Faith. Family. Story.
Nesting in January.
I am in such a nesting mood lately. Most years when I take Christmas down, I experience a surge of energy in the organize and rearrange department, but this year, I'm finding an extra helping of FUN in the whole process. Two+ weeks ago on a Saturday, I took the tree down and decided to move the armoire (with our TV inside) from one side of my living room to the other—this single action commenced a cascade of curiosity, so that now when I walk into a room, I'm thinking things like, "Why is that chair or bench or mirror or basket there? What if I moved that over here, or put it upstairs or got rid of it altogether?" As you can imagine, these questions are creating all kinds of exciting possibilities.
15 Things: Sundays
I told my kids at dinner that I needed something to blog. Taft said, "Since it's the 15th, write a list of 15 things." Ah! Great idea. I like it. I'm going to try it and then maybe it could become a recurring thing.
15 Things on the 15th
What we do on Sundays
1. We go to church. Right now our ward/congregation meets at 11:00am. We attend a three-hour block of meetings, beginning with Sacrament meeting, followed by Sunday School and then 3rd hour, Young Women's for me (I'm currently teaching 14-15 year old girls), Priesthood for my boys and Primary for Addie. Note: There are two weekends a year, when we don't go to church. The first weekend in April and the first weekend in October are scheduled as a worldwide General Conference for all members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We get to stay home and watch multiple sessions of conference online!
2. Geoff and I get up early. 5:30am (yikes) He has a 6:30am meeting and I fix him old-fashioned oatmeal, and we eat breakfast together. After he leaves I enjoy a couple of hours of QUIET time! This happens three out of four weeks. The first Sunday of every month is what we call Fast Sunday and Geoff doesn't have his super early meetings those days.
Prepping for RootsTech + Periscope plans
I'm really wanting to be better this year at simply checking in and documenting more regularly what I'm doing and thinking and anticipating. I miss doing that kind of blogging (the just for me and my family kind) because it's so fun to go back to read. This is the first time really since completing the bulk of writing for my *almost* book that I've had the urge to sit down and write. I've been enjoying that wonderful "no deadline" feeling and the freedom to pay more attention to my house and healthy eating and better exercise and the little clean-up and organize projects here and there. I've still got my RootsTech presentation looming, but with all the work I did on my book, it's coming together pretty easily. I uploaded my syllabus last night (late of course) but I'm feeling a sense of relief about that this morning.
In addition to being a presenter—a very small presenter—I have also had the good fortune of being a RootsTech Ambassador, which means I get to attend the media dinner and sit in really awesome seats for all of the general sessions, so that I can take pictures and post information and updates to social media. This really is a HUGE and exciting event to attend, and it dovetails perfectly with pretty much everything I'm passionate about (scrapbooking, storytelling, family, family history, entrepreneurs and innovation and SUPER inspiring keynote presentations) so it's kind of a Disneyland feeling for three straight days! Anyway, I'm working on my Keynote (powerpoint) slides today and tomorrow and looking forward to seeing my family members, including Clark and his new girlfriend (yikes!) in Utah next week. I fly out on Tuesday and return Sunday. My parents are coming from Seattle, so Darci and Kevin waited to schedule Cache's baptism so that we could all be there -- this makes me extremely happy!
I feel like I'm slowly figuring out where I want to fit in and what I want to focus on and I like that. The whole rejection thing sucks. I've been fighting those "I'm a loser" feelings, but I'm coming out of it now and I'm getting back to finishing some of the projects I started for the *almost* book and honestly, creating just makes me happy (period.)
My friend (and author) Julie Nelson
All about my friend Julie Nelson, the now parenting-expert who has written a NEW book!