Life lately

Charles' had a great birthday party.  There were lots of people that came and it was lots fun.  If you weren't there, we wish you were.  A few people brought gifts and it was funny that most of the gifts involved food.  People sure know Charles.

I taught Relief Society Lesson #20 on Baptism.  It went quite well I think.  I noticed that I teach similar to my mom; we must be related.  One woman said that I brought life to the Relief Society.

Charles and Angela (Charles' little sister) played a musical number in Sacrament Meeting, I Know That My Redeemer Lives.  Charles played his viola and Angela played the piano.  It was very beautiful!


Charles taught Elers Quorum on Elder Uchtdorf's "You Are My Hands" and did a wonderful job!


I am currently taking an English class at BYU and we were assigned groups to write a 20 page paper together.  Unfortunately my major (Speech Therapy) didn't correlate with anyone else', so I am in a group with two biologists and one public health person.  To pick a topic we all had in common was quite difficult, but one of the girls mentioned the idea of epidurals verse natural birthing.  Out of all the topics presented, that was the one I related to the best since I am a female and will someday have a baby.  So our group decided that we would research it out.  We have come up with lots of information and pros and cons to everything.  I have been able to talk to my sister who has done both, but if anyone else wants to share their experience and to have the chance of being quoted in a 20 page report, you can contact me and I would love to know all about it.

So I had an ingenious idea that I got from a friend and am now going to share with you.  About a year ago, my friend and I were presenting in class and as we were sitting there waiting, I saw that her slip had a thick chunk of lace at the bottom.  I asked her where she got it and she had no idea.  Since that moment, I decided that I was going to get six inches of black lace and attach it to one of my slips.  By doing this, I could then have the lace from the slip sticking out from under the dress to lengthen the dress.  After thinking about it for a year. I finally accomplished my task.  I got some lace fabric, doubled up the lace and hand-sewed it onto the the bottom.  I was nowhere brave enough to machine-sew a lace material on to a stretchy material.  The slip looks quite nice and whenever I wear it to work, I get a lot of compliments and show them what I did.  I guess you could buy a slip with thick lace on it, but it is at least $30 for it and since I already had a slip that was a had-me-down from my mom and the lace wasn't too expensive, it was by far cheaper to do it myself.


This last Monday was quite a day!  As I was driving to school, my car wasn't driving right--not too weird, just didn't feel right.  After about two blocks, I pulled over.  The Holy Ghost told me that I needed to check the tires.  I was kind of surprised because Charles just checked my tires the Friday before.  I looked at them and sure enough, my front right tire was was almost all the way flat.  I drove home and asked my mother-in-law if she could drive me to school.


On Monday as well, Charles called me during the day and told me that he lost his job.  I am not really too concerned about it.  I know that Charles will do great things!
(Charles' Commentary: I prayed that morning with more fervor than I have in a while that something would happen with my job.  Either I needed this job to turn into something great, or I needed to lose it so I could start learning and growing in another company.  I was SHOCKED that I lost it, but praying still helped cope with the shock.  It's rumored that my boss lied about me to his boss which is how he got permission to lay me off, but I hope for his sake he didn't lie and I give him every benefit of the doubt.  Everyone at Merit Medical loved me and I loved them...excepting my boss who didn't seem to love me.  I had just given the aforementioned Elders Quorum lesson in which I urged people with all the conviction I could muster that we need to love everyone regardless of how they treat us, and I guess in a way, being let go from Merit relieves me of a trial in my life and at least I can say in good conscience that I tried to love and serve him to the best of my ability.  I could talk about the lessons learned for hours, but I'll let you get on to Annette's more interesting material.)

The other day while I was at work with nothing to do, we talked about "Hoarders" a show on A&E.  I had never heard of it, but it was fascinating to hear about how these people hoard things for way too long.  They kept telling me all the crazy stories of people and how they will collect the weirdest things because of things in their past.  They said that most of the children of these people say their parents love their things more then them.  One child actually called social services because he would rather be a foster child than live in the filth.  I was quite intrigued, so I googled it and it was absolutely disgusting, but so interesting.