Brian returned from the California Carlsbad Mission on Tuesday and we met him at the Salt Lake airport. It was so great to see him, especially for Mark who hadn’t seen him since he left on his mission in May, 2008. So happy to have him home for the holidays!
So I’ve been slightly stressed because I want to have Christmas all done before our missionary comes home THIS TUESDAY!
But in between all the stress, we’ve enjoyed some holiday fun. We went to Celebration of Christmas by the BYU combined choirs & Philharmonic Orchestra at the beginning of December. It’s always wonderful and is a great start to the season. They had some really beautiful arrangements that just made me sigh.
I sang in the Alpine community Christmas concert last Sunday night, conducted by Marvin Payne, and got to sing with a bunch of my friends. We had some lovely music choices and it really made me feel in the spirit of the season.
Tonight I’m sitting in the LDS Conference Center waiting for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert to start because we were lucky enough to get tickets. We walked around looking at lights on Temple Square after eating at Crown Burger, so it’s already been a fun evening.
Tomorrow we are at the Alpine Christmas show to see Todd McCabe & April Moriarty & friends, so that will be fun, too.
Monday is the Christmas book club lunch when I get to see my pals. Can’t wait!
So it’s been fun with more to come. Mark came home from BYU on Wednesday, Brian comes home on Tuesday, and let the party begin!
So I’ve recently become an unofficial reading mentor to some girls in my neighborhood and it has been fun and satisfying. I posted earlier about my involvement with the Utah Women and Education Project, and one of the research outcomes showed that a young woman with a caring adult who is also a female college graduate will be more likely to attend college. So I’m putting research into practice. 😉 Right now I’m trying to come up with a perfect Christmas gift for each one and that has been a very interesting experience. I had no trouble deciding on the first and after mulling over the second for two weeks and re-reading a book to make sure, I’ve decided on her gift. But the third has been tricky. She is a young teen and wants to read some mysteries but her trip to the library with her mom yielded adult mysteries that the mom thought inappropriate. So I figured I’d give her an appropriate young adult mystery. Merry Christmas! I thought of one and started re-reading it but found a mild expletive around page 60 that I’d forgotten. So no go with that choice. I racked my brain for days and finally Googled some young adult mystery lists for inspiration. I found several possible titles that seemed to be repeated on all the librarian’s lists so I headed to my local library to do some research. I ended up coming home with a stack of nine YA books, only two of which I’d previously read. Scott looked incredulously at the stack and asked me if they were to solve my problem and did I plan to read all those in the next week? Ha ha……then he reminded me that I was already feeling stressed about all the stuff I needed to to do, like finish the half-decorated tree in our living room. Yeah, right.
I started on the stack, glanced through one that I’d read and saw language I’d forgotten, glanced through the other I’d read and wondered why it was on everyone’s mystery list and now I was down to seven. I discarded another as boring-seeming and was left with six. Two were from a series and a cursory glance found language so those were out; two others were from another series and I found an extended passage detailing a keg party with lots of drinking so those were out. What’s up with these novels? Now I was left with two. I was really frustrated and Scott asked me, “Haven’t you read any other YA novels you could give her?” Well, yes, but I want to give her a mystery since she’s interested in that right now. I make my life hard.
I need someone to write clean and absorbing young adult mysteries for teens with strong characters, preferably female. Who’s up for the challenge?
In the meantime, I’m reading frantically before making my Amazon order……
Finally started sewing my Thanksgiving quilt today. Yeah, it was only two 9-patch blocks, and no, it won’t be done for this year, but I got started. I cut out the blocks a long time ago so it made me happy to finally start sewing!
Winter storms make me feel yucky and want to curl up and hibernate. I experience a variety of symptoms every time a storm roars through and they’re not fun. So with this storm and the incredibly busy weekend I just barely survived, I wanted to lay in bed and read “David Copperfield” today. But alas, it was not to be. I spent the entire day packing up Halloween decorations, putting out Thanksgiving decorations, and cleaning my house in preparation for the college youth group that will be arriving at my house any minute. (Now that all prep is done, I am sitting with my phone writing to you, dear reader).
You may be wondering at the title to this post. It’s in reference to the fact that those activities didn’t use to take me an entire day. Not too many years ago I could roar through the house like a bat out of you know where and have all that accomplished in a couple hours. Not so now. I am learning to pace myself, put on some music, and just move at a snail’s pace. Frustrating, but it’s teaching me patience, I guess.
So here’s the victory: got it all done, got myself cleaned up and beautiful, and had 10 minutes to blog! Not bad!
Doorbell ringing………