Public Service Announcement

Post office, FedEx to see busiest day today - wtop.com: "The U.S. Postal service says 97 million customers will come to the post office, while 41 million will take advantage of convenient online shipping from home or office.

The post office recommends you send your packages by the following dates:

Dec. 16 - Parcel Post
Dec. 21 - First-Class Mail
Dec. 21 - Priority Mail
Dec. 23 - Express Mail"

First Presidency Christmas Devotional 2009

First Presidency Christmas Devotional 2009:

The First Presidency Christmas Devotional was held on Sunday, December 6. The devotional featured the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square. Members of the First Presidency were the speakers. Audio and video from the devotional are available in English below. Archives of the devotional are also available in many additional languages."

Another excellent Christmas Devotional.

First Presidency Christmas Devotional 2009

First Presidency Christmas Devotional 2009:
The First Presidency Christmas Devotional was held on Sunday, December 6. The devotional featured the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square. Members of the First Presidency were the speakers. Audio and video from the devotional are available in English below. Archives of the devotional are also available in many additional languages."

Another excellent Christmas Devotional.

Interesting Idea

Saw this over at Millennial Star. New tradition, blending my families' heritages?

My daughter is in the MTC. I made her a Hanukkah celebration that revolves around the light of the restoration.

I sent her a paper menorah to put up. The shamash is labelled “Light of the Restoration”. Each day she opens an envelope with a different theme of the restoration. For example, the first day is “The First Vision”. The envelope for this day contains a paper candle labelled “The 1st Vision” and readings about the first vision. The readings are approved materials for missionaries, such as Preach My Gospel, the scriptures, conference addresses, etc. Then there is a section on “Missionary Application and Personal Dedication”. After all Hanukkah is the festival of dedication. On the first day the reader is asked to “consider your testimony. What should you be doing to strengthen it? What do you need to do to better maintain it? How can you best share it?”

The candles are:
1. The First Vision
2. The Book of Mormon
3. Restoration of the Priesthood
4. Restoration of Christ’s Church
5. The Creation
6. The Fall
7. The Atonement
8. The Temple Ordinances

Of course there are gifts. And we’ve sent enough for her whole district. The first day they will get the traditional dredels and gelt. I was concerned that they get presents that wouldn’t be a problem to transport to their mission and would be semi-useful to missionaries. One day is blank cards on a ring for vocabulary words. The last day is Plan of Salvation cut-outs.

I also sent a tiny Hanukkah bush with silver and blue ornaments and a star of David on top.

Source: Friday Forum

Dear Mr. Erb

Upon the recommendation of the Admissions Committee, I am pleased to approve your admission to the Certificate in Homeland Security Studies program, effective with the Spring 2010 Semester.

[...]

Congratulations and best wishes on your admission. We look forward to working with you in the fulfillment of your educational and professional objectives.

Sincerely,

Dean
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Georgetown University
Jeremy L. Erb
Sent from my mobile device

ISO: Contact Info

To my faithful blog readers.

yes, all 3 of you ;-)

I have a request. It's that time of year again: we're making our list and checking it twice. Because we're getting ready to send out the Erb Annual Report.

Make sure you're included on the email distro by emailing me (to confirm I have your best email address), or sending me a message with your email address some other way (I accept SMS text, Twitter @jedci, Facebook, and snail mail).

We look forward to sharing our holiday message with you!

We've been busy!

We had a great trip to California -- a big thanks to everyone who made out trip fun, tasty, memorable, and possible.

We were able to get some good (quick) visits in with both grandparents and the extended families. For some of the cousins, it was the first time in 10 years we had seen each other! Too long, if you ask me.

We felt like we took a lot of photos, but apparently not so much... but here are the shots from our camera:


Thankfully, others took pictures as well.
Photos courtesy of our "family photographer":
Thanksgiving at the Goldstein's

We had a blast.

(I'm hoping Jill is going to post more on her blog about all the fun things we did. If she doesn't, I'll come back here and fill in.)

We flew back on Saturday, had a quick detour at a nearby Wal-Mart when our poor, tired battery -- on its very last legs -- had enough juice to turn over (after several attempts to crank and multiple bad clicking noises) and get us to the store. Thankfully, the Auto Center was still open, and we were able to get the battery tested (yes, it was bad) and a new one installed.

Got back in time to review some things for Jill's Sunday School lesson, then went to bed. Jill taught a great lesson in gospel doctrine, and we had another great lesson from the Bangerters in a combined priesthood/relief society meeting.

Monday came and it was back to the grind. It was a pretty quiet day at work -- except for all of the technical support I provided pretty much everyone in the office (ok, so maybe 2 or 3 people; but it felt like everyone).

And now it's Tuesday. With today being the first day of December and all, we decided to get out some of our Christmas decorations that we have with us. (Most of our decorations are sitting in the Walker basement back in Rexburg...).
(I forgot to get a picture of the yummy cinnamon smelling pine cones that Jill got for me.)

Now I sit here writing this all up while I back-up some of our photos to my SkyDrive and listen to the Vince Guaraldi Trio rendition of O Tannenbaum, streaming on my laptop from AccuHolidays: Holiday Jazz channel. Ah, technology. Wonderful.