I've been slow to finish up the last of the handouts for Come, Follow Me, but I'm slowly getting them done! Here are the handouts for July. As always they are free. You can download them here. 

Handout for "Why are covenants important in my life?"

Handout for "What does it mean to take upon myself the name of Jesus Christ?"

Handout for "What covenants did I make at baptism?"

Journal cards: 

If you enjoy using our handouts or find them to be helpful make sure you pin and share them with your friends!

PS>>Nathanael and I moved to Georgia for a little while and you can read about what we are up to here.

Happy St. Patrick's day next week. Don't let the Polynesian looks fool you - I'm Irish. And the part of me that's the most Irish is the kissing part. Yeah I like to kiss. Probably has a lot to do with the Boyfriend I kiss. But I digress. 

Since we're talking about kissing, some of my kids (they're 8 of them) have come to me in their teens and asked, "How old do you have to be to kiss?", "When is kissing alright?", or "Is kissing wrong?" That's such a loaded question for a parent!

On the one hand you don't want to encourage it, like it's all good, go ahead, kiss whoever you want. Then on the other hand you don't want to discourage it, make them all freaked out and repressed as if it's wrong. And sometimes kids just want to find out what their parent's are going to say just so they can do the opposite. But you're not sure when they're going to use that tactic. See the problem? So I've always handled it this way - with the truth.

I tell them kissing is fun. Very fun. That I really haven't met too many people who are just starting out on the relationship road say that kissing is boring. I tell them it's exciting. I tell them it drives a mix of emotions. I tell them it's meant to lead us to greater intimacy.  I tell them once you start you really don't want to stop. I tell them that it's very hard to go in reverse once you start. Lastly, I don't tell them when it's okay to kiss. I just say, "Put it off as long as possible." That's it. I put it back on them to decide. Risky I know. But to my surprise most of them have put it off much longer than... well never mind. My kids read my blog sometimes.

Okay, so we were talking about St. Patrick's day. See how sidetracked I get with the kissing stuff? Go get my gift Kiss O' The Irish print here. Then kiss someone. And then tell me how you've handled the kissing question in your family.

There's busy good and there's busy bad. I consider learning to be one of the busy goods and I've been on a streak lately. 

• I've learned how to do editable PDFs (still working on being quick at it) which many of you have asked about and will be very cool to add to some of my future downloads. 

• I've learned some and continue to learn about surface design. They're a couple of fabric projects that I did months ago that I'm so excited about sharing with you. (I'll post soon)

• Being an artist as well, I'm learning how to take my hand drawings and make it into digital artwork. Then I can use it for so many things, some of which will make it here to LDS NEST. Plus I've gone a totally new creative direction with Shannon's Studio which has caused me to rework my brand and website. All the new things will be up in about a month. Sooner I hope. 

• Plus I'm doing a little website housecleaning here too. (Which I would love to know what you like best about LDS NEST. Or maybe you'd like to see.) 

• Then the best good busy news for us as a family is that our youngest son Wade got his mission call yesterday. We love Utah and lived there for 15 years. In fact, until about 5 years ago the St. George Mission used to be in the Provo Mission where we lived. (We moved to Missouri about 7 years ago.) Being born and raised in Provo Wade said it feels like coming home. 

Because of all my new learning I haven't finished anything for LDS NEST lately so I went back through my files and found a camp craft I haven't shared with you. It's a flower clip and the gift download is here. You'll find photo instructions and supplies list. We gave this to the YCLs and they taught it to the girls.

As I was looking through things I couldn't find another camp craft that I thought I posted. I'm sure I posted it but figured if I couldn't find it then maybe you wouldn't be able to either. So, I'm re-posting that too. That gift download is here.

Well, that's just a little update of my good busy life. How's yours going?