Scorching the World

I love Sundays, but I was up a little too late last night, so it was hard to wake up this morning. I dragged my body out of bed and got in the shower, and it was HARD. I felt excessively tired, but pushed through and showered and got ready for church. When I came out of the bathroom. Tom said, "Why are you up so early?" I looked at the clock and realized I had got up at 5 instead of 6! In my sleepiness, I didn't see the number correctly! No wonder I was so tired! So we had extra time to get ready for church and studied the lessons and stuff. On the way to church, we saw all these hot air balloons They look really pretty. They're so colorful and serene slowly floating around! Church was wonderful as usual. Today was the first performance of our little choir, and it turned out better than I thought. We were missing about 5 of the people who had rehearsed, but the ones who participated sang well and it turned out good enough. Surely we had angels helping us! ...

One of the reasons Tom could take off work for my birthday is that he had to work today. He left about 7am because the place he had to go was over 2 hours away. I left about the same time to go for my morning walk. I tried a different route this time because there was a dead deer in the other direction. It was an equally pretty route but it was all downhill going, so it was all uphill returning home. I was really puffing and panting by the time I got home. Tom got back about 1:30. We took a much needed nap, then he worked on the computer a little while. We decided we needed to fit the van in the garage instead of the Miata, so we spent a couple of hours cleaning the garage a little better, moved Phil's jetski into the garage, put the Miata in the tent-carport, and got the van in the garage! Hooray! We hope Phil doesn't mind! The van was getting too much weathered being outside and it didn't fit in the tent-carport. It was uncomfortably warm outside while we were doing t...

Tom worked long hours all week with the single goal of not having to work on my birthday! He’s so sweet and takes such good care of me. He had the whole day planned out. First he needed to do a little computer and phone work so that he was free the rest of the day. He surprised me with a beautiful pot of flowers that we hope to plant at our new house when we have one. While he worked, I went for my morning walk. We left at 10 am so we could make it to the first showing of The Intern. It was a cute movie; I really liked it, but Tom jokingly called it a ‘chick flick’. From there we went to lunch. I took Tom back to the place my visiting teacher had taken me.  We had a delicious lunch: It was ridiculously expensive, so we probably won't go there very often - like once every 10 years or so. After lunch we took off for Oakland to go to the temple. The sessions there are only every hour on the hour and we have NEVER made it in time to go on the hour....

Thursday I walked first thing in the morning. I’ve been walking every morning this week, and have found that I sleep much better at night because of it! It is so hilly here, that the biggest challenge is getting back home because we live near the top of a hill. This is the view when I start in the mornings:  You can't tell how steep the hill is that I'm going down, but you can see the next hill I climb. It's pretty fun. The first day I only walked half hour total, now I'm up to 45 minutes, but I'm really huffing and puffing the whole way back up and have to stop and breathe now and then. Tom left for work shortly after I got back from the walk and was gone till about 6pm. He had scheduled to go do some visits in this area with the Bishop who got here about 7pm. They were gone for 3 hours, doing only 2 visits!

Wednesdays might be my favorite day now. Almost. The sisters in my ward who used to participate in Sit N Stitch on the 4th Wednesday of each month, also were doing a whole lot of quilting together on other days. The Sit N Stitch was getting poor attendance during the summer, so they canceled it the whole month. Anyway, they decided to try to combine the Sit N Stitch with quilting, and do it during the day, weekly. So was born Sew and So Forth! The truth is I was the only one not participating in quilting who was participating in Sit N stitch, so they just switched it so I'm invited to quilting. I'm not so interested in quilting right now, I've been knitting ever since I started it in Chile to have it in common with the sisters there. Now I can't seem to quit. I keep making these little dolls.  I like their crazy hair  I thot I needed a bride and groom. You can't tell the bride has tiny pearls all over the hem and sleeves of her dress.  A couple ...

During the summer, Tami and family were living in our house, or rather they were living here in their lake house with us, or rather we were living with them in their lake house. ANYWAY, while they were here all the time, Nina decided to put three aquariums up here. She has 3 or 4 in her other house of varying sizes which she brought for the summer, and took when they moved down to Dublin. She left me very careful, clearly written instructions on how to care for the fish because they need more than just food every day, and when she would do water exchanges and other more extensive things on the weekends when they came up. Now that school has started and Nina is working 2 jobs besides school, and everyone has very busy schedules even on the weekends, they haven't been able to come up for several weeks. During that time, a bunch of her fish in the 55 gallon tank died. It makes me really sad to find dead fish. Nina says it's not my fault, which is really sweet, but I still real...

Church was really good. The Primary had their program for Sacrament meeting and the children were just too darling. Sunday School and Relief Society were really good, and we were happy to see a family we visit sometimes came. The Young Women leaders have been fellowshipping the oldest daughter!! After church we had choir. There were a lot of people missing, but we had a good rehearsal. It’s so fun to see them really learning to be able to find their part and sing it. I don’t have an accompanist anymore because he moved to Arizona, so one of my sopranos had to play. I hope they find someone soon, but it is amazing to me how many people in this ward play the piano! Such talent all in one ward! I haven’t seen that for decades! So Tom had packed us a nice little lunch for after choir because we planned to go down and see Marc and Alissa because we missed Laelle’s birthday on Wednesday. So we ate, then tried to do a quick visit. The guy wasn’t home so we headed down to Alame...