Girls' D-ight or is it N-ay?

All day I spent at work doing preparations for the upcoming Temple Engineers Seminar with some ladies from work. Then I drove from there to PG for a girls night out with mom and the sisters while Lisa is in town. We all met up at the Olive Garden (which robbed me since I didn't know they'd increased their price for soup and salad to $9.75). That makes it a girls' day/night...or dight, or nay...

Mom and Me

Lisa and Sarah



Royal Wedding

It is official. There is a new Duchess of Cambridge, Princess Katherine. I didn't plan on getting up to watch it since the wedding would start at 4 a.m. MST, but I woke up like a kid on Christmas and went to my DVR recording and watched in double-time the two hours of press coverage for lead-up, then the actual wedding ceremony and procession, and finished just in time to get ready for work and to see the balcony kiss live on TV...or should I say two kisses. I felt very British again walking in to work in the overcast sky and drizzle. Time to go back!

Mindy is coming over for a movie tonight without the kids. Should be a fun girls night!

Scam?

After work I stopped at a gas station to fill up. A man approached me saying he was very embarrased to have to ask this, but could I help with enough gas to get to Utah County. So, I bought $10 worth of gas and both he and the woman in his car were very appreciative. They had a little baby asleep in a car seat in the back. A scam? Maybe, but, what if they really needed it? I decided it was worth the $10 bet.

It reminded me of being in Hawaii with the family and we were approached by a man in a broken wheelchair, bloodied and crying. He needed help getting a disabled cab to come and pick him up since he'd crashed and it broke the wheelchair and he couldn't get home. Maybe an elaborate hoax, but worth the $110 bet just in case he really was in need.

Happy Easter!

I spent the weekend in Pleasant Grove for Easter. I got to see Dana's kids sing in Church. Taylor was cute and rounded them all up so they stood together at the front in a group to sing. Dinner was a quiet affair with only me, mom, dad, and grandma. Since we had an overabundance of strawberries, I threw together the dessert. See, you can still do it with no baking!

Wienie Roast...Barbecue?

Thanks to the late season storms, instead of doing our annual bonfire for the Easter Wienie Roast, we used our barbecue instead. That meant all the kids were inside the house and loud! But, we made do and did all the Easter egg hunts inside, had dinner, and did the monthly family birthday parties.



Beau with his new glasses.



Cowboys Christian and TJ.



Nate as a young man.



Nate aged a few years...

HAIR Ball

I met up with my high school friend Melissa for dinner at Zupa's, a movie called Hanna, and then a hair cut at her place after. She straightened my hair when she styled it and told me a SICK hair story. She babysat Judy's baby a little while ago. Judy had cut someone's hair earlier that day and hadn't cleaned the hair up fast enough - he ate a bunch of it. So when Melissa watched the baby later, and had to change his poopy diaper, there was hair all over in it...plus a little still 'caught'. So, she got some baby wipes and started pulling and EIGHT INCHES and a whole lot of tugging later, the full hair ball came out. I was pretty grossed out.

Pincushion

After my visit previously for the heart ultrasound where I had an I.V. taped to my arm with three syringes coming out of it in spokes, and now my blood work today at the LDS Hospital, I'm being turned into a pincushion!

Welcome Home!

Lisa, Grant, and Matthew have come back for a visit from Washington D.C. Since I had another doctor's appointment in Draper, and wanted to see them before this weekend, I picked them up from the airport and drove them to mom's then hurried back to Draper for my appointment. It was good to see them again!

As for the doctor's appointment...I have to go get some bloodwork done and have now been referred to a neurologist to see if I have Migraine-Induced-Dizziness.  :-(

BUT, it was another taste-testing lunch at work today for the Engineer Seminar. Strawberry Crepes! YUM!

Comedic Shakespeare?

Sarah wanted to go see a play last night up in Perry, Utah which is by Brigham City. She had met a guy on-line who was going to be in it so I went with her as moral support. We had to hit Maddox for dinner first (the raspberry butter was delicious!) and then had some time to spare which we did by driving up to see the progress on the new Brigham City Utah Temple.

There were only about 20 people watching the play and we were front and center to watch it. A Comedy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare and it was interactive. Fortunately, neither of us had to leave our seats to participate, but could do it from where we were sitting. There were some seriously funny parts - the Macbeth scene in particular. I couldn't stop laughing from the Scottish accents and rolling R's and Sarah was crying tears from laughing so hard at the woolen skirts. Fun night!

This IS the Place!

Still doing preparations for the Temple Engineer Seminar coming up in May. MaryAnn, Karen, and I went to This is the Place Heritage Park again and took a golf cart ride around the park to determine different locations. I think this *bonus* activity for the engineers is going to be a lot of fun!

We had to tear ourselves away to make it back in time for another sample luncheon at the JSMB. These are a real hardship let me tell you!  ;-)



The covered golf cart



Mural at the Park

 



Children's Cemetery at the Park




Statue at the Cemetery



JSMB Pavlova for dessert

Friends for Lunch

One of my mission companions (Heather Cotting-Blinzinger) came up for lunch with me today and brought her two cute kids ...well, two and a half kids...along with her. It's her daughter Livvy's Spring Break so it worked out for me to be able to chat and catch up. I could have giggled a little bit about the mission companion who couldn't read the word 'sex' in our white handbook or fourth discussion on Chastity, now being a mom for three kids. Ha! Of course, it could be more funny to me than it really is because I would trick her into reading those pages in our handbook so that no matter who started us off reading on the first page, she would somehow manage to get the 'sex' pages everytime (insert evil cackle here). In my defense, it could have been a page that only said 'a member of the opposite sex', and she wouldn't have liked reading it. So much fun! It's the simple pleasures in life. :-)

Thanks Heather for coming up!

More Old Pics

I went through and uploaded more of the old pics that I found. Here are a few of my favorites:



New Digs

Laralynn and I are both being housed in one of our department's small conference rooms. Our computer and printer equipment got all setup and we are officially in. The old space looks so bare and lonely without us!

Today was another sample lunch over at the JSMB - my favorite so far though others didn't particularly like it. Blueberry, pecan-crusted chicken with anna potatoes and vegetables, a strawberry spinach salad, and rice pudding for dessert. Yum!

In other news, I was in a director's office in the afternoon and a window washer came zooming up into view right outside the window on his hydraulic lift. It scared me so bad I almost fell down. I had to go sit down and recover in the office next door until my knees solidified again and I could make it all the way back to my desk space. The washer saw how bad he scared me and kept motioning his apologies through the window. Absolute terror! in an amusing, and embarrassing way.

Dinner Groups

I actually signed up to go to one of my wards' dinner groups. This time it was held at our ward building after Church. I brought a strudel dessert for our international theme and it turned out quite well. I managed to get to know a few more people in the ward.

Korean Eyre

Amy and Amanda came up for us to go see the new Jane Eyre movie that is out. Afterward, we went to the Korean House to eat because my visiting teachee works there. Both experiences were actually pretty good even though I don't like the Jane Eyre storyline and don't particularly like ethnic food.

I did mess around with my new phone and discovered what Amanda and I would look like as old men:



Downsized

The work cubicle has officially been packed up for the interim move during the remodel.  Again.

And the Verdict is...

The good news is that I don't have a hole in my heart. The bad news is that I don't have a hole in the heart. It would have been nice to have a dignose with a known fix. Now I go back with all these test results to my first doctor and go from there. The test was interesting. I was told to take everything up from the waist up and put on the provided robe...which turned out to be not much more than a handkerchief. Fun, fun! It was cool to see my heart beating and all the bubbles injected into one side while we tested to see if they'd transfer to the other side of the heart.

I'm going to self diagnose and say I have Neurogenic Cardiac Syncope compounded with acute motion sickness. Meaning when my low blood pressure drops even more, I experience a particular kind of dizzy spell, faintness, nausea, unsteadiness when walking or standing, and blackouts. And while being in a fixed position, movement around me induces headaches, nausea, another type of dizzy spell, and faintness. A pill to raise my blood pressure and a daily motion sickness pill? We'll see what the doctor says when I tell him what I have.

Difficult Job

To prepare for upcoming temple engineer and president's seminars, the Joseph Smith Memorial Building is putting on luncheons for groups of ten people to come and sample their new menus. Today was one such meeting. We had summer chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables, homemade rolls, mint brownies, and vanilla bean ice cream. Different people in the department have been invited to several more upcoming luncheons in the next few weeks. It's a difficult job, but someone's got to do it!

iPhone-tastic!

I woke up sick still, got up briefly and then went back to bed and slept for another half hour. It was enough to make me feel better long enough to get ready and go to work. Only one 1/2 hour scare during the day and the rest of the time I felt well enough to get through.

What made the day better though? My new iPhone arrived! Jacob at work removed a virus from my laptop and helped me setup the iPhone so all my electronics are in tip-top condition. Time to get-to-know it better and play with apps!

Sick-o

Well, I had to catch a ride home with a co-worker from work again as I was sick ALL DAY LONG. It didn't get better even after going home and putting my feet up. It actually scared me a little with the 'what-if' situations. What if the test on Thursday doesn't show a hole in my heart? What if the doctors aren't able to figure out what's wrong with me? What if I have to deal with this for another 23 years?

Guess all I can do is wait and see. and pray. and hope.

General Conference

Bailey spent the night at moms with me in my room and then all of Dana's family came over to watch Conference there with us. During the first session, I went through old letters I had received from people. I actually do not remember two of the missionaries I wrote while they were on their missions, and I had no idea I'd exchanged so many letters with a third one. I'd thought we'd only written each other once or twice instead of nine times! There were Landon and Ubaldo letters too which cracked me up to read...and made it a little difficult to actually pay attention to the Conference talks.

So in the second session, I gave my couch seat up to mom and laid on the floor instead. That makes you open game for the 'bedlamites' to cuddle up and crawl all over you. So cute though! And I LOVED Elder Scott's talk!



After Conference, Jodie, Taylor, Bailey and I played Guillotine again. Thanks to Lisa for introducing us to the game!

Saturday Conference

While listening to General Conference on the radio, I cleaned out my boxes in mom and dad's storage container. Five hours later, I had removed half of the junk and kept only the things that really mattered to me. Like the crystal wear and embroidered pillow cases from grandma Pack, the crocheted blankets and pillow from grandma Backlund, the Crystal Creations jewelry box from Joseph, mission stuff, etc. I let the nieces and nephews go through three 'give-away' boxes and they LOVED it. Their mom had to slow them down because they tried to take everything - especially Bryan. I guess one person's junk is another's treasure!

Instead of all the girls going out to eat while the guys went to Conference, we put a quilt on to tie as a Humanitarian project in memorium of Yvonne Oliphant who passed away the day before. I finally got to use my big roll of fabric that I've had since cleaning up after the Draper/Oquirrh Mountain Cultural Celebrations.

Felix Festivities

Amy, Amanda and I went out to belatedly celebrate Amy's bday. This meant a Winger's and Hatch's hot chocolate run of course. They chose Veronica Mars for us to watch...and eight episodes and 2:30 in the morning later, I convinced them it was time to go and that we could watch more later.