We're still alive

It's been a while, so I guess I should post so that you will know that we're still alive. Seussical has now been over for a couple of weeks. I think it turned out pretty good, and we had pretty full houses for all of the performances. It's always more fun to perform for full houses! You can see a few pictures of us on the MTI website at http://www.mtionline.org/showprod.php?season=2009&prod=sl.

Those of you in Utah know that we made a trip down there last weekend. The doctor's office Erin works at was closed a week ago Thursday for some doctor's meetings, so she decided to take Friday off as well. Her old BYU ward was also having a reunion last Saturday, to give her more incentive to want to go that weekend. Since we hadn't been down to visit for a while I decided to take those two days off as well and we all made the trek to good old Utah Valley. Liz's sister Kathy also drove down from Logan with her daughter, and we all met up at Edwin's house on Thursday afternoon to celebrate Edwin's birthday. You may ask, what did we do to celebrate. Well, you would only ask if you don't know Edwin. We played games, of course. We stayed the night with Mom and Dad, and then returned Friday morning for more games before Kathy had to head back to Logan. We got to play our new game "Settlers of Catan" (which we bought with the gift certificate we got from Ben's family for Christmas) for the first time. It was pretty fun, which I would say even if I hadn't won.

Friday evening we met up with Tim and went to a Jazz game for Izak's birthday. Nate, Jeremy, Juan, Giovanni, and Christian also went with us. It was a late game (8:30 start) because it was on ESPN. The Jazz started out terrible, and were down by 21 at one point in the first half, but they ended up winning by quite a bit in the end. It was fun!

Saturday we went to Lane and Marcia's house in the afternoon to catch up with them, and also got to play one hand of Ming. Later in the afternoon all the brothers and sisters and their clans came over to Mom and Dad's to visit and to watch BYU barely beat Air Force in basketball.

Sunday morning we went to Amy's sacrament meeting, since it was the earliest, and since she was speaking, and then had dinner with Mom and Dad before we headed back to Boise.

When I got back to work on Monday morning, I found out that on the previous Thursday they had laid off a bunch of people, and had announced that, in order to keep from laying of more people, those of us who were left (of which thankfully I was one of) were going to get a 10% pay cut. Pretty painful, but better than a 100% pay cut for sure.

Today I had a meeting at 6:30 am which was some welfare training using a DVD from Salt Lake that the stake was asked to hold. Then I had YM/YW committee meeting at 8:00, which I had to leave early to make it to the River Heights Ward sacrament meeting at 9:00, where I was speaking. It turned out that they had a baby blessing today, done by a father who had lots of blessings to give his son. Then the other high councilor who was my speaking companion gave a full 15 minute talk, followed by a 5 minute musical number. When I got up to speak it was exactly 10:00 -- 5 minutes before the time I should have been concluding. I cheated and spoke for 7 or 8 minutes, but still ended up leaving out about 60% of what I had prepared. Oh well. Then I had to go to priesthood meeting in Edinburgh ward to sustain a new assistant in their high priests group, then stay afterwards to set him apart. By the time I finished there wasn't time to go home before our ward's sacrament meeting. We had ward conference today, so we got to hear from the counselors in the stake presidency in all of the meetings. The stake president was out of town so we didn't get to hear from him, unfortunately. It was all very good. Our stake goal this year is to learn to feel, recognize, and follow the promptings of the spirit, so that was the theme of all the meetings.

The last couple of days I have had plugged up sinuses, so I guess I should try to get some sleep and see if I can get well.