Long time, no write

I missed the whole month of September...my apologies. I can only plead chronic busy-ness. With our Criminal Justice program director on sabbatical this semester, I am running the criminal justice program as well as the sociology department and that has stretched me to the limit, I'm afraid. I had to cancel a conference in November in St. Louis (with apologies to my friend Theron - yes, that is not a typo - who lives there). We have been internet friends for over 10 years and have never met, and we were hoping to change that, but alas, my rapidly fleeing sanity will not allow that. Maybe he can come for Thanksgiving?

Well, on the Cameron front: he finally went up to Grandma and Grandpa Lawson's place and came back with his car. He is pretty excited. Of course he'll still have to put gas in it, so he may not be driving that much. His classes are pretty rough this semester, so he is doing a lot of homework, and not enjoying the student life quite as much as he had hoped. There is always next semester, son. Or summer. Or...wait, we are supposed to enjoy the moment, so I guess we should all try to focus on the good and worthy aspects of where we are.

We had a great stake conference last week. One family tip that I enjoyed was, "The secret to changing your kids is that you can't change your kids. You can change yourself, you can change elements of the environment you share, but then you have to let them take the opportunities to change themselves. The best you can do is to provide change opportunities." I may have done the quote a little damage, but you get the idea. Jamie and I are in a Sunday School class about families, and we have decided to focus our family home evenings this month on teaching the kids how to teach. We are using the "Preach My Gospel" book - I think it starts around p. 175, but I don't have it in front of me so I'm not sure. "Lesson one" seemed to go well. We discussed the importance filling your mind with the words of life, and of asking commitments of the people you teach. Then we committed ourselves to a half hour of private spiritual study a day, so that our hearts can be filled with the words of Christ. I have high hopes for us. We'll see how that goes. Maybe writing it here will keep it in my mind. More later...