley face on her hand at costco, I reminded her to say thank you to the nice costco lady.  She turns to her and says "Thank you!  I love you!", to which I responded with a reminder that we don't tell strangers that we love them.   She simply said "Mom!  She's the COSTCO LADY!"  Apparently costco ladies are not strangers.  :)

genealogy goodness

I am in the process of scanning in large amounts of family history pictures and it is just so dang fun!  It is slow going as I am scanning in at a pretty large dpi, but I'm just plugging along.  I love that my mom's side of the family has a plethora of pictures that help paint an image of their lives, personalities and their priorities.  I can't help but think that my great great grandmother had a tender heart when I find her sweet notes on pictures of my grandma.  I love the mock letter from Santa that my grandma got.  It tells a story of how he came across her new teddy bear.

This brings me to our lovely package that we received today.  It was like Christmas, but way better.  My Aunt sent us some of her family treasures to enjoy and I don't think she could have prepared me for how cool it was going to be.  Amongst the treasures was a copy of Pollyanna.  Not only do my girls enjoy this as one of their favorites, but this particular copy was my great grandma's.  It was given to her by her grandma (now we're at my 3rd Great grandma) and she gave it to my grandma for Christmas one year.  We love it!!  There are many pictures that I am trying to match up with family, but I think there will be some that will always be a mystery.

I'm back. (for now)

Thanks to a little talkin' to from my dear father, I am blogging.  I have to confess though that I am purely driven by guilt at this point.  In my defense, I have been journaling (for a whole week now!) using the lovely reminders at Ohlife.  To this, my dad responded "Can your family read that?" Well, no...but when I'm dead and have finished my lovely Project Life album for this year, they can.   Ok, so I got his point and decided to give this blogging thing a try. Again. :)

What is filling up our lives at the Kang house these days?  The same stuff that was a year ago.  Church, school and piano.  A few changes?  We have an adopted daughter of sorts this year. (A fabulously sweet exchange student from South Korea)  This results in kimchi always being in our fridge (good think I like it now!) and us having Korean food at least once a week on her dinner night.  It is pretty dang delicious.  Rachel is attending seminary, which means I am getting up much earlier for 5 out of 7 days.  Rachel is lovely type a sort of gal that pulls my blankets off of me (and nags me like a parent until I finally wake up!) each morning so I can get her to seminary 15 minutes early.  I am driving kids around much more than I am used to and, quite frankly, much more than I would like to be. With that being said, I much rather be driving them around than having someone else do the driving.  I firmly believe in being at the crossroads with our kids, especially as they become teenagers.  If this means setting aside nights to drive to church dances, getting up at insane hours in the morning or filling up the gas tank a few extra times, it is 100% worth it.  The conversations that are had, the tidbits of info that are given and (best of all) being there when they are most excited about where they just went or are about to go.  If you hear about a dance the morning after, you hear much less than if you get details right afterwards.


One of my biggest time fillers (it is a joyful time filler, just like the others!) is my calling in Young Womens.  I have to say that it is my favorite calling of all time.  It keeps me from spontaneous trips more than I would prefer, but I *love* our youth.  The young women are just downright incredible and they are so much fun to work with.  To make it even better, our church has an amazingly inspired program to help the young women grow closer to their Heavenly Father.  It is pure joy getting to help implement inspiration AND getting to watch its results.  

 Ok, its been fun.  Now I'm off to do school with the kiddoes.  :)

summer happenings

Whew.  Talk about a whirlwind summer of craziness.  I kind of like my summer to include things like spontaneous trips to the beach, sitting by the river and just some plain ole' relaxation.  Not this summer!
Some of our fun this summer has included:
•a yw campout
•getting ready for trek with a large dose of sewing
•trek
•getting ready for our exchange student
•lots of driving to efy and soccer camp
•visits from cousins (3 different visits!  What a fun summer!)
•getting ready for our exchange student some more (yep, it takes a lot of work when it includes gutting your craft room.)
•camping (see below)

And what does the rest of our summer include?
•our exchange student (from Korea) is finally coming
•another camping trip
•a benefit concert for starfish
•soccer, soccer and more soccer
•back to school shopping (which is a little different for us homeschooling moms.  I have curriculum to buy instead of clothes, which kind of makes it more mandatory.)
•hopefully at least 2 more trips to the beach.  We're only up to 2 and it is August.  This is very, very wrong.

Trekking it

Trek, trek, trek....where do I even begin?

For the past 8 months, our young women (12-18 year old girls at church) have been preparing to dress up in pioneer clothes and pull a handcart through the desert for 5 days. Oh.  The young men were also invited. ;)  We have been sewing, hiking, sewing some more, learning some mean square dancing skills and exercising a lot of faith that trek would be worth it.  It was.  It was beyond worth it.

I was lucky enough to have my dad as my trekking buddy while we "instigated music along the trail".  (really, that was our job.)  It was great getting to spend a week with my dad at a point in my life where I appreciate him much more than I did in those teenage years.  Through all of our prep, we have been prepared for some pretty roasty weather and an overall lack of shade.  We were NOT prepared for record highs, which left us with 106 degree weather.  Although I spent 7 years in Las Vegas, we are all a little soft after living in the very moderate western Oregon.  It was dang hot.  We consumed crazy amounts of water and gatorade while rarely needing to use the bathroom. (which was good with the port a potties feeling like horrible, stinky saunas)  Ok, so that was all of the bad part.

The good part?  Our youth are amazing.  All of these kids rose to the occasion.  They worked their tushies off, despite the record highs, the heavy handcarts and the sandy ground.  They showed an outpouring of compassion for their siblings (they were put into "families" for the week) and, quite frankly, any person that walked by.