I am sure I have commented on this before, but we are so blessed to live in a Church which presents us with different opportunities to serve in a wide variety of ways. One Tuesday afternoon, Gary took a phone call and then asked me if we were free for a visit on Wednesday or Thursday. He didn't mention who it was. I proceed to outline those days which included one of the conferences and I truly had little time to meet in the evenings. Gary talked on the phone some more and then told me that they were going to try to have time on Sunday to visit. "Who was it," I asked. Gary then informed me that it was the State President who wanted to meet with us. I don't know about you but I do not do well with waiting to talk to the Bishopric and certainly not the Stake President. Whatever it is about I just want to know and move on.......waiting just breeds uncertainty and wondering. I said call him right back and we will go tonight. Gary laughed. He loves watching me with this type of stuff.
As it turned out, the Stake President wanted to do it before Sunday so we fit a time in between my conference in Ogden and a meeting I had in Salt Lake. Gary was called to be the Ward Clerk in our ward. He has been a financial clerk before but never the ward clerk and he is discovering that it is more than he realized. Part of that is because he is learning all about the Church's computer as he tries to make sure we are using it to it's potential. He will be awesome and the ward will be as organized and up-to-date as possible. He is meeting lots of our neighbors and he is trying to clean up and up-date the records. He is there now cleaning out the clerk's office and trying to figure out what supplies they need and also updating the computer. Apparently the virus software had been turned off and it was a big job to get it working correctly. He is a good man.
One benefit was that we decided he needed a tablet. We have had a touch pad by HP which we got cheap when they discontinued them but it doesn't have many Aps for it. The tablet is amazing. He got a keyboard so that he can take notes during meetings and he says it works great. I borrowed it to use with my dad as we did genealogy last Monday and now I want one as well. Like one of my friends said about her Ipad. It is not a smart phone nor a laptop, it is something in the middle and you will wonder how you survived without it. We shall see. I am hoping to move completely to a computer calendar when I start using mine.
And by the way, he is still the Webelo leader and the Stake Employment Specialist although that will change in the near future we assume. It will be really sad for him to not do Webelos. I love having them come each week to our house for Webelos. They have all been great kids. They all try to arrive about 10 minutes early because Gary allows them in and they play pool and air hockey until time to start. One of us has done scouts for most of the past 20 years and some of the years before that. This will be a change for both of us.
Stake Employment specialist has been a good experience too. As we face the real possibility that Gary may be laid off in the coming months, that calling has given him lots of information about handling a job search. We have been so blessed in that Gary has been constantly employed since 1981 and there has been only 3 or 4 months of our entire married life that he didn't have a job (and even then he had part-time work to do). In the computer industry with many ups and downs, that is amazing!
Like I mentioned, callings are such a blessing!
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Conferences
When I mapped out April, I had reserved the two middle weeks of the month for preparing for and attending conferences. As it turned out, that was good because it truly took all of my time to do those things.
April 11 I attended a conference about the Brain and fatigue and stress. It was very interesting and I got lots of information to study and think about. I took this class as part of the 20 CEU hours I must do every 2 years to maintain my license.
April 13, I attended the Utah Emergency Preparation Fair in Salt Lake. There were lots of booths and the classes I attended were very good for the most part. Again lots of information to study and learn from to get more prepared.
Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to review and reorganize myself based on that new information as well as all of the stuff I learned from the Roots Net Conference in March about family history. All my spare time was spent in preparing for the Utah Down Syndrome Foundation Conference which was held on April 20. In February I was asked by the President of the UDSF to take over the organization and planning for this conference. Josh had recently become the President after starting the preparations for the conference back in the fall. He felt it was too much to do both (he was right). So that is how I ended up with a month of conferences!
The UDSF conference went great. This was the first one in many years and people loved it. It was fun to gather and talk about important topics. We had about 160 people plus about 50 kids who were in child care or youth programs during the conference. We even got news coverage on Fox 13 which included an interview with one of our self-advocates, Jared, who is 35 years old.
I am slated to actually be in charge of the conference for next year which I am very excited about. However that might change...more on that later.
Afterwards there were two days where I just recovered--Sunday and Monday and then I started "catching" up with housework, laundry, grocery shopping, all of the stuff that gets put on hold when you are dealing with 50 emails a day and writing a conference booklet of 50 pages, much of which can't be done until the last week in case of changes. In the middle of that time, my lap top finally actually died and Gary couldn't bring it back to life. Luckily we had bought a new desk top for me and had moved much of my stuff over, so it wasn't a total disaster. It was still a busy time to be figuring out a new computer with new software.
April 11 I attended a conference about the Brain and fatigue and stress. It was very interesting and I got lots of information to study and think about. I took this class as part of the 20 CEU hours I must do every 2 years to maintain my license.
April 13, I attended the Utah Emergency Preparation Fair in Salt Lake. There were lots of booths and the classes I attended were very good for the most part. Again lots of information to study and learn from to get more prepared.
Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to review and reorganize myself based on that new information as well as all of the stuff I learned from the Roots Net Conference in March about family history. All my spare time was spent in preparing for the Utah Down Syndrome Foundation Conference which was held on April 20. In February I was asked by the President of the UDSF to take over the organization and planning for this conference. Josh had recently become the President after starting the preparations for the conference back in the fall. He felt it was too much to do both (he was right). So that is how I ended up with a month of conferences!
The UDSF conference went great. This was the first one in many years and people loved it. It was fun to gather and talk about important topics. We had about 160 people plus about 50 kids who were in child care or youth programs during the conference. We even got news coverage on Fox 13 which included an interview with one of our self-advocates, Jared, who is 35 years old.
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| Our cute conference bags |
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| Jim Faber from National Down Congress |
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| Cafe Rio for lunch |
I am slated to actually be in charge of the conference for next year which I am very excited about. However that might change...more on that later.
Afterwards there were two days where I just recovered--Sunday and Monday and then I started "catching" up with housework, laundry, grocery shopping, all of the stuff that gets put on hold when you are dealing with 50 emails a day and writing a conference booklet of 50 pages, much of which can't be done until the last week in case of changes. In the middle of that time, my lap top finally actually died and Gary couldn't bring it back to life. Luckily we had bought a new desk top for me and had moved much of my stuff over, so it wasn't a total disaster. It was still a busy time to be figuring out a new computer with new software.
New Carpet
When we were choosing carpet for our new house back in 1998, I choose a berber carpet just for the TV room off the kitchen. We had something simlar in our Texas house and I thought it managed the wear and tear of the kids and dogs well. The sale person told me that I would be able to keep this carpet for 20 years, much longer than other carpets of that time. It was true that in 2998 when we replaced our other carpet upstairs, there was no need to replace the TV room carpet. However the past five years have been hard on it and so we decided it was time for a replacement. It is so much work to change carpet in one room......hopefully we don't have to do it anywhere else for a long time.
This happened just a few days after we returned from our trip with most of the work being done inbetween conference sessions for the Church. Like most projects like this, it is great to have it done.
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| The old carpet It does give you a good reason to spring clean the whole room when you are getting new carpet. |
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| The new carpet |
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| With the furniture back in |
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| As we put the tv on the stand, both Gary and I commented that we liked the clean lines of not having a big entertainment center around it. After thinking about it over night, we decided to go with it. |
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| And there is where we moved the other pieces of the entertainment center, into our bedroom on either side of our existing furniture. It is not a perfect match but very close., I like having book shelves in our bedroom. |
Windy Wednesday...
Not that Wednesday was really any more windy than our other days in Texas, but the "W"s worked for the title. I often excused myself for not spending a lot of time doing my hair because I grew up in places like Richland and Amarillo which were very windy cities. You lose your motivation to do your hair in those types of situations. This day was like that.
Jena and I headed to downtown Dallas again to visit the Ross Perot Science Museum. I had wanted to take Jena to the science museum where I had taken our other kids many times but I couldn't remember the name and couldn't find it during my internet searches. Later my friends indicated that they think the other one is still there at Fair Park We enjoyed our visit to this very new museum with the 30 busload of kids who were there on school field trips.
We saw a 3-D movie about meercats which was very interesting. The whole visit just reminded me how amazing our world is and how much I don't know about it.
After that, we headed to McKinney, TX, to visit with our friends the Keelers. We had great food as Maria is a great cook and had a fun visit.
We had a little bit of an adventure on the way back to my brother's house in Grapevine. Traveling back on "635" (because I didn't want to pay the toll the other way), we were traveling in the dark, in the middle of major construction where the lanes were changing around and there were cement barricades everywhere, it started to pour down rain like it can in Texas. Fortunately it only lasted about 15 minutes but that is terrifying driving for me. I was ready to pull over and take a nap. Typical situation in Dallas driving so I guess it was all part of the Texas experience.
We spent the night at my brother Rick's and had a quiet morning helping my sister-in-law Linda to box up and clean up Katie's room so that Thad could move in. We then packed up ourselves and got the 2:30 plane back to Salt Lake. It was a great trip and I was so glad that I was able to take Jena with me. I am sorry that we didn't get to see everyone we knew, but it still was awesome!
Jena told me at one point that she loves vacations with cousins. On the way home she told me that she wanted to go to Disneyland for our next vacation and then after a short pause she added, "but with Dad." Yea, I like vacations with Dad , too. No telling where our next trip will take us.
We flew in to Salt Lake and Gary and his mom picked us up and off we went to dinner and a play at the Hale Theatre. We saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which was great. During our performance the car actually did go "bang". Right at intermission when the car was flying and then started going down into the stage as a curtain was descending, there was a loud band and then a scream or two. A minute or two later, stage hands ran under the curtain and shortly the actors on the car came out through the curtain. We didn't see the car again so we assume it had a bit of technical difficulites. At least no one was hurt. It was still very fun.
Jena and I headed to downtown Dallas again to visit the Ross Perot Science Museum. I had wanted to take Jena to the science museum where I had taken our other kids many times but I couldn't remember the name and couldn't find it during my internet searches. Later my friends indicated that they think the other one is still there at Fair Park We enjoyed our visit to this very new museum with the 30 busload of kids who were there on school field trips.
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| The front entrance |
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| Dinosaurs-no natural science museum would be complete without them |
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| Frogs outside the entrance. |
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| In each different section of the museum, they had a place where they introduced different types of scientists who worked in that field. In the area about the human body, I was surprised to see this screen---This is Dr. Karol who did Tosha's surgery when she was five at Scottish Rite Hospital. She did an awesome job on it which allowed Tosha to dance and do most things with her hip. |
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| This section brought to life many of the things Jena is learning in her high school biology class. |
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| They had a lab area where you got to be a "scientist" and do an experiment. |
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| Jena prepared a slide of her check cells by scraping her cheek and then putting it on a slide and staining it. This is one of her cells. |
We saw a 3-D movie about meercats which was very interesting. The whole visit just reminded me how amazing our world is and how much I don't know about it.
After that, we headed to McKinney, TX, to visit with our friends the Keelers. We had great food as Maria is a great cook and had a fun visit.
We had a little bit of an adventure on the way back to my brother's house in Grapevine. Traveling back on "635" (because I didn't want to pay the toll the other way), we were traveling in the dark, in the middle of major construction where the lanes were changing around and there were cement barricades everywhere, it started to pour down rain like it can in Texas. Fortunately it only lasted about 15 minutes but that is terrifying driving for me. I was ready to pull over and take a nap. Typical situation in Dallas driving so I guess it was all part of the Texas experience.
We spent the night at my brother Rick's and had a quiet morning helping my sister-in-law Linda to box up and clean up Katie's room so that Thad could move in. We then packed up ourselves and got the 2:30 plane back to Salt Lake. It was a great trip and I was so glad that I was able to take Jena with me. I am sorry that we didn't get to see everyone we knew, but it still was awesome!
Jena told me at one point that she loves vacations with cousins. On the way home she told me that she wanted to go to Disneyland for our next vacation and then after a short pause she added, "but with Dad." Yea, I like vacations with Dad , too. No telling where our next trip will take us.
We flew in to Salt Lake and Gary and his mom picked us up and off we went to dinner and a play at the Hale Theatre. We saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which was great. During our performance the car actually did go "bang". Right at intermission when the car was flying and then started going down into the stage as a curtain was descending, there was a loud band and then a scream or two. A minute or two later, stage hands ran under the curtain and shortly the actors on the car came out through the curtain. We didn't see the car again so we assume it had a bit of technical difficulites. At least no one was hurt. It was still very fun.
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