1. A few months ago I got a phone call from a member of the High Council asking if he could meet with me the next morning at church. He said he wanted to issue me a calling. I told him sure. So after we dropped Emma off at nursery Chris and I set off to meet up with Micah.
For the past 5 or 6 years our stake has hosted a production of Handel's Messiah. It is a "multi-faith community choir and orchestra" event.
My new calling (in addition to my calling in my ward) is to be on the advertising committee for this years production. Since I have zero graphic design skills and don't own the software needed to even learn, my tasks for this involve making hundreds (maybe it'll be closer to thousands by the end) of copies, cutting those copies (lots of them are flyers with 4-8 flyers to a page, so lots of cutting!) and getting them separated out into different groups so they can be distributed to the different wards/organizations. I also get to make posters that will go up in all the church buildings.
My first task has been calling a million different print shops to find where the most cost efficient place will be this year to do our printing. Some of our black/white copies will be made at the church, but there are plenty of color copies needed as well.
Emma and I have been really busy going to different stores and pricing other supplies that we will need to assemble everything. Now we're just waiting for the flyers to be made (or approved... hopefully they have been made already) so we can get them printed and give me time to start cutting.
2. I've been subbing for the primary pianist in our ward for all of August (but not this coming Sunday since I have to teach RS). The kids learned a BEAUTIFUL song that is not in the Primary Songbook and I am so excited to have learned it. Listen to Gethsemane below.
3. We've been to the gym a ton lately. Emma loves being there when they do singing time. We sing lots at home, but before the gym I mostly sang primary songs to her, so it's been fun to add a whole new list of songs to our repertoire. Some of these I had taught her, but she always says they're from the gym: Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Twinkle, Wheels on the Bus, Bringing Home a Baby Bumble Bee are her favorites.
4. Emma loves to swim. We have a pool in our neighborhood and in the month of July we went there about a million times! It will be nice for the rest of August and September that the "big kids" will be back in school so there will be less people there.
5. We go to the library at least once a week. We have a few libraries we go to, so when I say we are going to the library I always have to specify which one. We go to Keri's library, Sandy's library, and "the mean library" which is just the library with the meanest staff. It's super convenient when we go run certain errands, but I try to only use it to return books so we can just use the drive thru. We love Sandy's library (the library right next to our old place) and if they didn't limit you to only 10 times out at a time it would probably be the only library we go to. Instead we always have 10 items from them, and 30-40 from Keri's library. Keri's library is where we go to storytime now and Emma LOVES it.
6. We accidentally killed some of our trees. The ones that got planted only a few days before we closed on our house. Chris thinks one of them may come back to life with a lot of watering, but I'm not so sure... Can't wait til the HOA sends us a letter telling us to take it out and replace it with another tree. We'll probably choose new trees that Chris isn't allergic to-if only we could've told them what trees we wanted in the first place!
7. About a month and a half ago we were at Sandy's library and I asked Sandy what a good way to pick books was. I was looking for some sort of list, or website or something. She went straight to her office, printed off some list from a librarian website she's a part of, and then told me about the Texas 2x2. It's a list of books recommended (by a committee of librarians) for kids 2yrs-2nd grade. I think it's about 20 books long, and all are books published the previous year. It's updated each year, this was exactly what I wanted! She also asked if Emma had ever listened to an audiobook. She hadn't, and Sandy showed us where their kids audiobooks are. We checked a few out and Emma LOVES them. We listen to a book every time we get in my car. Skippyjon Jones is one of her favorites.
8. We have cows in our neighborhood. Emma loves to see the cows. The other day they were super close to the fence and she was SO EXCITED! Emma has a few books that have cows in them and they are her favorites right now (Click Clack Moo, Dooby Dooby Moo, and Cindy Moo... for you book nerds)
9. I need to paint my toenails. It's been on my "to-do list" for weeks but I never find time to do it. Maybe tomorrow during nap time I won't write a blog post, and I"ll paint my nails instead.
10. Yesterday I had our sister missionaries come over to help me with a project. A few weeks ago the ward mission leader posted on our ward facebook page that the sisters were looking for service opportunities to get their service hours in each week, to build relationships with the ward members, and to get a break from riding their bikes in 100+ degree weather. They came by yesterday to help me hang pictures up on our walls. I figured living here 3 months with empty walls was long enough. We put our Seattle Temple picture up, as well as the canvases that hang above Emma's crib. I also put a picture of Christ up in Emma's room.
11. This morning when Emma woke up she was standing in her crib pointing at the canvases and singing "I Love to See The Temple" (one of the canvases has the outline of the SLC Temple). CUTE.
12. Emma started saying prayers all by herself. We had to help her remember to say "dear" at the beginning for a while, but now she's got meal prayers down! It's cute to hear all the things that she says thank you for.
13. A few weeks ago a friend posted on FB that she was heading to ikea (it's in Austin) and asked if anyone needed anything. I asked her to get the Latt table and chairs for me. It's a kids table that comes with 2 chairs and is like $20. I'd had my eye on it for a while but couldn't make a trip up to Austin work with our schedule. On Monday after naptime was over Emma helped me build it. She helped me take all the pieces out of the box, she looked at the instructions with me, and tried to hand me the pieces I needed as I needed them. She also helped turn the little wrench thing to tighten the screws. She was SO excited to have her own table and chairs. This morning she didn't even ask to watch TV after breakfast. She wanted to go upstairs and play at her table. She pulled out a notebook and some foam alphabet stickers and went to town doing stickers. She probably did that for over an hour. She LOVES her table, wish I had gotten it sooner!
14. In an attempt to help me relax more and relieve some stress I started coloring. Sandy (from the library) started hosting "adult coloring nights" once a month and although I wasn't able to attend them (they start too early for me to make it because of Chris's work schedule and the commute) it got me interested in the idea. I found some adult coloring pages online for free (thank you, Pinterest) and have started coloring! I've even found some fun looking coloring books for adults on Amazon and hope to order a few soon! I also spent a whole naptime one day looking at different coloring tools, researching different brands of colored pencils and pens and such. The set of pencils I'm looking at right now cost like $55 which is more than I really want to spend on colored pencils, but all the reviews say they are the best. I told Chris about them and decided I'd keep using my awesome Crayola set (thank you back to school time for letting Crayola colored pencils be on sale!) for a few months and if I still am interested in coloring and enjoy doing it then maybe I would invest in a nice set of colored pencils. I've also got to see if any of my local craft stores sell them in store because then I may be able to find a 40-50% off coupon which would make it a little better.
15. I thought i had more to say, but Chris just came home from work sick and Emma is starting to wake up from her nap. I should do posts like this more often to do a nice braindump.
I'll try to get some pictures up soon that go along with some of these things.
