Dancing with Daffodils

Tonight my family attended a teacher appreciation evening put on by our church. It was well-organized and a lovely event that included gifts for each teacher and a great video of each child saying what they like best about the teacher they chose to invite and honor. My two oldest invited school teachers who could not attend but my younger daughter invited her ballet teacher, who did come. It was wonderfully special to get to actually talk to this good woman who I admire so much for her approach to teaching dance and to see her interacting with my daughter. Teachers really are a special kind of person. When I was trying to choose a major I went to an English major introduction and all they talked about was becoming an English teacher, which was not what I wanted. I ended up switching my major to journalism so that I could write and not teach because I knew I wouldn't be good at it. It requires a special amount of patience and understanding and love for the subject and your student...

Last Sunday my husband was sustained and set apart as the bishop of our ward. That means that he is now responsible for the spiritual and temporal welfare of our entire church congregation and all the people that live in our ward boundaries. It is a weighty responsibility and one that he accepted humbly. Our church is one of a lay ministry with no paid clergy so we all take turns filling the various responsibilities. I currently play the piano for the children during their singing time and I love it. Other times I have helped with the youth organization and the women's organization. Josh has taught the children before but mostly served in the men's organization and most recently as the previous bishop's executive secretary. This was not something he sought after, in fact we both secretly hoped it would never be asked of us, but when the call came, we both supported it and said yes. A lot of people have been asking me how I feel about it and depending on the person I have ...

This weekend we're celebrating my husband's birthday, something we've done more successfully some years over others. My favorite was his 25th birthday when I surprised him with tickets to see Jerry Seinfeld. He loved the show and I knew he would love to see Jerry's stand up routine. I got some great tickets, planned a fun dinner out and was so proud of myself. We were poor college students so this was a big splurge and I couldn't wait to see the look on his face. Somehow he found out that Jerry was coming to our area and he got all excited, making me frustrated that he was ruining my surprise. I had to purposely take him to some websites that had tickets for exorbitant prices and was able to completely discourage him from going. While I had been disappointed that he found out about the show, it only made it that much more of a surprise when he opened up his birthday card and the tickets for that night's show were inside. We had such a fun evening going from ou...