Jordan Gets Baptized!

Sounds like a great name for a book. Maybe a future joint venture for Jo & I? His new love is writing & I'm not terrible at illustrations, so maybe...

I'm so far behind in the blogging world, I don't know if I'll ever catch up! I guess I'll start with the recent baptism of Jordan.

We were able to have a few family members come to town for the big day, which was really nice. Both my parents, Dave's mom, & my younger brother Grant (just got home from a mission in the Phillipines) came out to witness the special occassion.

Jordan, waiting for the font to fill with water.

My Mom, Dad, & Ty

Dave & Logan, who looks like he's devising a plan of sorts.

Ty & Grant, goofing off.

Jojo & Daddo (as Jo used to call him)

Just before the baptism.

Amazingly, I captured a true Logan-look. He's totally a Mikey & that grin proves it!

Dave & my Dad goofing off. Nice grills!

Watching the water rise.

So handsome in his Sunday best!

Jojo & his Yaya (Dave's mom)

Jo, with the honored mom. :)

Proud parents. :)

My Mom, Dad, & Jordan.

On August 31, 2010, Jordan was officially baptized & confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I'm so proud of him for making the decision to join the true church of Christ!

Jordan's thrilled to be able to go to Scouts, finally. He's been looking forward to it for some time now & it couldn't have come soon enough!

Triple 7's

While at a support group meeting the other night, one of the parents mentioned something about triple 7's. I had no idea what that meant, & we're not supposed to interrupt, so thankfully the group leader brought it up afterward & had another parent clarify what this meant.

This man's Stake President made promises to the people of his Stake that if they followed these "triple 7's", their troubles would seem to ease & their ability to handle the trials that came their way would increase.

Triple 7's means you must do 3 things a day, 7 days a week. Those three things are, personal morning prayer, scripture study, personal evening prayer.

Such a simple way to put something that can have such a great effect on people's lives! I was impressed with its simplicity & wanted to always remember this. It's something that's become habit for me over the past year, so I know that there is most definitely a difference many aspects in my life, from my testimony, to my faith, to my love of those around me. So much good can come from those 3 simple things!

New Calling

I'm sad to be leaving my sweet little Sunbeams, but I'm excited about my new calling as the ward Provident Living Specialist! This is my first calling outside of Primary (other than being a Visiting Teaching Supervisor while I was also a Nursery worker, so I'm not sure if that counts). Ever. I'll be out of my element, for sure!

I still kind of see Relief Society as the place my mom goes, but not so much me. It's funny because I'm certainly old enough to go, yet I think it will take some time before I feel like that's where I'm supposed to be. What in the world am I going to do without a gaggle of kids vying for my attention!?

I don't have much of a food storage, & I'm terrible at rotating. I don't know much about emergency preparedness or survival should a serious emergency arise, so this opportunity is exciting to me. I'm always up for learning new & helpful things. I've been so involved with learning about the various uses of herbs & essential oils for the past decade, so now it's time to expand my brain a bit & gain more knowledge to share. Hopefully I can do that in a way that doesn't make me seem like a know-it-all (I fear I come across that way sometimes), & be able to get others excited about learning & implementing what they learn into their homes & families. :D

Exciting times!! :)

Stake Roadshow

This past week, all of our wards youth & their leaders' hard work came to fruition. They put on a production of Grease entitled It's Hip to be Square. Though I might be slightly biased, I have to say they totally rocked!! Tyler played 'Danny' & sang his parts nearly to perfection.

They all gathered together, the excitement nearly tangible, in a few of the rooms before their performance time.
The only pics I got were taken after the performance. I video taped it but can't find my fire wire to download it to share (yet).

Karen Crowder, the woman-in-charge, was telling them what a great job they all did. I was so proud, my cheeks hurt by the end of it all, from all the smiling I did that night! The man in Blue beside Karen is our Bishop. That smile you see on his face is nearly permanent. I was just telling Dave how I like to watch him when he doesn't know it (sounds kinda creepy, but it's really not). He seems to always have this smile on his face that looks to be a mixture amusement from a funny inside joke & a radiant joy that can't contain itself inside him. His mood/attitude is infectious & just watching him makes me smile. Love that man! :)

My Mom was able to fly in to see the Roadshow. She, too, was impressed with Ty's mad singing skills! :)

Bart Yeates, telling Ty what a great job he did.


Braden, Justin, & Brandon. Justin did an AMAZING job!! His energy level made me want to get up & dance, too! Scary thought. LOL


Ty & I....I was beaming with pride! :)


Looking handsome & relaxed.


Ty, with one of his greaser buddies, Brandon.

After it was all said & done, my Mom & I took Ty out for a celebratory dinner at Outback. Ty watched the performance while we waited for our food, then made googly eyes at the hostess & his burger (not at the same time, fortunately).

In all it was a lot of fun & I'm so glad Ty was able to be a part of it. A HUGE THANKS to everyone who did anything to help out in this production. It took a lot of patience & diligence to get to this weekend & I'm so thankful for the dedicated, really great people in our ward.

Preschool

Days 1 & 2 have been a SMASHING success!! I don't expect the trend to continue (not pessimistic, just realistic), but for now I'm enjoying it.

I'm feeling like a really bad mom, though. I keep forgetting to take Logan & Hayleah's pictures, & pics of their new classroom, to post but I'll try harder tomorrow.

We switched Jo back to his old class due to some GROSS misrepresentations & outright omitting of the facts on behalf of the school.

Slightly off topic, but my Mom used to tell me even if you don't outright lie, it's still a lie if you leave out the truth! Someone must have missed class the day they taught that one!!

Anyway, Jo's happy as a clam & had a great day hanging out with me & later going to the park for our Wards playgroup. It was a fun day for me too. And the weather has been absolutely GORGEOUS!!

LOVE the fall!! :)

Castings & sharing the Gospel

I've been a life casting artist for the past 3 years now but I have been doing it very sporadically. I'm the type of person that doesn't want to turn a hobby in to a business (though this was never intended to be anything but a business) for fear of it getting old & making me not love it anymore.

It did get old for a while & honestly very overwhelming. I slipped in to a funk with all of it when it seemed all my business came from Candlelighters. I love the ladies over there, but when every child I took a cast of was guaranteed to either be gone within hours or had already passed away, it weighed on me too much.

Dealing with the babies who are soon to leave this world takes a huge emotional toll on me. I'm very much empathic & I haven't learned to protect myself from other people's emotions. A year ago I would have scoffed at someone who said they were empathic. I didn't know what it meant to have this "gift", & didn't believe it really existed until it came to my attention that people actually deal with this on a daily basis.

I've always been a sucker for a happy emotional climate. On the flip side of that, when I'm around negativity I tend to get sucked in to that as well & I begin to feel negative very quickly. The grief exuded from the loved ones of children with cancer, who have just left this world or are about to leave it, is something anyone can see & feel, if you're near enough. I just can't seem to help taking part in feeling it right alongside them, when I'm near enough. Almost every one's empathic to a degree, I think. It's when you can't shake the negative feelings that it becomes a problem.

There have only ever been two times when I have done castings on kids with cancer where the families weren't in extreme emotional turmoil. It happens to be that both of these families were LDS. I really believe losing a child would be one of the most emotionally difficult, heart wrenching experiences a parent could ever go through. From my experience, I've come to the conclusion knowing about & believing in the Plan of Salvation makes all the difference in the world for these families.

Seeing the families that don't have this knowledge makes me want to share it with them SO badly. I just haven't figured out yet how to make that happen. Maybe I need to stock up on the movie Together Forever, collect addresses of the families I've served & send the video to them.

Lately I've had business of the happier kind. I've been casting the hands & feet of very ALIVE babies lately. Babies make me happy. Especially the healthy ones. There's a small sea of tiny hands & feet on my counter right now as well as a gorgeous belly casting that's hanging out in my garage, all waiting to be finished. It's times like this, when I'm able to make a little spending money for my family & get to spend time with new mom's & their sweet little babes, that make my "job" not a job at all. I love what I do! :)

So excited!!

One of my favorite families from the Desert View Ward moved in to our ward! Rayleen & I have served together in the Nursery in the past & we both moved in to the DV ward at the same time. She's an amazingly sweet sister & I'm so glad to have a friend I've known for the past 5 years in my new ward.

As a side note, they released the other girl that was working in the Nursery with me & have someone new coming in but they didn't officially call her in yet so I'm in the dark as to who it is. Dave went to his first Ward Council meeting a few weeks ago & I'm pretty sure he knows who it is. I hate it when he knows something like that & I don't! :P He might as well dance around, singing "I know something you don't know" while he's at it.

I'm excited to find out who it is. And I really hope she's a bit more dependable than the last person. Not to say anything bad about her because she's a really nice girl & the kids always love her; just that she's a little flaky. I understand flaky & it's been an uphill battle for me to change my ways. I'd just love to have someone in there who will be there each week & enjoys it as much as I do. That's not asking too much, is it?

Ward Ice Cream Social & Game Night Tonight!

This will be our first activity since Dave was called as the Activities Dude. I'm hoping everything pans out & everyone has a good time. The young men are also doing a car wash fund raiser while we're feeding every one's faces & making them play games they would probably rather not, so at least some good will come of it! LOL

I'm still leaning more towards my zombie-side, with a muscle relaxant hangover, but hopefully I can function enough to get things done today. Dave has to work & the committee people aren't returning my calls (they're not the only ones....I think I'm going to stop leaving messages & just start calling people every hour as needed :P) so it looks like I'm the one doing the set up. I figure as long as I'm not stuck with the tear down & clean up, I'm all good. :)

Also, I think the threat of the crazies has passed so I'm floundering over whether or not to go public with my blog again. I don't prefer it this way & I think the crazy *ahem* lady has focused her attention elsewhere.

Scout Camp Fundraising

This year they're going on the trip of all trips! It will involve white water rafting, from what I'm told. I can't remember the exact details, just that it sounded like a trip even I would want to go on! Then they told me the cost.

Why must everything good & fun be so expensive!?

Luckily, the leaders came up with a plan to get the boys to raise some of the money on their own. Though, being the teenage boys that they are, Ty doesn't seem to be entirely motivated. I've had to push a bit to get him going & even found him his first "job" to earn some cash to help pay for the trip.

I dropped Dave at his bosses house earlier this week so they could head off for a round of golf. His yard had some mamma-jamma-sized weeds & their kids & even some cousins hanging out all over the yard. His tree was looking overgrown too, so I asked him if he'd be interested in Ty coming over to clean things up for him. He told me to send him over but we never discussed the price.

We went over there yesterday morning & I helped Ty get things done. It took 3 hours, several (freaking) splinters, a kind neighbor who took pity on us & loaned us her leaf blower, telling us it was too hot to be doing this (no kidding), some seriously sore muscles & a huge crick in my neck to get it done. But it's done.

He got home from golfing & though Ty did such a good job that he gave him a $20 bonus! Between the yard work & some babysitting Ty's done for us, he's earned over $100 to go towards camp!!

Momma's happy. :)

Now I just need Dave to become a chiropractor & the life will be perfect.