Contentment

 I've been studying contentment. It's a tricky thing. The scripture I've been focusing on this week is 1 Timothy 6:6-8 "But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content." So a long with contentment I've been studying godliness. Which apparently has a lot to do with how we speak. Dad was saying in Sunday school they talked about the need to always strive to better ourselves (godliness) and to be grateful for what we have (contentment). Godliness+contentment= great gain. I'd like to have great character gains! ...deep thoughts Lesley

Fall break with the Pershings!!

 Our vacation was awesome!! Bella and Sam were able to get the week off and it was also Fall break for Adam and Jen Pershing crew so we did a multi family vacation. It was so much fun. We went to a beach house in Florida and a lake house in Louisiana. Since we went to two very distinct and separate places it almost felt like the vacation was longer.

We ate out a ton and had far too much ice cream. Highlights were:

Lazy days on the beach

Bucees amazing gas station...that place is incredible

Crocodile show at the Fudpuckers

House hunting in Seaside, Florida (my beach house name would be Beaches n' Cream)

Bruesters Ice cream

Going on a river ride with the Roland and Susie Jones family. The moved to Florida after the station at Dm and they provided all our floats. We hiked for 1 mile then floated back to our parking spot . It was so beautiful and chilly!

Hawaiian food with the Jones family. They treated our whole crew to some of the best food!!

Visiting the capital building in Baton Rouge...the tallest capital building in the US, What a view!

Touring Bella's work.

Visiting the LSU cmapus

Boating in Lousina

Swimming int the lake

And all the movie nights!

Visiting Benjamin's childhood home town in Biloxi Miss.

Thorns in our trip, missed the connection flight in Vegas so we had to spend the night...expensive. The rented out the car we booked so we had to drive a Dodge Ram that someone has smoked in...

We truly has the best time. Bella and Sam are making quite the life together!!

LSU's tiger Mike

Dad's elementary school in Mississippi

We ate at Brusters ice cream a little too much. We will have to take you there!

Not a beach trip unless someone gets buried

Beach house cuddle

catching the rays, florida is known for its white sand. It actually squeaks like snow.

Full day kindergarten teacher

 Big change for me professionally. After fall break I started teaching full time. One of our full time teacher's husband is getting deployed so she is moving back home. I will be going from 17 scholars to 26   Luckily 16 of those kids go home at noon and the other 10  stay go to their specials classes like PE, art and music so I only teach for an additional 30 minutes but will bring in full time TEACHER'S pay!  The mornings will be legit crazy! But the afternoons are easy and I will now get paid to plan my lessons because I have more planning time built in to the full day schedule.

Renting the main house

 For the month of October we have not lived at home. I had the yellow barn house listed on Airbnb and forgot all about it and someone requested to book it...Benjamin calls it stupid money, I'd certainly not call it easy money because cleaning the house (particularly Adrian's room) is no small thing! But with two kids in braces and the fact that we are not independently wealthy (a saying Adrian wants me to stop saying) ..we couldn't pass it up. Unfortunately the guest house was also booked but hey that's the definition of stupid money. Nana and Papa have graciously opened up their home. We had one week in Louisiana/Florida for our fall break so that broke things up a bit. 

Luckily a couple of things fell into place before the booking happened. The dogs are outside dogs.  They kept eating off the table, eating trash, and they constantly shed. They are now backyard dogs. So we didn't have to worry about where to keep them. Benjamin's office is in the old preschool room so the dogs are being kept in the one of the stables complete with two dog beds and a couch, comfy rugs, water and food. We also cleaned out the pantry and kitchen so we were ready....well more ready then we normally would have been.

The people renting the house wanted single beds instead of the queen and king bed we had. So we quickly swapped them out. I think the rooms turned out so cute!

 

25 years go by!

 Not sure how it happened, one day at a time I guess, Benjamin and I just celebrated our 25th anniversary on September 19th!

5 kids

1 son in-law

1 apartment

3 houses

1 travel trailer

I double wide

Seven dogs, 8 goats, 2 lambs, 4 bunnies, dozens of chickens

7 cruises

1 marathon

Handful of triathlons

1 helicopter ride

2 surgeries

Dozens of church assignments

What a ride!! I don't think either of us would have predicted the many hills, valleys and mountains we would climb together. I am so grateful for the partnership we have. For our matching goals and  dreams. We walk the creek together almost daily plotting and scheming. We have the best kids, truly some of the most talented, compassionate and grounded humans. It's been amazing life. I love you so very much Benjamin Joshua Howe. Here's to many more adventures ones not even predicted.

To celebrate we went out to dinner and caught a movie. We are at Cheddar's and had a fantastic meal. After dinner before the movie we did a little shopping, although it turned out to be more perusing than shopping 😅 Benjamin said we each got $25 to spend.....before tax even 😂 We saw a fun adventurous film and then got the new pumpkin frosties afterwards. So yummy! We hope to go on a trip in the next couple of months. We'll see if we can make it happen.

Birthday Thai dinner

We went out to dinner for Nana's birthday at one of our favorite local Thai restaurants. The Smiths were there too. So fun to catch dinner and later a movie ( one of the worst movies I have ever seen....luckily it was Nana's choice!) At the table that we sat at there was underneath the glass pictures of Thailand and a map of a small region of Thailand. It was the same region that Holman is living in. It was pretty awesome. I love Thai food! 

 

Disaster within inches....

We had a crazy day of summer rains, aka Tucson monsoons. It was coming down fast and furious. We had just had our pool drained and cleaned the week earlier. I went outside to see if the flooding was under control. Thanks to Mark Weigel a friend in our ward who had brought his bulldozer the year before and who spent hours helping clear our streams beds of debris and sand. The pool was within inches of being flooded. Benjamin ran out in the rain and helped secure some breaches that had occurred.