Blessed

It has been a good week.








A really good week.

A good week of epic proportions.





Seriously.






I have been blessed. A lot.






Monday, this sweet little niece came to visit me. So did this one. I love this one.

It was so very kind of my brother and sister-in-law to give me such adorable and entertaining niblets. They make everything so much more fun!

And the week only got better from there.

President Sagers gave me a new group of mission prep-ers to tell my mission stories to.

This sweet family gave me two sacks of the most delicious vegetables I have eaten all summer.

And my most favoritest Burley cousins gifted me with the most beautiful washer and dryer I have ever laid eyes on. They hauled them over to my house, carried them up my stairs, and hooked them up in my kitchen, helping my laundry hookups to fulfill the measure of their creation for the first time since I moved in five years ago.

Kristi was kind enough to supervise the whole operation. She is always so good about letting me and everyone else in this town borrow her parents. I think she should consider charging some sort of usage fee, or maybe setting up some kind of rent schedule. Of course, she is too Christ-like to even consider that, but I thought I would throw the idea out there.

Seriously Kristi, you could make a haul!

Words cannot describe how happy and excited and grateful and appreciative and loved and thankful and indebted and overwhelmed and flabbergasted and touched I feel by their generosity. I know my mother will sleep better at night knowing that I am not frequenting the laundromat. I'll sleep better too... on my couch in the evenings while my my chalk-dust-saturated clothes enter the spin cycle in my kitchen.

Aren't they beautiful? Thank you, Joneses! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! I promise I will take very good care of them. I will even give these wonderful machines a nice little vacation each year...

...right around rodeo season. I'm sure the washer and dryer will have earned a break by then. And I would hate for all of those visiting rodeo cowboys to be lonely as they separate their whites from their colors. As the recipient of so many charitable acts this week, I feel like it is my duty step up and increase my charitable out-put as well.

And although my heart is always full of charity for rodeo cowboys, I think saving time and money by avoiding the Laundromat is going to increase my love for the rest of mankind.

In fact, my first load of white just came out of the dryer and I am feeling more kind and compassionate all ready!

My New Calling

This is me Tuesday night BEFORE getting set apart as an institute teacher...

...and this is me AFTER getting set apart as an institute teacher.
How concerned should I be that the two photos look almost exactly alike? I mean, it's not like I was expecting the same kinds of changes that a radio active spider bite might cause (although, how cool of an institute teacher would I be if I could conduct class while sitting upside down on the ceiling?) but I was hoping for, at very least, a slightly more mature aura. And maybe the desire to trade in my iron man backpack for something a person over the age of 8 might want to carry. Oh well. I guess the nice peaceful, comforting feeling that came with my setting-apart blessing will sustain me for a while (until I can find myself a radio active spider).

Spending the afternoon at my beautiful new temple helped a lot too. I'm pretty nervous about teaching Wednesday night, but if it wasn't for my time in the temple and my beautiful blessing from the stake presidency, my after photo would look a lot more like this...

Thanks to The Pioneer Womanfor this fabulous photo. Immediate family excluded, she is my favorite blogger. I highly recommend her site! So if this new calling kills me, you all can read her blog instead. And on that cheery note...I'm going to try to finish my visual aids for tomorrow night.

Miss H and the Long Weekend

I got a new short hair cut Thursday, so I decided to celebrate by having a long weekend.

Since my plans for world domination haven't progressed to the point where I can declare a national holiday to celebrate my personal style decisions, its a good thing Labor Day was already on the calendar. School has been in session for about a week and a half now, so when the bell rang on Friday, the hallways looked more than a little like this...

Long weekends usually mean trips to the big cities to visit family, but this weekend I decided to stay home and get some much needed rest. Not that it isn't restful to wake up at 7 a.m. with these little guys three inches from my face...
...but my return to the 5 a.m. exercise scene left me in need of some serious down time.

Since I wouldn't be visiting any of my family members and/or their laundry rooms, my weekend kicked off with a trip to my favorite laundromat. For more information about why I enjoy this particular laundromat, click here.
Normally I use my laundry time to grade papers or ogle rodeo cowboys but this weekend I had other things on my mind. Just previous to this laundry stop, I had a meeting with my stake president (a former rodeo cowboy himself). I thought the meeting was going to be about my lack of somberness while teaching Sunday school, but it turned out to be about making my busy life even busier, but in a good way. So I spent laundry time preparing for my new calling (a calling that I'm sure will provide plenty of blogging material, so stay tuned). One of my favorite weekend activities is grocery shopping. I know that usually isn't considered an "exciting" activity, but for me going to Walmart is like walking the red carpet at a Hollywood event. I always end up seeing at least a few of my students who all react in the same way...

1st- Shock. "Miss H? You're at Walmart?" They say it with the same inflection someone might use when they notice a lion has escaped from the zoo. (I remember how weird it was for me to see my teachers at the store when I was younger. It just seemed wrong to see them in any context that wasn't school)

2nd- Excitement. "Mom! Look! It's Miss H!" This is the part where my self esteem shoots up because I spend the next five minutes shaking hands with parents and listening to the my kidlet tell his or her younger siblings about how "cool" English is.

3rd- Pride in having thier teacher recognize them and interact with them. "See mom, I told you she likes to be called Mrs. Diesel!" I love listening to the comments they make as I'm walking away and they think I don't hear them. As long as I live in a small town with a Walmart I will never need Prozac.

My weekend schedule also always includes prep time for my Sunday school lesson. This week's lesson includes the chapters about Helaman's stripling warriors.
Because of the temple dedication, we didn't have meetings last Sunday. That means we have to cover two lessons this week to get back on track. To help the class cover all the information (and to help me stay on task) I made yet another Delightful Learning Experience that includes a section on how to be "Latter-day Warriors/Warrior Princesses". And since I made it through a whole interview with the stake president without once being chastised for my teaching style, I think our Sunday school class is going to have a pretty darn good time tomorrow.
One of my other much-looked-forward-to weekend activities is cooking. Real, honest to goodness, time consuming, sink full of dishes producing cooking is one of the few activities that allows me to turn off the blog narration that is usually bouncing around in my brain...and replaces it with a perky Rachel Ray-esque food network narration. Should I be concerned with the amount of dialogue that goes on in my head? Don't worry about answering that. I'll just ask my self about it later.
Tonight a made a pot of my favorite soup...a knock-off recipe of a spicy potato, sausage, and kale soup that I always order when I go to a certain restaurant that's name prominently features the word "Olive". I refuse to give the full name of the restaurant without being paid for my advertising services. A whole, like, ten people read this blog, so the folks at "*** Olive ******" should really take advantage of this advertising opportunity. Weekends are also nice because I (usually) have time to enjoy my food instead of scarfing it down on my way to a meeting or activity.
A less fun Miss H weekend activity is grading papers. With somewhere around 160 students this semester and only one preparation period every other day, I am going to be doing a lot of grading at home...and at FHE...and at institute...and in my car at stop lights.
So the smart thing to do this weekend would have been grade until I ran out of papers or my red pen ran out of ink. Too bad I'm not smart. I guess I could always do a little bit of grading after I read a few chapters...

Or not.

I guess its a good thing this is a three day weekend. Maybe I'll get something productive done Monday...but I wouldn't bet on it.