Picture Day is HERE!!!

A few years ago my adorable nieces found out that my dad has had his picture taken for school ever since he began working as a school teacher. They each took one of his pictures and put them in various places throughout their house. My siblings soon followed suit, and now I believe that everyone has or has had a school picture of my dad on their fridge. (We usually take the ones that are a bit older, when he wasn't as grey.)

Today I got my first round of school pictures. I didn't really know that our school did individual teacher pictures, I thought I only had to get my picture taken for the yearbook. I had a good chuckle when I got to school today and there were a bunch of my little smiles staring up at me from my desk. While raising her figurative glass of grape juice, Kelsey says, "Here's to the first of many school pictures."

Sweet Irony

One time for Thanksgiving my family went up to our cabin and spent the holiday with my dad's brother Jeff and his family. We were not used to spending a Thanksgiving dinner away from my maternal grandmother's house, we always spent every Thanksgiving there. We always knew exactly what to expect because we had been going there forever; the adults sat in the formal dining room and the kids sat at their own 'kid table' in the kitchen. We were all okay with sitting at the kid table because it was tons of fun. My aunts all seemed to have a specialty dish for Thanksgiving and they would usually bring the same thing every year.

This year at the cabin was different. There was no kids table, and there was no set tradition to follow. My mom and my Aunt Heidi had both brought their 'half' of the feast. Aunt Heidi brought something that none of my siblings or I had ever even heard of; candied yams. About mid-way through the meal Heidi noticed that none of us took any of the yams, so she picked them up, walked around the room and plopped some on to each of our plates. Being defiant kids, I don't think that any of us even touched those yams, they all ended up in the trash. Heidi noticed this detail and was disappointed because she said that this was 'grandma's candied yam recipe'.

Ever since that day I have never had to deal with any form candied yams, until last night. For Enrichment last night one of my couselor's wanted to have a gratitude dinner. We all thought it was a great idea. She organized the dinner nicely by writing down all of the items she usually had for Thanksgiving and then assigning each sister to bring a certain dish. I bet you can guess what I was assigned to bring. I got home from school and made this huge dish of candied yams (it actually looked almost identical to the picture above, that's even what my counter top looks like). I felt bad because I had no idea exactly what they were supposed to taste like. Lucky for me my mom and sister provided me with a great recipe that turned out just fine. I tried candied yams last night for the first time. Sorry I didn't eat them sooner Heidi, they're not half bad.

Next week's culinary challenge: my Aunt Connie wants me to make a sweet potato pie and a lemon meringue pie. Sounds like a good challenge right? At least I've had both of these pies before!

Mental Note

Being the environmental enthusiast that I am, in life I attempt to follow the addage to 'reduce, reuse and recycle'. I am no nut, just an enthusiast, so I simply try to make my environmental footprint as small as possible. Some of the things I try to do are as simple as separating and recycling my trash, buying in bulk, conserving energy by keeping my thermostat low (this also helps conserve my money), turn off lights when I leave a room, walk or bike as often as possible, use non-aerosol products, etc.

Having accumulated many of these 'habits' over the years, I mostly do them without ever thinking. The other day I was using the restroom at work and the CFO came in as I was washing my hands. She is a woman in her mid-fifties who is fairly quiet and conservative. We said hello to one another and then I went to a meeting. Just a minute or so before the meeting started this woman came up to me with a huge smile on her face. She asked me if I knew what I had just done. Not knowing what she was referring to, I said that I didn't know what I had just done. She then proceeded to tell me that when I left the bathroom I turned off the light. She screamed my name but I didn't hear her. She had to sit there and repeat to herself that she could do this, she could do this.

Lucky for me that she was smiling when I reacted to this story. I just laughed and laughed. I also apologized, but I laughed a lot too. She also thought it was funny; I'm glad she has a good sense of humor.

Don't worry, this will not deter me from being the environmental enthusiast that I am. I will still turn off lights when I leave a room, I'll just have to be more mindful of who else is in the room.

Feelin' It

I may be a little biased, but the neighborhood where I grew up was the best! At least once a week all of the kids would get together and play some sport. Usually we played soccer, but we also played basketball, football, baseball and volleyball. Sometimes we even got together more than once a week. I loved growing up in this neighborhood because we were such a tight-knit group.

I didn't realize what a great thing I had until I moved away and found out that not everyone did that when they were growing up. Fortunately, I have been able to 'convert' people to get together and play sports wherever I have lived. Carson City is no exception.

Yesterday we rounded up a bunch of people from the branch and played soccer for three hours! I was in heaven! (Today I'm in a different place because of things I pulled and muscles I haven't used in a while.) It was such a blast that we plan on doing it again soon-as long as the weather holds.

Distractions

It’s been a while since I have updated the old blog. Many things have kept me from doing so. I thought the best way to update was to talk about the things that kept me from updating.

SCHOOL
We just finished our first semester last week. Since the format of our school allows students to work at their own pace, many of my students worked at an accelerated rate last week so they could get a passing grade. I was so pleased that many of them decided to care about their grades, but found it unfortunate that they waited until the last week of the semester to care. Needless to say I was bombarded with homework and grading.

Two weeks ago I helped with the school’s Halloween Dance and create a school float for the Nevada Day Parade.

Mrs. Talia and I at the dance we put on for the students at SSHS.

FAMILY
I spent the weekend before Halloween visiting with the Webbs and the Watfords. It was fun to stay up late chatting with my Aunt Connie; what an amazing woman. I attended a session at the Sacramento Temple with Connie, Tim and Sarah. That was neat. I also got to go ‘trunk or treating’ with the Watfords. I love visiting with family and getting to know them better.

I spent the weekend of Halloween with the Bosch duo. We went to Sacramento on Halloween and worked on promoting Proposition 8. We also checked out the capital building and Old Sacramento. Saturday we watched some great movies and went on an amazing walk in the rain.
My Aunt Delcia and I in Sacramento.

This is Desi, my cousin's daughter. She is the cutest cowgirl I've ever seen!

Here are two tired trick or treaters. They were both dogs for Halloween.

CHURCH
I was called as the Relief Society President a couple weeks ago. Yeah.