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Since I made this blog private several years ago, I feel as if it's become more of a journal of my own personal thoughts than a collection of writings of the family.  I have lots of invited readers, but really only Sarah and Ethan are regular readers of it.  With that, I feel the need to record my feelings tonight. Tomorrow, John leaves State College behind.  He'll be driving from Port Matilda to Ypsilanti with four dogs in Greenie.  He's spent a lot of time this week, trying to get the house ready....for nothing. I never honestly thought this day would come, but it has.  We are officially leaving our house behind, and we don't have a buyer in sight.  Our beautiful house full of so many memories.  Our land, a veritable Garden of Eden in the middle of the Commonwealth.  Even our trusty goldfish friends who are now trained as hand-fed creatures. Nobody wants our house.  It is either too expensive, or too small, or too much land, or too ne...

I have the best job in the world.  And surprisingly, I'm not talking about being a mom. I just love my job here at Interlochen.  In a world where I could choose what I would do each and every day, it would be working here. People know that I'm a "Health Assistant" here, but that description leaves a lot to the imagination.  Kind of like people who work in "Compliance". :-) I wake up each morning around 6 a.m., shower, throw on my uniform, and leave for work by 6:45.  I walk up to our tiny health service cabin in the woods around 7 a.m., and prepare for whatever the day will throw at me. I fill three coolers of water and place them around the cabin.  I make sure all the patient beds are made and ready.  I do a bit of clerical work.  I catch up from the previous day with my friends...conveniently around the water cooler :-) Then, around 7:45, campers begin showing up to take their daily meds.  It's like a dance between the nurses and me. ...

Oh my goodness, I need to find a way to stop time!  It's moving way too quickly for me, and I feel at times as if I'm losing my footing. Today, the last Kennedy kid checked into Interlochen.  Yep, this was it.  Little Baby Glo is beginning her ninth (and final) year as an Interlochen camper. I have had so many thoughts today about those past nine years with the Babe.  Here are just a few: The first year Glo came to Interlochen, she didn't want to do anything with violin.  Instead, she filled her day with art classes.  Ceramics and painting are the ones I actually remember.  They were held in the old Junior Arts building (that has since been torn down). She loved Environmental Science with Coggin.  She would come home daily with new tidbits of information about the Michigan backwoods, along with mosquito bites covering half of her body.  One year I got really good about spraying her down before she went to class, and she came home with ...

I love the hymns of the church.  So many times, they are sermons unto themselves.  There is a hymn with these words: Sweet is the peace the gospel brings to seeking minds and true, With light refulgent on its wings it clears the human view. Its laws and precepts are divine and show a Father's care. Transcendent love and mercy shine in each injunction there. Faithless tradition flees its pow'r, and unbelief gives way, The gloomy clouds which used to low'r, submit to reason's sway. This past weekend, Mark, Allison, Glo and I headed to Philadelphia one last time.  It was ultimately for one more lesson with Amy, but we turned it into a mini-party seeing as it was Markie Boy's 24th birthday, and Glo's graduation weekend. Goodness, it was so good to get away and have a little bit of fun! We shopped at King of Prussia mall for Mark and Glo.  Mark got Levi's from an actual Levi's store (and yes, they actually carried a couple of pairs in jeans wit...

Imagine a spider web.  I know, I know--there are several Kennedy family members who would rather not think of spiders, but you can't deny that the webs spiders create are pretty fantastic.  All those long tendrils of silk leading to one central point of the web.  Just imagine that.  You can even imagine it in a lovely meadow with dewdrops hanging from the strands if that makes you feel better :-) I have a lovely tender mercy which sits at the center of several tendrils of experiences that I would like to share.  It might take me a minute to get around to that "core" of the web, but please bear with me. I don't know what it is, but in our current ward (and stake), and in the Bitburg ward, I have had some serious issues with some of my priesthood leaders.  Before we moved to Germany, I had served as Primary president in our ward in Dayton without a single hitch, nor had I had any problems before that, so I'm not sure what has happened.  I can't ...

Dear Blog Brothers and Sisters, Today was an interesting day.  After spending nine years as President Mike Price's counselor in the stake presidency of the Altoona Pennsylvania Stake, I was officially released.  I have known this was coming since the beginning.  There was a time when I was called that I thought it was 10 years away because when we were called into the stake presidency I thought it would be a 10 year calling.  Then several years ago, President Price asked to speak to me as in an interview and I thought I was getting released.  A few years later when I hadn't been released, I found out that it was a 9 year calling for him and that that would be when my time in the presidency would end. As I have served there have been many times when I have dreaded this event, meaning my release.  The following is a list of the reasons why I have dreaded the eventuality of my release.  I have also listed them as things I will miss. I love the peopl...

So much of our lives lately is closing chapters.  I guess that's what happens when you live in the same place for eleven years! This weekend concluded nine years of service for John in the Altoona Pennsylvania Stake Presidency.  When he was called nine years ago, he was called as the second counselor, but when President Rupper (the first counselor) moved to China back in 2012, John was called as the first counselor to President Price, and today he was released. We've known for a while that it was coming.  In April, President Price received this letter: Dear President Price, After careful consideration in a recent meeting of the Council of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve, and in view of your tenure of service, it was determined to reorganize the presidency of the Altoona Pennsylvania Stake. Accordingly, it is with sincere appreciation for your watchful guidance of stake affairs and your deep concern of the welfare of the people that we now extend to...

I copy a couple of paragraphs from a recent Time article: To look at Kennedy and to study his presidency is to glimpse America coming to grips with the nuclear age, waking up to the moral imperative of civil rights, fumbling with the dirty business of counterinsurgencies and regime change.  He encapsulates the giddy conviction that Hey! America can do anything! --a notion that produced both the moon landings and the Vietnam War.  Kennedy is the high before the lows; the buoyant marker of a fleeting hope that the laws of historical gravity might be suspended, if not revoked outright. The nation at Kennedy's centennial is a different place, looking inward instead of outward, stepping back from the world instead of toward it.  America is led by a generation of politicians who grew up in the relative peace of the postwar order, answering to an electorate more exhausted than energized by the duties of a superpower. In the White House is a man whose Inaugural Address was...

I feel like most times when I go to the temple, I get this small glimpse into heaven. Yesterday, John and I attended Stake Temple Day at the Washington D.C. temple.  Being in charge of Temple and Family History work as a member of the stake presidency, John was the one to plan and organize it, and it being the weekend before the stake conference when John will be released from the stake presidency, it felt like one of those full-circle moments.  It was a last chance to get together with all of his friends from around the stake and spend some time together...like we will in heaven. I have stacks of temple names that need sealings done, and I've slowly been chipping away at them over the last year and a half.  Ask any of the family--anytime we are together, I beg everyone to join me at the temple to do sealings.  I could give them away to other people to do, but having as little family as I have, I feel a grave responsibility to do them myself.  With no siblin...

With all the stuff happening in our family right now, with selling the house in PA to move to Michigan, and Ethan and Rebecca moving out to Utah (despite their distaste for "the Holy Land"), and a lot of things hinging on what God has told us and not exactly what we can see with our mortal eyes in the current frame of time, it's always nice to see kind of a completed picture for once. Or in this case, more like what I can only assume is a brief snapshot into a much bigger picture that I can't appreciate even now, but it's a snapshot at least. Sometimes in comparison with the grand vision of God, it's amazing how short sighted we regular people are some times. As the summer's gone by, there's been a sense of impending dread at the thought of Ethan and Rebecca and Baby moving! Darn it, why couldn't Ethan and Rebecca just be like the rest of millennial college graduates and hang out for a while after graduation while they figured out what they wa...