Spring Has Brought Me Such a Nice Surprise!

No, the surprise is not my spring cold (although I was not expecting it, having been so unusually healthy for the last 10 months).

We had quite a lovely day today and when I ventured out into my garden to pull the invading grass from my planter beds, I found this!

I have always loved crocuses so last winter I planted a bunch of bulbs.  None of them came up last year but today I found this little beauty!  Of course, it would be growing right next to the lilac bush I'm planning on moving this weekend and probably won't survive past Saturday but at least I got a glimpse of spring--before the next snowstorm hits us.

Layout #9

I'm not sure if I've posted all of my layouts for my class on the blog but this is the 9th in the series of 12 for the class.  Again, I've used photos from my trip to the Czech Republic in 2007.

I am seriously considering taking the design class next week.  It is $325 but lasts 5 weeks and teaches you the ins and outs of designing and marketing your own digital kits.

Why polygamy doesn't work.

I have always told Jeremiah that the reason I could never be a polygamist wife is because women (myself included) are not good at sharing their men.  I was backed up by proof that this is actually an inborn, innate setting in women's brains last weekend at stake conference.

We decided we wanted soft seats and since the chapel was already filled, we went into to the Relief Society room to watch the talks in there.  Apparently this was a popular place for people with children in the 18-24 month range and we ended up sitting behind several families of small kiddos.  Sitting next to Jeremiah was an adorable little boy named Matthias who, after carefully watching the other children swarm a mother with treats, decided to join the fray.  Upon making his presence known to the group, he was immediately set upon by a precocious little brunette named Lucy.  She decided they should hold hands and swing their arms while she whispered/babbled sweet nothings to him.  Matthias did not object.

In comes Girl #2 (I never learned her name).  After watching how much fun Lucy and Matthias were having, she decided she wanted to join in.  Now, take note, she had no desire to steal Matthias away from Lucy.  No, she merely wanted to share him.  Lucy would have none of this.  After successfully disengaging Girl #2's hand from Matthias' (who had no objection to sharing himself between two lovely ladies, also apparently an inborn trait), Lucy carefully but forcefully steered her back to her mother, even placing her hand inside her mom's so she could play the swinging-arm game there.  She then backed Matthias down the aisle in order to be out of range of any other women who might hold similar ideas.

Like I've always said.  Girls. Don't. Share.

And another layout

When I finally dragged myself out of bed this morning (Dobby wanted to snuggle and I was in no hurry to move him), I realized *horrors* that I am two classes behind on my scrapbooking class.  So, after doing some work-related email, making myself presentable for the day, plotting out my dream mini-orchard and research dwarf fruit trees on the internet, I settled down and created this lovely shabby-chic layout for the new album I'm doing of my trip to the Czech Republic in 2007.  Here it is:

Little Jaunt

We had a fun little over-nighter to Ogden recently and quite enjoyed ourselves.

Thursday afternoon we drove up to Ogden and stayed with Jeremiah's aunt Susan, uncle Doug and grandpa Doug.  They were kind enough to take us to their favorite restaurant, Javier's, for some yummy Mexican food and put us up for the night, even though they were getting ready to leave on a cruise the next day.

On Friday morning, I got up early and drove to the last day of the USHA Conference (Utah Speech-Language and Hearing Association.  I'm on the executive board--I do the newsletter and take pictures of events).  I got to introduce one of my former (and favorite) teachers/clinical supervisors from graduate school, Nancy Alarcon, and listen on her great classes for the entire day before heading back to Susan and Doug's to help them get ready for their cruise (Jeremiah and I showed them how to prep their Flip and iPad for the trip).  Then they were sweet enough to take us to Winger's for dinner before we left (it was my first experience there--pretty yummy but I wish I wasn't so stuffed from the conference food--we had bagels and fruit for breakfast, donuts for a mid-morning snack, roast with veggies for lunch and chips with salsa and guacamole for an afternoon snack).  We got home at 10 to our cooped-up crazy cat and enjoyed settling into our wonderfully soft bed for the night.  It was a nice 24-hours.

Exciting News!

Well, sort of.  I realized I forgot to post that my license FINALLY came through and I began working for TinyEYE Therapy Services yesterday morning.  I spent the entire day working with a group of school children on the Louis Bull reservation in central Alberta.  It was a tough day due to super slow internet speeds that kept freezing video and audio but we managed to get through everyone and it was really fun.  I worked this morning at another school in Alberta (that thankfully had much faster internet so I only had to deal with a little audio lag, which was still a bit annoying because I ended up talking over the kids and aide a lot) but my afternoon school was cancelled due to a weather-related school closure (I guess that's what you get for living in Alberta).  I'll be working fairly close to full time for the next few weeks as I make up sessions we lost with the kids while waiting for my license to come through, then it'll pare back to 15-20 hours a week until mid-to-late June.  It's good to be working again but I do miss not having to use an alarm.  :)

More My Style

This week's class is more my style, shabby chic.  I decided to scrap our Valentine's photos (at least some of them, I will turn this layout into a double in the next few days).  We had a fun Valentine's.  We decided to keep it cheap so we went to the dollar theater to watch "Megamind" (but since it was in 3D there was an extra charge, plus I got our tickets online and the tickets aren't really a dollar any more for a normal movie so in the end it actually cost us $3.50 each but hey, that's still not bad), then we went to one of my most favorite restaurants ever--Zupa's!  It is a wonderful soup-salad-panini place that if you are blessed to live in Utah, you may have been to.  I got soup (lobster bisque, a good choice but next time I will follow my heart and get what I always get--wild mushroom bisque.  Heaven!!  When I'm feeling up to par, I like to do the combo with a chipotle chicken salad) and Jeremiah had a panini and berry salad.  They always give you chocolate dipped strawberries for dessert so it was pretty much perfect!