Mission Call!

Joseph received his mission call this week!

Last Monday, he got a call from his Branch President, who told him that the call had been issued and was in the mail.  Wahoo!  On Thursday morning, I ran out to the mailbox, and this is what I found. 

To see the name of the Church on that large white envelope is quite a thrill!  I yelled for Jesse and Mary to come out (they were out of school that day), and they ran and celebrated with me.  Bruce was hollering from his office window to bring it in.  The postage on it was $1.90.  We couldn't remember for the life of us what the postage on Josh's envelope had been, so we searched the house up and down looking for his envelope and never found it.  The postage is important because it's more if it's a foreign call because there's more paperwork.  We texted Joseph a picture of his name on the envelope, and he called back and said, "Mom, right when you sent me that, I was blasting Called to Serve by the Mormon Tab!"  He later said that nobody was in his college apartment, so he ran around the apartment yelling at the top of his lungs.

So there we sat, staring at the call for a day and a half.

In the meantime...

We went out to the Orchard to pick apples.  I love it out there.  I heard someone say that they have never seen such a plentiful harvest.  I love the pictures that I take at the Orchard, especially of the children, because they inevitably look so happy.

On Friday, we went out to the farm to do pull pipe.  Peter's friend Hunter came along, so we had a 3 teams going, with Libby driving the four-wheeler.  We moved right along - it was awesome!  We had some trouble with horses getting loose and running hay-wire, but eventually we rounded them back up and put in their respective pastures.

After that we went to meet up with Joseph and Dane, who had just arrived into town with their ride.  When we got home, we had about 40+ people waiting in the house to open Joseph's call.  Luckily Mom & Dad got there first and welcomed people in.

Joseph opened his call to a crowd of expectant, happy faces all gathered around the kitchen table.  His call is to the Argentina Mendoza Mission, speaking Spanish!!  

He will report to the MTC in Provo, Utah on Jan. 23rd, 2013.  What a coincidence - that is the same week that Josh reported to the MTC in Jan of this year, 2012!   It's a perfect time to go in.  It gives us about a month to get ready after Joseph finishes up at BYU-I.  I really thought that my share of luck and blessing had run out with Josh going Spanish speaking, but the Lord saw fit to send Joseph to a Spanish speaking mission.  Oh, I'm so grateful!  Now the three of us - Josh, Joseph and I, can keep up our Spanish with each other.  Bruce understands and speaks quite a bit too.  WOW!!

To have that call happen on Friday night, and then to enjoy Conference Weekend with Joseph here has been heavenly.  

The announcement on Saturday morning by Pres. Monson that the age requirement for missionaries has changed was stunning!  I turned around and grabbed Jesse's hand, and we both started to cry together!  Girls can go on a mission when they're nineteen and boys when they're 18!  I told Jesse that when I was nineteen I prayed all the time that the Lord would make that change.  It wasn't the right time then, but it is now.  The cultural and spiritual ramifications of this change are widespread.

I told my family (tongue in cheek - somewhat) that this is a sure sign that Mitt Romney's going to win the election!  And here's why:  1) Mitt has to win so that the economy will improve and parents will have jobs to pay for all these new unexpected missions, and 2) The Church is going to have so much more exposure because of his presidency, that more missionaries will be needed all over the world to take advantage of all the media exposure.

But seriously, what this means to me is, as Elder Holland said in the Press Conference afterward, that the work is hastening, and the time is short, which means the Lord needs more missionaries than ever.  And the fact that so many more sisters will be able to go, well, this FB post by Porter Hoskins says it all:

 

I am so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who guides us through living prophets in our day.  I love how this is going to energize the Young Men and Young Women's programs, and Seminary also!

Speaking of Sisters, check out this future missionary!  She may have to tone it down a little, or the 18/19 year old missionary thing may not work out so well...

 

This is Jesse on the night of Homecoming.  She went to the dance with Victor, the starting quarterback at the High School, who got named the Idaho football player of the week for his tremendous play at the Homecoming game the night before! Way to go Victor!

Victor and Jesse

 They had a great time that night - thank you Victor for being a gentleman and friend!

And I just have to tell you about these shoes.  These are exactly the shoes Jesse had pictured in her head when she bought the dress (yes - she paid for everything for Homecoming with money she earned teaching piano lessons).  When we went shopping to find the shoes, these were the first shoes we saw in the first store that we went to.  No joke!  Talk about manifesting what you want...

 

I found this yoga pose on Pinterest, and asked Libby if she could do it.  Pretty close!!  Libby is SUPER flexible.  

Some more pictures - this is the last time Joseph will be out at the farm working with us for the next 2 1/2 years!  

I love this picture!

 We finished pulling pipe on Saturday after the afternoon session of Conference.  I couldn't believe the difference in our family's work.  Everybody worked quickly, happily and efficiently.  If you had told me it would be this way as little as 2 years ago, I wouldn't have believed it! 

On Sunday, we got a surprise visit from cousin Matthew!

 He just returned from his French speaking mission in Switzerland and France, and came by with Grandma and Grandpa H.  My parents happened to be here at the same time.  What a treat!

 Wow, writing this post has made me so grateful for the Lord's blessings to our family.  I feel like paraphrasing Mormon and saying, "Surely there could not be a happier family..."  We are not without our troubles (the house is 60 degrees right now because we have no heat - the furnace is broken), but they seem minor compared to the Lord's bounteous blessings. 

Coming up next week:  Cider Festival!

Buttercup finally had a cow!

Hint: Turn the Music Player off for this post (or at least pause it for the videos). There's too much good stuff in the background on the videos, especially the llamas talking, the birds cooing, and the soft moo of the newborn calf.

Almost a week after Bruce predicted Buttercup would have her calf within the next two hours, Buttercup finally got that calf out! (We are beginners at this!)

But before I tell you about that, I have to record the following.

Here is a marble track that Joseph and Peter have been working on diligently over the last 10 days or so. This has been serious business. When the video was taken here, it had already been worked over by Libby and her friend Dallas (i.e. had to be rebuilt), and had been worked on for hours and hours. But here is the final version on video. It's pretty cool!



Pretty fun, huh?

I also want to always remember the Piano Recital we had on Tuesday night.
This is Maddy, one of my fun students, and I, as we played a duet. (You made the blog again Maddy!)
And this is Will, otherwise known as a Jedi Knight (see this blog post), standing in front of the Steinway Grand Piano that we got to play on during the recital. Will is in my Primary Class at Church, and he is just a hoot! He can't sit still to save his life, so I have to get creative in how to teach him, and he just grows on me week to week. I love this Jedi Knight!

After the official Recital, the other families left and our family stayed another hour, with each child begging to have a turn on the Steinway. It was amazing to play on this piano! Josh played Go the Distance, and was glowing afterward. Joseph relished playing his own composition on this piano, and Jesse couldn't contain herself. She was in tears at one point when she thought her turn was over and she wouldn't get another one! At one point, Josh, Joseph and Jesse all played Hundred Years together, on different pianos, and it made me cry it was so cool. (You can hear a snippet of Josh playing Hundred Years on the marble track video above!)

I want to congratulate Mary and Peter! They were the only ones that had their songs memorized, and they played them perfectly! Way to go guys. Yes - Peter played his song, with the fingers that are sticking out of his cast!

Have I put a picture of Peter on yet with his hot pink cast? You've got to see it! I'll get one on soon.

The venue for this Recital was a local music store that allows you to rent the Recital Hall for only $10. So, I figure we can go down to this store every month for Home Evening and have a family Piano Recital on a Steinway. The Taco Bell afterward contributed to everyone's happiness as well. :)

So, on to Buttercup. On Wednesday morning Bruce said, "She's going to have it today." This time, he was right. I have full pictures of it on Picasa, including the birth (not for the faint of heart) if you want to see it. But here are some highlights.


Thanks to my friend Wendy (mother of Jedi Will), who came over to see the birth and helped take pictures! They also took a little tour around the farm, with Jedi Will gathering the eggs
and feeding the llamas and the horses. Wendy commented, "When we lived in California we would pay to go see a farm like this." Needless to say, Farmer Bruce would rather show a four year old around the farm than just about anything else he can think of, as evidenced by this video below.


My friend DaraDee also stopped by a few hours after the calf was born, and this is little Abigail seeing the calf.

And this is the Sister Missionaries coming out to see the calf after our dinner together.
You can see a little piece of Peter's pink cast here! All the nurses were impressed with the choice of color, "A man not afraid to wear pink - we like that!"

The calf had a hard time figuring out how to nurse. Late last night Bruce finally had to put Buttercup in the stanchion so she would stand still enough to let the calf nurse. He had to do it again this morning. Hope they get the hang of it soon.

By the way, for the unenlightened (like me), here is the dictionary definition:

stan·chion (stnchn, -shn)

n.

1. An upright pole, post, or support.

2. A framework consisting of two or more vertical bars, used to secure cattle in a stall or at a feed trough.

AND, Bruce wanted me to inform you that Buttercup didn't have a "cow", she had a "bull calf".

Bull - male that has not been castrated
Heifer - a female before she has a calf
Steer - castrated male
Cow - a female after she has a calf

Now you know!

Announcement - a new Resident on the Farm

Well, here she is, the newest resident on the Family Farm.
This is one addition we've been contemplating for a long time.
We found a good deal on Craigslist and finally decided it was time.
So we proudly introduce Buttercup, the Jersey dairy cow. This was her name before, and we decided to keep it.
I wish I had a camera to see all of your reactions right now! I told Bruce that we're trying to make ourselves as "peculiar" as possible. What percentage of the US population works on "bleeding edge" technology as a software engineer and milks a cow twice a day? And then blogs about it??

Ever since our friends and neighbors got a milk cow almost two years ago, we have helped them milk their cow once a week. This has given us an idea of what it would be like. We have thought about getting our own ever since then, and we finally did it. It's a great investment because we will not only have the milk, but are able to breed her and raise steers that can be sold for profit, besides raising a steer for ourselves for meat. Our ancestors were not far off when they described their dairy cow as one of their most valuable possessions!

We're pretty excited about Buttercup. She is pregnant and due on Feb. 14th. If she has a heifer (a female calf), we'll be able to raise her and sell her back to a dairy for twice what we paid for Buttercup. If it's a steer (a male calf), well, he's not so lucky. We'll name him Hamburguesa II, raise him and eat him. If you're vegetarian and reading this post - sorry!

Because she's pregnant, we won't start milking Buttercup until about four months after she's calved. Luckily though, we have a deal with our friends that they'll milk their cow for half the year and share the milk with us, and then we'll milk Buttercup for half a year and share with them.

Another important reason we wanted this cow was to have meaningful work for the children, as Elder Maxwell encouraged us to do. They'll be the ones trading off doing the milking.

Also, what better food storage could you have?

But mostly we are excited to have some good milk!!

Welcome to the Farm, Buttercup.

Pullin' Pipe

(Suggested music - International Harvester)

Bruce's parents have a grass hay farm about half an hour away from here, and since it was Labor Day, Bruce decided we needed to labor on the farm. Isn't there something twisted with that logic? No, but really, this is the only time we had to do it without having to miss all sorts of stuff.

Bruce put Libby to work picking apples, since she is too little still to help with the pipe.

The rest of us got to bring in the irrigation pipe - which we call "pullin' pipe" for short.

Peter drives Grandpa's four-wheeler with the pipe trailer behind it. He'll drive a little, then stop and wait while we bring the pipe and load it on the trailer.

Today we had three teams: Dad and Jesse, Mary and I, and Josh and Joseph.

We can pick up three rows of pipe at a time this way because Dad and Jesse do one side, Josh and Joseph the other, and Mary and I do the one right down the middle.

Jesse was a Shera today doing the pipe. Man, she is one tough chick. It's challenging to carry two pipes at the same time, but putting them on the trailer two at a time is even harder. She did it all morning with Bruce without any complaint whatsoever. She just informed me that it is not challenging, and that she and Dad did three at a time. Sheesh!

Mary has grown enough this year that she is finally tall enough to lift the pipe over the guard rails on the trailer and get the pipe on. That means she is a full time worker, and she does a great job.

Libby in pink in the hay. :)

It's a great experience to work together as a family and get this job done. I would like to say that it was all kindness and cheerfulness and hard work, but it was not. It gets a little tense sometimes, but in the end, in the overall picture, it's good.

We take a lot of breaks. After every load, we go in to Grandma and Grandpa's shed (it's more like a warehouse) and raid Grandma's freezer. She leaves all kinds of frozen food there that we can microwave and munch on. I was musing today about how she provides food for us, even when she is in another state. They don't actually live on the farm - they own 20 acres, and plan to build a house on it someday, but for now, they just live in their trailer when they come.

The farm is beautiful, and working out in the open on the farm is a different feeling than any other kind of work that I've done. I frankly quite enjoy it, and I love living in Idaho and having the chance to have these kinds of experiences with our family!