Sunday, November 21, 2010

Happy Feet, I've Got Those Happy Feet

On Wednesday I got a call from the owner of the aforementioned dance studio saying she wanted to hire me! Yipee! So I drove up to Bountiful the next day and watched and took notes during the classes I'll be teaching (three instead of four, but I can also make money subbing for other teachers), and got the run down on everything from Diane, the awesome teacher I'm replacing. It's a great studio and I am SOOO excited to teach these classes!!! I also can take the adult ballet class on Thursday nights for free, and yesterday I took the barre portion of a master class taught by a dancer from Ballet West. I am just thrilled to be doing what I love again!!! Woo-hoo!

Late Tuesday night I thought I might be getting sick, and sure enough I've come down with a cold. However, I'd already scheduled a deep-tissue massage for Thursday morning (with a gift certificate from last Christmas, hee, hee), and if I rescheduled less than 24 hours before I'd have to pay an extra fee. So, I got the massage (so nice!) before going up to Bountiful, but the next day the after-effects of the deep bodywork coupled with body aches from the cold were too much! Ow! LOL. (Note to self . . .)

This morning I woke up to snow on the ground, and it made me smile. (It will stop making me smile promptly on January 1st - hee, hee!) Lots of people are sick around here, and I filled in for the teacher in Relief Society today. We have such wonderful sisters in this ward, and the things they shared made it a really sweet and touching meeting. Just another reason for me to feel happy and so blessed! I will, however, stay home from choir tonight. I'm feeling too crummy (physically) and I don't want to get squished between a bunch of people and breathe all over them. :P Additionally, the snow that melted after church was followed by hail that covered the ground in white, which is still being followed by more snow and some crazy wind. Yep, indoors sounds good. And maybe some hot chocolate . . .

Sunday, November 14, 2010

15 Minutes of Fame

So, if you've perused the pages of the November Ensign magazine, you just might have recognized a familiar face on page 113. On that page there's a photo of our group of sisters that attended the General Relief Society Meeting in Salt Lake on September 25th. One of the gutsier sisters called the Ensign cameraman over and asked him to take our picture. We thought it was fun, but never thought that anything would come of the solicited photo op. But, ta-da!

Yesterday I drove up to Bountiful for a job interview at a dance studio. They need a teacher for four ballet classes on Thursday evenings. I don't have much experience teaching dance, yet, which makes my chances quite slim. However, the interview went well, and the owner and I liked each other a lot. It seems like a great studio with a nice, healthy approach to dance, yet with high-quality instruction. AND it's 2 MINUTES from the apartment we're moving into. Oooh! Me wants it!! :)

Aside from that, there's really been nothing noteworthy this week. I am SOOO excited about moving into our own apartment - and getting our life out of storage - in three weeks!!! That keeps me pumped during the days. :) I'm also reading The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, which is pretty interesting (and keeps making me think of Tim). The rest is just business (or busyness) as usual. :)

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Daylight Savings Time . . . Oh, Yeah

So this morning I rolled over and saw that Tyson's clock said 8:34 am. Distressed, I jumped out of bed, got ready, and zoomed over to the church with a few minutes to spare. As I pulled up to the church, though, I realized that there were very few cars in the parking lot. I checked the time on my phone, and realized what I'd done. Ah, daylight savings time! I had completely spaced the fact that the change was this weekend. LOL.

As some of you already know (thanks to Facebook), the big news is that yesterday we put down a deposit on an apartment in Bountiful, and we can begin moving in on the first! It's less than ten minutes from Tyson's work (instead of over an hour which he's been driving since February), and in a cul de sac of four-plexes near an elementary school. We're just around the corner from two grocery stores and our bank, too. I'm so sad to move away from our amazing ward, but I just can't describe how elated I am to move into such a perfect place!

Last weekend, we were about to put a down payment on another apartment in South Jordan. But neither of us felt like it's what the Lord wanted us to do. I was too excited about moving to really listen as I should have, but thankfully Tyson was in tune, and we called back to say we couldn't move in after all. Now I am extra grateful for the Lord's guidance, because the apartment we will have now is better in so many ways. :)

Also last weekend, everyone did their trick-or-treating on Saturday out here, which was really cool. I took a little time to carve a candy corn jack-o-lantern, which I'm pretty proud of, since I didn't know how I was going to do it ahead of time. That night, in the middle of trick-or-treating, a crazy hailstorm pounded down on us! One of the cats got totally freaked out by the noise and curled up on the stairs and just kept meowing. After the hail stopped, though, there was a huge double rainbow we could see from our backyard! Tyson and I both did our best to take pictures of it. :) The next day my celebration consisted of making some tasty Halloween cupcakes. :)


The other pictures are of my favorite recent food conquests. I have fallen in love with Paula Dean's Baked Acorn Squash with Brown Sugar and Butter - it's like having your vegetables for dessert! Also, I've loved Olga's Kitchen's spinach pie since I was a child, so I busted out the phyllo dough again and made Emeril's spanikopita. It has a more pungent flavor, more authentic than Olga's, and it's one of the simplest recipes for spanikopita I've found. I just devoured them! I also tried a recipe for spaghetti squash, which was pretty good and can be easily tweaked. The trick was just getting the knife out of the squash after my initial stab into it - I feel like someone should crown me king for finally getting it out! I tried out a recipe for pumpkin cake, too, and baked the batter in Caleen's awesome pumpkin-shaped mini-cake pan. They were so light and soft and moist! It was like they melted into creamy pumpkin pie in your mouth!


This past Friday night, in order to use up leftover pumpkin and some aging apples, I made some apple-pumpkin muffins with streusel topping for Saturday's breakfast. They were fabulous! Next time I'd like to use all whole wheat flour, so I can feel a leetle less guilty about eating all that sugar. ;P


I apologize for not writing the last two weeks. Tyson and I have been working on compiling a ward directory with photographs, and so our Sunday time between church and choir has been absorbed doing that. Also, after ward choir from 4pm to 5pm, we've been attending the stake choir from 5pm to 6pm, which started two weeks ago. And then more often than not family comes over for dinner. But of course, with the holidays and moving both coming up, I make no promises about the future! :D