Tomorrow is the first student day!  We teachers had a couple of days of workshops on Thursday and Friday, but tomorrow is the first day for students.  Nathan is not very excited about it, although he does like his teacher and he's excited to see his friends.

Emily taught the lesson today in Young Women's.  I was so proud of her.  She did such a good job.  Then, after church, they had a seminary kick-off, which she went to.  This is her senior year, and she has three years of seminary under her belt.  Luckily for her, she has three other kids this year, unlike previous years, when she has been the only one at time!  This year she'll have Courtney, Rebekah, and Taylor.  I'm just so proud of her for going to seminary and church. 

I'm kind of excited for school now, although it took me a while.  I felt better about everything as I got my room ready and started planning.  I'm also not as upset about moving rooms now that I'm all settled in. 

I'm really enjoying my new calling at church.  I also am enjoying going to Sunday School.   I haven't been able to go for about 10 years, so it feels really nice to study the scriptures again, and be able to just listen and learn instead of teaching all of the time. 

As is tradition, I'm going to list all of the things I was able to do this summer so I feel like I've done a lot:

• Swimming a lot at Mom & Dad's
• Blueberry picking with the Atwaters
• Vacation to Florida with Dan, Nathan, Megan, Ashley, Emily, and Mom
• Made bookmarks with sisters at church (owls and kimonos)
• Had a game night with Mom, Aunt Diane, and Kathy (we played 63) at Kathy's house
• Made three receiving blankets for project at church
• Lost 25 pounds!  And kept it off!
• Spent lots of time with Emily while she had a couple of weeks off work
• Saw a few movies (The Odd Life of Timothy Green, Paranorman,  Brave, and Ice Age: Continental Drift )
• Got a pedicure done by Emily
• Went to a tri-stake Young Women's Conference in Exeter
• Met Sister Dalton!
• Read lots of books, both on my own and to Nathan
• Had Nathan do lots of math, spelling, and reading
• Caught up on all my scrapbooks
• Went to Range Pond with Dan, Megan and Nathan
• Gave a talk at church
• Had Steven and Lil over for supper and played Farkle
• Had Joseph and Ephraim for a sleepover
• Had Maddi and Sydni over for a sleepover
• Attempted an Anne of Green Gables marathon with Mom, Emily, Gram, and Megan (we only made it through part of one)
• Brought Nathan to two LOOK classes (Tribots and Stuffed Animal Monsters)
• Participated in the Norway Library summer reading program
• Got called into Young Women
• Had Ashley here for about a week and a half
• Had a Cooper get-together for Ashley, and celebrated Mackenzie's 5th birthday
• Went out to eat at Daddy-O's with Nathan, Mom, and Gram
• Went out to Cole Farms with Nathan, Mom, Olivia, Felicia, and Emily
• Got my hair dyed for the first time
• Went to Ephraim's birthday party
• Went to BYU-I Dance Alliance show with Mom and Gram
• Organized my scrapbook room
• Temple trip with Dan and the youth
• Did visiting teaching both months!
• RS pool party at Mom's
• Mini-golf and gokarts with Nathan and Emily
• Went to Nick and Coti's wedding
• Went to a shower for Jenny and Lee's new little girl
• Celebrated Olivia and Felicia's birthday
• Went kayaking with Mom and Marianne Zukowski

Sister Dalton

This past weekend I chaperoned a Tri-stake Young Women's Conference in Exeter, New Hampshire.  We only had two girls that went, but it was such a great experience.  I'm so glad I went.  Shannon and I both went and she drove, which made the trip much nicer for me.  We brought Courtney and Bekah and they were as perfect as you can get.  They are such nice girls.  I just love them already and I've only been in Young Women's for a couple weeks.  Anyway, we drove to New Hampshire, dropped Harper off at Shannon's friend's house, picked up her two girls, and drove to the conference.  The conference included workshops and service projects  (making first aid kits, no sew blankets, and trya cards) and speakers.  We heard President and Sister Wood, Elder Matthew Eyring, and ..........SISTER DALTON!  That was the highlight of the conference.  It was so neat to hear her speak in person.  We also got to meet her, and she gave me a hug!  Her talk was amazing.  The part that stood out to me was when she was talking to the girls about their valiance in the pre-existence.   She said, "You were not average in the pre-existence... and you're not average now."  That was a powerful statement because I'm always comparing myself to others, and wondering if I'm average in certain areas or below average, etc.   It was just a great experience.  We stayed at Shannon's friend's house on Friday night.  We cooked a big breakfast in the morning for her and her family and the girls.  It was so delicious.  She took care of Harper for Shannon during the day.  She and her family reminded me of myself when it comes to books!  They had bookshelf after bookshelf of books throughout the whole house.  She had a basket of books she was going to donate and told us we could take anything we wanted for our kids.  I ended up coming home with about 30 books for Nathan and 11 more that I'm borrowing for myself.  Courtney and Bekah were so nice to the other girls we brought with us.  They are not snobby in the least bit, which is no nice to see.  (The last time I was in YW, the group I had was known for their snobbishness.)  These girls are as sweet as can be. To top the weekend off, on the way home on Saturday we stopped at Wild Willy's in Rochester and had burgers.  Yum!

Last week, I was doing church stuff for four nights in a row.  I had YW on Wednesdays, a RS bookmark and card making activity on Thursday, and the YW conference on Friday and Saturday.  Oh, and of course, Sunday was regular church.  So actually, 5 days in a row.  I'm sure most weeks won't be like that. 

Dan and Nathan and I went to school tonight and moved all my furniture around.  I had to move downstairs, but nothing was arranged yet.  I'm feeling more positive about school now.  I hope it continues.

I'm reading a Titanic series by Gordon Korman to Nathan right now.  Now he has 12 books he's collected over the last year that are about the Titanic.  He's still pretty interested in it.  He's going to use his collection for cub scouts because they are supposed to start a collection of something.  I said, "Hey, you collect Titanic books.  You should use those."

    

Only a couple more weeks

I am starting to feel really stressed out.  I thought maybe I'd feel better about going back to school after I'd had a break, but I'm just as worried and anxious as I was in the spring.  I'm going to stop into school tomorrow and take a look at my room.  I had to move to a room downstairs, so I'll need to rearrange everything.  Maybe after I start getting ready for the first day I'll feel better.  I don't know.

This past week was nice.  Nathan and I spent a day with Gram, we went out to eat with Mom and Gram at DaddyO's, went out to eat at Cole Farms with Olivia, Felicia, Emily, Mom, Nathan, and I, went to Ephraim's birthday party this morning (at the bowling alley), went to my first Young Women's Wednesday night activity (basketball), read Charly by Jack Weyland, attended a shower, went to a BYU-I Dance Alliance show, saw the new Ice Age movie at the theatres with Dan and Nathan, and got lots of things done around the house.  This afternoon I organized my scrapbook room, which desperately needed it.  Now I just need to keep it that way.   Also, last week we went blueberry picking with the Atwaters, and got haircuts.  I dyed my hair for the first time.  I was getting pretty gray, and I'd been putting off dying it for a long time.  I like how it came out.  Hardly anyone has noticed it because it's my natural color.  Oh, well.  I guess that's a good thing because I wanted it to look natural. 

On Saturday,  Gram and Mom and I went to a shower for my cousin Jenny Morin and her husband Lee, who just adopted a four year old girl.  I think it was probably my favorite shower I've ever attended.  Addy loved everything, and was just so excited and appreciative of all her gifts.  It was so fun watching her open her presents.  What a sweet little girl!  I'm super excited for them.

I got to go to Sunday School on Sunday, which I haven't been able to do in a long time.  It was great.  I'd read the lesson ahead of time, and just was able to participate.  In the past few years, if I got to go to SS it was a last minute thing, so this was nice.   This week I'm going to be teaching the Young Women lesson for the first time.  I'm feeling kind of excited and nervous at the same time.