Lesson

I got called to be a teacher and it is horrifying! Everyone keeps telling me that it will get easier, but they are lying. It is horrifying every sunday.

As if I wasn't already scared to death, our stake decided to change the way lessons work and did away with the teaching manual. Now I have a topic, such as "The Godhead" and I have free reign from there. I think this is a little too much freedom for my liking.

The up side is that I get to spend a little extra time learning about my Heavenly Father, my Savior, and my potential. (Sounds pretty selfish. Probably because it is.) Maybe, if I'm lucky, I can share a little of that with those I teach. Maybe....

This is a clip I would like to share for my next lesson, but my room doesn't get internet, so I won't be able to. So, you can enjoy it here!

Instead of the movie, I think I'll measure people's bodies instead.

Sounds like fun to me  :)

Les Miserables

Love this

I've already seen it twice.

This Christmas Season

Happy Birthday To Me!

Apparently, I left my facebook open at some boys apartment.

My mistake.

This is what I got:

New Profile Picture

New Status

made me "Like" things and made me from Mount Gay, Virginia

 And the best part....

They made it my birthday!

It was so much fun! People wished me a happy birthday all through church. Bishop even joked about it at tithing settlement! The best was my family all singing Happy Birthday to me before family dinner. They ate apple pie to celebrate. Too bad I wasn't there to celebrate with them!

I was the best un-birthday ever!

p.s.  notice the little boxes instead of words? they also changed the language, so i can't figure out how to change some of it back.
awesome.

Coeur d' Alene Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving I went to Coeur d' Alene with my parents and sister to visit my brother and his cute family. Love them!

One of my favorite parts was the annual gingerbread house competition. We split into two teams and put our creativity to work! I am now going to be lazy and give you an excerpt from my brother's blog:

"And of course, we had our Annual Gingerbread House Contest! This is where you come in. We have two teams. We'll call them "Team A" and "Team B." Please look at both, read the descriptions, and then VOTE by leaving a comment on this blog or on one our our Facebook pages. Really, we have a full year of bragging rights at stake here, so don't take this lightly."

Please vote! I need those bragging rights, people  :)

You can vote on my blog or facebook as well. I'll post the winner in after all the votes have been counted. 

Guys, this is so fun! 

Vote!

ok

Well, I was going to write more about how great Thanksgiving was and post pictures on here, but apparently I am "out of space" again. 

Lame! 

But if you want to see some disgusting pictures of me (I loose all hygiene when I travel) and my cute nieces and nephew, you can just read my brother's blog for that too. He's a better writer than I am anyway.

oh yeah, and one more thing....

Vote!

(All links in this post will lead you to the same place, where you can vote.... or here on my blog. or my facebook)

(In case you didn't know, anything yellow is a link)

(And here's the link again, if you still haven't voted)

Thank you and goodnight.

Firehouse

Last night, a group of us went to Firehouse for dinner to help raise money for Deaf Education. 

We're all about a good cause  :)

We were so loud! 

Luckily we were the only ones left in the building, so our noise volume only disturbed the poor workers cleaning up around us.

It was so fun!

I promise we're not drunk  :)

The Neighbors

Soo.... this ended up being kind of a long post. oops.

A few months ago, we got new neighbors.
They are three guys - Rich, Jake, and Corey - who are all going to grad school and already have good jobs. They are all very charismatic.
I was immediately impressed.

We gave each other tours of our houses. They have two deer heads and a foosball table. In their garage they have 2 trucks, 4 four wheelers, a cabinet, 2 garbage cans, and I think they also might have 2 dirt bikes or something like that. All in their garage. Crazy! 

So now that you get an idea of who these guys are, I'll tell you what happened.

Nothing.

Nothing happened.

After our initial meeting and house tours, we never really did or even saw any of them again. 

Sometimes we would think, we should invite the neighbors to our game/movie night or whatever the occasion might have been.
But they were never even home!

However, on the rare occasions that we did see each other at church or ward prayer, they were always very good at saying, "Hey neighbor!" (It's a good thing they were good at this because I honestly wouldn't have had a clue who they were otherwise. That's how often we saw them.) Then we would talk - I would give him a hard time about never being home and being bad neighbors, and he would say "Just come over!" But I don't "just come over" because I think it's awkward, so nothing ever happened.
And that was how it went. The end.

After a while, we gave up on ever being actual friends with the neighbors. They were too out of our league.
Jake had gotten a girlfriend, so he was a lost cause. Corey traveled a lot for work and Rich was busy with school.
They would just be nice acquaintance friends and we would be happy with that.

Then, last Monday, we went to home evening at the Bishop's house where we were combined with another group, and who do you think was there - Corey! (the good news is I actually recognized him this time) He greeted us with his usual "Hey neighbor!" and we had our standard conversation. He told us to "just come over!" I responded with "You're never home! How about you guys come over! It would probably work better." And that was it.

Chelsey and I joked, "What if they actually came over. Haha! That would never happen!"

But, the next night around 10:30 something happened. There was a faint buzzing noise that sounded through the house. It was odd and it took me a while to identify the sound as our doorbell, which is apparently broken. 

It was Corey! 

I just stared at him. I think I was in shock that he was actually at my door! I finally offered him a brownie, which I had made earlier that day. We talked for a while and then we said goodnight and he went home. I was amazed! He had actually come over!
I went upstairs to share my shock with Chelsey who was equally as surprised.
Were we were actually making friends with the neighbors? Maybe it was just a fluke. Better not get our hopes up.

Thursday, Richard added me as a friend on Facebook! I was making real progress! It was probably the most exciting part of my day.... until around 10:30 that night when the doorbell/buzzer went off again. This time it was Corey and Rich! Holy smokes! We talked and they casually invited us over for Sunday to watch Home Improvement which they apparently watch on a regular basis. I couldn't tell if it was a real invitation, or just a "one day that might happen" kind of an invitation. We decided to wait and see if they re-invited us.

Friday, I was at work, but apparently Rich and Corey showed up and jumped Cate's car for her. 

Tonight (Sunday) Cate was playing nintendo and I was working on a photo shoot I did yesterday. Around 10:30 there came a now familiar buzzing sound. Corey had come to invite us to watch Home Improvement! I told him we were playing nintendo and that was all it took. Who can pass up the original Mario!? I tell you what, Corey has some impressive Mario skills.

So, in conclusion, I don't know what happened, but we are suddenly friends with the neighbors!
And I think they're pretty cool. 

It is exciting  :)



p.s  I tried to find a Mr Wilson "Howdy Ho Neighbor!" but I guess youtube decided not to put any of those clips up. oh well.