Cute Andrea

I wish I had a cute picture of her to put right here on my blog. I don't so I will just tell you what a great girl she is. Andrea currently is the President of the IWC (International Womens Club) at Thunderbird. They had a barb-b-q last night and a get to know you night. It was America's night to shine. (Both North and South) It was really great to go and see her in action. They had several girls talk about their different countries and we (my RS Sec. who's husband goes to midwestern, and Tiana) sat next to a cute couple and the wife was from Colombia and husband from Chicago. We got to hear they're love story. So cute. Talked to one of the girls from Brazil and mentioned my son spent a few years there on a mission and that got me in instantly with her. Her husband was from Conneticut. They met in Rio. It's funny, cuz I am so used to the students in our ward and many of them have a foreign spouse, I was constantly jumping to the wrong conclusion last night. I would see American husband and foreign wife and assume LDS missionary who went back to that country. Funny! I got to meet and talk with a gal from Russia who is in our ward too. Really nice people all the way around. Great night and fun to have Andrea in charge.

I wish I was here

I really do wish I was back on my trip in beautiful Australia, with not a care in the world. Like I told my new Relief Society group, I had been praying for help in figuring out what to do with my extra time. Be very careful what you ask for. You never want to "mention" in a prayer that you have extra time! Honestly I felt as though I needed something to get involved in or go back to school, or volunteer somewhere. My prayer was answered in a way that I was definitely not expecting. I was happy with my little beehivers and felt very comfortable where I was. The Lord had a different idea for me on how I could spend my time. This has been an interesting month to say the least. I have been very humbled at the prospect of looking after the welfare of 203 women. I have learned a ton and I know I have many more lessons to learn. One thing I know for sure is how amazing the church is and the programs are in place for a reason. I never understood the absolute beauty of visiting teaching. How else will I know what is going on with my group of women? I need help and Visiting Teachers are my foot soldiers. I never understood the amazing welfare system that the church has in place. I was able to visit the Bishops storehouse last week and again, it was a very humbling experience. Unless you are a Bishop you will never know the amount of welfare that takes place on behalf of the members of the church. What a beautiful program it is and to know that it is in place for those in need just makes me love this church all the more. I am learning a ton about patience. It's easy to understand why teenagers make goofy choices, harder to understand why adults do. We had 11 funerals in our ward last year and I have been in one month and the Bishop says I am setting a record for amount of time without one. Thank goodness! Of course I will cross that bridge when I come to it, I have had lots of firsts this last month, but funerals can wait. Thanks all of you for your examples of Christlike love. I am drawing on your experiences to help me through.

Fantasy Football

For those of you who can remember back this far, we did end up with a winner from our Fantasy Football league. As was stated by the commish, a ring would be ordered for the winner and awarded. These are the pictures of the amazing ring ceremony.

Ok, this is really the end of the story

On Monday morning, we hustled out to Amish country to a world famous Smorgasbord. I am sure I killed the spelling on that but wow was that a great breakfast. It was a huge place and had everything you could think of for breakfast. You get get pancakes made any way you wanted them, omelets any way you wanted them and then just a ton of other options. Downstairs was a huge store, some of the things were handcrafted by the Amish, but the rest was like a Souvenir Store. We had a great time wandering through the store. After that we drove around the countryside enjoying the beautiful farms and wondering how in the world the clothes could possibly dry on the line outside when it was snowing and so cold. We actually saw icicles hanging off some of the clothes. We did do Valley Forge after that (I was a little off on my story before) and then we came home and crashed waiting for Ashley to get home from school. Then we headed out to King of Prussia Mall (one of the biggest in America) and had dinner at Cheesecake Factory. Then we walked around and looked at all the cute stores. The next morning Tyler left us a car and we drove into downtown Philly (yikes) and we met Ashley for lunch. We toured her Dental school and we all were so impressed. The lab was particularly interesting and we could picture Ashley just working away on her model teeth. Now we can picture her with her hair caught in a machine ouch!!! (see Ty and Ash's latest blog) Ashley then drove us to the airport and we were off! This flight wasn't croded at all and so Tiana had 3 seats to her self and Tiff and I shared 3 seats. Much easier to survive 5 and a half hours when you are not all skrunched up! Again, we had a fabulous time and are so thankful for our hosts and especially for our sweet "sponsor" my hubby.

Pictures

Be sure to scroll down and see all the fun pictures and click on them all. They are much better on a full page. Especially the police and pool ones.

Thanks Tyler

Tyler helped me through my blogging issues and suggestion among other things to try Mozilla rather than MSN to work through and it works like a charm. Hooray...now I can get all caught up. Here are some various stages of the pool.

Let's see if Mozilla works!!

OK...Valentines day was just before we left for Philly, and Tiana received these beautiful flowers from her guy, Thomos. I told my "guy" that a trip back east was great by me for a Valentines gift.
The next picture is of a police standoff that happened in our neighborhood a week ago. This picture was from up on our deck and the police kept shooing us away. It was a home invasion that the police thought might be a hostage situation. Turns out the people knew the guy and hid him in the attack. The SWAT team was called in (as well as about 30-40 uniformed cops who all carried machine guns) and found him and in all the comotion, the guy fell through the ceiling and was hurt. Funny, but scary!