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About Me (updated Dec 2022)

I am Lara.  I have been married to a wonderful guy for 29 years now and in the process have become mother to five  great kids, ages 17-27.    WE lived in Northern Virginia for 20 years, then had a quick 2-year pitstop in the Philly area (almost all during COVID), and moved to Utah in summer 2021.   We are still deciding how we like Utah living.   

My oldest son has had a rough road in life, but he is ten years in remission from cancer and is  trying to figure out what to do next with his life.

 My oldest daughter  returned from serving a full-time mission in the France Lyon mission,  got married to her best friend in the Salt Lake Temple, graduated from nursing school at the University of Texas-Austin, and just moved to Birmingham, Alabama for her husband to complete a medical residency.  They are also proud parents to a sweet one-year-old (our first grandbaby), Lucie.  We are quite smitten with her.  

My third child was called to serve in the Toronto Canada Mission--Spanish speaking right before COVID hit.   She was reassigned to Salt Lake City-West Mission and ended up spending all 18 months of her mission  in the Salt Lake area.   We moved to Utah about half-way through her mission, but, at her insistence, never tried to see her.    She had a wonderful mission and is now a student at BYU.   

My fourth child completed a year at BYU, spent the summer as an FSY counselor, then headed out on a mission in August to Portland, Oregon.   He is adjusting to missionary life and learning to love the people of Oregon.  

My fifth child is still living at home and working on becoming her best self.  She is applying to college currently, so my nest is going to be empty before I know it.   

I homeschooled the kids for a number of years and have held a variety of church callings along the way.  This blog has fallen by the wayside over the years, but I still look at it as a place to record some of the things I've learned about living the Gospel and parenting along the way.



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What about all these FHE lessons?   

Several years ago a friend asked me to join a FHE lesson exchange group and sometime after muddling through my first lesson and receiving the amazing efforts of the other members of the group it soon became an all-consuming passion for me.   I was so excited to have wonderful, creative resources for teaching my family the gospel, that I joined every exchange group I could find (on the internet, in my ward, in other wards).  Every night after the kids went to bed became my researching, cutting, coloring, and laminating time.  Creating family home evening lessons was my main hobby for 4 or 5 years.  (yes, I may be a little weird)

 Now I have teenagers in the house and I don't have time to participate in the groups any more, so my passion has evolved.  What started as a way to back up my favorite lessons, should anything happen to them, has become a continuation of that same passion I had then.     It is my hope that you will enjoy these lessons as we have and that you, in turn, will share them with others.  I have a testimony of the strength and the joy that weekly family home evenings can bring into families and I hope these lessons will make that quest for meaningful lessons a little easier for you. 

Please feel free to contact me for questions or ideas for future lessons.  I love hearing from you!  :)

Waaaaaaaay back in the day when we lived in Baltimore and first was asked to join a FHE lesson exchange group.  (about 1998)


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