Silver Creek Falls

For one of my unofficial activites we went on a hike to Silver Creek Falls, Oregon. It was way fun but quite a long drive. I forgot my camera and so the few pictures that I do have is from a friend named Spencer. Though he didn't have pictures of the otheres there it there was Jared, Spencer of course, Will, Michelle, and I.

Michelle Gamez and I. (love this girl)



There were little cave holes all through out the hike.

Tender Mercy

Saturday I got a call from a dear friend of mine, Miss Stacee Jo. Not that it's uncommon for us to call one another just to have a good 'girl chat' but this call was special. Stacee Jo got a chance to see my boys up close. Stacee happened upon my family namely my parents, all the nieces and nephews, my boys, Lindsey, Crystal, Caroline, and I think that's everyone. Now she didn't have the guts to go up to Caden and Hyrum and drill them with a million questions like I would have loved for her to do, but she saw them and they were happy. She even informed me that she thought Caden looked like me.

Now My family as I had learned was going to the gateway mall in SLC, which has become quite the tradition for the nieces and nephews to do now. I thought nothing of it though had the typical heart strings pulled at the thought of wishing I could be a part of the fun. I knew most likely that I would hear little of the activity which happens with most things that my sweet boys are included in, but yesterday while skypeing my parents I asked them about seeing Stacee at the gateway. In conclusion to the little shin-dig Dad was kind enough to send me a pic of all the grand kids taken the day that Stacee saw my little ones.

Left - Right Carly (8) holding Lucas (6m) Caden (turning 7) Lincoln (5) Eden (6) Aspen (turning 3) Hyrum (5) Ty (4)

Now in reality after seeing my boys Caden looks more like his daddy than me by far and Hyrum is the one that looks more like me. I love it though. What a blessing!!

Lot O' Shakespeare

So tonight with my new roommate who I am getting along famously with Sharon Hagel invited me to go to the Linfield College theater to watch Lot O' Shakespeare. It was free and I figured why not try it out. I don't remember liking or disliking plays in the past. Anyways this ended up being a one man show. How can Shakespeare possibly be done by one man you say, well I'll tell you. Timothy Mooney was the gentleman name and he played different acts from several different plays written by Shakespeare. He had memorized over 70 different sections of the play and then would act them out at random. Literally it was random he used bingo balls to find out which story he then would act out, while we in the crowd hope that he would call out the correct letter and number so that we could win a prize playing instead of 'bingo' 'iago'. I'm guessing Iago is a character in one of these plays but as I mentioned before I went in there with nothing.

It really was so fascinating. He really did a fabulous job and because the crowd was limited in size it was intriguing to watch his facial expressions. Sharon and I hooked up with second row seats so it was pretty intense. I really was very impressed and enjoyed myself almost the entire time. :) Would I go again!? Absolutely and possibly might even pay if I needed to next time.

Long Sabbath Day!!

 So I'm walking out of my relief society meeting proud of the accomplishments that the presidency made but to be honest a little frustrated by the lack of willingness that both the sisters had in wanting to go visit the sisters. After I told them both multiple times about the meeting and it being lengthy. Urg! Well it ended up being an hour long anyways and I admit that I felt better in visiting the girls with Michelle this week. Hoping since she knew some of the girls I was planning to visit that it would make the visit go more smoothly. I left the meeting drained and so ready to go home and get into my pj's and drink some hot herbal tea. As I was about to turn the corner of the hallway there stood Sister Haslam informing me that I was wanted in the Branch Presidents office. I happily concord thinking that I could turn in my receipts and ask my questions concerning some relief society questions that I had concerning the rolls.

Much to my surprise President Haslam was not asking me about getting me my refunds or even the visiting teaching list (though we did go over that after the fact), no President Haslam has asked me to be the new relief society president. Literally my breath was taken away for a moment. President Haslam kind of got a kick out of it and said that I honestly couldn't be that surprised. Honestly I wasn't, but I didn't except to be called I just thought I was going to act like the relief society president. I really was contemplating at the time whether or not to move farther north so as to be in a larger area where there would be more single LDS males that maybe courted. Ha!Ha!

Well all that has changed now. I have been struggling since Sunday to come up with those whom the Lord and I would like to have in my presidency. The first name came incredibly easy, in fact almost the moment that I caught my breath the name of my first counselor was reviled to me. Though I have not had such luck with the other two names. I struggled greatly because President Haslam suggested that I keep what I had in the presidency already and just add one more. Well that would have been easy enough except for the fact that I have a great desire to be an exceptional presidency to befriend and bring those sister back into the branch that may be struggling spiritually.

To be very frank I do not believe that the two sister who are in the presidency now will be able to fulfill in a way that I need. Right now I feel like I am doing everything on my own. I know that with my crazy schedule and trying to stay healthy and strong I would need a good support. I still am not sure on the names, but I feel pretty good about the two other girls that I have now chosen and will go to the Lord tonight to see if I have chosen wisely. Let us pray that this is so because it is technically already Saturday and President Haslam wanted to sustain us in church this Sunday. Ahh!!

Good News!!

This is my new place of residence... if you truly believe me then you are a sucker! No, this is my new place of employment. Wahoo! I am starting tomorrow. It's orientation and am very excited and nervous. I will be working with patience who are suffering from dementia and Alzheimer (sp?).

My interview was this past Saturday. It is so fabulous to have at the end of the interview the question so when can you start? Does Tuesday work for you. I'd like you to come in then for orientation. There was no waiting time to see if I got the job or not. Let me tell you it saves a lot of torment time for me. Usually when I get out of an interview I go over in my head what was said, asked and how I responded. Trying to learn from the situation so that hopefully next time I will be able to improve my interviewing skills. phewph!! I am so grateful to have this job. I don't know for sure if I will be working on Sunday's or not, but I did put that on my application so I hope that Sunday's will continue to be free so that I can do my calling.

I will keep you posted on how my first week as a care giver goes. It is a better paying job (not by much) than the Allison. So it's definitely started out to be a very positive thing. :)

On a side note. My relief society calling is kind of wishy washy. I can't think of a better word at the moment sorry. Anyways last week the relief society president Missy Spencer is moving to Utah. We have just barely been in about a month. So now, since the Branch isn't ready as they called it to call a new presidency I get to play relief society president since I was/am the first councilor. Its crazy, I feel very lost and overwhelmed by the responsibility at hand. Hopefully I will get some time to study my new responsibilities this week, so that I can do a fair job when the time comes to go to the meetings and conduct relief society. Yeah! I'm honored for the responsibilities and pray that I may be strong enough to endure the challenges that I may be faced with.

Short Lived!

So the Allison was very short lived. Yup! Today was my last day. Well actually it was more like Tuesday. I arrived at work today and was there for a good 30 minutes waiting for my supervisor to have two seconds to tell me that they didn't need me anymore. I cried all the way home. So frustrated! Why did I even take that stupid job when I knew I would have to work on Sundays. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

On a plus note, I did end up working at least 6 hours at another place here in MAC. Yeah! So I still made some money today which is good. I also had time to apply for a couple more jobs today. I am also crossing my fingers that I will be able to run in the 5k tomorrow that I had been training for to dedicate to the boys. I don't know if they will let me because I didn't send my check to run and I'm not sure they will let me pay the day off, but I'm sure going to try. Now I gotta find were I packed my shirt. I really hope its not at Bob's cuz I don't want to talk to him right now.

Another fabulous plus. I get to go to church on Sunday! Wahoo!!!

The Allison Resort

                                                                                       









Well this is the beautiful resort that I am now employed at. It really is a gorgeous place. It's insanely busy right now, it being a holiday weekend and all. Though they till me it will be this busy until October. Craziness is what I call it. Today I saw a couple that was from Paris. Fancy Smancy!
The cheapest stay is about $450/night. It's incredible to me for someone to have that kind of money. Seriously the people that are staying all weekend if they got the cheapest deal is still spending $1800 just on a place to stay, a little spa treatment and some fabulous food.

My experience is much different for obvious reasons than those that stay with us. In fact just finished my second day of work and I have blisters and sores on my feet, a backache, and a monster headache. I am currently icing my knee as I am typing. It makes me sound old. In fact I told my friend Carlos that I feel old. Everyone at work has informed me that it will get better after the first week of working there. Even your feet will stop aching, they say. Most of the people that I work closely with are latinos. I guess it's a good time to learn spanish. I have learned that I hate it because they start talking spanish when they don't want me to know what they are talking about. I think it is incredibly rude. Now I know what it is like for the Deaf people who have friends who speak both spoken and sign, and chose to speak and then maybe paraphrase in sign to them. Frustrating! I feel much like an idiot most of the time. Very unimportant! Kind of like I'm a fly on the wall and they are trying to swat at me to get away.

It is hard work and though I don't mind working hard...it helps the day go a little faster. I feel incredibly lonely at work. I am not looking forward to working tomorrow (Sunday) it will be my first time ever working on Sunday in my life. I wish so badly that I could change my schedule around. I might stay longer if I could. Anyways I'm trying to look at it as a stepping stone to a more fulfilling job that wont make me work on the sabbath day. Urg!! This is killing me. I don't know how long I'll be able to do this without having my Sunday's to take the sacrament. It's depressing!!! I guess I need to pray harder for a new job to come up.