Primary Day 1

Neil and I spent a couple of hours over the weekend preparing an awesome lesson on reverence for our primary class. We probably put way more time into it then most people would think necessary but I wanted it to be perfect. I even enjoyed coloring pictures for a lesson activity and Neil got to find items for a game. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to teach our lesson because we didn’t have any kids to teach! I was so nervous to teach but I put so much time and effort into the lesson that I at least wanted to give it. We ended up “helping” the sunbeam teacher. We didn’t really even need to do much, so we just got a lesson on reverence aimed at 4 year olds. However, the sunbeams did not disappoint me. I knew they would give me some good material. Here are a couple comments they made:

Context: The teacher was showing pictures of various bugs doing different activities. The children were asked to say which ones were reverent and which ones were not.
Little Girl: My Dad ate grasshoppers when he was in Thailand.

Context: The children were peering in the hallway waiting for their parents to pick them up.
Little Boy waves and says hi to another little girl who passed the classroom.
Little Boy: I was just saying hi to Eva. I am going to marry her when I am a Daddy.

Meet Kirby

Neil and I are harboring a criminal while my parents are enjoying a cruise. Kirby is my Mom's African Grey Parrot. African Grey Parrot's are considered the most intelligent species of bird and I would say of any animal. Kirby talks and asks for the things he wants. For example, he asks to come out of his cage, he asks to be petted and asks for spaghetti (his favorite food). He even sings and makes up songs. The cutest thing he has done so far is that he keeps calling for Gizmo (my dog but my parents have custody). I guess he misses him. Neil has decided to teach Kirby to say "That's what she said" (from The Office), so my parents will have a pleasant surprise when they get him back. So far he hasn't had much luck. I just hope I don't kill him.

Drum Roll Please

I was very pleased with your contributions and humoring me in the speculating process. It turns out that Alyssa guessed right. And Megan and Adrienne, I know it would have made for good blog material to be called to the same thing for the third time but I am sure glad you were WRONG!

In order to keep the drama to a minimum, Neil and I have been called as “Primary Workers.” We will be teaching the CTR 6 class. I just have to say, that I am so relieved. I am even excited but very nervous at the same time. I seriously had the thought, what if they don’t like me? What can I talk to a 6 year old about? I even asked Neil if 6 year olds still color. This sure is going to be an eye opening experience.

I am the youngest in my family. So my experience with kids was kept to a minimum. I have a dozen nieces and nephews and they are great but I don’t see them on a regular basis. I am keeping the hope that Leonora is right, that I will like my own (my mom assures me of that too). I do plan on having kids, someday. Because I am an extensive planner, I made sure to study child and adolescent psychology in college. I figured since I planned on being a mother that would be the best way to go. But now that I am facing the reality that I will be teaching six six-year olds each Sunday, it just might be useless. I could tell you all about how they are supposed to develop and think. I could name countless study after another about children and teens and how they should react in various situations. I could go into great detail about how neural patterns are developed in children and how to stimulate neural growth but will that do me any good? Probably not. I even studied attention spans. I can at most get 15 minutes (if I’m lucky) of their attention. How is that going to work when 40-45 minutes is set aside for “lesson” time?

Keeping things on the bright side, I am almost positive that those kids will provide a lot of excellent blogging material along with my fear of those kids.

To Speculate or not to Speculate

Earlier this morning I got the call. I’ve been waiting for it and had almost given up. Two weeks ago our ward was split for the second time in 16 months. I guess that is what happens when you live in a new development area. Even changing wards twice we still have managed to be called as the “food storage specialists” twice. I have to admit it has been a great calling for us because we have diligently been working on our food storage. But after the last few months of canning the entire ward’s orders ourselves because no one thinks it might be polite and responsible to help out, we’ve been wanting a change. So with the announcement of the ward change, I have anxiously been waiting for the call. We are meeting with our new Bishop tonight at 6:50 pm. I immediately called Neil and left him a message and hoped he would call me back so we could speculate. I love speculating. But, I was once again reminded that men think much differently than women. Neil got my message, put it in a box in his brain, and went on thinking about engineering stuff, with no desire to speculate about what the outcome of our meeting would be. So when he FINALLY called me back hours later, I had to check and make sure he got my message. Because if I got that kind of message, I would have at least called to talk about it but oh yeah I am working with a man here. After receiving the confirmation that he indeed did get my message, I asked him what he thought. But before he had a chance to speculate, I had to give him MY ideas because I’ve had hours to think about it. In which his response was, “We’ll see tonight, won’t we?” Then he wanted to talk about engineering stuff. But I wasn’t done! I wanted to know what he thought. Because I am a woman and can’t let things go, I ambushed him 30 minutes later, demanding why he wouldn’t speculate and his response, “I don’t like to speculate, I would just rather wait and see. I am either going to be right or wrong, so speculating is just a waste of time.” Well, I KNOW that..... but speculating is fun. Speculating lets me go through all the possibilities so I will be prepared for the outcome.

Since I can’t get anywhere with my man, I thought I would speculate here and maybe you can speculate with me. But you will have to be fast as my fate will be decided in nearly 4 hours. I am 85% sure it will be nursery. I don’t know how we have avoided it thus far. It is inevitable. I was just hoping since we weren’t contributing to the bunch we could fly under the radar. Plus, I am terrible with kids. I am embarrassed to admit it because I am suppose to ogle over babies and such but I couldn’t care less. Seriously, I was that girl who when my mother-in-law tried making me hold a baby once, I actually refused. I wanted nothing to do with it. Maybe she thought it would be inspire me or something. In any case, unless I can talk intelligently with an individual and as my brother says “they can go the bathroom by themselves” then there is a problem. Neil on the other hand loves nursery. He is great with kids and knows how to talk to them. Our three year old neighbor girl has a huge crush on him because of his charm with kids.

Anyway, if it is not nursery, then we will probably continue our sentence as “food storage specialists.” Honestly, I would love a calling in the Relief Society. I would be good at that. But that is why it is probably nursery. Somebody needs to babysit all 60 kids on Sunday.

Did I say that out loud?

I've learned my lesson. Never publish your football score bet on the internet. Never. Even if you want to, just don't do it. I think that is why the Cougars fell apart. It has become a long standing tradition that my Dad and I both predict the score and put imaginary money on it. When I got extremely in debt with my imaginary money, we stopped betting imaginary money. But we still like to predict the score. I thought it would look cool when I posted my bet and I actually would be right and then everyone would think I was amazing. Here is how the predictions went last night:

Me: 65-0
Dad: 44-13
Neil: 42-0
Mom: 56-3

As you can see my Dad won (the final score was 34-14). Lame (which is my new word, just so you know). I also think our extreme confidence in the Cougars led to the infamous downfall. During the first quarter we just laughed because BYU only possessed the ball for like 3 minutes and 14 seconds but had already scored twice. Pretty pathetic for the Aggies, right? Well, 12 penalties later (a loss of 128 yards), a sacked quarterback (first time this season), and a missed field goal and well, the score speaks for itself. I will give credit to the Aggies, they played hard. They must feel great that they were able to score against BYU's defense when UCLA and Wyoming could not. They must feel even better that they were able to take down Max Hall for the first time this season. But in my defense and to make myself feel better, the score would have been much different if BYU had been on their "A" game.

I've learned my lesson though. It will just be less dramatic when I report that I won the bet after the fact. Lame.

GO Cougars

So I know this is totally unoriginal but today is GAME DAY and it just feels more exciting because the Cougars are in town. Plus, I took a chance and wore my BYU shirt to work. I am putting my bet in for 65-0.

Throwing Caution to the Wind

Because Neil has to write 20 papers this semester, I have become his official proofreader. As I have been proofreading paper after paper, I have become happier and happier that I am done with school. I no longer have to take tests. I no longer have to write papers and I especially love that anything I write does not have to be submitted for a grade. I am thrilled that I no longer have to follow MLA or APA guidelines each time I write. I also can start my sentences with “And” and “Because” and I can be very generous with my commas (I love commas!). Honestly, the rules about writing change every few years, so I don’t even know what is correct or incorrect these days. Once upon a time you were not allowed to use “I” in a paper and it was the ultimate taboo to start a sentence with “And.” And I don’t know why. I think it is so cool. But I have also realized that sometimes it was nice to write a paper and be validated by having it returned with a big red A+. I even further realized that because I have thrown every writing rule out the window with this blog in order to contribute some humor to the world, some might find my writing down right atrocious. So I offer my deepest, sincerest apologies to those who find my blog appalling. To those who don’t, I sure wish I could get that big red A+.

Therefore, my point is that I have no point and I just needed to take a break from thinking about Neil’s papers.