Here comes November...!

Well, I continue to be amazed at our incredible weather. I am loving it!! Ends tomorrow, though…

General Conference was the first weekend of October. It was great, as usual. I got to watch all the sessions and I even watched the Priesthood session online after-the-fact. Our November Ensign should be here sometime by the next week and I’ll get to read all of the talks, plus I also get the CD’s so that I can listen to them in the car. Those usually come in a month or so. I am in awe that I live at a time when the words of our modern prophets are so available.

We also had our Stale Conference this last month. On the Saturday evening where adults are invited, the Stake Presidency and all of their wives spoke. That was nice. Then on Sunday morning, it was actually a Regional Stake Conference, so it was broadcast from the Conference Center downtown. We got to hear the General Presidents of the Young Men (David L. Beck) and Young Women (Elaine S. Dalton), a member of the seventy (Craig C. Christensen), and the main speaker was the Apostle David L. Bednar. It was also a really good meeting.

We had the Primary Sacrament Meeting program last month. All of the kids did a great job on their parts, and they sang their hearts out. I have found a few tricks during Primary that gets them to really sing. I have an assortment of silly hats and I bring one every so often. The class that sings the loudest, or the best, gets to have their teacher wear the hat during the next song. I am amazed at how well they do just to see their teacher look ridiculous. The older Primary kids are very competitive. If I have a reward for the half of the room that sings best/loudest they will sing real well, so I try to come up with new ways of doing that. It is wearing me out, but I love to hear them sing!

Jesse and Amanda went on a cruise in the Mediterranean that they really enjoyed. Tyler came over and helped Randy put in storm doors on the French doors off the dining room. (Randy had previously put a storm door on the front door.) Heidi ran in a half marathon for the first time and did real well even though the farthest she had ever run in training was 5 miles. Ingrid and Jeff dressed up as gypsies for a Halloween party with Kalvin as their monkey. And Dylan’s letters from the mission field sound as if he continues doing well and enjoying his service. This picture is from a Zone Conference that he attended. He is the second from the right.

Monday night was Halloween and we had lots of trick-or-treaters come by – not as many as in years past though. Connie handed out the candy again this year. So (big breath) – holidays, here we come…!

Goodbye to fair weather.

Well, I can’t complain about it being October – the weather has been beautiful. It has felt like San Diego for a couple of weeks! The lows at night have been in the high 50’s and the highs during the day have been in the mid 80’s – perfect.

At the beginning of September Randy and I attended a free Billy Dean concert down in Payson. They also had free ice cream, kettle corn and drinks! We have a CD that Billy, Marvin Goldstein and Thurl Bailey performed together on, and we love it. Marvin actually came out and played piano for a few songs at this concert. We didn’t stay for Billy’s second set since it was on a week night, but we really enjoyed what we got to see and hear.

I have been a little reluctant to give blood at blood drives anymore, because I usually don’t feel too good for a few days, but our Stake had one, so I went. They had a hard time keeping my blood flowing because my veins are so small, but I finally filled up the bag (after they messed around with the needle several times) and I actually didn’t feel bad at all afterwards. And, my bruise was small.

We had the sister missionaries over for dinner one night. They have a new challenge where you make a list of non-member friends and pray for them every day for 3 weeks. The sisters will visit them, if possible . The promise is that after this 3-week period one of those individuals will be prepared to receive the missionary lessons. We will start this program as soon as I finish these two classes that I’m in right now. We have had several letters from Dylan since he arrived in Ohio. It sounds like he is loving it and doing great. They were scheduled to have a baptism last week.

An old friend of Randy’s, Gene Vice, visited from Alaska for a few days. He was one of Randy’s best friends when he was growing up in Topeka, but Randy had lost track of him for the last 30 years or so. Thanks to good ole Facebook, he actually found Randy and asked to be his friend! He was down here visiting his kids, so he stayed at our place for a couple of nights and drove around with Randy one day.

We celebrated my mom’s birthday on the Sunday following her 93^rd birthday. We had a lot of family over, so that is always fun. The kids ate their cake and ice cream outside and played on the trampoline. I also provided them with sidewalk chalk this time, and they were able to draw all over the basketball court.

This has been our month to clean church facilities, I guess. One week Randy helped to clean the church, another week I helped to clean the church, and one night I helped to clean the temple. What a blessing to be able to help! Our ward’s contribution to the Day of Service was to clean up around a lake and the trail in the woods behind it at a housing development called “The Cove” (it’s about 4 miles up the canyon from my house), to clean up around a walking trail at another park, and to weed an area near the parking lot at church. While I was picking up trash through the woods, I saw a couple of deer. They were only about 15-20 feet from me and they must have been mule deer because they had such big ears. This actually would be a great park for our reunion if we need it this next summer. It has a covered pavilion, sand volleyball court, and there is fishing and ducks to feed around the small lake. I was only able to help for about one hour, but service always feels good!

The General Relief Society broadcast was the last Saturday of September. It was wonderful, as usual. Pres. Uchtdorf spoke, as well as the General Relief Society presidency. Randy and I were gone that Saturday night, so we recorded it and I watched it the next morning. General Conference is this weekend. I always love that. There are so many great messages and there’s always at least one that really applies to me.

So, I have just a few days left of the two classes that I am taking right now (I took a Final for one class last Friday), and then I only have one class left. YEA!!! I have felt pretty good about most of the classes that I have taken and about the instructors. However, one class that I have had this term (Marketing Research) has really got me mad. I have a research report due at the end of class that will serve as the final. I sent the instructor an email asking him about some requirement that seemed impossible, and about how many pages it was supposed to be. He answered me by asking for clarification and what it was in regards to. I thought I had been very clear, but I further clarified my questions and sent them back. He replied using quotes from the book and using one word totally incorrectly so I still wasn’t sure what he meant. And, he didn’t answer me as far as how long it needed to be. So, I sent another email and asked him again how many pages it needed to be and if we needed a reference list (I couldn’t find anywhere in the book or on the instruction sheet that addressed these two questions). I waited 5 days. School policy states that questions will be answered in 48 hours and his class policy states that all correspondence will be answered in 24 hours. So, I sent another email that told him I had been waiting 5 days for the answers to my questions. He replied with “Please refer to assignment requirements.” (the noise you hear is me sounding exasperated) So, I sent him ANOTHER email saying that I had checked all the requirements and the book and couldn’t find any information. I told him that I would only make it long enough to address those things that were expected and I would have no reference list. I also sent a copy of this email (and all the other ones in this chain) to my advisor so that she would know what was going on in the event that I was marked down for those things. When this teacher saw that I had cc’d the email, I received a reply (within one hour)that I was on the right track, and he wanted to know who this other person was. By the way, his emails showed that he did not have a very good grasp on the English language (he is a foreigner – Shahid Sheikh), and all his comments on my essays seem like they are written by another person (or they’ve gone through a translating machine!!). Anyway, I got a call from the school and I could tell the woman I spoke to was really grossed out by the whole situation. She told me a reference list is ALWAYS required for papers. She wanted me to forward any other emails that I had from him to her. So, I may cause him to lose his job, but he really has no business teaching at this level even though he has a PhD (supposedly). If I end up being killed, you will all know why (seriously).

I was supposed to go to jury duty this past week, but I had to call each evening to see if they needed me on the following day. I called Friday evening for Monday – no go. I called Monday evening for Tuesday – no go. I called Tuesday evening for Wednesday – no go. Mind you – I was told I would be penalized ($1000 and/or 30 days in jail) if I didn’t do this and/or show up when I was called. I called Wednesday evening for Thursday and the recording said that I would not have to do jury duty on either Thursday or Friday. It was a relief since I had a proctored final set up for Friday, but it was a hassle to have to call on a daily basis. I guess I still could be called up at any time, but I should at least have several weeks warning before I have to go through this again.