Every Christmas and birthday I rack my brain for something meaningful and creative to give to my mom. She doesn't want a store bought gift so I need to find a gift that says: I think you are fabulous, wonderful, inspiring,thoughtful, amazing, brilliant, warm, generous and practically perfect in every way. I need all of those sentiments wrapped up in one very fabulous gift. Every year when we ask what she wants it goes something like this: "I want you to write your testimony down". Or: "nothing, I don't need anything". Or: "children that don't fight". Etc. Etc. Since that has been her answer for years I have stopped asking and tried looking for little clues that she drops without even knowing that she is dropping them. This year I heard her talk about food storage a couple of times and thought BiNgO ! That is a gift that keeps on giving and says all of the above (at least in my mom's love language). We have an amazing girl in our ward who does a provident living newsletter and each month she gives food storage ideas to do. I decided to take each of those ideas and as my gift spearhead a family home evening once a month and do the suggested food storage activity. Our first month it was to update our 72 hour kits. I am ashamed to say that we didn't have one. Yes, you heard right, not even one kit for a family of 7 who recently went through evacuations from the fires. During that terrifying experience, Travis was out of town, I had 6 kids to evacuate one of which was a 5 week old. With no 72 hour kits and trying to pack the essentials at 3am while crying, the things I packed were interesting to say the least. In my suitcase I packed my scriptures, scrapbooks, journals, some basic toiletries, one running shoe, a sports bra and a pair of workout shorts. Yes, apparently I was planning on running through smoke infested skies in one shoe, some shorts and a definitely inappropriate top. Not to mention that I didn't bring a change of clothes other than what I was wearing while evacuating. Not only that but I had raided my pantry the night before for food for the other families that had been evacuated never dreaming that I would leave my house mere hours later. The result of this lack of preparation was that we had no basic toiletries, no plan and I was a nervous wreck. Obviously I learned my lesson because 16 months later I FINALLY got my 72 hour kits. Yes folks, I am a suuuuper speeeedy fast learner. So for this Family Home Evening, we decided to meet at Wal-Mart . For me I was starting from scratch, for my mom she was updating her rotten mandarin oranges and out of date preserves and adding a few extra toiletries. I have to say that we made quite a spectacle in the aisles of Wal-Mart expressing our glee for little bars of soaps, mini deodorants and toothbrushes. All the while we were snapping the oh so exciting pictures of a cart full of toiletries. I think people must have thought we were filming some new youtube on silly things you do in public while pretending that you don't care what other think. All in all it was a memorable experience - after all I can now mark off my life goals list # 77. Take photos in the aisles of your local Wal-mart.
Even Callen got in on the action
A cart full of goodies
I never thought anyone else would get as excited about laundry detergent than me
For the life of us we could not seem to find Tanner and Lexie.....
OK, I admit it we are TOTAL nerds. I mean who else can say
that they have taken a family picture at Wal-Mart?
1 comment:
I can't even tell you how cool it is that you have a family picture in WalMart!! hahahaha
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