Ropes

 I finished the semester strong.  I'm pretty sure I got As but more than that I did a lot of hard work and learned a lot.  I'm proud of that.

M is home for a month.  She's been doing rowing, lifeguard, bioengineering, doing well in classes. I'm amazed at her success.  But really, I've known that's who she is all along.  Still.  It amazes me.

I was intited to become trained to run the ropes course for the church camp.  What a thrill.  I love learning, helping, being outdoors.  This is all that!  I jumped off the leap of faith twice today.  Tomorrow we'll do climbing wall and zip-line.  So cool.  I can't believe I get to do this.

P is so good to me.  He supports me in every good thing and takes up so much of the things the family needs in my absense.  I'm so grateful for him.  

I'm glad I'll be done with night classes for a few months.  1 more year until I graduate!  It has been awesome so far.

 UPDATE: I finished the ropes course training and even rappelled off the 40' tower.  I was trained in the mid-zip position which included free climbing a pole with lobster claws, zipping to the midpoint using a grillon and hand brake, receiving and sending participants, setting up the rappel tower, belaying, and running the pamper pole.  It's pretty amazing all they trained us to do in 3 days.  With 20 people getting trained there was a lot of time waiting for your turn but there was also a lot of chance to see the same thing done over and over again.  I thought I was being trained to just put on harnesses, instead, I'm now trained to run major elements of the course.  Heavy.  I can do hard things.

The sweet thing about this is it is a way to always go to camp.  It also puts our family on a list of folks to attend family camp-outs for training.  I am so humbled to be given this opportunity.  It's such a tender mercy to have a role but not be responsible for organizing camp, or people.  I'm serving as primary president right now so this is kind of a sneaky side calling.  I'll get to be there helping youth one at a time, then sending them on.  Nice.

Holy Week and Easter

 I've been seeing clients at the clinic for my program.  All of my areas of study are coming together now that I have clients.  The paperwork, assessments, planning intervention, and code of ethics all hit the road in clinic.  

I left my job in March to do the extra work that clinic would require.  It has been good because I have time now to work on projects and take care of family appointments.  I was so strapped for time in January and February.  Because of holidays and weather days, I kept having to go and work Fridays.  It was frustrating to never have time to go to the Dr., get an oil change, go to the bank; all that stuff that needs to be done, on top of my school work, and seeing the children.  I came home each day from 3-5 to see them and make/share dinner.  I had night class 4 days a week.

I had a group paper and I worked so hard on that paper.  I was waiting for my group members to do anything with it and they never did.  Unfortunately I forgot to put it through Chat GPT to find all the punctuation errors. I felt embarrased that I let them down, but also annoyed that they didn't do anything to help the paper be better.  Oh well.  Our next paper is individual.  I already wrote it, and ran it through Chat GPT.  It's ready to turn in.

B and L are playing Machi Koro this morning.  They are such sweet companions.  I'm grateful for them.  They get along really well.  lP often joins in on their shenanigans and that is very sweet.

We watched conference yesterday and it is so strange to have everyone able to sit still.  For 20 years conference has been a struggle.  Now we're able to enjoy it together, even learning new signs as we watch it with the ASL interpreter.  We have a tradition of eating the 72 hour kit treats during conference.  The kids like that.

P and I sang in a choir with the H and M stakes.  It was so glorious.  We had this lovely backdrop at the H stake center.

In the spring our cherry tree bloosoms and it is gorgeous.

We had such a nice time visiting Florida.  G is so fun to hang out with.  I'm glad we got to spend a lot of time with him.

When someone in our family gets a job we go out for dinner.  lP chose Panda Express so we went there to celebrate her new job.  She's worked 3 days so far.  It's such a cool way for her to have that experience.

Our back yard is so fun.  We have a nice porch right off the back of the house and this big bradford pear tree that shades us in teh summer.

In the back yard we have a trampoline, slack line, and 3 swings.  It is so fun to hang out there.

We had a nice Easter feast.  lP leaned out of the picture.  That's life.  She decorated this carrot cake.  I feel so blessed to have this wonderful family.

M will be an RA

 M applied to be an RA in and also signed a lease for an appartment in October.  At the end of February she was told that she didn't get an RA spot.  The next week she found out that she was moved up and got an RA spot! I made a facebook post to try and sublet her lease.  M found a person to sublet the lease and walked them through the process all by herself!  I gladly paid the $350 fee and she is all set!

Big day for lP

 Yesterday lP got invisilign on her teeth to close her open bite.  After I took her back to school I went by a shop for a replacement purse.  I noticed that they were hiring and asked about the position.  It would be a good job for lP with limited hours and wholesome environment.  When lP got home (walking) I told her about the job and she asked to have a little time before going to interview.  I described what would give them a good impression, especially to be confident with the machine.  She met with the ladies for 45 mintues and they invited her to work there!  What a day.

March has a lot going for it

 I started seeing patients at the clinic for my program.  Knowing this would be more time than I could add to my schedule I gave notice in February to leave my campus job.  I enjoyed many things about working, but it was a lot of stress.  I learned that I need to be very careful about falling into office drama.  

My two patients are working on memory things and that is exciting to learn how to plan therapies. I have been interested in Music Intonation Therapy and I get to use it with one of my clients.  All the paperwork involved with planning and documenting therapy sessions is a lot.  So far I'm keeping my head above water.  

I put in a lot of time working on creating a memory resource for my patient with Broca's Aphasia.  I was telling P that I needed him to write 96% on a paper for me on doing this self assigned project so well.  He wrote me a very nice card and even put one of his A+ shiny smiley face stickers on it.

Friday night we celebrated Spring Break by having a smores cook out and trampolamp out.  The 3 peas tried to sleep on the trampoline.  They came in at 1:45am.  I'm proud of them though.

Our friends the S family are so cool.  They hosted a pi day party and it was so lovely.

Today I am flying to Jtown for a conference on Early Hearing Detection Intervention.  My parent advocacy job is paying for me to go.  P will drive down to Fl Monday with the kids.  Wednesday they will come and pick me up.  I can't believe how awesome the timing and location is for me to go on this trip.  Yay!

On the flight in to Jtown a person in my row was also going to the conference so we shared a lyft to the hotel.  When we got her I met several members sitting at various tables.  It has been truely amazing.  When I went to a conference in Atlanta for Language First it was fun, but I didn't know anyone.  Here I already feel like I have 6 people I can hang out with.  I even got the contact for the Early Intervention providers in Amerian Samoa.  P told me to do a lot of networking and I'm definitely doing that.

Baby Roo

 I'm reading Whinnie the Pooh with L and B.  B is enjoying it a lot more.  He is so delightful and really enjoys these stories.  Last night we read about how Rabbit was acting nimby about Kanga and baby Roo.  Rabbit contrives a scheme to kidnap baby Roo to get Kanga to leave the 100 acre woods.  It's horrific.  In the end Rabbit and Pooh end up friends with Kanga and Roo, while Piglet who was most roped into the scheme gets the most blame.  

I was discussing this with L today on the way to school; acknowledging that it was a horrible idea, and that hate comes from ignorance.  Once Rabbit knew Roo, they were friends.  God knows us, and loves us.

I like myself

 Someone asked me today if I was keeping busy in my calling.  They said "Doesn't it seem like there is always more you can do?"  My reply led to a larger response about how I like myself and I don't suffer from the common malady of inadequacy.  I was raised by a fantastically competent woman who told us lots of stories of people being mean to her.  What I took from those stories was that my mom was not perfect, and that those people were jerks to be critical of her rather than helpful.

In my own life, because of my mother, I am very capable, and feel good doing good.  I don't feel inadequate, or like I need to be doing more.  In my current calling I am super aware that there are at least 30 other women in the ward that could do this calling and do a great job.  I just happen to be the one doing it right now and I'm not trying to "impress" anyone, just do my best.

The 4 agreements are very important.  Learning to do your best, take nothing personal, assume nothing, and not use the word for poison, help me be happy.  When I break these agreements I do suffer from self doubt and worrying that people will hate me.  These outbreaks of worry are always less than a few hours, then I stop caring if someone doesn't like me.  That's their problem.  I like me.

When our ward was reorganized we were paired with the Spanish Branch.   I wanted to create a bilingual resource, but by the time I got it done, we aren't paired anymore.  Oh well.  I am pleased with it.  Now I can work on my spanish.  I read the English phrase then I read the Spanish and do sign language at the same time.  If I can't figure out the spanish well enough to put signs with it, I probably don't know the word for real.