It All Worked Out in the End

Have you ever been planning a big event or activity and had one of those stress nightmares the night or two before?

You know the kind of nightmare I am talking about, right?

When you show up  late and the whole thing is a disaster?

Or when nobody else shows up and the whole thing is a disaster?

Or when too many people show up and you don't have enough food and the whole thing is a disaster?

Or when you show up with the completely wrong decorations and when you go home to grab the RIGHT decorations, you somehow end up in your classroom teaching a lesson you forgot about and then realize that you needed copies of an assignment so you leave the kidlets alone in the classroom while you run upstairs to the copy room, but on the way you meet a handsome cowboy who wants to take you out to meet his herd, but you can't go because you still have to make copies and teach the lesson before you can go put the right decorations on the table?

No? You haven't had THAT particular panic dream. Interesting. I thought it was fairly universal.

What about the dream where you arrive at the stake center on a Saturday morning to get things set up for the General Women's Conference Broadcast that evening and find out that the building has been double booked for a wedding/wedding luncheon/reception?

No again? Here, let me tell you about mine.

I remember walking into the gym and seeing tables already set up and partially decorated and thinking, "Am I late? How did they get so much done already?" Then I saw a man appeared and perkily proclaimed, "Welcome to my wedding!" And it was at that point that I started looking around for the handsome cowboy who usually shows up at this point in my dreams. But instead of a tall handsome stranger striding into the room, I saw one of the sisters from the stake Primary presidency sitting with her head in her hands. I thought, "Oh. If this is going to be a cowboy-less panic nightmare, I think I will just go ahead and wake up now." But I didn't wake up. I didn't wake up because, it turns out, it wasn't a dream.

Because the Women's Broadcast wasn't scheduled to begin until 6 p.m., the building scheduler almost reasonably assumed that it would be fine for the wedding festivities to be scheduled in the chapel and cultural hall right up to then. The scheduler meant well. I mean, the wedding was for an older couple who hadn't been active in the Church and it was a really, really good thing that they were getting married. And if it had been a Priesthood broadcast, it wouldn't have been a problem at all.

But this was a WOMEN'S broadcast. As in, the kind of broadcast where WOMEN spend ten hours preparing for a post-broadcast meet-and-greet that will last maybe 40 minutes. That is how we roll!

One by one, the rest of our Relief Society presidency showed up, along with the sisters from the stake Young Women's and Stake Primary, And one by one, we all had that, "This has got to be a bad dream!" moment. 

If you are brave enough, try to imagine what could have happened with not one, not two, but THREE auxiliary presidencies finding out that they won't be able to start making things pretty for 450 sisters until about 20 minutes before those sisters show up. Then, if you aren't already terrified, add to the mix a bride who is trying to put a whole wedding/luncheon/reception together with just the help of her soon-to-be-husband and a friend or two.

To The Brides credit, she took the whole mix-up very calmly. The only time I saw her teeter on the verge of a come-apart was when her groom cheerfully offered to postpone the wedding for another month. I think he was teasing. I also don't think he did any more teasing for the rest of the day.

To our credit, we only teetered on the edge of one collective auxiliary come-apart for a moment as well, and then we launched into Plan B mode. Since The Bride was only planning on using half the gym, and we wouldn't have time to do everything between 5:30 and 6,she let us set up the chairs for the overflow.

The rows and rows of chairs didn't add anything to the party ambiance, so The Bride really gets a ton of extra good sport points for that.

Sister Woodhouse also scored some extra points, dusting EVERY SINGLE ONE of the folding chairs so that none of the sisters in attendance would smudge their dresses. How sweet of her was that?

Then, so we would be ready to roll as soon as the reception ended, the primary ladies took the rest of us into the Relief Society room to give us a lesson in how to set up the centerpieces they had designed for the tables.

It turned out, both our decorations and The Bride's decorations featured burlap, so the Bride was invited in to see them too.

She really liked our centerpieces...

And the adorable cake stands that had been made for the post-conference tables...

So our head decorator thanked The Bride for her good sportswomanship by spening the rest of the morning helping The Bride fancy-up her reception by mixing our decorations with hers. It ended up looking super nice and The Bride seemed pretty pleased.

So then we all went home for a couple of hours to rest up and carbo-load for the superfast setup we were going to have to do that evening. Because the wedding was going to be followed by a luncheon and reception, we couldn't use the kitchen to get our refreshments ready. Instead, we set up in the Young Women's room.

A restaurant in town donated enough cheesecakes to feed 450 sisters.

Yes, you read that right. They made it, cut it, and donated it.

Six different flavors: chocolate, cherry, strawberry, coconut, banana, and caramel.
We love them all so much! And by "them" I mean the family who owns the restaurant and all of their flavors of cheesecake.

With only an hour to get 450 pieces of cheesecake plated, we called in the big guns to help us. My pal Val came and helped tackle the cream cheese challenge, and so did the sister missionaries who are serving in my ward. We never would have made it without them!

As soon as the last reception guest left, everyone who wasn't elbow deep in cheesecake ran out to change table cloths and get the decorations set up.

And miracle of miracles, every table was beautified before sisters started arriving for the meeting.

In fact, everything went so smoothly that except for some heavy breathing as we speed walked into the chapel, there were no signs of the scheduling drama that had been going on all day.

We spent the next 90 minutes feasting on the Gospel, as taught by our beloved general leaders and the handsomest Apostle, Elder Uchtdorf. And after our souls had been fed and our spirits had been lightened, we feasted on cheesecake, which also helped to lighten our spirits... while not doing a thing to lighten our backsides.

And so everything turned out just fine, even with only an hour to get ready.

Afterwords, one of the brethren who had come to help with the post-meeting-clean-up wondered aloud if, now that we knew it was possible to set things up 45 minutes before the meeting started, we would just keep working on that abbreviated time frame from now on. After all, he reasoned, why spend 10 hours doing what could be done right before. 

About 15 seconds later, he stopped wondering about that and focused instead on being grateful that we were all to exhausted to aim carefully when throwing decorative gourds at his head, and too full of cheese cake to chase him all the way down the block

You can watch my favorite musical number from there meeting by clicking below...

And to click below to watch the awesome video about the blessings of the temple that was shown between speakers!

This is How My Brothers and their Wives Like to Spend their Saturdays...

Zombie Run from Mindy Haws on Vimeo.

Sharing The Goodness

A few weeks ago, I made the mistake of checking my phone during lunch and discovered a text from our stake executive secretary asking if I could meet with the 2nd counselor in the Stake Presidency that evening. After confirming the appointment (and letting him know how cute is email was, making it sound like I had any real choice in the matter), I immediately started to freak out.

You see, Jolene, Sue, and I have been living in fear of being released from the stake Relief Society for months because, well, we might  have been serving a little bit longer than most  presidencies. After working together in the branch for three years, and then serving together in this presidency for a few (or more) years, the three of us have become a really good team. The kind of team who dresses alike without planning to and finishes each other's sentences.

So I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to put on a perky teacher exterior, while my interior was in serious turmoil. And let me tell you, trying to conceal inner turmoil from 7th and 8th graders is not an easy task. Junior high kids THRIVE on inner turmoil. They drink up angst like butterflies slurp up nectar. You might think I'm exaggerating, but seriously, if you were to put 30 books on a table, a junior high kid could, using only their built-in-angst-o-meters, find the one book in the pile with a terminally ill main character who is in a love triangle with a doomed self-sacrificing tribute and a self-loathing vegan vampire in under fifteen seconds.

So needless to say, it was a rough afternoon in Miss H's room.

And things didn't get any better when I got home. The anticipation of having our presidency torn asunder was painful. I one point I considered putting on a bunch of eye makeup (I am lazy and usually only wear a little eyeliner) so that when the ax was dropped and I started to cry, my tears would be REALLY obvious. I wanted everybody in that stake office section of the building to FEEL MY PAIN as I left via running mascara, puffy eyes, and a red nose.

Luckily I repented of my evil eye makeup plan before I left home. When I showed up for the appointment, President King asked how school was going and, during about 5 minutes of painful small talk, all I could think was, "Just do it already!"

When the "appointment" started in earnest, he opened with, "So...You're busy." And I immediately thought, "Oh! They are going to release me from Relief Society because they think I'm busy!" So I quickly launched into a rambling speech about how I'm not busy at all. In fact, I am the total opposite of busy. I am bored, like, all the time. And even if I was busy, which I'm totally not, but if I was, then it would be a good kind of busy. The kind of busy that keeps me out of trouble and makes me a better, stronger, happier person.

Eventually I finished my  "I wouldn't even recognize busy if I passed it on the street" soliloquy, giving President King a chance to tell me that, in keeping with Elder Bednar's counsel to "use social media to sweep the earth with messages filled with righteousness and truth," our stake was going to start a blog. And they would like me to be the stake's blogger. 

It took me a few seconds to figure out I wasn't getting released, but once that sunk in, I was one happy lady. I had a great conversation with President King about the stake presidency's ideas for a missionary themed blog that would feature uplifting experiences as shared by the 30+ missionaries currently serving from our stake. We discussed possible blog names, ways to gather content from the missionaries, and how to encourage stake members to share the posts with their families and friends.

When I walked out the door and onto the path that led back to the parking lot, I was feeling all sorts of good. I actually made it about six steps before I stopped dead in my tracks and thought, "Wait a second... what just happened here?"

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I ended up with a second stake calling that nobody believes is an actual calling, even though it is. Really. I was set apart and everything. Even though I need an official Church name tag, or a notarized statement from the stake presidency to show people so they won't snicker so much when I tell them.

So the blog has been up and running for about a week and a half and I think it has a lot of potential. So all of you out there in blog land, feel free to check it out. And if you are in my stake, like to keep track of the missionaries you know and love, and want to make President King really, REALLY happy, feel free to link it on your blog and on your Facebook/Twitter/Tumbler/etc.

Because Prayers Are Answered

And if you aren't in my stake, feel free to read/link it as well. I think it will turn out to be a good resource for stories/experiences you could share in lessons or talks. The more people who read and share it, the more goodness there will be out there in cyber space, per Elder Bednar's request to #sharegoodness.

Also, the more people who read and share the stake blog, the happier my stake presidency will be.

And if they are busy being happy, they might just forget to remember that our Relief Society presidency might be nearing our expiration date. 

My Town Has Real Animal Attraction

So I was reading one of the 20,000 articles about abuse that have been appearing daily on CNN.com  (courtesy of select NFL players) and made a seriously upsetting discovery: I am in an emotionally abusive relationship with the state of Idaho or, more specifically, it's state department of education.

No joke. Idaho and I fit eight of the ten warning signs. Eight!

But even though I have thought about leaving Idaho (Wyoming is a serious flirt!), I just can't bring myself to walk away from the state because I love my town too stinkin' much!

Case in Point: 

Two weeks ago, I showed up a little early for a hair appointment. 

While the lovely and talented McKenzie finished up with another client, I decided to check out the salon's magazine rack. I thought I might find some cute new style ideas in the hair magazines that the salon was bound to have because it is, you know, a hair salon.

And I was right... kind of.

The magazine on the top of the pile did feature a along mane of silky, slowing, well styled hair...

... the key word in that sentence being "mane."

Yes ladies and gentlemen, the top periodical in my local hair salon's magazine rack is Horse Illustrated. I cannot even express how happy that made me.

Almost as happy as my favorite sign makes me whenever I drive through town.

So Idaho, you had better thank your lucky stars that my little valley is so magical. But as soon as I can talk everyone body else in town into coming with me, I will sooooo kick you to the curb and high-tale it to the state next door who knows how to treat a lady teacher right.

The Day the Lights Went Out in CowTown: A Narrative Poem of Epic Proportions

Gather round, and listen! 

I have a tale for you 

 About the day the school went dark 

 And the chaos that ensued. 

 That Wednesday started well enough 

Then a loud “Boom!” shook the dawn 

Some lights across town flickered 

But our school’s power was flat-out gone.

When the doors were opened

Kidlets filled the darkened halls

And we worried for their safety

In pitch black stairways and bathroom stalls.

First corralled inside the lunchroom,

Then shuttled down the street.

The kidlets poured out of the buses

And filled the KFAC’s cushioned seats.

A constitution video

Was played to fill the time

While the city crews worked feverishly

To repair the power line.

But the kidlets were not interested

And though cell phone use was banned,

The sneaky little critters still

Texted complex escape plans.

And when the power problem

Proved too large to be controlled

The kidlets were all notified

That they would be paroled. 

But to turn 500 kidlets loose

In the middle of the week

Is a stupid thing to do,

Unless with their parents you can speak.

And so contact lists were handed out

And staffers hit the phones

To find out who would be picked up,

Take busses, or walk home.

It took over an hour

To get parental  consent

And luckily, only a couple dorks

Disappeared before they should have went.

Later on that afternoon,

Much to the kid’s dismay,

The  building's power was restored.

School would resume for the next day.

But when the next day dawned,

Another BOOM rang  out

And plunged the building into

A school-wide brown-out.

One third  of classes still had light,

As did the hall where kids were fed

But less than half the  outlets worked

While the rest were really dead.

So teachers tired to educate

Kids in pioneer-ish ways.

But minutes later another boom

Heralded another power-less day.

But thanks to lessons learned

The very day before

Things ran much more smoothly

To get the kidelts out the door

And so just after 10 am

The last bus pulled away

And the junior high school kidlets

Celebrated another school-less day.

Their siblings were oh, so jealous.

Their parents were annoyed

Their teacher’s had cell-phone fatigue

But the kidlets were over-joyed.

And so this group of students

Down in history will go

Known as the kidlets so full of luck

They got two snow days with no snow!

You can be sure, come Sunday night

Many children will lie awake

Whole heartedly offering prayers

For more power lines to break.

My Name is Mindy, and I'm an Addict

Behold, the bounty of fair ribbons (and sugar!) that I won this year.

I have become quite fond of fair ribbons over the last four years.

Maybe a little too fond of them.

The more I get...

...the more I want.

And it's not like there are a whole lot of uses for fair ribbons.

I thought about using them to decorate my classroom...

...but then I thought their awesomeness might be too distracting to the educational process.

Ribbons are decorative by nature, so I thought about using one to replace the faded green flowers that usually hang from my rear view mirror. But one ribbon just didn't seem like enough...

... and more than one posed a bit of a safety problem.

Using them as hair accessories was a less dangerous option.

And that is when I realized I that I have a problem.

I am addicted to fair ribbons.

To be honest (because isn't honesty one of the twelve steps?), fair ribbons aren't my only addiction.

I have a very addictive personality, which means that I am frequently obsessed with various and sundry things. A wide variety of TV shows (Doctor Who, Sherlock), books (Harry Potter, The Thief Series), songs (It's All About That Bass, Hooked on a Feeling), and foods (cucumber snow cones... more on that later...) have captured my attention for days, weeks, months, and sometimes years on end.

For example, Christmas vacation before last, my niblets introduced me to a My Little Pony app. I downloaded it to give them something to play on my Kindle.

And when Christmas vacation ended, I kept visiting Ponyville, earning bits and gems so I could collect ponies. At first I told myself that I was just doing it because I was such a good aunt, building up virtual pony towns for the love of my nieces (and one or two of my nephews).

But when summer vacation rolled around, I found myself spending more and more time in pursuit of the elusive gems.  Like, a lot of time.

I mean, with the number of times I uttered the words, "I have to check the ponies...", I might as well have been one of those cigar-smoking, fedora wearing, race track junkies waving racing forms in the air.

I quit the ponies cold turkey last fall, just to relapse over spring break. But I am happy to say that I have been pony-free since June.

But being pony-free doesn't mean I am living clean.

Over the 4th of July, my sister-in-law New Jenny introduced me to Hungry Shark Evolution. She touted it as a great stress reliever because you get to cruise around as a shark and eat things.

Including people. Who scream and then disappear in red clouds of virtual blood.

My Little Pony it ain't.

I have been playing for a little over three months now, and have almost achieved Great White status.

And when I found myself sitting in my car in the stake center parking lot trying to earn my daily playing bonus before going to a training with members of the General Relief Society board, I knew I officially had a shark-evolving problem.

There is a good chance that my shark game addiction could take over my life. Luckily, I have a second addiction to balance it out: Cucumber Juice.

A few summers ago, my sister Jenny (the Original Jenny) introduced me to cucumber snow cones. At first it was an innocent infatuation, but eventually I began dreaming about cucumber snow cones, and even driving down to Utah under the pretense of "visiting my niblets" several times during the summer just so I could eat one... or two or six.

This summer, high gas prices combined with a busy schedule prevented me from getting a cucumber fix ever few weeks. So I had to take matters into my own hands and start manufacturing my own version, cucumber juice, to feed my addiction.

Once a week, I stock up on cucumbers, limes, and mint leaves and whip up enough to get me through the next seven days. I honestly don't know what I am going to do now that our nights are dropping below freezing and my friends won't be able to hook me up with their home-grown cucs anymore. I guess I will have to find a supplier south of the boarder.

So.... this post was originally just going to be about my August fair ribbon haul, but somehow turned into a pictorial self-intervention. Yes, I have a problem. Several of them, in fact. I was sipping cucumber juice while watching Doctor Who while I typed this blog, for goodness sake!

I think I am ready to get help.

Do you think the Church addiction recovery book has chapters on shark games, cucumber juice, and British TV shows?

I'll check right after I take my level ten tiger shark out for a spin. 

Notes to Self...

Ice bucket challenges should not be done in the evening in Idaho in September.

Oh, and if you are going to do an ice bucket challenge in the evening in Idaho in September, make sure the ipod is actually recording, so you don't have to do it again.



Challenge from Mindy Haws on Vimeo.