Weekend Update No. 2

It was a very full weekend. Brendon spent Friday night completing two final exams to put another semester of school behind him. Only six more to go....!! The rest of us went over to hang with Bryant and Oliver for a few hours while Marchelle served up dinner to a missionary zone conference.

Gracie is definitely the favorite with Oliver! 

On Saturday, there was no downtime for Brendon as he headed off early for appointments at work and then meetings at church most of the day. I took Shayne to a five-mile hike for Scouts that morning and ended up walking three of it with them. At the end, Shayne convinced me to climb Jacob's Ladder, and let me tell you, three days later, I am still paying for that. So. out. of. shape. (In my defense though, they are also referred to as The Stairs of Death.)

I spent the afternoon making some beans and guacamole to contribute to a dinner for the visiting church leaders at Stake Conference that night. Then, when Brendon had a break in his meetings, we took the kids to 7-11 for the Bring Your Own Cup Day promotion. (Thanks for the heads up on that one, Shelly!)

As long as your container could stand upright in a ten-inch diameter test space they had set up, you could fill it and only pay the price of a medium Slurpee. So the kids selected a large mixing bowl, a Tupperware pitcher, a nacho helmet, and an empty milk jug. It was so, so funny. We saw college kids filling up enormous water bottles and one woman getting chewed out because her extra large animal cracker container didn't fit within their ten-inch guidelines. Brendon was a bit leery of the whole thing ("Are we really going to let them fill up their whole containers?") but I assured him it was all about the experience and fun, so we just let them have it--mixing flavors and filling them to the top. The great thing about Slurpees, in this case anyway, is that they don't keep. If you put them in the freezer, they get too hard and icy to eat, and if you put them in the fridge or leave them out, they melt into sugar water and just aren't that fun anymore. So within an hour or so, all the Slurpee fun had melted away and gone down the drain. Wasteful, yes, but the kids had a ball with it.

Saturday evening and Sunday were our Stake Conference meetings. We had two visiting Seventy--Elder Nash and Elder Palmer--here to change our Stake Presidency. I felt convicted, challenged and inspired at every meeting. It was wonderful--a game changer in some ways, I think. More on that another time, perhaps.

And so here we are in a new week, the week I usually dread each spring, the week before my students' research papers are due. It is full of reading and re-reading rough (rough!) drafts and meeting with panicked students to either calm or affirm their fears. Wish me luck!