Jesus want me for a Sunbeam

One Sunday in March, I got to sub for Hayden's Sunbeam class in Primary. I loved it. Since before January I had been teaching Primary for 2 1/2 years for the 5 turning 6 year olds. I should have been a sunbeam teacher I love the lessons the kids are awesome and want to learn and are so into the lessons because they are at their level unlike the other lessons I taught for the 5-6 year olds. Some of those lessons were a little over their heads. The lesson was on I am thankful for fish. We talked about fish and I brought in Payton and Kennedy's Finding Nemo figurings and we talked about them. We fished for paper fish that they got to color. For snack we had you guessed it gold fish crackers and Swedish fish. We talked about Jonah and the Whale (big fish) and Jesus telling the apostle where to fish since they hadn't caught anything all night. It was so much fun. I can't wait till I can sub again for his class.

Are you kidding me???

Well today March 2nd it snowed again. That is 3 times this year it has snowed more than just flurries this was enough to stick to the ground and make a snowman and not just a little bitty snowman that you make on your car with the snow that is on the car because it isn't sticking to the cement or roads. I didn't even take pictures this time. This has been by far the coldest winter in a long time. I'm not too sure about the rest of the world but there is definitely no global warming or climate change or whatever they are calling it now if anything it has been the opposite. The snow was just light flurries when the bus came this morning. All the the counties around us closed school early except ours which was fine by me since Jon was out of town. The weather was going to be below freezing the rest of the day and through the night so I kept checking to see if the school was cancelled for the next day or if it was delayed a few hours like some of the other schools. I did one last check just after 10:15 pm before I got ready for bed and just 2 minutes earlier they had delayed school 2 hours so the ice would melt so they buses could get around safely. So when the kids woke up in the morning, they were all excited because they thought it was a snow day. They were very disappointed to find out they only had 2 hours off of school. I hope this is the last snow post of the season!

Out of Town

I can only think of one time that Jon has been out of town for work for more than a day. That was a long while back when he did some electrical work for a Residence Inn Marriott in Alabama. Last week, Jon flew to Orlando in the morning to look at a job and was home by late afternoon. He gave the company a bid and 4 days later was off to Orlando with his business partner and 2 helpers. They left Monday, March 1st in the morning and got home on Saturday late afternoon. All I can say is thank goodness for school. The job he did was for a company who had this office closed for some time now but they needed to get it back in shape to hand it over to the landlord so he could re rent it. So they pulled out and scrapped lots and lots of electrical wire that this company added while renting it. Fixed a few things put up over 1000 drop ceiling tiles, threw out a bunch of junk and garbage had excess furniture hauled away and vacuumed this enormous 2 story 50,000 sq foot office space and maybe a bit more but that is all I am really aware of. It turned out to be a very good job and some of that money is going to fund our 2 week Disney trip this June. We booked a rental house a month back in Orlando for 13 days in June and had money set aside for the rental house but didn't have any other money saved for entertainment (Disney tickets). We thought well we at least have one day tickets from our give a day get a day service we did a month ago but now we have ticket money so I can't wait. It has been far to long for our family. By the time we go it will be a couple weeks shy of 18 months since we last went. I am glad Jon is back but it looks like he will have to go back in another week to finish things up.

Movie Night

Movie night is the primary kids favorite activity of the year. The kids work so hard the month before to earn their reverence bucks every Sunday so they can buy hot dogs, popcorn, lemonade, and candy. Since I am now an activity day leader, they didn't ask me to help out with the activity they only asked the Sunday teachers. So this meant Jon and I were free to do whatever we wanted for 2 hours. This year the Junior primary was watching An American Tail and the Senior primary was watching some Muppet movie. We got the kids all situated with their food and then we went down the street with 2 other couples to the Peachtree Diner for dinner. We did have Brenton with us though since he is no longer in Primary. We thought we would treat him to a nice dinner since he attended 2 merit badge classes from 8-4 today. We were happy he was able to get those two completely passed off. We had a great time chatting and before you knew it it was time to pick up the kiddos. They had fun and can't wait till next year. So everyone was had a great evening.

Cannery

Our ward scheduled a cannery trip on Saturday Feb. 20th. So before Hayden's birthday party with the relatives my sister Christa and I decided to go to the cannery to can some food for our long term storage. I wanted to be able to buy the rest of my year supply of food that the cannery has to offer on this trip so my big mother Yukon was filled to the top with boxes of canned food. I did have Christa with me so she had some food in my car as well. I think the only thing I still might need more of that the cannery has to can is powdered milk. I only buy a little at a time because it is pretty expensive. I worked at the messy station with the powdered fruit drink, hot cocoa mix, flour, milk. So I had powder all down my front even with the nice plastic aprons they offer. It was fun. The next day my upper back was sore from loading and unloading all the boxes of cans to and from my car. I am quickly running out of room to store all this food. Time to get creative.

Happy Birthday Baby

Today, February 19, my baby boy turned 4 years old. He is growing up so fast. We went to his favorite place McDonald's for his birthday dinner. The kids had a great time in the play place.

The next day we had the relatives over for the celebration. Hayden wanted a Spider Man cake and Jon did an awesome job with the 3D decorations. Happy Birthday!! You will always be my baby.

Hayden

Hayden with his Spiderman cake

Hayden with his presents

Valentine's Day

Since Valentine's Day fell on a Sunday, we decided to grill some steaks and have a nice dinner after church. The next day I bought some Valentine's candy that was 1/2 off while I was grocery shopping and we ate that for Family Home Evening treats. So just a relaxing laid back day. I'm not really the romantic type person so this holiday makes me feel a little uncomfortable so that makes this my least favorite holiday. Also, I would never let Jon buy me double or in some stores triple the price flowers on this holiday I would rather wait another week and get them at a reasonable price or not at all. That's just me though.

Census 2010

Since January, I had been thinking about applying to work with the Census. So I looked up all about it on the Internet at the Census website and gave a call to the local Census office in our area to find out more. She told me my next step was to take the test. So on Saturday, February 13th, I headed over to some church not to nearby to take the test. I left, or so I thought, with plenty of time to get there since yesterday was snowy and today there was still icy patches where the shade covers the road. The on ramp to the freeway I needed to go on was blocked off due to a car crash. So I had to go back and around and take some back roads to get to the next exit up on ramp. Then my GPS told me the church was on the right and it was on the left so I had to turn around by this time I was supposed to be in my seat. So I turned around parked the car headed into the church and saw to the right a gym where people were playing basketball and then saw a sign off to the left saying Census with an arrow pointing to the left. So I ran down the hall and came to some stairs and didn't know if I should go up them or go straight there was no sign. So I walked straight and nothing so I ran up the stairs and saw a sign and got into the classroom. I was about 10 minutes late by this time and was hoping to just sneak in but there were only 4 other people besides the instructor in the room. So I signed in and took a seat and filled out some paper work that the others were working on. Luckily, I was in super speed mode and filled out all the paper work before at least two others. After the paper work, the instructor read off a bunch of stuff and then it was on to the test. I did print out the online practice test the day before and took it at home while my kids were running around along with their Tady cousins whom we were watching as part of a Christmas present we gave Christa and Aaron. We gave them a Macaroni Grill gift card and told them we would watch their kids when they go. So with all that racket I set the timer for 30 minutes and took the practice test. I think I did pretty good considering the noise and that I couldn't really concentrate. I missed 4 out of 28 questions. After we took the real test, which in some areas were easier than the practice test but others were a little more confusing at first. We had 30 minutes to answer 28 questions so just over a minute per question. She would let us know when 15 minutes were up and then when we had 5 minutes left. I had no problem completing all the question and had plenty of time to go back to the few I circled to reread and check over. Since there were only 5 people, she graded the tests right then and then gave us a sticky note with how many we got right. I only missed one question so I was pretty happy about that. I could see her while she was grading the tests so I know one other person missed one and another missed 2 and one got them all right and one missed a bunch. She said our class was the best scoring of all her classes so far.
If they call it will be in another month or 2. If I do get a job, it will most likely be calling or driving to peoples homes who didn't turn in their census forms and get them filled out all in the city where I live. It could last up to 3 months depending on how many people mailed in their forms in my area. At this point I don't really care if I get chosen or not I just thought it would be something worth trying out and make a little money on the side.

Snow

Well today, February 12th would have been another snow day but the kids already had the day off due to Presidents Day. They were kind of bummed out. But this snow was the perfect snow for everything from snowballs to snowmen to snow angels. I for one wasn't to thrilled about this. My thought was, we already had our 1 big snow of the year (haha if you could call it that) enough already I'm ready for Spring. After all, that is one of the big reasons why Jon and I moved back down South to get away from it. The kids and Jon had a great time playing in the snow. Here is some of what they did.

Snow Dog

Talmage with the snow man

Jon, Kennedy, Hayden, and Talmage

Hayden

Connor