The Worst Part Of Changing Wards

Chris and I are getting ready to move again. We decided to buy a home and we close very soon, so this Sunday will be our last Sunday in our ward. There are many many things that make moving from our ward a harrowing experience, having to meet new people, not having the sweet seats by the clock in sacrament meeting behind the cute babies, knowing that we're going to be asked to speak in our new ward etc. For me, though, the worst part about changing wards would have to be getting released from my calling as primary teacher (although that whole speaking thing is really bad. I'm more afraid of death than speaking in public. I hate when groups of people look at me.). I bawled the last time we moved and I had to leave my sunbeams. I doubt this time will be any different. I've been teaching the 5 and 6 year olds and they have been wonderful. The seven of them have kept me on my toes, even more so than the sunbeams from the Virgina ward. Believe it or not, but I've had more trouble keeping them in their seats and reverent than my sunbeams, and while that's usually a bad thing, I've loved every minute of it. They are the funniest things and we've had a really good time. For example, last week, my co teacher brought treats for the kids to enjoy at the end of class. One of the kids was chewing gum and he took it out of his mouth and put it on his nose, presumably to continue chewing it when he was done with his treat. It turned out that this was the really really sticky, messy kind of gum that isn't going to let go without a fight. The kid couldn't get it off his nose and the more he tried, the more it went everywhere. It was all over his face, on his hands, little bits of it ended up in his hair. We sent him to the bathroom to wash himself off before singing time, but apparently it didn't do as much good as we had hoped. While you couldn't see the gum by the time we went down to singing time, there was still some gum residue on his face and he kept pushing his lip up to touch his nose, where the gum residue would grab hold and hold his lip to his nose for a few seconds before the kid would push it up again. Neither I nor my co teacher were sitting next to him, so we couldn't stop him from doing this without attracting everyone's attention (which the kid would have loved. He's always trying to make the other kids laugh). I could hardly keep myself from laughing out loud. They are such a fun group of kids and I'm going to miss my calling horribly, especailly when I get a new calling in our new ward that is not going to be nearly as fun and may even be tortuous, like sunday school teacher.

Waffle Run 2009

My sweet little mother in-law loves running and she loves her family. This is what inspired her to create an annual 4th of July race called the Waffle Run. She started it last year. The Waffle Run is a 5K race followed by some delicious waffles with a lot of friends and family. Chris and I ran in it last year and had a good time even though it was quite hard. We hadn't been running for very long and the elevation difference from DC to Utah was hard to get over. This year, we've been running the course 3 or 4 times a week and we beat last years time by a minute and a half! It was great.