Who Needs (Many) Words?

So I don't feel like typing a lot of detail, but figured I should post these pictures since they're already a week old.  Last Saturday was a lovely weather day.  Brad randomly called and said they were going to the park and would we care to join them.  We cared.  So we did :).  So did Christina.  And okay, so park #1 wasn't an option (no grills, as it turns out).  So we decided on the State Park.  Which we generally spurn, since they require a "Discover Pass" just to park.  And that made me mad after I donated my $5 to the State Park fund on my vehicle registration/tab renewal in 2011.  (I didn't in 2012...  I'm mean).  But they had grills.  So we sucked it up and decided we'd all go there.  And to avoid paying $10 per vehicle, we all crammed (perhaps not-so-legally) into Brad's Expedition and headed to the park.  We were going to buy a Discover Pass anyway.  But nobody answered the door.  So we just went with it.  I found out later at work, through a co-worker, that, in honor of Earth Day, the parking was free that day.  And all this past week (including today).  Hmmm....  Turns out we could've taken all 3 vehicles and been legal.  But where's the fun in that?  (Though it would have been more convenient, considering we left the charcoal in my car at the library...).  So anyway, above are a few pictures.  Emily wouldn't go down the slide by herself.  The kids enjoyed playing with Uncle Jeremy.  We ate cheeseburgers with cheese that I got at the Dollar Tree (my first mistake) that really was fake cheese -- it wouldn't actually melt... just got all bendy.  And I made ants on a log (no worries, I didn't use the ants from our house...) -- you know, the ones made of celery, peanut butter, and raisins?  Yeah, I think I liked them more than the kids did...  Oh, and there was a picture of me and Jeremy.  We broke the camera, though...  Seriously.  That was the only corrupted picture of the 330 pictures on my memory card.  Nothing I tried would recover it.  So, c'est la vie.  It got deleted in the interest of retrieving the other pictures.

So, enjoy.  I will be off to a bridal shower (for me) in a couple of hours.  I've been promised that I would blush a lot today.  I can hardly contain my excitement.  Oy.

Fun Facts from a Fastly Fading Filly

Okay, so it's getting late and I'm tired. I'm getting up earlier these days and being highly productive in the morning hours (like at 6 a.m.). The trade-off is that I get sleepy earlier. So I was feeling silly and made up an alliterative (although mostly ridiculous) title :). Because I'm the "fastly (not even a word...) fading Filly. Yeah, I need a class in creativity, I know.

Here are a couple pictures for funsies. They were taken by my sister-in-law Angie. On our wedding day (yes, you're still getting those pictures). And the first one is hilarious. We were playing and unfortunately (or, I think fortunately ;)) Angie caught me with the look still on my face! Haha... But picture two tells you how I really feel about this handsome husband of mine :).
Awww... Love it.
Anyway, I promised some fun facts. Fun for whom? That's yet-to-be-determined.

1. There are ant carcasses strewn about my kitchen. Ah! Tragic. The weather has warmed and the ants decided to take up residence (or perhaps they were already here, but dormant...). I squish them with disinfectant wipes at 6 in the morning and then get busy shredding vegetables and then have to go to work... You know the drill. Point is, the dead ants (saying those two words together make me think of a joke I believe my Aunt Hila told years ago... "What did the Pink Panther say when he stepped on an ant?" Answer: "Dead-ant, Dead-ant, Dead-ant... (to the tune of the Pink Panther). Anyway. The dead ants are still on the kitchen floor. Along with some mobile ones at this point, I'm sure. No worries. We'll be dealing with that shortly.

2. A slug also came to visit last week. Jeremy discovered his slug slime on some less-than-desirable items. Like a cutting board. Ew!

3. My car is under the weather. It's hanging out at my mom's house, because it developed a massive oil leak on Sunday. So guess who has been driving Jeremy's stick shift car to work this week? And guess who hadn't driven one of those in about 3 years (or more)? And guess who has never driven one in the land of a million mountains and hills (aka Washington)? Yep. Me. I'm a bit nervous about killing it on the hills. I'll admit it. Stupid oil leak...

4. Jeremy and I watched The Great Race and ate garlic popcorn for our date night on Saturday. It was really nice and enjoyable to snuggle on the couch with a movie :). Purely awesome to watch that movie with someone who has never seen it before. Actually, purely awesome to watch it with someone who has! It's just a great movie. "Leslie escaped with a chicken!?!" If you've never seen it... you should.

5. We just got a WinCo here. It's a cheaper grocery store. You bag your own groceries. It's way cool. However, I wanted to miss the crowd on Friday, so I shopped at 7 in the morning. This is practically unheard of for me. I was pretty proud of myself ;). I was equally proud that I came in under budget and I bought extra stuff :). LOVE IT when that happens!

6. I've begun the name change process. That's good times. Turns out the bank is less accommodating than the social security office. Who knew?

7. I'm going to make home-made granola bars this week. I'm way excited about it :). White chocolate cranberry almond will be my first attempt :). Then chocolate with peanuts. Jeremy and I also made this for dinner last Friday. It was delicious, and not really all that hard! Took some time, but not difficult. I'm also getting the granola bar recipe from that site. I love it!

8. Easter was good. Jeremy and I ate dinner with Brad, Angie, Autumn, Christina, Nick, Desiree, Emily, my mom, and my grandma. I took creamed spinach and bread. Angie took roasted potatoes. Christina brought key lime pie. My mom did the ham. It was all really good and we were able to sit around laughing and telling stories. It was good. And my mom got the kids a toy that you push on and it says "Happy Easter!" Only, my mom thought it said "Hop the Rooster." I don't know why she would think that. But she did. In fact, at first, she told Brad that she thought it was weird that it said "Hop the Rooster." Brad set her straight. But how hilarious. Makes me recall a time when she said, "I'm pretty sure those trees are real." Fig trees, Mom. Fig trees. Hahaha... Best. Story. Ever.

There are probably other fun facts I'm forgetting. But this filly is fading fast ;). So I need to go to sleep now. So I can do it all again tomorrow. Yippy skippy! :)

Goal Update

Well, it’s a few days into April. And I do want to try to update my goal progress for the year quarterly this year. So here goes nothing ;).

Memorize 52 Scirpture Masteries: Well, it didn’t take me long to realize that I was kind of making a mountain out of this goal… Important? Yes. 52? Probably not the best choice. So I have cut that down to about 20. I’m all about being realistic. If you set too many unrealistic goals and then accomplish none, you get discouraged. It’s much better to be realistic and have the potential to reach it. So how am I doing on this one? Well, I memorized one new one :). It was part of Sharing Time and I helped the Primary kids learn Amos 3:7, which states: “Surely the Lord God will do nothing but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets.” I do have others memorized, but they are ones I had memorized before. Like Moses 3:18. Or 1 Nephi 3:7. So I have some work to do to reach this goal. I probably should start…

Simplify: I don’t know if I’ve done this well or not. I kind of think I have, because – well, look at my wedding ;)! It doesn’t get much simpler than that! No stress of planning. I have felt mostly laid back lately. I haven’t begun working on cross-stitch ornaments. I probably should make a list of things that would help me to simplify. Things like planning meals – and even making meals ahead of time and freezing them. Although, Jeremy is a great help with dinner. Right now he is getting home before me, so he is willing (and able) to make our dinner :). Today he gets it easy, since I got it in the crock pot this morning and all he has to do is add the green peppers and make the brown rice. But yesterday he made our creamy chicken and biscuits from start to finish. But yeah, I am grateful I set this as a goal, because in Conference just this past weekend, President Monson asked us if, in this fast-paced world in which we live, we ever slow down enough to meditate and ponder on eternal truths. So I think I need to continue to ask myself that and work on making time to do so.

Visiting Teaching: Well, I’m starting out with what I hoped. It can be a challenge, and that’s mostly because I feel really awkward when I call up someone I don’t know and ask them if Wendy and I can visit with them. But I think, if I’m open and honest and just be myself, it won’t be so bad. So if I feel awkward, I can say I do. That’s keeping it real ;).

Eat More Vegetables: Woohoo! Well, I am doing okay on this. For one thing, Monday Meals has been going along pretty well (except the last 2 weeks, because things have been going on…). For another, I recently discovered that the way Jeremy enjoys his veggies is actually quite good! He shreds up several different types of vegetables and eats them with mayo. And okay, so I’m not a mayonnaise fan. But I can put salad dressing on them, and WOW! I was quite pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed them! So now, if I don’t have time to whip up some veggies to go with dinner (or I forget to tell Jeremy what page to look on in a cookbook to fix some veggies I had planned…), we can rely on the shredded veggies that are pretty much always on hand! So I think I’ve done better about eating veggies this year. And I think I will continue to do EVEN better!

Humility: This is hard to measure. And somehow I don’t know how humble it would be to say I am more humble ;). If I am… But the point for me is that I am working on trusting my Heavenly Father and His will for me. Though this may sound like it should be an easy thing to accomplish, it isn’t. At least not for me. Because sometimes I just don’t understand. I often reference my experience of moving here to Washington because I KNEW it was the right thing for me; and then winding up here pretty much jobless for the first 4 months and then working part-time jobs at low pay, living with my mom and grandmother (feeling like a moocher), and seeing no prospects of marriage… And that was for a really long time. And I’m not going to lie. That was a blow to my confidence in my decision to move here. It was even a blow to my faith. But I pushed forward, although reluctantly and sometimes begrudgingly (definitely not the best attitude…). And now I know and understand. Maybe not all of it. But a lot of it. Because I know now why I was told to come to Washington. I know now why I was kept where I was kept. I know it was so I could meet the wonderful man I would marry. It just took time for everything to be “right.” And so I am working on trusting. And trusting enough to move forward in faith when I know something is right – even if it doesn’t make sense at the time. And being humble enough to have confidence in that choice when things get hard, instead of becoming like a belligerent teenager and shaking my fist at the heavens… (I’ve totally done that on more than one occasion).

Bucket List Item: I’m going to go ahead and say I have already accomplished this. I did so on March 23. I married the right person at the right time in the right place for right now. And while it isn’t what I anticipated when I listed that as one of my bucket-list items, it is right. After all, as I’ve quoted to you before, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” There will be another time and another place that will be right. It will be the time and place when we become a forever family. But it will still be with the same right person ;).

Three-Month Supply of Food Storage: Well, I am moving in this direction in different ways. One new way is being in the habit of replacing things as I use them. So if I make something that uses a can of cream of chicken, I immediately add that to my shopping list so I replenish the supply. This is a new thing for me. In the past, I would deplete the supply and then have to buy it when I needed it. So I never had a store of it. We are also doing really well with having plenty of white rice ;). And we now use nonfat dry milk exclusively, so we will keep a store of that. I’m liking having staples. And while our meals might not be exciting by any means, I’m pretty sure Jeremy and I could sustain life for 3 months on what we have in the house, if we needed to. Well, except for water… But I don’t think we will try to store 3 months of water… But we do need to try to store some water.

72-Hour Kits: Still not doing super-awesome on this. I’m not really sure why. Probably lack of focus. Sometimes life seems to be in such constant change that I think, “Well, I’ll do that when things settle down.” Well, what if things never settle down!?! Yeah, we should probably get on this…

Well, that was a short list! I need to keep these things in my focus a little better, I think.

In other news… Guess who is speaking in Sacrament on Easter Sunday? Yikes! I feel completely inadequate. So I will be praying a lot!

And you know what else? I’ve been missing Alabama lately… Wishing I was back there on vacation. Well, except for the whole 85-degree weather bit. I don’t miss (or want) that. Of course, I’m also ready to not miss (but have gone) this ridiculous cold weather up here. How about some 60s? I’m cool with that! Stop dipping into the 30s! It’s April for goodness sake!