Two things I saw when I got home

I saw two interesting things when I got home from school/Ashley's today:
#1:

A rooster. In our car park area. We are in the middle of the city. Where did this rooster come from?

#2:

My free, yes, FREE authentic replica RSL jersey with my name and number on the back. Direct from RSL in SLC. On a whim I text entered a Gatorade RSL sweepstakes and this is what I won. It even still had the tags attached! Yay! "I look so good!"

What a good day.

My Pumpkin

This both one of the coolest carving jobs and one of my nearest to epic fail I've ever come with carving a pumpkin. Not since the foot fell off of my headless horseman have I had so many breaks in my carving. I created this design by combining two others I found online. When I printed it out I actually thought it might be too big for my pumpkin, but about half way through poking the holes I realized I could've gone significantly larger (and it would've helped so much!) What we ended up with is an awesome design slightly too small on a pumpkin slightly too small for the details of the design. I got about half of it carved out last night after ward prayer but I had a job lined up so I had to go to bed at a reasonable time. I had been carving the flesh out inside as I did the design so the light could shine through and it created a pretty unstable surface that ripped pretty easily. Due to these problems poor Doctor Who lost one eye and his thumb. I kept them and hoped to be able to reattach them after it was all carved out. Then I went to bed.
   When I got back to my pumpkin after school today all the carved stuff had dried out and shriveled up like a pumpkin does after sitting outside for a day or two. The eye and thumb had also shriveled up and I thought there was no hope for reattaching them. Then I had the brilliant idea of trying to rehydrate them I soaked them in a cup of water while I finished carving, then I soaked the whole pumpkin face in my laundry bucket in shower. It worked! It all came un-shriveled and I was able to use 2 safety pins (they were the only pointy thing I had...) to reattach his eye. In the picture you can hardly even tell the safety pins are there. I think it turned out pretty well considering all the broken pieces and such.
   The image is of the 11th doctor with his sonic screwdriver and the TARDIS is in the back. First a look at what it looks like on the computer, where you can do fine details to your heart's content...

Now, the finished product-

"Bow ties are cool!"
Not to shabby, if I say so myself. I had closer up shots, but they turned out kinda fuzzy. Fuzzy pictures makes me feel like I'm not wearing my contacts, so you'll have to make do with the farther away one. I didn't get a really amazing costume this year (I was a Philipino table tennis champ = ) so I'm glad that I had at least one bit of Halloween awesomeness.

I made soup!

So, you might remember my last attempt at a Sunday-after-church-what's-in-my-fridge meal. It turned out something like a sloppy joe stew. It was odd, but not too bad. Today was a much bigger success.

Veggie soup! My upstairs neighbor was making soup when I got home, and I thought sounded so great, so I pulled out all my left over veggies from the cheese soup I made for the murder mystery and did pretty much the same thing, but without cheese and with more broth (I had a box of chicken broth just waiting to be used...) And with peas = ) It turned out really well! I used a big handful of Italian seasoning instead of parsley, and I think I could've gone with just a small handful instead since at the bottom of each bowl I was left with some broth and lots of  flakes of spices. I didn't have any meat on hand so it's just veggies, I didn't even think to add noodles, but that's ok. It's great on it's own. I'm so excited that I made something really quite tasty without a recipe. I don't really consider myself much of a cooker so this was a triumph.

A Permutation

There are n! ways to permute n objects. That means if I have 3 objects there are 3*2*1=6 ways that I can organize them in a line. If I have 8 objects, say people, and I want to put them in a line there are 8! = 40320 different ways. Now, if there are 8 books, numbered 1-8, and they are distributed to these 8 people and these 8 people sit down in a room in basically a semi-circle beginning at the door and following the wall around (there was a big TV on the other wall, hence the semi-circle) here are a few interesting stats-

There are 16 ways for the people to have sat in order 1 thru 8 beginning anywhere in the circle and going either direction around it. That makes a 1 in 2520 chance of that happening.

There are 2 ways for the people to have sat in order 1-8 beginning at either end of the semi-circle and going around the room (avoiding the break in the circle made by the tv). This makes a 1 in 20160 chance of that happening.

There is only one way for the 8 people to sit in order 1-8 beginning at the door and going around the semi-circle. A 1 in 40320 chance.

Guess what happened at the murder mystery last night...

P.S. It was a really fun evening. We did "The Wattersdown Affair." My character was an author who's murder mystery novels were praised for their incredible view into the mind of a murderer, naturally that means my character was in fact a murderer and had the audacity to write a "fictional" book based on it. Ha. In fact there were 2 characters who were confirmed murderers in the group and neither of us did it. In fact we were numbers 1 and 2 at the first. My friend Alycen has done 2 of these with me and each time her character has ended up being an American hussy. (We do not do that on purpose! You don't know until you get there all the dirt on your character) It was pretty funny. The game takes place in 1936 England, so we all got to dress up fancy and wear hats and talk with phony English accents. It was great! If I ever get a hold of some of the pictures I'll post them.

Why I love my job!

Lately I've been having a really big problem being motivated to actually get jobs. If any one who reads this doesn't know, I am currently employed as a substitute teacher for the Logan & Cache school districts. This means that, unless I am contacted by a teacher beforehand to teach their class, I get to get up at 5:30 or 6 am to get online and try and snag a job. Some days there just aren't jobs to be had, some days there's a lot. It depends a lot on the time of year and day of the week. Mondays are usually pretty slim pickings. Anyway, I've found that it's been hard lately to get myself up and not just let myself sleep in and do whatever all day long. So, since I have my prep hour right now for the class I'm subbing, I thought I would remind myself as to why I like being a sub.

• I get days off whenever I want them. No prior notice required.
• To some extent I get to choose where I work, and with what age group. (I avoid elementary school... the kids are swell, but they can't pay attention for more than 3 min, and I'm supposed to do things just like their teacher whom I've never met... It's stressful!)
• Even if the kids are brats and the day goes horribly, 99% chance I don't have to see them again tomorrow. Or maybe ever.
• I have nights, weekends, and holidays off, always.
• I get out of the school while it's still daylight. (Big thing during the winter in Logan. Didn't always see the daylight when I was student teaching...)
• I've never seen people so excited when I tell them I can do math as do the students in the math classes I sub, especially if they have a test coming up.
• It's actually pretty good pay.
• I get to know teachers at the schools and can see how they run their classrooms and lessons.
• I get to write on the whiteboard.
• I get to watch interesting videos and learn new things from the different classes I'm over.
• You learn a lot of interesting things when you have nothing to do besides read bbc.com and wikipedia.com for several hours.
• I never have to take my work home with me.
• I get a good laugh almost every day I sub. Students are sooo funny. Especially the middle school kids.
• I can deffer difficult questions to their teacher. "I don't know. You'll have to ask your teacher when they get back" is so lovely.
• Good days remind me why I wanted to be a teacher in the first place. Helping people learn to do math is fun!

So in summary: That's what substituting is, you know. It's not just a lesson plan and a roll and a whiteboard and markers, that's what a sub needs but what subbing is... what it really is... is freedom.
And that's why I love my job.
...Today.

Stuff that has happened within the last week II

Sugared bacon wrapped water chestnuts.
Holy smokes. So good.

I never realized what cut-throat business it was trying to get someone called to a calling. I had to rock-paper-scissors the RS 2nd counselor today over a sister in our ward (for who got her for their committee). We were sitting next to each other and the said sister was speaking and we learned that we both were requesting her for a calling. I totally won, but the RS is heavy and they're reluctant give her up...

I got sick Thursady. I'm better now. Shout out to ShaReece who went and got me some Canada Dry even though it was the day before her wedding and her family was coming over soon. Also to Nate who left work to come give me a blessing. Good people!

Pearl cotton thread doesn't fit in a regular cross stitch needle. Hmm.

"Just Like Heaven"- strange movie. She's not dead, but she's haunting her apartment? And they just let him walk away after he tries to steal her body? I mean really? Even if she did wake up from a 3 month coma they still wouldn't just let him walk away. I'm just sayin...

For those not on fb- I totally won a RSL jersey with my name on the back. I entered some Gatorade-RSL sweepstakes thing through text over a month ago one day while I was grocery shopping. I was hoping for RSL tickets, but I'll take the jersey for sure! I can't wait for it to come = )

We had a stake RS meeting today. One of the stake RS counselors talked to us about being good a good wife. I realize that it's a very important thing, but doesn't it seem like a strange topic for an entire stake of single women?

At some point I would really like the opportunity to see Ashley and I at the gym from an outsider's view. I think we're pretty funny to listen to, I hope they think the same. (Who has two thumbs and is a Hufflepuff? I'm a Hufflepuff!) ((youtube it.))

Um. that's all. Have a lovely day!

Dinner

So, I got home from church and thought "What should I make for dinner?" Unable to readily think of anything to make I promptly laid down and took a long nap.

Upon waking I thought "Hmm. What could I make for dinner?" and then went upstairs and played Parcheesi with my roommates.

After the game I finally entered my kitchen and organized a dinner.
It's moments like this I wish I had gone to culinary school. I didn't have much of anything that would make anything I recognized. So I just started cooking things that were sitting in or around our fridge...
brown some hamburger...
chop some carrots and potatoes...
um... boil some carrots and potatoes...
ah, umm... drain them and pour BBQ sauce all over them.
Add browned hamburger...
Eat.
It's not to bad considering. I think I'll have to devote a little more time to my cooking skills in the future though... If only I had access to the Food Network again! I would cook a 30 minute meal with Rachel Ray every day!
Or... I guess I could just make sure I have in my kitchen the ingredients in order to make things I know how to make. That would work too... I suppose...
Oh well. Good thing I love carrots and potatoes!

The Rest of the Summer (Abridged Version)

So the plan was to write about the mountains of fun and awesomeness that happened each week at EFY this summer, but now the summer has past and I have only taken the time to detail the awesomeness of 2 weeks... Well, that's how it goes. Now for the abridged version of my summer.(It may be abridged, but this is still going to be a mammoth of a post...)

  We had one more week in Logan, in which not very much happened that I distinctly remember. We only had 2 hospital visits for fairly minor things, it was terrific! I don't remember if I mentioned about all the sick people we had during Logan 1, besides the ones who went to the hospital. We had at least 10 kids get sick during the week and spend one or more days sleeping in their room. That first overnight week was just so special. But the problems seem to have used themselves all up and Logan 2 was just swell. That week during registration Braden, my co, and our health counselors came up with a plot to sneak out and go to the midnight showing of Harry Potter 7 part 2. I volunteered to remain behind in case something did happen and we began plotting. I told them we needed a name for our secret operation and Braden said "Operation Robot Unicorn Attack". Turns out this is an actual, really simple, ridiculous, fun, stupid, time wasting, addicting game. This game went on to take over our office for a week, then we all got better. But we even got our session director playing it during down time. We had a high scorer list on the board that we kept updated.
   During the course of the week I happened to discover the way into the attic of the institute that had a door to the roof of the institute. It was one of those ceiling drop down ladder doors and the first time we tried it I was lifted up by 2 guys on my team and pulled the little ring they had to open it with. As they were lowering me I had the thought that we didn't actually know what kind of ladder it was, and I had this image of a sliding ladder coming flying out and whacking me in the face. So my finger of my right hand was stuck in the ring to open it, I was being lowered down by these boys, and I was trying to keep my face from being smashed in by a possibly sliding ladder... I wish I had a picture of it. It would be really funny. But the ladder unfolds and no damage was done. During the week we even got to use it once cuz someone lost their volleyball on the roof. The best part though is that when we told our session director about it he wanted to come up with us and see the roof! on Friday after all the kids had left we took him up there, and he took lots of pictures of our team. = ) An example is given below.

If this seems really weird go check out http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com that website provided the theme for most of our 'family pictures' throughout the summer...

   So, Logan was good, but it was time to move south. We started in SLC with a bang and had, again, 4 medical trips that week. #1. broken wire on braces. Had to call a bundle of orthodontists to find one that could fix it immediately and for free... these requirements resulted in them driving clear to the south side of SLC for it to get fixed. #2. At games night a boy with a heart condition pushes himself to hard and his heart beats like it's going to explode. Eric and Braden rush him to the hospital. #3 During pizza night (same night as games) a boy who had been sick gets worse and they think he might have appendicitis and Laurie and Jay rush him to the hospital. (I spend the evening dealing with all the fun of stupid counselors letting their kids run around like loonies by myself cuz half of my team is at the hospital. It was an eventful evening. Boys in togas, sick kids... such fun) #4 was much less impressive and I can't even remember what it was. Maybe it was pink eye kid who we had to take to get diagnosed and get meds, but it turns out he just had really bad allergies in his eyes and it wasn't contagious... hmm...
   Besides the hospital visits and the toga boys I had to get mad at during pizza night  (this was our wild week...) we had troubles all week with counselors letting their kids do whatever they wanted. We literally had kids climbing the buildings. And on Friday the counselors allowed their kids to go running through the sprinklers and do a 200+ person bridge jump (We cross the Legacy Bridge on our route to and from the institute from the dorms. It was built for the Olympics, and it's cool. If you get about 30 or so people to jump in unison on it once you can feel it wiggle and it's cool. You get 200+ kids jumping on it a lot and you get really concerned, scared drivers going underneath it.) On the one hand (the 'I am the one that's in charge...' one) it was really bad and we were super frustrated with the counselors and the way things went. On the other hand, it was really really funny. One counselor sent us a video of the madness of all the kids running through the sprinklers (in an effort to alert us to the chaos) and I have to admit I laughed a lot at it. But it certainly was our wild week of the summer. It was craziness all week long.
   On a good note, we did have tons of fun babysitting the session director's daughter a lot. The rule is that if the kid is under 2 (I think) they can bring their child with them to EFY. I actually had this session director last year in Ephriam when their baby girl was something like 3 weeks old. Her birthday was on the Saturday of this session, so that was fun.

  Then we got a week off where I went to Bear Lake for the 4th of July with Alycen and Kandi and played in the lake in wet suits and little 2 man sail boats,

and then hung out the rest of the week and slept on Ashely or Alycen's couch all week... yay.

  When we got back to EFY things kinda normal-ed out. We didn't have very many more hospital visits or crazy kids. We impressed on the counselors the importance of being responsible adults and things improved. The last 3 weeks were pretty laid back and we just got to enjoy being at EFY, without all the emergencies and chaos. The 3rd week in SLC one of the girl BCs got the start of pneumonia, but insisted that she was on meds and would be better by Tuesday. So we didn't hire a different BC and I did her duties anticipating her return... She didn't return till the next week. But it was fine that we didn't hire a different person. I had so much fun being a BC and everyone else on the team helped when my BC and coordinator duties overlapped. It was one of the best weeks.
   On the day that HP7.2 came out Braden and the HCs came up with a sneaky plan to escape without anyone knowing they were going to the movie. They all left their dorms at different times and 2 of them went and waited at predetermined locations on campus. The 3rd then drove the car to each location and picked them up. We thought we were so funny and sneaky. When we finally revealed to the BCs that they went we were expecting some sort of reaction, but they didn't really care. So much for all the sneaky-ness...
   Um, what else interesting happened... I had a dad call and yell at me because his son didn't make it into the variety show (the son refused to change the song he was playing on the guitar, but the words to the song have profanity. EFY rules don't allow this in the variety show so he didn't make it in) for about 15 minutes straight (I mean, he talked for 15 minutes straight, I couldn't get 3 words in) until I broke and told him he was offensive and (in not so few a words) a big jerk and the session director took the phone away... That was special.
  I'm sure there's more interesting stories, I just can't think of them right now so y'all are spared.

   Finally, I ended up working in Sacramento my last week, as a counselor. I was excited to see the coordinators out there who I'm really good friends with. I was not excited to drive to California. But that's where the job was, I had 3 other girls carpooling with me, so I borrowed Mom and Dad's van and we drove to Sacramento. It was great. The kids that week were so nice and great and funny. It's so nice to get to just focus on a group of the youth instead of everything. We walked all over campus, crammed ourselves into the tiny-est institute building you've ever seen, and waited in the longest meal lines you've ever seen but the cafeteria staff were the nicest of anywhere I've ever been. They were so cool. Because of these things our schedule was always in flux and we never quite knew when anything was or where, but it was kinda fun that way. It was more of an adventure = )
   At the end of the week we slept most of Saturday and then drove down to San Francisco to eat dinner and see some sights with some other counselors. When we set the GPS for San Fran we said 'Yes, let's avoid toll roads'. Turns out that was a bad choice. We discovered, after about 2 hours in the car driving to who-knows-where, that you can't actually get to San Fran in a reasonable time without going over toll roads... Ha. So we changed the GPS and got there an hour later. We ate at the sourdough bread place, went to Ghiradelli square and enjoyed wandering around Pier 39. It was a fun evening, and I learned that even in the summer, take a jacket to SF. I thankfully had mine in the car, but the other girls all bought new SF sweatshirts. Actually, they all bought matching SF sweatshirts (mostly on accident) and 3 of the boys bought the same pattern but in t-shirt form completely by coincidence. So half our group was walking around with matching sweatshirts/shirts.
   Sunday we went to sacrament meeting at 10 (yes, they didn't have a 9 am ward, how weird) and then drove home. We listened to an audio book that one of the girls had on her ipod the whole trip, but the problem was it wasn't the only audiobook, and the tracks weren't labeled in any particular manner so the whole trip home my job, as the one in shotgun, was to find the next chapter of the book. At one point we skipped 10 chapters of the book without realizing it, but we didn't really miss anything so we just kept going from there. As we neared Utah we almost met with catastrophe. I couldn't find the rest of the book! We had about 5 or 6 chapters left and I couldn't find the next track! It was very distressing. But at last the track was found and we continued on. As we neared SLC we realized we wouldn't have time to finish the book so we skipped to the second to last chapter. Then as we got into SLC we realized we had to drop off the girl who owned the ipod first! We skipped to the last chapter and made her parents wait while we finished it. Ha. We had to know what happened with the main character and his girl! Anyway, it was a fun trip, but I don't think I'll be driving anywhere far away for a while. That was enough to satisfy for a while.

  Well, there you go. The abridged (yes, it was abridged) history of my EFY summer. Whew! If you just read all of that you deserve a pat on the back and a cookie. Congratulations! Thanks for reading!

Logan 1

We only had one week of SAH EFY as a team, so we got to start our over night sessions in Logan the next week. The big thing for coordinators each week is check in, and we were expecting a mess. Usually we'd take some time on Saturday night and go through the housing lists and try to head off housing problems before the kids arrived and made it all dramatic and complicated. We were expecting a mess because we didn't get the session info with enough time to do that. We were expecting a lot of upset parents and whiny kids. It didn't happen. It was magic. The only people who had housing requests were people who didn't want to room with their friend. One was really funny. A couple moms came up and asked us if they could move their sons into a different group. You see they were, by chance (really), in the same group as their other friends, which their moms weren't happy about. They wanted them to branch out and meet new people and not spend the whole week with their regular friends. But we couldn't let the boys know that their moms were asking us to move them. So we got to pretend that some other kids needed to change and so they had to switch rooms. It was really fun. I figured it was too easy and so something was going to happen during the week. I was right. It was a pretty special week. We had a crazy girl who (probably) wasn't taking her medications and was freaking out her whole group. We ended up putting her into a group with her sister and having the counselor watch her take her meds each day.
We also had a lot of medical problems. We ended up going to the hospital 4 times that week.
1. Complex migraine- they are commonly mistaken as mini-strokes. That was exciting because her aunt and uncle came and went back in the back with her, so Laruie the HC and I got to sit in the waiting room for some sort of word on what was going on. While we were there we got to meet some really lovely people. A 5-ish year old kid, that I really couldn't tell if it was a boy or girl, wrecked his/her bike and screwed up his/her wrist. The parents had a super adorable baby just learning to walk. There was our more intimate friend who was waiting to get stitches in her hand after she put a hole in it with a nail that was sticking out of an ottoman she was moving. Her husband and kids were at some relative's house, so it was her night to kick back, relax, and read a book... Then there was the amazing elderly gentleman who rolled his car down an embankment in the rain earlier that day, probably a good 5-7 hours before, and had only come to the ER because his wife wanted him just to make sure that his neck was fine. We had a lot of good conversation while we waited till late into the evening. Finally her aunt was able to sign for her and we came back to campus. She got better that night and returned the next day.
2. A girl with diabetes had extremely high blood sugar and couldn't get it down. I didn't actually take this one to the hospital, but from what I hear it was quite a miracle that she wasn't in a more serious situation. It had all the signs of being very bad and leading to a lot of time spent in the hospital, but she was just fine after they finally got her blood sugar down.
3. Thursday morning a girl got out of bed and went to walk and proceeded to fall flat on her face. She had a boot on her left leg because she had popped a tendon in her left ankle. She'd just gotten off crutches and was rejoicing in her freedom. Naturally her other leg was taking quite the beating because it was taking all the stress off the other one. She felt the pain behind her right knee, but Eric couldn't find any problem with it, off to the hospital we go. We had previously gone to the IHC hospital, but we weren't hurrying anywhere, so we went looking for an insta-care cuz we thought there was one at the specialty hospital. There wasn't one, but we went to the specialty hospital anyway. It was so great. They got us in right away. Our nurse, Eli, was great, he got Eric and I juice to drink while we waited. It was pretty fun. It turns out she did the exact same thing to her right leg that she did to her left and had to get a boot and crutches. Yes, she had a boot on both legs. She was a really good sport about it. She had fun getting pushed around in a wheel chair and dancing on crutches.
4. Friday a girl slipped off a curb and sprained her ankle. Eric confirmed that it was only sprained, but her mom wanted us to take her in to get it checked out. So at way to late at night we got to take her to the ER and waited around to find out that it was indeed only a sprain and get her some crutches.

Whew! It was quite the busy week. I don't really have a picture to post from this week. Sorry. It was fun being back to the over night sessions and all the fun that comes along with that (pizza!). Or session director was Bro. Anderson. He was definitely a teacher. He made teacher jokes. He did a "Tangled taking it home" lesson at the end of the week. Tangled really does work quite well as an comparison to our being children of God and our purpose on earth. It's fun to watch that movie trying to see how many gospel analogies you can find. Try it. = )

Logan SAH 1

the SAH stands for Stay-at-Home, so you know.

This was the first week of the summer and it was a good warm up. SAH programs are great because the kids come at 9 am and go home at 9 pm and in between there we can do anything we so desire. There are 9 of us that will work the entire summer together as a team, Braden and I are the coordinators. Katie, Kylie, Britta, Jay, and Colby are Building Counselors (BCs). And Laurie and Eric are our Health Counselors. We all got to stay in Richard's Hall on USU campus, and it was a party. For some unknown reason they decided we needed the rooms the farthest away from either stairwell in the building and put us on the 3rd floor in the middle. We're pretty sure we were the only ones staying there the whole week. It sure got us our exercise though! I'm pretty sure Braden and I didn't do anything but help new counselors figure out their jobs the whole week. Check in was a breeze because we didn't have any housing to mess around with. We didn't have any sick kids because they either just went home or didn't come in the morning. The biggest problems we had were counselors who didn't know they had to do something or things that just come naturally with being somewhere for the first time. It was a dream. The kids were swell, the counselors were good given the situation, and no one died. Good week.
Our session director was Bro. Miller and his wife from somewhere in California. They were really fun to talk to and he was an excellent teacher. He had a lot of stories but they were always applicable. And many of them embarrassed his wife, which was really funny. He was totally clueless that it was something embarrassing until after when she would tell him. In his defense they were usually only mild, but she gets embarrassed easily. But that all just made it more fun for the rest of us. (That sounds mean doesn't it... but it's true) I think one of the best things of being a coordinator is getting to spend so much time with the session director and his wife. It's fun to see how different married couples interact and hear about some of the the lessons they've learned. (and hear all their funny/embarrassing stories = )
One of the best parts of the SAH is that after the kids leave we can all go out and get food. Dinner at EFY is really early. It's even earlier at the SAH sessions, 4:30-5:30... by the time the kids leave we're all starving, so usually we'd get whoever wanted to come and go get something to eat and hang out for a while. You would think that having the kids go home at 9 we would get more sleep. Ha. Wrong. I think I came out of that week just as tired as ever. But that's life at EFY and that's part of why we love it = )
Here is a picture of us eating greasy Mexican food on Thursday

 and one of us after cleaning the institute on Friday after the kids went home.

Once we finished cleaning we took advantage of the giant screen and projector and watched How to Train Your Dragon while we ate our nightly meal. Ah, good times. Braden says that if he ever does EFY again he's only doing SAH because they're so easy and fun. It's true.

EFY-ing

Currently I am sitting outside of my dorm building while the youth prepare their cheer and banner for games night. I was thinking about how exciting EFY is and how I have failed to share any of it with anyone who chooses to actually read my blog from time to time. I probably will only have a few minutes before I have to go set up, so I may not get very far, but I want to explain some of what my job is this summer.
  It's been really different being a coordinator. (that's my job) In short my companion, Braden, and I are the top people at our session of EFY each week. We do most of our work on the weekend and Monday. Saturday we get everything ready for the next week. Sunday we do counselor training and conduct the fireside. Monday we deal with all the upset parents because they think their kid isn't getting what they want. The rest of the week we conduct a meeting every other day and do whatever else people need done. The best part of the job is Wednesday at games night we get to be judges for the banner and cheer competition. We get to watch all of the cheers and judge all of them and the banners each group of youth prepare and pick 3 from each age group to do their cheers for everyone, and 3 winning banners from each age group as well. It's fun. Sometimes the cheers are really imaginative and funny. I feel bad sometimes that we can only pick 3 because there are others that are so funny and good. So being a coordinator is very different from any other EFY job I've had before. It's a lot fewer regular duties and a lot less teaching time, and a lot more time trying to find answers to questions I don't actually know the answer to. But it's been pretty good so far. We're working with a lot of new counselors so that's a fun adventure too. On one hand it's harder because they don't already know all the nuances of the job, but it's been really great for the most part. They are un-tainted by years of getting away with things and how it's been done in the past. Now we get to be the ones to mold them into the EFY counselors of our dreams. I hope we're doing an ok job.
 Anyway, time to go judge some cheers and banners! More to come about the adventures had here at EFY.

Ah, summer

Wow. What a spring. It was so full of surprises. And rain. It stayed downright chilly here until June. Really, I think June 1 was the first day with decent weather since finals week! I was so disappointed in the weather because it ruined all my plans for the month of May. They were to spend as much time outside doing fun things as possible. To fill my outdoors quota for the next 2 months when I'd be doing EFY. Now, I love EFY. I think it's a great job and I'm excited to get started again tomorrow. However it has a few drawbacks- no shorts, no time for hiking, etc. during the week. “Save it for Saturday” goes for hiking and swimming and many other things at EFY. So my plan was to get my fill of it in May then go happily (and tan-ly) into EFY come June. Well, I'm pretty sure there was still snow on most of the hikes up Logan Canyon until this week. No go. Oh well. I've been enjoying the wonderful weather this week, and I hope it keeps it up!

It's been especially nice to have the good weather while we've been cleaning the house and moving everything out. Most people think of fun and vacations and such when they think of summer break. I think of work and moving. That sounds really sad. But this year it's been a bit worse than usual. I have to think about work more than in the past since I'm a coordinator, and spent more time moving and cleaning and packing stuff than ever because everyone in the house was moving out. My roommate that owns the house, Becky, got engaged in December and got married to day to a man from Mississippi, Shane. So she's going to rent out the house as a whole and move to Mississippi. We didn't want to do that since 2 of the 3 of us would be gone all week to different camps, so we all just moved out. Kandi moved all her stuff back to her Mom's, and Dana moved in with our friend Alycen. I ended up with a unique situation. I have a friend, Cassie, who is doing EFY in Salt Lake & Orem all summer but was unable to sell her contract which goes through July. So she has offered to let me “apartment sit” since she doesn't have any roommates staying at the house right now. So I loaded all my stuff into the garage and now have somewhere to stay on the odd weekend I'm not housed by EFY. Lovely. It's really weird thinking that I won't be going home to Becky's house tonight. Oh well. Tomorrow I'll move into EFY and then things really get going. Ah, summer...

 (All my stuff excepting what I took to EFY stacked in Cassie's garage.)

P.S. This was intended to be published on Saturday, 6/4/11 but I didn't have internet access, so it didn't happen. Rough thing about blogs, you need internet...

Jane knows...

"What are men to rocks and mountains?"
You know, Jane Austen really hit it right on the nose.
I would just add a bit and then it would be perfect:
"What are men to rocks and mountains and warm summer days spent outside with a good book?"
Nothing Jane, nothing.


P.S. The book was "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society". Sounds strange, but is an excellent read. Excellent.

P.P.S. This was originally intended to be published on 6/2/11 but in the flurry of moving it didn't happen.

Wishlist

Since my birthday is less than a week away I'm assuming everyone who's going to buy a birthday present already has done so, thus making this wish list a little useless, but I thought I put it up anyway... It's pretty short, but mostly more expensive things that I wish I could buy myself.  So maybe it'll just be a general wish list to the universe. Hmm, and I guess since this is now just a general wish list to the universe I can include some things you couldn't really give as a birthday gift... Well, here we go:

Things I would like:

• Ukulele
• running shoes (new ones, mine are pretty worn out)
• rock climbing stuff (shoes first, than a harness and chalk bag)
• a road bike
• Bike repair/maintenance kit
• a trip to anywhere
• X-country ski poles (mine are too short)
• mp3 player (one has a screen like an ipod)
• gas for my car
• a direction
• a job (yes, I know they're out there, what I'm wishing for here is for one to just fall into my lap all ready to go. Not going to happen, I know... back to my applications)
• fresh yummy corn on the cob, watermelon, and bbq chicken.
• cooking school
• weekend backpack
• overnight backpack
• bike rack for my car
• a map of the world (political boundaries)
• map of the USA
• a case of root beer milk from Gosners = )
• ...

This is your life!

    So- this actually happened earlier today. It was great. Everyone else has little kid stories to tell, I have to do with the strange things that come out of mine and my roommate's mouths = )
    In honor of Prince William & Kate Middleton's wedding Dana announced that she wanted to watch "The Prince & Me", just for fun. I remembered and began to recount a conversation I had with a friend of ours named Court at our last FHE. I asked him if he liked car racing (it's a long story) and he said no, but it might be fun to drive race cars. Court works on his family's farm out in Richmond so when he said he might like to drive I had this image of him out on his family's farm racing around, which led me to another thought which I tried to relate to Court. There's a scene in the "Prince & Me" where the main girl's family does lawn mower race with their neighbors. So the conversation went as follows:

"I feel like we need to watch The Prince and Me in honor of William and Kate"
"Ah, the Prince & Me. At FHE I was trying to tell Court about the lawn mower races so I asked him 'Have you ever seen The Prince & Me?' and he said no..."
"Well yeah, he's a dude!"
"Well I don't know, maybe he had a girlfriend once!..."
At which point we busted up laughing. If you don't think it's funny try saying it with a different emphasis or accent... = ) There now, isn't that funny? Ha!
   As I was enjoying the funniness of my house I thought about how some people think that when we get to heaven there'll be a big 'life review' where we go over everything that ever happened in our live whether in book or movie form... (ooh, my life flashed before me eyes! 'Twas very boring...) And I desperately hope that when we do that God will be so kind as to include a blooper reel. A collection of all of the awesomely funny things we said or did. I hope they'll be as funny in heaven (of course he'll include only the ones that are truly funny). Just think of a better way to enter heaven than with a review of all of the awesome moments of life. I suppose it should not only include the funny things, but still, they would make a really good contribution.
Anyway, that's kinda a random post, but I felt like saying something cuz I haven't posted in a loooong time, and it truly was very funny. So just think of this next time something great happens in life. Maybe it will be in your "life review" one day.

Thought had while reading a book

So Pride and Prejudice, right. We're talking the original novel here. It's definitely an excellent work of literature and one of the most beloved novels of all time (Probably made so mostly by women who hope for some Mr. Darcy to come sweep them off their feet) (Though I've decided that a Mr. Knightly would  . Yet I don't think you'll ever see it among the list of book to read for high school English. (ok, you may see it on some reading lists, but I don't think it's one ever done as a class unit) In fact I think that if I proposed the idea of making a bunch of high school boys read a 18th century romantic novel to any administration I'd probably get laughed at. But here's my story-

This last week I was substituting for Mr. Weeks whom I had worked with last semester doing my student teaching in two of his geometry classes. I taught his class Wednesday and Thursday and because he offered to pay me, I went to parent teacher conference to hand out grade reports and record any questions or concerns I couldn't answer. Mr. Weeks teaches not only math, but also computer programming. Well, I don't know to much about computer programming and the kids were pretty self sufficient in those classes so I didn't really have a lot to do during those periods. On Thursday I was particularly bored during the last hour of computer programming and decided to read a book on the ipad that Mr. Weeks had left and let me use while he was gone. (they're pretty darn cool, but I wouldn't trade in my laptop for one...) There's an app on there that is pretty much a small library. I browsed through the available/suggested books and decided I should pick something I'd read before so I wouldn't get sucked into it and neglect my duties as his substitute to walk around and make sure no one had died. I selected one of my favorites- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Along with enjoying the story, for many reasons, I also find that I like the language she uses and the way that she writes. Her humor is so subtle some times I love it. Anyway- I began reading somewhere close to 2/3 of the way through just where the youngest daughter Lydia elopes with the insidious Mr. Wickham. As I read and continued to read during parent teacher conference I was struck by the variety of characters in the novel and the moral lessons each has for us. I'm not much of one to do the english class "What did the author really intend for us to learn here" as I think that most people probably just wrote a good novel, and as with anything we can learn from it and make application. This has become a really long paragraph. Allow me to break...

So, I'm reading and I realize, so many of the lessons to be learned from this book are right in line with the troubles ailing our society in general today! Silly people who only think about themselves and immediate gratification. People who are proud for whatever reason and see people and things beneath them that aren't actually. The importance of family and personal values. We see in so many of the characters the flaws that our society exhibits en mass. I wonder if high school students were to examine the behavior of Lydia and Wickham if they wouldn't see some of themselves, or maybe in the character of Kitty or Mary, or Caroline Bingley and Mr. and Mrs. Hurst. Even in comparing ourselves to the main characters of Elizabeth or Darcy there is good and ill in their characters, what do we have in common? What kind of person would we ultimately like to be? One of the reasons I so much enjoy this novel is because it's wide cast of characters represents almost everyone. Sometimes we'll be like different characters at different times in our lives, but they're very good generalizations of people as a whole. Now, Pride and Prejudice isn't the Bible or Book of Mormon that obviously teach us about what we should strive to become by teaching us about Christ and Christlike people, but you can't read the Book of Mormon in a high school english class...

Um, so there you have it. I think I've about run my course on this really strange post. Just think about that next time you dive in to a seemingly superficial book. You can find application in anything...

The flower

So, back before Christmas when Mom came up to visit she brought me and Ashley some amaryllis flower sets. They come in a box and have the soil (in a really cool dehydrated disk- add water and it expands to fill the whole pot! It's amazing!), pot, and flower bulb all ready to go. I took a really long time to getting around to planting it, but when I finally did, it sure did surprise! I guess Mom's was a dud and didn't grow much, Ashley's grew and bloomed, but was pretty short, but mine shot up like a rocket, two tall skinny stems that just can't quite stay straight. I had to rotate it every day to help it grow more straight.

See how pretty it is? Lovely. Crooked but lovely. If you look carefully you can see the 3rd branch shooting up behind the shorter one. All seemed to be going well until one morning we came upstairs to find the flower fallen over and a bunch of dirt spilled all over the ground. Well, it damaged the flower stems and they just couldn't quite stay upright anymore. So I gave it a little help:

 Note brown pipe cleaner helping one individual stem stay upright, the rope lashing the pot/bulb to the table to keep the bulb upright and the pot firmly planted on the desk so it won't fall over any more. And finally, the ski poles used to prop up the flowers so they wouldn't sag and break the stems. Lovely, no? Oh it get's better. It fell over again. All over Dana's guitar. But I was not ready to give up! The 3rd branch was growing still. I wanted to see it bloom! So I helped it out again!

Isn't is wonderful! Creative if you ask me = ) That's a broom handle shoved between the desk and wall to stay still. The flowers that fell off when it fell I piled up in the pot as a memorial to it's trials. And yes, yes those are kabob skewers taped to the flower with masking tape to keep the stalks from falling over. They'd sustained substantial damage in the most recent crash. The sticks were a great support. But the saga does not end there!

 Alas, the sight that greeted us in the morning.

 And the fix. The new blooms are quite delightful. Definitely worth keeping this poor flower in one piece for. You're probably thinking "Good gracious. How many pictures is she going to post of this one silly flower?!" Answer: only one more.

Um, I think I'm done fixing it. Thank you flower. You have been beautiful. You had a life of trials, but brought joy to many. R.I.P.

Let me explain...

...No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
1) blog post #1
The setting: I have been contemplating this whole blog thing for a long time, and wanted a really good, fitting blog name for it. Well, turns out that it's not the most pressing thing in my life and I have had a hard time thinking of a name that I felt worked for my blog. I know it's not that big a deal, but I still wanted to have one I liked.
Scene 1: (USU dorms, summer 2010) I decided I'm going to blog and write the above post with the intent of creating the blog next time I have a few minutes and posting it. It doesn't happen and the entry just gets saved to my computer.
Scene 2: (Logan, yesterday) I decided again that I should actually do this whole blog thing. I get on after church while I'm eating dinner and spend the entire break between church and ward prayer not coming up with a name for my blog. Feel like I waste a lot of time on this pretty minor detail...
Scene 3: (Logan, today) I come up with a name and create the blog. I pull the old post from my files where it was saved an posted it first, cuz that's what it was meant to be, the first blog post. I haven't actually read it since I wrote it I think, so I hope it makes sense still = )

2) Rome.
It might seem strange, considering I've never actually been to Rome, that "always a roman" would be my blog address, and the title of the blog what it is. So, here's the thing: Rome is the name of the house I live in. As you walk in the door you will immediately notice a big banner hanging in our living room that says "When in Rome..." and we change the ending for every party or occasion we celebrate. So, all the inhabitants of the house are naturally called "romans", and once a roman, always a roman. Hence the web address, and the title.

So there you have it. Two really long, random posts to start off with. In the future they'll probably not be so long, but probably just as random. That's just how I roll.

#1

SO, I have decided to start a blog. I personally believe that my life is extremely ordinary and don't know really what I'll ever have to write about or who will want to read it, but a few things have prompted me over that last few weeks to start writing. I feel like recounting these things, so I will:

First off, my family has a little tradition that began back when my oldest sisters got married and our family got a little more spread out. We've never been great phone talkers, except for my mom who can talk to her mom for hours on end, so we began to write letters each Sunday detailing the events of the previous week and the things we've learned and enjoyed. Sandra, my second oldest sister, is not very good at sending these e-mails so she began a blog and will just post things periodically about her life, kids, husband, and various other adventures. I find that I also am not very good at writing these e-mails. Not because I'm communicationally challenged like Sandra is (love ya babe!) but because I don't feel like I have that much t o say at the end of each week. I don't have a husband in school/work, kids with funny stories, or even grand adventures with my friends. I feel, whether this is correct or not, that my life is just full of the day to day ordinary things that are of no interest to anyone not directly connected to the situation so I feel bad making people read an email full of thins they probably have no interest in besides the fact that it means I am alive and well. So now I can yack away and people can keep up on my life as much as they wish without me feeling like I am inflicting my random thoughts on anyone.

Also I find that I am not much of a journal keeper. I do frequently however have thoughts I would like to record whether or not anyone wants to read them. I know that this blog is not really a replacement for the daily journal I am not keeping (I do keep a study journal quite faithfully) but it will at least be a support to the journal I don't write in. And who knows, maybe I'll find I enjoy detailing my days so much I will start to keep a real journal.

One more thing that I like about the idea of a blog came from facebook this last week or two. I was on facebook and saw that a friend of mine who was a session director's wife and was with us for a week at EFY had a blog. I opened it just to see what it was like and ended up engrossed in reading about her life and struggles and family. I learned so much about her just by reading her blog. I was amazed. I'm not sure why this encouraged me to write a blog, I would think that it would on the contrary deter me from writing one because I am naturally a very private person. However it did encourage the idea of a blog and pointed out another usefulness of it.

The final prompting came today. For several months now I have been contemplating this thought of keeping a blog. This summer I've been doing EFY again and was sitting in my dorm room in Logan today after church and started watching Mormon Messages on lds.org. There's one called “My New Life” that is all about a mom who was in a small plane crash that she and her husband survived but are now not as pretty anymore. It's really cute. But in it she talks about writing a blog and the therapy it provided as she copes with the changes and challenges of her new life. Now, I don't need therapy (I think...) but as I watched it the idea of a blog really stuck out to me again. In the past the idea has come up. I've even looked at a couple different blog hosting sites online, but have never really started one. In fact I'm writing this post before I even have a blog to post it on. But after watching that video I kept thinking of what I would do with a blog and what I would say, and I want this to be my first post, so here you go.

I hope you enjoy. If not, you don't have to read it. And that's why I love blogs.