Sorry this is coming out late this month. I have had a
busier-than-usual month so far. April got off to a great start with General
Conference, which I always enjoy so very much. On the 4th the YM and
YW went to Ketchum Park and cleaned up the south side from the branches and so
forth that were all over. I couldn’t believe how much there was to clean up! They
worked really hard at it. It was a beautiful day for it, but the wind knocked
everyone’s cups around if they didn’t keep some water in them. Overall it went
really well though and I think we’ll be repeating that idea sometime in the future.
The 8th was Easter. We spent Friday and
Saturday assembling and painting beehive boxes. I had no idea how much work
those are to build! By the time we finished on Saturday we had no energy to do
the traditional egg hunt and such. We just got out the candy and passed it out
and didn’t even bother with baskets. Pretty sad, but we were really exhausted.
Too much hammering, too much painting and then Megan and I got sunburns on top
of that, so we wimped out on Easter. The talks at Church were really good
though and I was grateful to come home and nap that day. I love a good Sunday
nap.
School started again for me on the 2nd. I
have three classes again. One of them requires me to observe a preschooler for
about 10 hours. It has been interesting to do that. I enjoy being in the
classroom and got the idea that perhaps I could change my schooling around ever
so slightly. I talked to my dean and he confirmed my thoughts. I’m going to
switch my focus, not my major to getting my ZA endorsement. This means that I
will be certified to work with young children, prior to kindergarten. I can
then get a job and teach preschool while I continue to work on my bachelor’s so
I can teach regular school. This is very exciting to me. My endorsement will
take less time to complete by far, so now I’m trying to get with the dean and
find out what I need to take to make that happen. I’m really not sure, but I
know I have at least nine more classes that I’ll have to take, which is an
entire year’s worth. Still, it would be nice to work a little and go to school.
At least then I’ll feel like I’m getting somewhere after all this time I’ve
been in college. Another class I have this term is about using technology in
education. This class has really shown me some fun things that I didn’t know
existed on the Internet. We have made cartoons, done research, made digital
storybooks and much more. I thought I was pretty smart with technology, but this class has really proven that theory to be rather
incorrect. My third class has been just plain fun. We read stories to each other one
night and soon we will spend class doing a felt board story. I haven’t used felt
much
over the years, but this assignment (we have to make our own pieces) has
been really fun. Now I’m excited about it and want to make more stories. The teacher showed us a box full of pieces that she got 30 years ago and she
has used them every year and they are still in good shape. Now I want to make a
bunch of pieces for myself and use them too. I wonder how crazy the young women
will think I am if I were to do it for one of my lessons. That would be pretty
funny I think. Sometimes I think they wish they could act younger than they
usually get to. I might just give that some more thought and do it someday.
The rest of April is
a blur. I remember being very busy, but I don’t remember why. I’m sure it was
school work and things with the Church, but I don’t know what they were.
Andrew got some good
and bad news about the middle of April. He was offered a permanent position at
the place he’s been working as a temp. That’s the good news. Another piece of
good news is that his salary went up. It’s still not enough, but it’s better
than before. The bad news is that he is now on 3rd shift. This means
that a regular shift for him starts at 10pm and he gets off at 6am. If he has
to work overtime, it’s before the shift starts and then he has to stay the full
shift no matter what. There are lots of good things though. He is working when
it’s cooler, he is going to start getting paid for days off (he wasn’t before,
he just claimed unemployment because you can do that as a temp worker), he gets
vacation time, and he will get insurance at some point. Additionally he can now
apply to do anything in the company whenever a different job becomes available.
We are hoping that will happen soon because his immediate supervisor is an
idiot. Sadly the idiot’s supervisor (I don’t know here name) knows it but can
do nothing about it because her supervisor (again, don’t know the name) is the
idiot’s good friend. So you can see that there’s a big problem there. This guy
yells at his team all the time when he is there, but doesn’t bother working
half the shift because he’s busy being friends. He also insists on doing things
a certain way even though that way is harder and takes longer. Luckily they can
ignore that when he is away, but when he is there they have to conform or the
idiot will write them up. It’s crazy. We are hoping he will find something
else, but until then we just put our collective head down and keep working.
Andrew finished his classes on May 7th. He is
now off for the summer. Summer is nicer when neither of us are in school. I
might take one class this summer, but will only have to go to the school five
times for it. This would be such a nice thing. The other half of the class is
purely online. The only problem is that we will have to come up with the money
ourselves, student financial aid won’t pay for only one class. We’ll see what
happens. It’s one of the classes I need to get my endorsement, so I’m anxious
to take it, plus I know the instructor and it would be a VERY easy class to
take. I would have little to no homework and almost a guaranteed A in the
class.
Megan was excited when the end of April came around
because she finally got to get a new phone. Hers hasn’t been working well for
several months now and so she was glad when her phone arrived and has been enjoying
playing with it.
We switched our internet carrier and we now have a
Voice-Over-IP home phone instead of being
with AT&T where we seemed to get bad service all the time. I’m in hopes
that our new company will be much better. So far things have been good. That’s
more than I can say for the beginning of our time with AT&T.
We have been watching some very interesting shows on
Netflix. Andrew and I watched several biographies and we all enjoy watching
documentaries. We just finished a series called “America, the Story of Us” and
that was pretty cool. I had no idea about some of the things and other things I
was surprised they mentioned.
We are planning a surprise trip for Megan over Memorial
Day weekend. We figured out by chance that Kirtland, Ohio is about as far from
us as the Detroit Temple, so we are going to go and spend the weekend there. We
plan to camp which will be nice. We will have to figure out what to do with
Krissy and the chickens. We can camp with Krissy, but I don’t think we can take
her to do things in Kirtland. The chickens are staying here no matter what
though!
Andrew continues to work with the YM and I work with the
YW. We enjoy it, but it takes a lot of time. We are glad to be with them though
and love our callings. We are blessed to live in a nice house and are thankful
for the many blessing that are ours. We hope that you all have the things you
need, even if they are not want you want. I know we certainly don’t always want
what we need.
