This Past Week

I know I used to blog almost daily, and my frequency has slowed down a lot lately! Here is a quick update on what we've been up to this past week:

Katelee - Katelee has learned two new sight words: 'a' and 'it'. She loves to search for these words in books and read them aloud when we come to them. :) We've had some nice weather, and Katelee has enjoyed riding her scooter and new bike, and playing at the park where she especially loves to swing really high. She had her four-year-old well check, and she is growing well and doing great. Her two favorite activities lately have been either pretending to be a kitty cat or building a 'fort,' which means taking all the cushions off the couch and jumping all over them. :) She loves having her grandpa and grandma here, and is going to have serious withdrawals whenever they have to return home!

Gerald - Gerald's school schedule is organized in such a way that he will have some weeks with time to spare and other weeks that he barely sleeps. This is a 'barely sleep' week. Last night he worked all night long at campus. He slept for about an hour this morning and returned to school. It is now 12:30 at night, and he is still working hard on campus. I honestly don't know how he can even function. The presentation he is preparing for is tomorrow, so hopefully he'll be able to crash a bit this weekend. At least he's not alone; practically his entire class stays all night long together. Still, it's not healthy and I really hate it when he's gone. His professors have the attitude of, 'Well, that's grad school for you.' But I think it's wrong and wish there was something that could be done about it. He is currently looking around for a job for this summer when he has a break from classes. If you know anyone in the Denver area who might know of a job, let us know! :)

Jennifer - It's been a particularly busy time for my calling. I taught the Relief Society lesson on Sunday about using the atonement more fully in our lives. Although I always try to use the spirit in my lesson/talk preparation, I felt particularly blessed as I was preparing this lesson. Several times (once while lying in bed in the middle of the night and once while walking down the hall at the hospital, etc.) I had very distinct impressions come to me that I was prompted to write down. I am recording this because I want to remember how the Lord can bless me when I am seeking his help, and how He can use me to help others. It was really thrilling to see how all the different ideas and impressions I had received came together in the lesson; the ideas came from the Lord, not from me. I have a strengthened testimony of the spirit in my life.

Tuesday night was also our Relief Society birthday celebration. I am currently the 2nd counselor in the Relief Society in our ward, and we have no enrichment leader (what is that calling called now that we don't call it enrichment anymore?) and no enrichment committee. I can call upon anyone in the ward to help, if they are willing, but it's not their calling. In the end it's completely up to me! Luckily, many people are willing to help and I definitely used all their talents! I wasn't even stressed on Tuesday; everything came together so nicely. I took my camera to take a picture, but felt foolish when it came down to it because I really could take no credit for how everything turned out. Two amazingly talented sisters decorated the room, and it was seriously stunning! We had a dinner (a big salad bar and rolls with white almond sheet cake for dessert), which was prepared by another group of sisters. All I had to do was buy the food and then I decorated each slice of cake with a little flower. Dinner was followed by a program. The program did take me quite a bit of work, because we felt strongly that we should have a program celebrating both the Relief Society and temples, since we are focusing on temples as our theme for this year. I searched and could find nothing that fit this description, so I wrote the program myself. Because I wish someone had shared something like this online, I decided to post the program I wrote on MormonShare, so that someone else might be able to use it. Here is the link if you are interested. The program turned out really nice; a variety of sisters in our ward read the different parts. I loved the way the 'readers' added so much personality and depth to the script. Overall, I think it was a wonderful evening, thanks to so many people being willing to help!

As always, I've also been keeping busy being a wife and mom, hanging out with my parents (I love having them here!), teaching piano lessons and preschool music classes, and making cakes. I made Gerald an architecture cake tonight for a special occasion at school tomorrow - I'll have to post a picture soon.

Looking forward to tomorrow night: We bought Katelee tickets to 'Disney on Ice' as part of her birthday. It is surprisingly affordable if you get the cheapest seats. She has been really looking forward to it, and we are all excited to go!