Yellow Wallpaper

I meant to get another post or two in at some point during this week, but obviously that didn't happen. It's hard to believe that an entire week has gone by since I last wrote. Time sure flies fast around here. This week was actually pretty uneventful, which is always a good thing. Work was moderately stressful since we had five brand-new people start this week; thankfully we had everything in place for training and they all seem like good, competent workers. As far as my goal of getting more exercise during the work day ( from last week ), I didn't do such a great job of accomplishing that but I will try again next week. I did go to the temple Tuesday morning since I was a bit ahead on hours and that helped me feel better about a lot of things. Here's the update on how I'm doing right now: Physical: Generally feeling good, just tired. I heard back from the doctor's office that all my tests were normal, including my thyroid levels and blood iron. That means th...

My friend Josh Weed recently started doing a thing on his blog where he does a 'weekly check-in' post about how he is doing physically, emotionally, and spiritually. He encouraged readers to respond with their own check-ins through comments, but I'd rather just put it up on my own blog. I might try doing this for a few weeks and see how it goes. This week went by quickly. Things were a little hectic because work had a lot of crazy stuff going on (including two coworkers who were on vacation and a bunch of new hires that need training), plus my sweet sister-in-law and dear friend suddenly lost her father about ten days ago and couldn't babysit for me all week. I certainly don't hold it against her at all and I've spent all week thinking about her, but making different arrangements in ours schedule can be a bit tricky. Thankfully everything worked out well and we all survived this crazy week. Hopefully next week will be a little more calm and happy for everyone. ...

I'm sure everyone is dying to read a play-by-play account of our Fall Break vacation. Right? Well, even if you're not, I'm going to write it down so I can remember it all some day. This year I decided to take the kids on a little road trip down to Zion National Park. I don't remember when I got the idea exactly, but a few months ago I realized that I had never been there and that it would be a fun place to go for Fall Break with the kids. Plus I had not used any of my vacation time this summer (because I hadn't really earned any yet), and if you work while your kids are in school then you have to figure out something to do with them when they have time off. I'm not going to take time off during all of their holidays, but Fall Break seemed like good timing. We left on Thursday afternoon; I had planned to leave a little earlier in the day but I ended up going in to work for a few hours and we just weren't ready to go until later. I thought it would be fun to...

Daughters of Jared by H.B. Moore I have liked most of Moore's other Book of Mormon novels, but this one just didn't really work for me. I really liked the main character, Naiva, but her motivations weren't always clear to me. I also felt that the world-building in this novel was incomplete; her other novels based on the Book of Mormon had a fair amount of background taken from the scriptures and it felt like she included a lot more details about the characters and their world. In this book I felt like there were gaps and inconsistencies in the setting and elements of the story, which was made even more frustrating by the fact that the scriptural story the action is based on was fairly flimsy as well. I'm curious to see if Moore continues with the Jaredite-era stories or she will go back to her original series and continue from there. Heaven is Here by Stephanie Nielson I have heard a lot about Stephanie over the last few years and I occasionally read her blog. I...

I don't know if I've blogged before about how much I love October. I love the cooler temperatures, the fall leaves, the fact that the first weekend is almost always a mission reunion for me and General Conference. Next week the kids have a few days off for Fall Break and we are going on a little trip down to southern Utah to see Zion National Park and a few other things. I love going on road trips and I hope this will be fun for everyone. Today we had parent-teacher conferences at the kids' school. I always like hearing about how other people perceive them and getting feedback on how they are doing. S-Boogie's teacher loves her and thinks she is very sweet. Interestingly, her school teacher, her Activity Days leaders, and her church teacher always describe her the same way: 'such a little doll--such a sweet girl'. S-Boogie is right on grade level as far as her skills go; she is a very fast reader, but her comprehension scores are a little low. I have noticed t...