March 2018

The spotlight this past month goes to Luke who earned his Webelos and Arrow of Light Awards.  This time I actually felt like I earned the "mother's" pin!  I am going to miss this little group of guys.  They have been so much fun.  

 Asa, Parker, Stetson, Landon, and Luke

 Here they all receive an arrow.  The Order of the Arrow came in and did a special presentation for them. 

And here we (the boys and I) are dying eggs.  It is down to the last two and me now, the girls are semi-interested in dying eggs now.  They have more exciting things to do!

Not much else is happening.  I lost my voice this past week, and it was awful trying to teach classes.  The students were so sweet about it, and I had a couple of Chinese moms tell me to drink more water!  I learned how to say "laryngitis" in Mandarin  喉炎
(Hou yan), and I finally got most of my voice back by Thursday. It was pretty stressful because you really can't cancel classes without it looking bad on your contract. Of course, emergencies happen, so they let you submit a "ticket" to show it was a legit reason. Since this is just my first contact, I want to have a really good record. I will hopefully have my contract renewed at the end of May.

Here are LL and Savannah at the temple this week. 

 Laura Lee and her team had a special team dinner.  She lettered in Basketball and here are her coaches and some teammates.  Her coaches played a trick on her.  LL likes to collect signatures of Aggie basketball players.  Her coach Lindy Stone (on the left) is married to a former Aggie player, Jordan Stone.  LL asked Lindy if she could get Jordan's autograph and from then on, the team was teasing her mercilessly about Jordan.  So, the coaches all gave the girls a gift at the team dinner, and inside LL's gift was a framed picture of Jordan.  He was there of course, so LL had him sign it.  She is a good sport about it, and her coaches are the best.  They are a super positive influence on the girls.  

Laura Lee, Jordan, Kennedy, Jacie, Chante, Kinley

We have Spring Break this week. I am working every morning-- which is fine because everyone is sleeping in past 8 am, and I get up at 4 and work until 7:30! We planned on doing a "Stay-cation" where we go to places nearby. I didn't feel well at all last week, and neither did the boys, so we missed Easter festivities at the Tylers. I think we are cursed. I will stop saying out loud when we want to travel somewhere.

We anxiously await the arrival of a new washer and dryer on Thursday. It is with deep sadness we say goodbye to the two Maytag appliances we have had for the past 16 years! Now days, that is a long time to have an appliance, unfortunately. The repairman told us that it would cost $350 to fix the dryer. We just had the washer fixed. He told us that they actually don't make parts for our set any more because they are so "old". We decided we might as well buy new ones. So goodbye paycheck from March!! :)

For my birthday, I told the kids I want to take them out to eat at a restaurant. It has been a long time since we all went out to eat, and I consider it a gift to not have to cook dinner! Yay!!