Today I came home to find Jon watering the garden, and he had some sad news: the watermelon plant is pretty much dead. I looked at it and it is kind of a shriveled little yellow dry crusty thing, so I don't think there is any way we can revive it. Luckily most of the other plants are doing ok.
This has been a crazy day. I get a text from Jon this morning telling me that the previous bishop of our ward called him and wanted him to let me know that a girl in the ward (who is 2 weeks from her due date) was in a car accident earlier today. I called both her and her husband and left messages, but didn't hear anything until later this afternoon when the woman who is our representative from the stake relief society called me. She had talked to the girls husband and found out that they were monitoring her and her baby at the hospital, and they thought they would both be alright and they would probably be able to come home tonight. I have been worrying about them all day, and I hope everything is still ok. I called one of the girls on the compassionate service committee and she said she will help with meals and to find babysitting for this family's 2 year old girl if they need it. I wish I knew what was going on, so I can help more. I just pray that everything will be ok for them.
"I'm a worrier I guess. That's why my friends call me whiskers"
Monday, June 28, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Extreme front room makeover and life in general
When we got home from Taiwan I was very excited to be home, but I was surprised to find that our apartment was not quite the same as we had left it. While we were gone Karen Ware had re-decorated our living room. It is super cute and it is very nice to have a room where things match and it is all decorated and stuff.
This is the table Jonathan made in his wood working class at BYU. He worked really hard on it and did a really good job. The three cactus on top of the table are our practice children. So far they have been thriving and survived being transplanted from their original pots into these slightly bigger pots. Despite my best parenting efforts the one on the right still refuses to grow straight. I haven't given up on it yet.
This hardly recognizable piece of furniture is the shoe cabinet that I got from someone that my mom works with. Karen repainted and put new handles on it and it looks so much better. The "e" on top of shoe cabinet doesn't really stand for anything, but that doesn't matter because I like it anyway. It came from a Deseret Book store sign from a store that moved or something. From the makeover we also inherited a new child: the little ivy plant in the mug. This child is much more needy than the cactus. I will often find it looking sad and wilty and realize it has been a while since I watered it. After I water it it usually perks back up pretty quick.
This is the new couch we picked out with Jon's parents before we left for Taiwan. Oh, that reminds me that Jon was in on this whole redecorating thing from the get go. I guess he helped pick out some of the pillows and okayed teal as the accent color. I think the teal looks good with all the browns and blacks.
Opposite the couch are the bookshelves and the tv. I love the bookshelves because all of our non-cute crap (dvds, games, books, magazines, etc) is hiding in sleek black boxes with little teal labels saying what is inside them.
Here is the view of the whole wall with the bookshelves and tv. I like all the cool stuff that is on the shelves like the picture frame full of little silver ball-bearings. I also love all of the old cream with teal trim suitcases that are in the room. Lets just sum up by saying I love the way the living room looks and it is nice to have a room in your house that you absolutely love.
So here is me looking happy next to my cute new bookshelf, but there might be a little fear in my eyes in this picture because we took this the morning I was being sustained as Relief Society president. This was crazy. The Sunday I got back from Taiwan the Bishop gave me the calling, by the next sunday I gave him my counselors, and the next Sunday I was sustained, set apart, and taught the Relief Society lesson. Today was my third week as Relief Society president and I still feel like I have no idea what is going on and no body tells me anything that is going on in the ward. I found out that a girl in the ward had her baby earlier this week when the Bishop announced it in Sacrament meeting and looked at me for confirmation that the baby was a girl. I knew the girl was really pregnant and looked ready to have that baby at any moment, but it was news to me that she already had it. Hopefully once I have figured out more how to do my calling people will feel like they can tell me what is going on.
Another thing that we have done since being home is we planted a few more things in our garden.
The two little plants in this picture are the melons we planted. the one on the right is a watermelon and the one on the left is a crenshaw. I have never had too much success with melons in my parents garden, but we're trying it out.
This is our cucumber plant. We picked one that looked pretty lively and thick, so hopefully it will do well because i love cucumbers.
These three are tomatoes. The first one is an early girl, the second is a better boy (or a big boy I can't remember now), and the last one is a yellow pear tomato plant. It will be interesting to see what grows in our garden because the soil is really rocky and I don't know how good it is. This weekend was Shop Hop, so I went to a bunch of quilt stores with the Ware women and started making a Christmas tree skirt from a pattern the Kent Ware helped me design (and by helped me design I mean that I told him kind of what I wanted and we sketched out a drawing and then he figured out the measurements and did all the hard stuff). I would have been able to do more on this but I was trying to make tags for the father's day gift that I was in charge of for the men in the ward. Jennifer brought her cricut and everyone helped me cut, tape and glue the little things together.
This was the finished product. All the men in the ward thought they were great. Jon told me after church that he saw a member of another ward with a can of Dad's root beer and he felt far superior because they only got a can and each brother in our ward got a bottle. I thought that was pretty funny (my root beer could beat up your root beer was one thing that came to mind). Life is feeling a bit crazy, but I'm figuring it out.
This was the finished product. All the men in the ward thought they were great. Jon told me after church that he saw a member of another ward with a can of Dad's root beer and he felt far superior because they only got a can and each brother in our ward got a bottle. I thought that was pretty funny (my root beer could beat up your root beer was one thing that came to mind). Life is feeling a bit crazy, but I'm figuring it out. Thursday, May 20, 2010
Day 12 (part 2), 13, and the trip home
I need to finish the posts about the trip to Taiwan before I forget or get too busy doing things here. The evening after the last time I wrote they had a lady come who was going to thread the hairs off our faces. I didn't really understand why, but they think it is very healthy and attractive to rip the peach fuzz off your face. This hurts way way bad. The first thing this lady did was pull our head hair away from our faces with a hair net/band thing. After that she covered our faces with this chalk stuff that smelled kind of weird that she said would help the hairs come out better. She then wrapped a long piece of string around her fingers and went to work.
The part that hurt the worst for me was around the edges of my face by my normal hairline. I don't know if this was because she was getting longer hairs that she didn't intend to yank out or if that is just a more sensitive area on me or what. I was trying to summon strength from within, go to happy places, and clenching every muscle I could think of to stop myself from jumping out of the stool I was sitting on. Luckily I made it to the end of my turn and she plucked out a few of my stray eyebrows for good measure.
After me it was Jon's turn. The process went down the same way; hairnet and chalk
Then hair ripping.
He was doing all that he could to summon strength etc., but I could tell this was hurting. I don't know how I looked when she was plucking me, but the winces and groans were probably similar. After he was done I knew he was not happy. He was a very good sport about it because Lloyd had wanted us to try this for some reason. I thought his hair looked funny when the lady pulled the hairnet thing off so I took a picture.
Jon wasn't too happy for the rest of the night after this because it hurt him way way bad. I don't really think that either of us will ever have our entire faces threaded again. I would consider it for doing my eyebrows or something but ripping of my invisible peach fuzz seems pointless. After this we pretty much just went to bed. I managed to get a picture of the other room that we stayed in for a few night when some of the family was there for the wedding. You can tell from the picture that it is quite a bit smaller than the other room.
The next day we packed up our stuff and went out for a little bit to grab a few things that we decided we wanted to bring back. After that we went back to Lloyd's made sure everything was packed and didn't weigh too much. We ate some food that Lloyd brought us. This was kind of scary. I ate a soggy sandwich thing with strange meats and vegetables in it that I couldn't tell what they were because it was all crammed in the hogie bun and covered in some sauce stuff. I ate most of one of those and then tried some soupy stuff. The soupy stuff had a clear brownish broth that was kind of sweet and it had chunks of something white and ice floating in it. I ate some and the white stuff made me think of mayo for some reason and that thought kind of made me lose my appetite because the idea of mayo in a gelatinous blob kind of grossed me out so I made Jon finish that for me. Lloyd and his girlfriend drove us to the airport and waited as we checked our luggage. They even took a picture of us with the tomato head man. I have no idea why his head was a tomato, but his shirt said I heart Taiwan and he had a laptop so we took a picture.
They didn't hang around at the airport for too long with us because Lloyd's girlfriend had class that night. We went through security and as we were walking to our gate I heard someone saying our names. A member from one of Jon's areas who works for the airport had found out our flight information and met us on the other side of the security check. I thought that was really cool that he would do that. He took us up this secret restaurant lounge place and told us we could eat whatever we wanted. I wasn't really hungry because I had forced myself to eat the most of the sandwich and Jon wasn't really hungry either. I still ate and apple and had some juice and Jon had some ice cream and soda. It was pretty cool to be in this little fancy pants place, but I felt bad that we had just eaten because this guy had probably paid for us to eat. We chatted with this guy for a while and when it was about half an hour before we could board the plane we headed over to the gate.
We waited for a little bit and then got on the plane. I stayed awake the whole flight and watched some random movies and episodes of TV shows. I also listened to music and crocheted a hat. It is a little too small for me so maybe I will give it to Alexis or something. They gave us dinner on the plane and the options were pork or fish. Jon went with the pork, so I went with the pork (both options didn't sound too great to me). The pork ended up being a very good choice. I didn't eat any of the meat but I stirred the meat around with the noodles and veggies it came with and ate the noodles and veggies and it was good. They also gave us breakfast toward the end of the flight. This time I got the omelet because I knew the porridge was a bad idea. The omelet wasn't anything amazing but it came with yogurt and fruit and it was edible. We landed in LAX earlier the same day we left from Taiwan. That was kind of exciting because we went across the dateline and just met the sun on the other side of the ocean.
We got off the plane and went trough customs and got out luggage x-rayed. This took forever. I was kind of worried that we might not make our next flight, but it as fine and we ended up getting to the gate of our next flight with like 45 minutes to spare. We got on the flight back to Salt Lake City and I listened to this guy and girl flirting pretty much the whole time. We made it to Utah and my mom picked us up from the airport and drove us to Jon's parents house where we picked up our car and drove home. We were tired, but we made it and I was able to sleep well because I didn't sleep on the plane, so i think I got over the jet lag... hopefully. We also had a surprise waiting for us when we got home but I will have to write about that later because this is already long enough and its late. It is nice to be home.
The part that hurt the worst for me was around the edges of my face by my normal hairline. I don't know if this was because she was getting longer hairs that she didn't intend to yank out or if that is just a more sensitive area on me or what. I was trying to summon strength from within, go to happy places, and clenching every muscle I could think of to stop myself from jumping out of the stool I was sitting on. Luckily I made it to the end of my turn and she plucked out a few of my stray eyebrows for good measure.
After me it was Jon's turn. The process went down the same way; hairnet and chalk
Then hair ripping.
He was doing all that he could to summon strength etc., but I could tell this was hurting. I don't know how I looked when she was plucking me, but the winces and groans were probably similar. After he was done I knew he was not happy. He was a very good sport about it because Lloyd had wanted us to try this for some reason. I thought his hair looked funny when the lady pulled the hairnet thing off so I took a picture.
Jon wasn't too happy for the rest of the night after this because it hurt him way way bad. I don't really think that either of us will ever have our entire faces threaded again. I would consider it for doing my eyebrows or something but ripping of my invisible peach fuzz seems pointless. After this we pretty much just went to bed. I managed to get a picture of the other room that we stayed in for a few night when some of the family was there for the wedding. You can tell from the picture that it is quite a bit smaller than the other room.
The next day we packed up our stuff and went out for a little bit to grab a few things that we decided we wanted to bring back. After that we went back to Lloyd's made sure everything was packed and didn't weigh too much. We ate some food that Lloyd brought us. This was kind of scary. I ate a soggy sandwich thing with strange meats and vegetables in it that I couldn't tell what they were because it was all crammed in the hogie bun and covered in some sauce stuff. I ate most of one of those and then tried some soupy stuff. The soupy stuff had a clear brownish broth that was kind of sweet and it had chunks of something white and ice floating in it. I ate some and the white stuff made me think of mayo for some reason and that thought kind of made me lose my appetite because the idea of mayo in a gelatinous blob kind of grossed me out so I made Jon finish that for me. Lloyd and his girlfriend drove us to the airport and waited as we checked our luggage. They even took a picture of us with the tomato head man. I have no idea why his head was a tomato, but his shirt said I heart Taiwan and he had a laptop so we took a picture.
They didn't hang around at the airport for too long with us because Lloyd's girlfriend had class that night. We went through security and as we were walking to our gate I heard someone saying our names. A member from one of Jon's areas who works for the airport had found out our flight information and met us on the other side of the security check. I thought that was really cool that he would do that. He took us up this secret restaurant lounge place and told us we could eat whatever we wanted. I wasn't really hungry because I had forced myself to eat the most of the sandwich and Jon wasn't really hungry either. I still ate and apple and had some juice and Jon had some ice cream and soda. It was pretty cool to be in this little fancy pants place, but I felt bad that we had just eaten because this guy had probably paid for us to eat. We chatted with this guy for a while and when it was about half an hour before we could board the plane we headed over to the gate.We waited for a little bit and then got on the plane. I stayed awake the whole flight and watched some random movies and episodes of TV shows. I also listened to music and crocheted a hat. It is a little too small for me so maybe I will give it to Alexis or something. They gave us dinner on the plane and the options were pork or fish. Jon went with the pork, so I went with the pork (both options didn't sound too great to me). The pork ended up being a very good choice. I didn't eat any of the meat but I stirred the meat around with the noodles and veggies it came with and ate the noodles and veggies and it was good. They also gave us breakfast toward the end of the flight. This time I got the omelet because I knew the porridge was a bad idea. The omelet wasn't anything amazing but it came with yogurt and fruit and it was edible. We landed in LAX earlier the same day we left from Taiwan. That was kind of exciting because we went across the dateline and just met the sun on the other side of the ocean.
We got off the plane and went trough customs and got out luggage x-rayed. This took forever. I was kind of worried that we might not make our next flight, but it as fine and we ended up getting to the gate of our next flight with like 45 minutes to spare. We got on the flight back to Salt Lake City and I listened to this guy and girl flirting pretty much the whole time. We made it to Utah and my mom picked us up from the airport and drove us to Jon's parents house where we picked up our car and drove home. We were tired, but we made it and I was able to sleep well because I didn't sleep on the plane, so i think I got over the jet lag... hopefully. We also had a surprise waiting for us when we got home but I will have to write about that later because this is already long enough and its late. It is nice to be home.
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