Birthday Girl!

I turned another year wiser this week. I usually either look forward to or dread my birthday for several weeks ahead of time, but this birthday kind of just snuck up on me. My visiting teachers came over on my birthday eve to bring me beautiful pink potted tulips that are blooming in our kitchen right now. I know the Lord loves me because he knows that I love tulips but my visiting teachers didn't.

I also love roses and gerber daisies and Jason brought me three lovely red roses just before I started teaching my class that morning. As a result my class sang "Happy Birthday" to me. My good friend Sara was kind enough to take me out to lunch at Kneaders. I had never been there before, but highly recommend it. It was delicious!!!

That night Jason and I celebrated by going out to dinner at Mimi's Cafe and then to Color Me Mine. For those of you not familiar with Color Me Mine, it's an art studio that allows you to buy white ceramic kitchen items or decorations, and then paint and glaze them any way you want. They provide all the glazes, brushes, stickers, tools, aprons, etc. and then they fire your ceramic artwork in the kiln for you. Jason and I were there for over three hours. I decorated a square serving plate and he decorated a utensil cup. I think the most random part of our experience is that we ran into one of Jason's freshman dorm roommates, a guy from our university dance class last year, and the friend of one of my former students at Cedar Ridge who recognized me as the teacher who got her engagement ring in class.Saturday Jason and I played racquetball with a couple other guys from our ward and that night we went to the BYU v. U of U basketball game. We went sitting up in the nosebleed section, but we could still see fairly well. It was a pretty loud and exciting game and crowd was really into it. Jason's ears were ringing afterwards and I got a headache from all the noise. I'm glad BYU won in the end.

Today Jason and I were sustained as the Ward Employment Specialists. Apparently the Bishop is pretty concerned with the number of members who are either unemployed or under-employed. Hopefully we can connect them with some resources that will be helpful.

We enjoyed a delicious dinner at Jason's parents' home tonight to celebrate Jason's and my birthdays. Both sets of grandparents were there for the occasion. Jason and I did 4 truths and a lie as the honorary guests. Nobody could guess my fib, but Jason so focused on coming up with his truths that he kind of forgot about the lie part. It was kind of funny. :)

Thanks to all those who called or wished me a happy birthday! It's nice to be reminded of how many people care every one in a while.

Social Butterflies

I got released from being "Primary President" today. People kept asking me if I was sad about it, but the truth is that I wasn't really sad at all. In fact, I was a little relieved. It's been a great calling, but I'm ready for a change and my favorite child just moved away, so it's good timing.

I don't know that I really have that much to write about, but we'll see what I come up with. Friday night I didn't feel like cooking and since I have a birthday coming up, I found birthday coupons. We ate burgers at Red Robin. Jason doesn't like eating at restaurants, but he does it just for me. I ate more french fries in that one night than I did in all of 2009 I think. They were YUMMY! And not surprisingly I took home half of my burger.

We were actually social this weekend. We went over to some neighbors on Friday night for a birthday party, were invited over for dinner and games at another neighbors house on Saturday night, and we invited another couple over for dinner at our apartment tonight for curry. We usually aren't that social, so I guess it's feast or famine with us.

My new job is going well. It's kind of fun, exciting, and stressful at the same time. The part I like most about it is that my work informs fairly big decisions made by the administration and Deans of colleges at BYU and will affect thousands of students and hundreds of faculty. It's kind of fun having a job that is so directly influential. It's for that very same reason that it can be stressful though, not to mention that I work for people that have a lot more clout and are very accomplished. Who am I to give my opinion in meetings full of people like that?

A New Semester

Well, this new semester has brought a few new changes. Jason started several new classes this semester including a History of Civilization class, a Seminary teaching class, Media in the Family, Korean Conversation, and Hebrew 101. It’s an interesting mix that keeping him really busy. He’s cut back on the hours he works in the coding lab, but he still pokes his head in every few days to see if they need anything. Jason was also released as the ward clerk this past Sunday. He has really enjoyed working with our Bishop and the whole bishopric are amazed how on top of things he always is. He says he’ll miss being in the “know,” but not the early morning Sunday meetings.

I didn’t really know how this semester would turn out, but it flipped very quickly from not knowing what to do with all my time, to not knowing how to get everything done in my time. I was offered a job at the Center for Teaching and Learning at BYU as a Research Assistant/Evaluator. I am hired to work on two pretty big projects, a significant but quick project with the American Heritage course, and a technology research project to find out the technology needs/wants of the faculty in connection with Course Management Systems such as Blackboard. I didn’t really realize how big these projects were when I took the job, but the last few days have been both exciting and stressful!