To Lani...OPPS! I'm going to blame Primary President Brain!

So I messed up this year!  Now I know why there was the rule that there can not be any specific requests.  Back in January I requested dad.  I had something I was going to do for him that didn't work out.  But in my mind I still had him. Carrie sent me an email in May asking if I had requested someone because she had a name next to mine in her spread sheet.  She said she didn't normally take requests so she thought it was a glich.  I replied back to her that I had requested him.  Once I saw today that two of us posted for Dad, I did a search in my gmail for Carrie Collins Christmas and saw that I have an unread email from Carrie saying that my service recipient was Lani.  Blast!  Somehow I missed that. But if someone is mistakenly going to get 2 people to do service in his name, what a great recipient.

I panicked but then I realized that of all people, if I missed Lani, it was a great miss for many reasons. I know Lani is one that gets much more joy out of doing the service then reading what someone did for her.  But the main reason this one isn't too hard for me to improvise is because I have been thinking a lot about Lani lately while doing service.  When I was called to be Primary President a month ago, I panicked!  But one thing that kept me calm is thinking that I knew I could go to Lani if I needed any council and advice.  There have been a few times in this short period that I have been frustrated wondering what to do.  Then I thought to myself, WWLD?  What would Lani Do?  What would the Lord Do?  I have a whole new respect for the service Lani did as Young Women's president.  And doing it with 3 very young children all at home!  I really don't know how she does it all.  Now she has a job and her boss RAVES about her to me daily.  He says "if only I could have a staff full of Lani's.  If only I could clone her." Somehow she gets everything done. She truly is Wonder Woman! 

We can all be a fan of our fellow Brothers and Sisters

Soooooooo......................
When I received my name, at first I didn't know what to do. It took me quite a while to ponder and get some good ideas. Then like most of us, I put it on the back burner and would get back to it later. Throughout the year I kept thinking about what to do. I didn't want to do something that someone else could do. I also wanted it to be over the top. Like most family members, there was a demographics challenge as well. Well, toward the end of summer I started to get some really good ideas. Yes!!!!!! This is it. This is perfect.Why did I not think of this before.
Then, three months, two weeks, two days, and fourteen hours ago........I was back to square one. Our family encountered a spiritual event and I was baffled once more. What could I possibly do for Tiffany now? So with everyone trying to keep their routine on track and going to go support our baby sister, I kept watching to see what it was that I could do. I then realized that she was ok. She had uncles and aunts, friends, brothers and sisters, mom and dad all around her taking care of everything. There were errands, chores, packing, shopping, painting, babysitting, plus a multitude of other services that I was not even aware of. So that is it. I found my service. I want to give just a tiny fraction of what we gave our beautiful sister to another sister that hasn't been as fortunate.
I contacted my Bishop and explained to him what our family does and what I was looking for. After a week of research, he came back and gave me three names of sisters that were single or had husbands deployed. I picked one of the names and sent her a link to our blog. I explained how our service worked and told her I wanted to include her in our family in honor of our loving sister Tiffany. She was so excited and gave me my service. She has been wanting a ceiling fan in her youngest daughters room for quite a while. She asked if this was something that I do.......Let me think......uh.............YEAH!!!! So this was a couple of weeks ago. She didn't want anything done until after the holidays, but was very thankful for the love of her fellow brother in Christ.
Tiffany....I love you soooooo much. You have two darling girls that are adorable. I have great memories with your family when I first started dating Charise. I remember when you got your license. I had a blast DJ'g your 16th birthday party. I was also there to hug you when you got into the car accident after the movie on Christmas day. It seems like yesterday when I looked into your innocent face. Today I see your face in the same light. But I see an innocence of Heavenly Fathers love. He is with you. We are sent to Earth to be tested and tried. We are given the strength to handle anything crossing our path. With our testimony and our family, we can get through anything. It may not seem like it, but when we are least expecting it.......there is always someone that can put up our ceiling fan.  

To Bill From Ryan via Darcy

     Hey everyone Darcy here. so in September the week after Ryan's passing Carrie Collins  texted me and asked if I would do Ryan's for him, and he had Bill. So the first thing I did was call Tiff and see if he had done anything and if so what and if he had anything in mind. He did not but he usually does his the week before Christmas. So I did my research and looked at what people had done for bill in the past and then I also looked at what Ryan had done for people in the past. Bills were all very different. I was very concerned when I got bill because all of his big attributes (construction and roller skating) had all ready been done so I thought to myself what is something special about bill?

     One thing that popped into my mind that I didn't know before this summer was that Bill was a convert to the Church and he wasn't able to serve a mission because he was just barely too old. So how do you serve missionaries? They serve others, and asking them what they need/want for Christmas is not how you do it because all you get for an answer is "haha I don't know". Or "what do you mean?" Those were not the answers you want so when I went to Africa and brought packages for the missionaries they consisted of gum, toothpaste, and shoes or socks. So I made announcements during seminary, young women's, mutual, and any other opportunity (Facebook). Asking for LDS games, socks and gum.

     I made little packages to send to the missionaries in Ryan's ward, Bill's ward, and my ward. Or stockings :)



Sorry it is upside down but there is socks (or stockings ) with a few of their treaties in them.

 

I love you Bill! And so does our Ryan up above! You two are amazing uncles!






P.S. The cousins my age have a blog that you might of read about in my mom's post! Read that one to if you have time.

To Char, From Wayne

This year I had Char.

Charise loves Christmas time.  Her favorite thing is "halabloo." 

We have some friends, The Schotts.  They love Christmas but Dan (the Dad) is not too hip on heights.  This year we were visiting during Thanksgiving.  I hung Christmas Lights for them.  I also fixed their lawn mower. 

The photo is still to come, as I had it on my phone but then accidently fell in the ocean last week in Laguna Beach. 

I know Char thinks I am funny, but I can't think of a funny right now...maybe I will think of one and post later.

Merry Christmas Char...Love, Wayne

To Dad, Love Amy

Dear Dad,

I really tried this year to not put this off.  When thinking about what I wanted to do to honor you, I kept going back to what a wonderful example you have been in my life.  I decided in June that I wanted to take Grandpa Bodell to the temple once a month.  Here is us from July.  In Aug, Grandpa got sick and then in Sept, we lost Ryan and things didn't happen as I had hoped, so I needed to change my service.

I need to change my service, so I went back to the example you have always set.  You are a forever teacher with your example.  I decided to help others with service.  I volunteered to do a bulletin board for Dillon's school class.  I went in a talked to them about service.  I had them all write down a service that they wanted to do and then we put them up on the board.  It had just snowed a few days before, and more than half of them said they were going to shovel driveways.  It didn't snow again for about a week.  A few of Dillon's classmates live on our street.  When it snowed and Dillon went out of shovel, our drive way had already been done :>  Here is a photo of the board.  When they finished their service they would put a bow on their "Gift of Service."

I thought that I was done and all was good.  Last week, Dixie needed help for her service for Ricky (a new cousins service blog).  She wanted to help spread the Christmas Spirit.  She asked if I could bake cookies.  I had just made 50 sugar cookies (Mom's recipe).  I didn't feel like jumping to it, but I thought of my Dad, if I asked him for help with a service project, he would be there in a heartbeat! I then proceeded to make 136 cookies to help my daughter with her service project.

Dad, Thank you for always being a wonderful example off continuous service.  Love you tons, Amy