January

I suppose I should blog again. It's been awhile. Nate is doing well. He slept 10 hours straight last night and 9 straight the night before. I can only wish, dream, and hope that such a pattern will continue. I hear it is lucky for kids his age to sleep 4-5 hours straight, which he does regularly. We haven't had to get up with him more than once a night for the last several weeks. I worked on his baby book today. I have several things I want to save that won't fit in the book. I don't want it totally bulging out (I'd like to keep it in its box) and I'm not much of a scrapbooker (I purposefully don't start because I would get addicted and waste a ton of money on supplies then never take the time to use them all). Any neat ideas on how to save them? The only thing I can think is to put them in the time capsule we're making for Nate to open when he turns 18 or 21 or gets married or something. We are going to put lots of "2009" stuff in it. Hopefully we can get that done before he gets too old. Any ideas what we could put in?

Our ward split a couple of weeks ago. It is nice to have a smaller group, but it is still a large ward. We went from around 6oo members to around 400. I received a second calling as a primary teacher. I tag team with a really nice lady named Jamie Moore, whose son is in the class. It is the CTR 5B class. In the past the children would go to class based on the age they were turning that year, but that has changed and now it is based on the age of the child at the beginning of the year, so all of my kids are 5 going on 6. When I was called, Brother Richardson (newly called second counselor to the Bishop; he is from Columbus so we talk OSU all the time) told me not to worry, it was a small class; there were only ten kids. I laughed out loud, reminding him that I'm from Ohio and that ten kids is NOT a small class! The last class I taught had 3 kids in it. Luckily, being from Ohio himself, he understood and corrected himself. (Another interesting fact: Notice I'm teaching 5B, which means another class, just as large, of 5A. That's correct: about 20 5 year olds in primary. Because of the large amounts of kids 5 and younger, senior primary is all kids 6 and up [usually 8 and up is senior primary and 3-7 is junior primary] and junior primary is only ages 3-5. Picture a room of about 60 kids ages 3-5. Primary is fun!) This last Sunday was my first time teaching. It was fun. The class has 7 girls and 3 boys and all but 3 girls were in attendance. I taught about being children of a heavenly father and how we're different and unique but he loves us all and has given us wonderful gifts, like families. We talked about how we used to live with Heavenly Father and how we want to go back and live with him. We also talked about the gift of physical bodies and how our spirits look like our bodies and give our bodies life but we can't see our spirits when we look in the mirror. I used the hand-in-the-glove visual to explain this concept. (For any unfamiliar with this concept: The glove represents the body and the hand represents the spirit. The glove can't move until the hand is in the glove and when we die, our spirit leaves the body, but the spirit continues to live.) I'm really glad I am not teaching alone. It makes it easier to have another adult in there to help out. Also, it means that I only have to teach every other week and there is a built in substitute in case of sickness or whatever.

Grandma Derby gave us a bunch of names to do at the temple. We got all the male initiatories and 1/2 the female initiatories finished this past week. I'm planning to go and finish the other half of the females in a week or so. I am trying to get a group together to help out with the endowments but my hopes aren't very high. It seems everyone is too busy or has a miriad of other excuses. It's not that I was expecting 100% attendance or anything, I just wish people would tell me WHY they aren't coming, so I don't fear the worst. I am pretty flexible with date and location, so I'd hoped people would at least let me know if another time or place would work better. That would at least tell me they cared enough to try and work it out. I feel responsible for the names, and I will get them done, but David and I only go to the temple once a month and we have enough names to last us over a year and a half. I don't want to pawn the names off to others; I just thought it would be nice to have a few extra people go through with us and do some of the names at the same time we were doing them; get 6 or 8 done instead of 2 at a time. Oh well. I guess I will be able to do family names until mid-2011. I'd rather do family than temple names anyway.

David and I are trying to figure out a cool place to go for our anniversary this year. It's our 5 year mark and I really wanted to do something special. The original plan was to spend a week in Nauvoo since we really didn't get to see much of the sites when we were there for our wedding, but I don't know if that will work out. The plan called for us spending our actual anniversary in the temple (which would be a great way to finish a chunk of those temple names!) but now that we can't go during that week I don't know if I want to take the trip at all. I mean, we could go at an other time but then the significance of being there during our anniversary would be gone so I was thinking maybe we could just save that for another year. The reason we can't go the week of our anniversary is two fold: First, I signed up to run the Ogden Marathon Relay on May 15th. Before you all start laughing and wondering what the heck I'm doing that for, I wanted a way to get in shape and it is a fun way for me to do it. I am training and running the marathon with a whole team of neighbors (including my primary team teacher, Jamie, who is actually the captain of my 5 member relay team [the neighborhood has 3 relay teams of 5 members each]). I walk/jog/run 3 times a week. We just started last week, at 1/2 mile each day we train. This week we're upping it. Some days I feel pumped and excited; other days I wonder what the heck I'm doing. However, I made a goal and I intend to stick with it, even if I have to walk my entire leg of the relay (which is 3 miles by the way...)!!! The other reason is that Michael Carey is getting married on Friday, May 21. Michael is a very close friend of David's (Nathan's middle name is Michael after him) and we wouldn't miss his wedding for anything. He flew all the way to Nauvoo from Utah for our wedding, I couldn't possibly feel good about not being at his wedding, especially when it's only as far as Draper. With all that in mind, I didn't think it was worth it to go all the way to Nauvoo on a Sunday and then have to be back by Thursday. We might go somewhere else at a later time...we'll see. Nothing in stone yet. I'd take a cruise if we could afford it.

OK that's the latest and greatest. I better get back to work.