May was quite a long month for me, especially the last week. I’m sorry I didn’t get this out sooner, but I just didn’t have the time. I will try to keep my story somewhat abbreviated. I hope that you are doing well and that your family is also.
First though I will tell you that our new Branch Presidency was organized on the 29th of May. Our new Branch President is Brad Peterson. The first counselor is Morris Evans, he served as the branch president when we were first organized as a branch, so you might remember him. The second counselor is Mike Fittro. I think that they will do an amazing job as we continue to move forward.
On the 6th we had a branch party with a BBQ and games. It was lots of fun. Probably the best attended event we have had since I moved here a year and a half ago. Mother’s Day was fairly quiet. I got to pick activities for my family on Saturday and I chose to watch some documentaries that I’ve been wanting to see but we haven’t made time to do so. It was a lot of fun.
On the 14th and 15th we had Stake Conference. I enjoyed that very much. I ended up listening to a big chunk of the Priesthood Leadership session and really enjoyed that as well. Our new Stake Presidency is quite an amazing set of brethren. I could tell that the mantle of leadership had been passed onto them. The Sunday was session was broadcast from Salt Lake City and was amazing. I got to listen to some of it twice because Andrew and a brother from the stake spent a few hours afterwards trying to fix a bunch of little problems with the sound system in the building.
On the 21st I got to find out that I’ll be working with the first year girls and found out what level leaders and youth leaders I will be working with as well. That was lots of fun. We planned snacks, fun games, ideas for decorating and such. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but I really was so excited to finally know who I would be working with!
The 22nd was my birthday and it was pretty good. I got to take a nap and I love when that happens, so I was pretty happy. I also got some nice gifts for which I was grateful.
Memorial Day was pretty good at the beginning of it, but when I went home as you know the storm came. We spent about an hour in the basement and then finally came up. We lost electricity and it was off four days. That’s a long time to also not have running water. We spent much of Monday trying to prepare for the days ahead and were so grateful to have several coolers already here. We got a couple more coolers and we made it through pretty well. We did lose some food, but most of it was fine. The food that we did lose we could mostly give to the chickens as it was still good enough for them to eat, but not considered safe for human consumption. Mostly it was eggs that were lost. We tried to have the elders over for dinner on Tuesday and made foil dinners, but then there was that brief rain storm and we ended up at Pizza Hut instead of cooking the dinners outside like we had planned. It worked out, but it was quite interesting. I was grateful for the rain though because we had run out of water for flushing toilets and that made it possible for our containers to be replenished enough to make it through. We finally got power back on Thursday around 3pm or so. I spent a lot of time at the library that week trying to do my homework since I had a major research paper and a major project due on June 6th. It was nice to be able to go there and use the internet and their power. I also enjoyed using the restrooms there where I didn’t have to refill the tank after flushing. Running water is so nice to have. J So on Thursday we spent the evening cleaning the house and putting things back into the freezers and refrigerators (we have two refrigerator/freezers and one large freezer). It was nice to have everything almost normal again. Our large freezer scared us when it didn’t come on. We found out it was the outlet, not the freezer. Andrew replaced the outlet, but it’s still not working. So for now was have it plugged into an extension cord. It works short-term but he’s got to figure out why that outlet isn’t working anymore. On either Thursday or Friday Andrew found a mouse nest in our car’s engine. All the baby mice were dead. Mom and Dad were nowhere to be found. He tried to clean it all out, but didn’t succeed until Saturday when he spent probably 6 hours cleaning it out. He found close to 10 bodies I believe. It spelled absolutely awful from the time he discovered them until he finished cleaning it out on Saturday. I had to laugh because they had created their nest with the napkins we had in the car and Andrew found the earbud of my headset that had literally been chewed off. Sadly it was a nice headset that I had to get rid of about 6 weeks ago now. That wasn’t a happy time. I still haven’t found a replacement. Grrr.
The other fun story from last week as a result of the mice was that on Saturday when we went to the temple in “Detroit” which is really in Bloomfield Hills we went without air conditioning. It was 95 F and we had something like 80% humidity that day, so needless to say we were sweating pretty badly on the drive over and back. It’s about an hour and 45 minutes one way to get to the temple. That wasn’t the best travel I have done since getting here. I was more than glad to come inside the house when we got home. We ate some ice cream and I took a cool shower to get cooled back down. Andrew went outside and got really sweaty cleaning up the rest of the mouse mess. He finally succeeded, but his shirt was wet clear-through due to the temperatures. He’s such a trooper. Sunday morning the car smelled decent again. There is some residual from all the Febreeze, the Clorox solution and the air freshener that’s still hanging in there, but at least it’s not so stinky that we have to drive around with the windows down!
Much of May saw me doing more and more school work as I worked to complete major projects and papers. I had two large group projects that culminated in addition to my individual project and my research paper. For one of my group projects I had to rewrite a chapter of a grammar book. I probably could have finished it much sooner if I had been working on it myself. I hate group work like that. Oh well. The other group project, for a different class was to plan, script, rehearse and perform a dramatic representation of a poem with four elementary students. That was actually a very enjoyable group project. I love group work like that. My research paper was supposed to be about a theory, practice, or whatever that helps to teach grammar. That was hard to find something to write about, but once I did the paper went easy enough. I wish I’d had more time between finding something to write about and the due date however because I didn’t do as well on the paper as I had hoped. The other big project I had was to select 10 children’s books and write lessons based on those books. Each book needed five lessons, language development, science, math, creative expression and one other that I don’t remember the category for. That was a lot of work. I’ve been working on it for a long time, but my goodness it was a lot of work. Monday the 6th I finished those two classes. On May 12th I started a third class though and am finishing that up later this month. Whew! I feel like I can hardly breathe after just writing all of that down. No wonder I’ve felt so busy.
Of course the month was full of Young Women’s activities and Church and meetings for Church and Relay for Life things and getting ready for Girl’s Camp to an extent a well. Sometimes I wonder if I have a hole in my head when it comes to realizing just what I’m in for when I say “yes” to something. I keep telling myself I will scale back, but then I never seem to do it. The one good thing about not having power was that I seemed to be less busy, although it really created a lot of problems for me because I wasn’t able to do so many things that I needed to. Oh well. Live and learn.
I don’t remember the exact day, but Andrew started interviewing to work with Prudential at some point during May. He went to quite a few interviews and discovered that his licenses could all be transferred and/or reinstated that he held previously. He never would have considered working for Prudential if the opportunity had presented itself sooner, but for whatever reason this felt right at this point and he is actually training to work there. He is not officially hired until his background check comes back clean, but we know that will happen because he has never done anything. We were against the idea initially because we used to work for Primerica which is really against whole-life policies, and for good reason. However, this office for Prudential, or rather this region has a different way of doing business. As a company they have virtually quit selling whole-life and so that was the first major block cleared. Andrew won’t sell that type of insurance. It’s not good for people. He will actually be working more with businesses than with individuals, though there will be plenty of those as well. Already we are seeing blessings of him going down this road. A friend of ours, Rhonda, the same one who suggested we move here actually, just opened a new business downtown and is really excited to have Andrew take care of the finances for the business. She has already invited him to do seminars there once he is officially able to do so. While Andrew is training, which is about 10-12 weeks supposedly he will not be paid because if he doesn’t get paid he has the potential to make more money after training with bonuses and such. He will be working here in Marshall with another Prudential representative, who is the high counselor for our branch. This makes it easy for us to potentially have just one car until he is making some decent income. I hope all of that made sense. We are so excited that he is finally going to be working again. He has been without for six months. The Lord has really taken care of us during that time, but it will be nice to stand on our own again.
I’m so thankful that things are going to change focus for the summer. It will still be busy, but at least it will be something else. J I am hoping to be able to really focus on my weight-loss and I really am looking forward to a break from school. We have youth conference, girls camp, scout camp, Relay for Life, the farmer’s market and of course mutual each week and church and church meetings each Sunday, but I’m hoping that amidst all of that I can carve out some time to do some fun activities with my family that are more meaningful.
Megan gets of out school on the 9th, in just a few days from now. She is very excited for that to happen. I’m going to be glad too because things are more relaxed time-wise when she is out of school. The bad part is that we tend to stay up too late at night. Maybe this year will be different. I sure hope so. As much of a night-owl as I am, I’ve discovered that I get less done that way. So I guess I’m finally beginning to see the wisdom in going to bed early and arising early. Took me long enough. J Well so much for the abbreviated version. I hope I didn’t bore you to death.
