Moran Family Fun

Today Natalie, Samantha, and I all spoke in sacrament meeting and we all spoke on the same topic - gratitude. Natalie is not even a little bit comfortable with public speaking. In our last ward a member of the bishopric called and asked to speak with Natalie so I passed her the phone assuming he was going to ask her to speak in sacrament meeting. When she came back from that phone call and I asked her what the call was about she said she'd been asked to speak. I probably responded by saying something like, "How exciting! When are you speaking?" and she told me that she'd said NO. Can you believe that?  Photo Credit https://ldssotd.com/  When we were asked to speak this time I accepted the assignment on Natalie's behalf and she's been salty with me about it all week long.  Today was the day she's been dreading and I just don't even know why because she rocked it! She was such a good youth speaker for our sacrament meeting. She wrote a decent talk (with ...

Today was a Saturday filled with getting ready for Sunday, just like the song says. We worked on talks and lessons, we cleaned the house, we grocery shopped, we showered. After all that work we needed to have some fun so tonight the girls, plus one friend they invited, had a bomb party! Apparently in the Moran house we really know how to party because the main event was making friendship bracelets and snacking on the most basic of charcuterie boards and some rice krispie treats.  Samantha pulled out her supplies of colorful thread and everyone had a crash course in making friendship braclets. While the girls were partying, I had the good luck to be sitting in the next room just listening in on the fun. They had music playing and were singing along and laughing and just having such a great time together. It reminded me of times in the past when I would be driving the kids somewhere with their friends and they were just chattering away in the back seat and I got to listen in. Such sw...

I got a letter from Jared today. He can send letters to us by free mail no stamps or anything! He just writes free mail where a stamp would go and it is sent off. Granted it takes a long while for the letters to make it to their addressee as this card was postmarked October 18th. I don't know where he found this beautiful handmade card, but I love it and it was just such a sweet surprise to get a little note from him today. It was also a good reminder that I need to write him a letter sometime soon. Jared has been taking the time to write to each of us individually while he's been gone but I haven't written him a letter back yet. What kind of wife even am I?  We must have talked before he wrote the letter and it sounds as if I was feeling like a failure. Most of the time I'm doing alright with Jared being gone, but every so often life hits me hard and I feel everything piling up. I don't even remember specifically what was bugging me in mid-October anymore, which ju...

1. I was doing a quick tidy-up in the kitchen today and I thought that I should take a picture of one of my favorite kitchen tools. It's not for cooking, it's for cleaning. Introducing the best little tiny broom and dustpan. The broom fits neatly inside the dustpan and the whole thing has a flat bottom so it can stand up on the counter for storage. I tuck it away behind the paper towels when I'm not using it. It's perfect for sweeping crumbs of the table but I use it most often for cleaning off the stovetop before I spray and wipe it down so that no stray bits of toast end up getting stuck in the rubbery seal that goes around the flat stovetop.  2. A bench scraper is a kitchen necessity. Perfect for doing what you'd think and scraping things off counters, it's also perfect for transporting chopped ingredients from a cutting board to a bowl or pan and is amazing for cutting a pan of Rice Krispie treats into squares. I also use mine for cutting up bread dough int...

Normally I'm thinking about what might make a good post and what I could take a picture of and write about. Today I was not intentional and didn't have any real plan behind what I could share. It was a day a lot like any other.  Woke up and got the littles off to school then did some picking up around the house. Went to get my dad from the dealership so he wouldn't have to wait around while they worked on his car. Actually, that's not a normal everyday occurrence and it was good to see my Dad and to go and grab some donuts with him on the way back to our place. When he texted me and said that we should stop for donuts after I picked him up I realized that my love of sweets is something I inherited from both of my parents and not just my mom.  Then I went with Emily to the base to get her a new ID card since hers is expiring next week. While we were there we ran into an old friend of mine from England who lives here now. She was my PTO secretary when I was crazy enough t...

Three years ago I sent a box much like this one to Jared. Christmas in Sicily called for a tiny tree and some gifts from home. This year, Christmas in Kuwait means it's time for another box stuffed full with a tiny tree and presents. This is our first Christmas box this year and we'll probably send one more to our hero in the desert before December 25th. Tomorrow makes four months since Jared left so we're one-third of the way through our year apart!  Yesterday when I was talking to Jared he mentioned that getting mail is his favorite thing and that he likes mail so much that he'll order things from Amazon just so he has stuff to pick up at the post office. He's actually said that to me a few times since he's been gone.  It's the sweetest but also the saddest thing to hear. When he was in basic training and tech school in 1997 I wrote him an actual physical letter every single day. When he was deployed to Iraq back in 2008 I wrote him an email every day and ...

Perhaps because they've had to deal with so much change in their lives because of our Air Force life, our girls really hold on to certain traditions and are resistant to things being changed or eliminated. The years we haven't carved pumpkins at Halloween are not good years. Last year we didn't make gingerbread houses for the first time in a long time. I definitely heard about it and am already thinking ahead to December and figuring out when and how we'll do them this year. Don't even get me started on the year we had Thanksgiving dinner at the chow hall on base instead of at home with mom doing all the cooking.  Our girls get attached to their traditions and even to the things that have made their way around the world with us as we've moved from place to place. The day we sold our van before moving to England in 2016 was a hard day for some of our kids. Even now when they see a white Kia Sedona they point it - "There's our car!" Before moving thi...