Wednesday, June 27, 2012

2 Big Surprises & Other Info

All right here it is, the reason for my lack of posting for the last month and the reason I have been so exhausted all the time:  2 big surprises!

First, over Memorial Day weekend, our Bishop wanted to meet with me and Russell about something.  Of course that always means a new calling.  Russell and I were trying to rack our brains on what calling it could be when I realized the Primary Presidency was getting released.  I thought there is no way it could be that so I just dismissed the thought.  Then, when we went into the Bishop's office, he wanted to us to say a prayer before we started.  While he was saying the prayer, I had this distinct impression that I was going to be the new Primary President.  Once again I thought no way.  When the prayer was over the bishop looked straight at me and said, "We feel very strongly that you should be our new Primary President."
Of course my jaw dropped and I was immediately over whelmed!  I didn't even know what to say, I just said "What does that mean exactly? What does a Primary President do?"  Obviously they preside over the Primary and make sure that runs smoothly but there is actually so much more behind the scenes stuff that I didn't even know like scouts, activity days, baptisms, and that is just scratching the surface.  I am still learning a lot.  I told the Bishop and the counselor over Primary that I was more of a behind the scenes person not a leadership person.  They said I would be fine.  I very hesitantly said I would try really hard to be a good president.  The Executive Secretary is one of our friends and he said I looked pretty shell shocked as I came out of the bishop's office that day.  I have served in Primary for all of my married life; 6 years.  Two and a half years as Primary Pianist, one year as a teacher, two years as the Music Leader and now Primary President.  When I first got called to the primary back in 2006, I realized that this would be the calling in the church that I would love the most and I told the Lord I would always serve there if needed.  I love these kids and I really hope I do the best job I can for them.  I really think the key to working in the Primary is to love the children as Christ did.  As it says in 3 Nephi when Christ came to the Americas, "Behold your Little Ones."  Christ took each of those little children and blessed them one by one and wept for them because he loved them so much.  Afterward, angels came from heaven and administered to those children as well.  I really believe that as workers in the primary, we are those administering angels that helped Christ administer to those children.  It is our responsibility to watch over them and protect them. 

I knew I had to select counselors that had the same feelings I did toward Primary and the children.  I wanted counselors that would just love the children and be willing to serve.  I fasted and went to the temple and the names seemed to come so clearly that I almost thought I was just making them up.  As the names continued to come back to my mind, I knew they were the ladies I should serve with.  When I told the names to the bishop, he was OK with 2 out of the 3 names.  The other name he was okay with my back up choice which in reality, as I look back now at the promptings I had at the time, this was the name the Lord was telling me the whole time and I just needed more humbling I guess.  These 3 ladies have been AMAZING!!!  I could not ask for a better presidency.  They are so willing to serve and follow through with every assignment that I never have to worry about things getting done because they just get done.  In fact they are always asking me what they can do and doing it that I sometimes feel like I am doing nothing.  Our first Sunday as the new presidency was Father's Day.  The next week, we moved into a new building which required a lot of work to move everything but like I said before, I had a lot of great help.  So we have been in for two weeks and I think things are going pretty well so far.

And the second surprise is: 

Yep baby # 3.  We are still trying to wrap our minds around this because it did come as a surprise.  We found out we were pregnant on June 1 a few days after I got my new calling.  The crazy thing about it is we didn't really know when the due date was because we had no way to measure when I became pregnant.  But the nurse that did my HCG Blood test said I was definitely pregnant.  So she scheduled me to come back in a couple weeks for an ultrasound.  Dr. Astle is awesome (he is also my stake president, which does sound kind of weird).  He laughed and said "We love unknown dates!!!  You must be blessed!"  He told me there was definitely a baby in there (even though it is kind of hard to see in the above picture).  He said the baby measured 7.5 weeks along which makes the due date somewhere around January 30, 2013.  Colby will be 23 months old then which I guess is a good length of time between siblings.  I don't even know how to predict what this one will be because this pregnancy has been so crazily different that the other two and I guess once you have one of each you don't mind having another one of either one.  I would love another girl for all of the cutesy girly things but I think a boy would be great because Colby and the baby will be close in age that they would be best friend bros (and we already have all of the boy clothes and things out!).

One another exciting note, I just found out that Jessica is prego too!!!! 
I stole this picture from her Facebook page because I thought it was awesome.  This is her first.  The really cool thing about it though is she is due the exact same time as me!!  We will be prego together.  Wouldn't it be funny if we had the babies on the same day?  Anyway I think it is cool.  Terral did the needle test on us and it said Jess was going to have a girl and I was going to have a boy.  The needle test has never failed us before so we shall see.
Anyway, on a lighter note, here are a few thing we have been doing in June that didn't get documented due to the above reasons.  First, my mom, sisters, sister-in-law, and nieces when to see Hairspray at Tuacahn:

It was a lot of fun to have a girls night out and the play was really good too.  One downside was we didn't get home until midnight : thirty and then it was back up for work at 5:30.  Poor Taylor and Becca were zonked before we got out of the parking lot! The play was really good and I do recommend it is worth seeing.  The nice thing about it was we got all 12 of our tickets for FREE!  As IHC employees we got 4 free tickets to the show so Russell got us 4 tickets, my mom got 4 tickets, and Chad got us 4 tickets.  It was awesome.

And I had to throw in this awesome picture of Colby: 
Yes under all that chocolate pudding is a little boy!  Needless to say he LOVES chocolate pudding.  Lately he has decided that he is big and can feed himself.  He really actually does a great job and will eat all of his food if he feeds himself. (Or at least it is out of his bowl and in the vicinity of his mouth as the picture shows.)  I can't believe how grown up he is getting.

Well there is an update on me and mine.  Maybe next month will be better.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Father's Day

Happy Father's Day, Dads!  We had a really nice relaxing day.  We just chilled at home which is what Russell wanted to do anyway because he worked the night before! 

For Father's Day, I made picture collages of the kids holding signs that say "We {heart} Dad":
And for the grandpas, "We {heart} Papa":
I love how you can see all of their personality and expressions in the pictures.  They were the perfect gift and everyone loved them.  I think my favorite picture is the "Dad" picture where Emily and Colby have thier tounges sticking out.  I didn't even tell them to do it.  Emily just said she wanted a funny picture so she started sticking out her tounge.  When Colby saw this, he loves to copy his sister so he stuck his tounge out too!  So Perfect!

This week was also my first week in my new calling as Primary President!  Yeah talk about over whelming.  It was a good week though and the primary kids were actually pretty good.  For a Father's Day gift to our ward, I had the primary kids hand out Hershey's Kisses to all of the men in our ward.  Along with the Kisses, my 1st counselor found a cute printout of the "Daddy's Homecomeing" primary song that said, "Put my arms around his neck Hug him tight like this.  Pat his cheeks and give him what? A great big KISS."  They were cute and the men loved them and the kids loved handing them out.

That night, we went to the park and celebrated Jack-Jack and Jacee's birthday as well as Father's Day.
Happy Father's Day!

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Official Firefighter

2012 St. George City Fire Figher Recruit Graduation.

On the 11 of June 2012 was the end an awesome fire academy and the begining of an awesome career with the Fire Deparment. The graduation was held at the Arts building on 100S and Main. I was so excited for this day. The academy was about four months long and when I got a month out from graduation I was starting to get a little excited that I was soon to be done. In the picture above are all of us in the in our offical dark blues. Yep no more light blue academy shirts and red t-shirts. Man we all look good. In the pictures below are all of the all of the sernior officers and us cadets.


  As a thank you to the St. George Fire Dept, we as a class got together and made a plaque with our picture and the names of each of the instuctors who taught the class. The plaque turned out really well. I think it is the best plaque the dept has seen yet. Vasu Mudliard and Jared Jepson were asked to present the plaque to Chief Stoker.
The whole graduation was amazing. It started off with the color gaurd presenting the colors. The guys who where doing the flags wore thier class A uniforms; they looked really sharp. After the pledge, our class was asked to sing the "Star Spangled Banner" as part of a deal because we lost our flag. We all sounded really good. Chief Stoker was really impressed, he had no idea that we were going to sing. He thought it was a voluntary choice that we sang. Next we had a slide show of the whole academy. It showed pictures and video clips of what we did through out the academy. Once that was over, it was time to be called up and get our badge and our graduation certificate. I was so excited to go up and watch Chief Stoker pin that badge to my chest. I am offically a Fire Fighter. All in all it was a great graduation. I cannot wait till I get my first call as a Fire Fighter.

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After graduation it was picture time with Daddies little munchines and Tiffany. I am so grateful for a loving wife and two kids who are very supportive and had amazing patience with me as I went through this class. The class was not easy, but it was worth every bit.






Sunday, June 10, 2012

IHC Family Fun Day

June 9 the hospital put on a Family Fun Day for all of the employees and their families.  We had a lot of fun playing at the park with all of the other families. 

First we bounced in the bounce houses.  Emily loved it and so did Colby.  Colby was still a little too small so Russell got to go in the bounce house with him and help.  Colby kept saying "Jump! Jump! Jump!"  He says this any time he gets on the couch or bed too.  Even though I have told him we don't jump on couches or beds, he still does it. 

Next we got to see inside a fire truck.  Russell told the kids he would soon be working on one of these  trucks.  He is so excited to be done with Fire Academy:

Then Emily and Colby got thier faces painted.  Colby got a paw print because I knew he wouldn't sit still for much more.  Emily got a really awesome pink and purple butterfly.  She was so proud and it was her favorite colors.  Well the face painting didn't last long unfortunately because we when to the splash pad right after.
As you can see Emily's beautiful butterfly washed right off.  She didn't seem to mind though because she was having too much fun in the water.  We love the splash pad.  We had a lot of fun at the Family Fun Day.  Thanks!

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Our Little Popcorn

Emily had her first dance recital on June 1 & 2.  Her dance company, Dixie Arts Conservatory (DAC) put on three shows during these two days and Emily had a blast dancing in front of the audience with her friends.  The show was titled "Under the Big Top" and had a circus theme.  Emily's class was the youngest class and they were the little Popcorns!  Their tap dance was right before intermission and it got everyone in the mood to buy popcorn at the concession stand during intermission!

Here is our little popcorn in her popcorn box:

Duing the show, the little girls hid in the popcorn box as it was rolled out and then popped out of the box when it was thier time to dance.  The were definitely the cutest dancers in the show.
Here are the girls doing their popcorn dance.  Emily loved to practice her dance at home and during class.  As long as she watched someone do the dance she remembered each step.  So during the recital, I told her to follow her friend, Faye, because she knew the whole dance.  Emily and her class did an awesome job during the recital and they had a blast.

The day before the recital, Emily had her picture taken with her class:
They also had a picture taken with the whole dance company and everyone in the show.  I took my camera so I could get a few pictures of everyone as well and the photographer kind of got mad at me!  I would take my picture just before him or with him (I wasn't the only mom taking pictures as well).  Finally he got mad and said "I can't have all these flashes going off and ruining my lighting!"  I couldn't help but laugh to myself.  I didn't care because I got my shots in...sorry!

During the show, one of the mom's stayed behind the scenes with the girls until it was thier turn.  Above is a picture of the 5 little popcorns as they waited for thier turn.  Emily really liked her dance teacher Miss Brittany.  She was really fun and so good with the girls.  Emily loved dance class and asks us when she is going back.  We haven't decided when we will start dance up again.  Probably not until after the summer is over. 

Good Job Emily!