Primary Activity

I've been teaching the Sunbeam (three year old Sunday school class) class at church this year. It's been so fun to be in the primary. I know I probably shouldn't admit this, but learning the hand motions to songs and playing bean bag toss games is just so much more fun to me than adult Sunday School.

I love my little Sunbeams. I'm still getting used to living so close to the people in my ward. It's been fun to be out and about running errands and hear a little voice from a corner of a store yell- hey! That's my teacher!

Last Saturday we had a big primary activity. The kids split up into groups and went around the church to learn about all the different things that happened while they are in primary each week. They got to see the bishop's office, and the clerk's office and the room where they prepare the sacrament.

Doug got to come and be in charge of teaching them what happens in the Elder's Quorum. I don't mean to brag or anything, but his station was the coolest. They were in the gym and he made a big maze for the kids to go through. At every point where they had to choose which way to go there were arrows with pictures of people doing different things. If you chose the thing that the Elders do then you wouldn't get stuck in the maze.

He's so cool. I was proud of him :) And my Sunbeams were sure happy to have something so fun to do!

Spring Design Work

I've been pretty busy designing things the past few weeks. It's been a lot of fun. I've been doing a few wedding invitations, which are always fun, but my favorite was the poster on top. I got to make it for my dad's lab. I guess drawing DNA and RNA was just a nice break from the various types and styles of flowers that I typically get to draw. (you can click on the images to make them bigger and see more of the details) Plus there was the added bonus of having my dad as the one who was critiquing my work. Turns out he's a lot nicer to me than most my clients :)

Life in April

It seems impossible that it is only May! I keep thinking it's June. I feel like the past two weeks have been full enough to fill at least a month an a half. I just kept telling myself as soon as we had our new renters taken care of (our last renters' contract was up at the end of last month, so we had to find new ones) I'd get some things done. So here I am. Our new renters moved in today and I'm trying to catch up on our blog :).

An exciting thing happened to us about a month ago. We got our first check from Google! For those of you not so familiar with the 'pay-per-click' advertising world, I will explain to you why this is a big deal. When I put google ads on my site (my wedding blog) I make about $.10 to $.30 every time someone clicks on them. And I don't get a check until I've made over $100. I'm sure you can imagine that it took a LONG time to get to that first $100.

So that first check was exciting, but what was even MORE exciting was to see how, as our site grew and we got more people visiting it- we were able to get to the $100 mark so much faster. Today we got our 2nd google check in the mail and we're just a few dollars away from getting our 3rd! (I love wedding season!)

I can't tell you how many times Doug and I have looked at each other and said- ".... It's working!".

We've sure had a lot of fun doing the professional blogging thing. We're hoping it keeps on working for us!

A Bit More Global Warming Please?

This is what I saw this morning as I looked out my kitchen window. Doesn't the sky remember that it's the middle of April? In UTAH!

This is supposed to be one of Utah's big, redeeming values. I'm supposed to be able to call all of my family members living in their fun Eastern cities full of exciting culture and say- Yeah? Well at least your weather stinks compared to here!

*sigh*

Last year I thought it was so crazy that I had to stand in a snow drift as I lined up for graduation (in the end of April). I'm beginning to worry this is going to start to be a normal thing.

I'm beginning to side with my dad. Maybe a bit of global warming wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Happy Easter!

Doug and I had a wonderful Easter Sunday.

An Easter egg hunt just isn't nearly as fun with only two adults in the house, so we decided to let Georgie help us out with that. Anything that's small enough for her to bat around with her little paws can constantly be found all around our house- we took advantage of this little trait of hers and put out Easter eggs Saturday night for her to 'hide' for us. She did a pretty good job- by morning they were scattered throughout the house! Thanks Georgie.

I also surprised Doug with a 'healthy' Easter basket- crackers and yummy cheese, craisins, an Easter tie and some diet Dr Pepper (yes, it was caffeine free- for those of you who were judging us for a second there).

Doug's family came over for Easter dinner and an Easter egg hunt for the kids (Easter egg hunts are a lot more fun when kids are involved!). It was so fun to see them- we love being close to family!

I'm am so grateful for the Easter season and how, because of it, we get to be reminded of the amazing life of our Savior, Jesus Christ. I've been studying His life so much more deaply lately than I ever have before and it's been so encredible to see how the more I learn, the more it all makes sense. I am so excited to understand His life more and more.

Done!

Ever since Doug and I got married I've been working on these books. I'm pretty stinking proud of myself for FINALLY getting them done! I was so excited when they came in the mail this week. I've been flipping through them and organizing and reorganizing our bookshelf so that they fit in just right.

The 'set' consists of three books. The first is my favorite It's so cute it's almost disgusting, including pictures of where we lived when we were dating, emails we sent to each other, pictures we took together etc. Next comes our wedding album (I like how it took me a year and a half to finally get our wedding pictures together). And then a book of our first year together- which is actually mostly just all our entries and pictures from this blog.

It was so fun to go through all of our memories- but I'm definitely relieved to be done! I was so excited with how fast our blog book (the first year together one) went up. Mostly because now all I have to do is keep writing on our blog and our 2nd year book will pretty much complete itself.

Hooray for blogging!

Best Day Ever!

Yesterday was probably my favorite regular day of my entire life. (I say regular day to make sure you all know that, of course, my wedding day is ranked higher on my favorite days scale. But it wasn't just a 'regular day'. It's ranked in a completely different category of 'extraordinary days')

Can I just tell you why? It was just so great.

I'd gotten to that point. You know, the one where your computer turns into poison that sucks all joy and happiness out of your soul as soon as you sit in front of it. (most of your probably think I'm crazy right now. But I KNOW that all of you who have ever had a job where you just sit in front of a computer all day-EVERY DAY- know exactly what I'm talking about. And if you worked from home on that job and had absolutely no human interaction during the day except through your computer then you REALLY know what I'm talking about.)

I kept trying to find things that I could do away from the computer so I could have a little break, but I just kept finding one thing after another that I really had to get done in front of my computer monitor. sigh.

So yesterday I woke up, bracing myself for another day of computering- only to find that Doug was still home... and he'd made me breakfast in bed! I was so excited just to get to see him for a little while before he went to work. And then- as I was eating my croissant and sipping my hot chocolate from my warm bed- I found out that he'd taken one of his vacation days so that he could stay home and cheer me up! Isn't he just the best husband ever?

It was the best day. We went to a matinee at the movie theater (in the middle of a work day- when everyone else was at work. And we WEREN'T. It was so great!), got a fresh bagguette and made the most amazing sandwhiches for lunch, and pretty much just enjoyed the day together. It was the perfect medicine for me. I'm happy to say that after such a great day, my computer is no longer sucking the happiness right out of me (in fact, I'm back to rather enjoying working on it)

I am so grateful to have such an amazing, thoughtful husband!