To Learn Is To Become Educated! Right! Not when you are old as dirt! But we did our best today; and we will see how it turns out tomorrow. I was asked to help Mills prepare a wall chart for him to take to Mississippi for Mother's Day. It has taken me seven hours, one stop at Staples, three stops at FedEx Office at two locations, and a return trip tomorrow morning at the FedEx on University Blvd. Maybe we will get the wall chart and maybe I will have to start over again. But this is all part of the learning process. This is the first time anyone has asked for a wall chart in the four years I have been working with Roots Magic. I am buying a copy for me to use in case this is something we can use in the teaching.

The making of Swiss Easter Eggs comes to South Florida! You need some flowers, some raw eggs, some thread, some leaves, some onion shells and red roots, two pans, large slotted spoon and two hours for lots of fun and Pizza to share after you are done. The trick is to tie the flowers and leaves on the eggs without breaking them and put them in the boiling water without getting burned. These blue flowers make beautiful eggs.

Sister Hopkins and Sister Geest are

learning how to wrap eggs without breaking them. Only one broke. I could not find any thread at Walmart, so I bought fine crochet thread. It worked just fine. In fact I think it is better than regular sewing thread. You can handle it better. We had a floral arrangement left over at the church Sunday that had delphinium and orchids and hydrangeas. They turned out great.

Elder Chef Graff cooking his brew! He has one pot of red roots and one pot of brown onion shells cooking. After they come to a boil, he will carefully ladle the wrapped eggs into the pots. The shells and roots provide a cushion for the eggs as they boil. Then he cooks them for 20 minutes and then carefully puts them one at a time into a sink of cold water. Then carefully pulls the strings to unwrap the eggs. Then rinses them off and wipes them with a cloth that has cooking oil on it to give them a shine.

The finished product! We took them over to the chapel where we taught another new member. The young people couldn't get over how beautiful the eggs turned out. They want to do this as an activity for the YSA Ward. We hope they will ask us to come back and show them how to do it. Sister Hale wants us to come over and show her family how to do it before Easter. That should be fun!

Mother and babies resting in the shade. We found them out for a stroll last night at 9:15. I think that is too late to have your children out walking at night. Guess it is safer during the dark. They really have made the parking lot their home base. If we get 28 more ducks running around in the parking lot, it may become a potty lot.

You can see how big the babies are getting. They are on theri way to the lake. hope they all make it back safely.

We have baby duck again! I hope these new batches survive this time. The new mother had 14 in this batch. We noticed them on April 5, so they are two weeks old now. If they can survive another week or two, they will be too big for the turkey buzzards to swallow. It has been fun to check on them each day when we leave to go to work. They are staying close to the parking lot and keep in the hedges, so we are hoping that the mother is keeping them safe. There is another mother that is still on her nest. We keep watching to see if her ducklings have hatched. But not today. We're not sure just how long it takes to hatch them. But she was nesting long before the first batch hatched. Still haven't found any good duck food. Maybe I'll try some canned corn. That should make Elder Spud mad. he loves his canned corn. There I go again, talking about food.

We have just finished another week of apartment inspections. We have been training Elder and Sister Sommerfeldt from Canada. They will be taking the north part of the mission next month and we will take the south again. Then President Hale says we have to switch. Most of our friends are in the south, so that makes us sad. But fair is fair, so they say. The weather is getting up over 90 and the humidity is starting to rise. We try to find places to sit in the shade and let the breeze blow over us. Elder Graff says he should just stand in one place on every one's lawn and water the grass. Wish we could lose weight with all the moisture that keeps pouring off of us.

We found the best Mexican Food place in all of South Florida. Yes, I know we talk a lot about the food here. But this place is the best. We took Sister Hale to lunch there yesterday and she even thinks it's great. We bought one of the coupons books that the kids sell to make money for their schools and found a coupon for this place. We got one entree free with the purchase of the second one. Yippee, that make Elder Spud happy.

These pictures were taken by Alex Graff, one of the proud uncles to Braxton. He has just taken up photography and really enjoys it. He is our current High School Senior and hopefully on the trail to a mission. I would love to have him come here to South Florida. He would love the people here and all the beautiful things there are to photograph. That would give us another excuse to come back to see the Temple Dedication. We hope the ground breaking will happen this month. Anyway, President Hale is busy buying shovels and gold spray paint to have them ready when the time comes.

Braxton Riley Wilcox joined our family, Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 7:34 am. Mother Stephanie and Braxton are doing fine and are home where big sister Mia can help daddy Ruston tender them. Stephanie called us from the delivery room even before her father Chris could call and give us the news. Braxton is number three for our great grandchildren. We're glad he made it here safely.

Some of the things that I got from the talks today are: 1. Attending the temple together with your spouse will strengthen your marriage. 2. Invite the Holy Ghost to help and guide you each day as you say your morning prayers. 3. Build on the small flecks of gold (the Lord's tender mercies) to bless your life. 4. Compassion toward the people you work with will build stronger bonds. It was nice to stay home and watch the conference on TV. We're glad we elected to have AT&T bring cable service into the apartment.

We have just watched four hours of conference and Elder Spud has just left for the Priesthood Session with Elder Martin. They are meeting at the Plantaion Chapel on Old Hiatus Road. Before the first session of conference we made another list of the apartments we will visit next week for inspections. They have divided the route again and we have been given some new apartments and have had to give up some of our favorites. But, the good news is that we will make friends with other young missionaries and hopefully they will make appointments for us with their new converts. I am working on an excel spread sheet using the dates and names and wards and what we have taught for the Miami South Stake Workshop coming up on April 14. There are three things Brother Clanton hopes to use at the workshop. The number of people we have taught since the first of the year, which area of the mission they live in, and how many names we have qualified for them to take to the temple. My excel skills have come in handy, I only wish I could remember all that I use to know. I think it was 30 years ago when I first used excel. That's a lot of years and a lot of changes in technology.