Weekly roundup

I love holiday decorations. I always have. Now that we have only bigs, the sweet little kid art is all the more fun to display. 

Matt found a sudoku book to work on during slow moments in his lab where he can’t have any other computer, and he came home and told me we’d had a moment together at work. He was so excited as he flipped to a page where I had signed my name back in 2007 while we drove to the Grand Canyon. He said the memory made him teary, and Matt so rarely cries that it was really sweet. 

Matt worked the late shift all week and I didn’t love it. We did all our normal things. Mondays piano and ju jitsu. I had a presidency meeting Tuesday and a long list of women’s conference to-do’s. Also a Just Serve/communications/self-reliance how-do-we-figure-this-all-out meeting Thursday. Wednesday was ju jitsu and youth activities. Since the older girls did something Thursday and Matt was working late, I stayed at the church. Actually, D and I went shopping and then back to the church. I’ve been so spoiled not usually having to be there Wednesdays! We dropped off a crew of girls after church, and another day down. 

Me! 👇🏻 

I’d been wanting to understand our church area’s better and found this graphic. Our area is big, but dang 8!

School got out 2 hours early on Friday and Duke had a family dance. D has a friend who’s dad is blind and mom just had surgery and can’t drive, so she asked if she could come to the dance with us and I’d take her home. Then Hayden came home with them too and almost immediately the other girls started talking about going to Hayden’s to put on makeup for the dance. I talked to Delaney and she didn’t want to go, and wasn’t going to put on makeup and I tried feeding and distracting them, but they insisted. Then D brought home a dress of Hayden’s to borrow that was about 2 sizes to small, but she figured wearing tights would manage the too short dress. 🙄 Anyways, it felt like a good deed that turned into a fiasco. But we had a good talk and life is all about learning. 

V true. 

The LP RS had a big Emotional Resilience Conference Saturday and had invited our ward. My counselor Amber was the keynote speaker and she did such a good job! I picked up groceries and cooked up some party foods and worked on my talk for Cyndi and Chris’ baptism and on my lesson for the DC Branch. C&C live in our neighborhood, so last year I was going to lessons with her every week with the elders and then we took her to the temple open house. And she got baptized Saturday night! It is the coolest thing to be part of someone learning the gospel, I am so so happy for them. 

One of my goals for this year is to host more, so I had invited friends for an adult dinner Saturday, but then the baptism was scheduled at the same time so we invited friends for appetizers and games. Darrow’s and Aina’s came and it was so fun to hangout and beat the boys. I tried a few new easy party recipes - a pimento cheese dip and ricotta lemon honey dip and neither was terrible but also neither was fabulous. Another goal is to cook something new each week, so ✅. And also ✅ for hosting more. 

I woke up early Sunday to work on my RS lesson for the DC branch. I was a little nervous because I’ve never taught in the deaf branch and obviously the best lessons have lots of participation. The lesson was Elder Renlund’s Framework for Personal Revelation and studying that talk was wonderful. 

I made a Keynote presentation that I am pretty proud of. And the lesson went well and we did have lots of participation. 🙌🏼 

I used quotes and added some of my favorite things as graphics. Tulips, beaches, birch trees. It was pretty fun to make and I only asked the girls for help a few times. 

We still have our recliner in our room from my septoplasty when I needed to sleep elevated, and Matt looked so comfy reviewing his lesson Sunday morning. 

I had to laugh at this and make note that we need to up our sign advertising game for next year. The DC Stake is making our Suitland Stake advertising look like an elementary science fair presentation. 😂🤷‍♀️ I set our poster away from theirs and it looked just fine on its own. 

I stayed for their mission correlation meeting and with 5 sister missionaries, 2 youth representatives, 2 RS and 1 EQ leader all excitedly working together - it was such a cool meeting. At one point it seemed like everyone was signing all at the same time and it was lively and lovely. I’m working on Spanish right now to help me in the Spanish branch, but I’d also love to learn some ASL, even just the alphabet. It’s such a beautiful language. 

I had a stake mission correlation Zoom meeting next, and since the YSA ward was meeting and i knew it wouldn’t be needed, I decided to sit in the comfortable chairs in the mothers lounge. It was perfect. As I came out of tha room I’d never been in there was this beautiful picture. We loved choosing art for the RS room when we beautified it and I just loved that this picture was chosen for that spot. I know what goes in to choosing the art, and this is beautiful. It’s called Bless Them in His Name. 

We went to Aina’s for the Superbowl and it was a fun night to chat and semi-watch. Rihanna represented for all pregnant women and her outfit, while odd, was actually very modest, so 👍🏼👍🏼 We ended up staying till the end and that is the story of why we were all 5 tucked snugly into our beds by 9:00pm sharp Monday night.