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Aaron just told me that he got a 101 percent on his test! He actually got a 99.5 percent, but his teacher decided to give extra credit for a couple questions that they hadn't gone over in class yet. Since he got them right, he got extra credit! That took him over the 100 percent mark. Congrats to Aaron!

Won a Prize!

So my work had a health fair yesterday. My work provides 100 percent of the health insurance for employees (meaning none of the cost comes out of the paycheck) and so they're always doing things to try to lower the cost of health insurance. They want to keep it free, but if it gets too expensive, they will not be able to pay for all of it anymore. So anyway, they do things like they had a campaign this last summer that if you ate enough "colorful" foods in a two-month period, you would be entered to win two roundtrip airline tickets. Of course colorful foods include fruits and veges (they said m&ms don't count, even though they are colorful).

Anyway, so they had a health fair where you could get your cholesterol and your blood-sugar tested to make sure you were within the right bounds and you could do a fitness test. You could have chiropractor do a scan to see if your spine was out of wack. And finally they had a raffle with some prizes. Now I am not one to win (and it's probably cause most of the time the odds of winning are so small), but I actually won something from the raffle. Since the fair went all day, the raffle was done by HR later and they just emailed the winners. So I won a Dirt Devil cordless hand vac. Cool huh! It made me smile :). I'm excited to start using it. I have to wait 24 hours while it charges up before I can use it, though. Ooooo, anticipation.

News

Well, I found out some exciting news: my sister-in-law and her family (which includes two adorable girls who are 5 and 2) are going to be moving to Utah near us. Her husband applied for a position in Salt Lake City with his company and was given it so they are going to be moving here next month. How exciting! We'll have family near by finally. Plus I'm excited to spend more time with my nieces. So yeah!

My Adorable Girls

Things are going better for me as the Primary Chorister. I am getting the hang of how it works and now that we are done with learnign the songs, we can now just have fun by playing games that practice the songs. I am starting to learn more of their names, which makes me connect with the children more and they have more fun. Yesterday we played a board game where each square had an activity for them to do, like one children quacks the tune of a song while the rest of the children guess what it is, or having one of the children lead. It was really fun and overall the children liked it. Yeah!

So in a month or so, our Ward will be having their annual Primary Presentation and being the Primary Chorister I am in charge of the music for the presentation. I decided that it would be fun to have a small group of girls sing one of the songs and a small group of boys sing another song, you know, to add variety to the presentation. I had announced it last Sunday at the end of our singing time, and so this Sunday those who had volunteered stayed after to practice. You should have seen them. They are so adorable! There is this one girl, Abby, who wanted to do it who I thought would be too young (she is only 6). But she did wonderful. I had them all sing by themselves so I could get a feel for their voices and this little six-year-old sang so sweetly. And she was really well behaved and obedient as we practiced. So cute! I wish I had pictures to share to show her cuteness. I had a lot of fun practicing with them and I am so glad I got a good-sized group to volunteer (I've had 8 volunteer so far). No boys have volunteered yet, so I asked the Bishopric to sing it with they're sons and they seem up to the challenge. Each one has one son that is still in Primary, so it works out great.

So overall things are going well for me and the Primary choristering. I am so glad that I'm getting the hang of it. It really is a reward to work with children!

Latest News

So Aaron started back at school on Wednesday. This is his third semester at UVSC. He's taking four computer science classes, so it may be a tough semester, but at least they are classes he is interested in. What was kind of funny was he was planning on using the extra pell grant money to buy a 1 GB flash drive to use at school, but when he went to one of his classes for the first time, the teacher told them they would be required to have an external hard drive for class that had at least 80 GB (he ended up getting one that is 120 GB because it was only $90 after rebates). So he figures he doesn't need the flash drive anymore--he can just use the hard drive! So funny. (And it was only $20 more for the hard drive, but of course way bulkier.)

While I was at BYU I signed up to be on an email list for editing minors. The secretary for the department (who just happens to be my old boss), sends out notices every once in a while with job offers. They can be really random sometimes, not just editing. Recently she sent out an email asking for English speakers to do voice-over work. I figured what the hey, so I recorded my voice with the microphone on my headphones and emailed the recording to the company (isn't modern technology wonderful?). I got an email a couple days later saying that they were going to have the customer hear the recording and if I was selected, they would let me know. This was pretty exciting to me. They had mentioned in the job ad that they would be screening the recordings for the customer and only the best would go on, so it must mean they liked my voice. I haven't heard back since, but I have good hopes (it's only been three days). If I am selected it pays $15/hr. Granted it is only 1 to 5 hours of work, but hey, it could lead to more work in the future. Yeah!

There is not much news other than that. My work still hasn't hired me. It will be six months on Sept. 7. I was really hoping to be hired by now. If I don't hear anything from my boss soon, I'm going to ask him about it. I think it's funny that I've only been there six months and yet I have already switched who my boss is. They hardly even bothered to tell me till like four weeks after they had switched me. Oh well. I like working for the second boss cause not only is he really cool, but he is higher up on the chain of command and so I'm hoping he'll have more pull in getting me hired. One can only hope!

PS We paid back our loan. We are officially free of any student loan debt. At this moment our only debt is on our credit card and is less than $40 (which at the moment has 0% APR cause it's still in the intro period). Yeah us!

My Husband's Family Visits

Last week my husband's family visited. I should clarify because he has so many families (his mother and step-father, his father and step-mother, his sister and her family, etc.). It was his father and step-mother who came with their three teenagers. Unfortunately, I was asked to attend training for four days at work, for 9 hours each day. I was able to get out of some of it to spend time with them, but normally I could have taken off as much as I wanted, so I was disappointed. It was fun to see them. Their oldest, Ashley, is planning on attending BYU next year after she graduates high school and so I showed her and her family around campus so she could get an idea of what BYU offers to students. She said that she knew that BYU was a good school academically, but she didn't realize how much they provide for the student including tons of computers, music practice rooms (she loves playing the piano), and a huge library. I also showed her the dorms so she could decide which one she wanted to live in. I was pushing for her to stay at Helaman Halls cause they are much nicer than Deseret Towers and would be more comfortably. Shy, humble Ashley just said to her mom, "I'll be happy to stay in either," since her parents are paying and she doesn't want to seem greedy.

Aaron and I can't wait until Ashley is able to come here for school. We really want to be near family and I am excited to mentor her through her college years (if she'll let me). The other two teenagers, Tim and Crystal, are also hoping to attend BYU when they graduate. This is great news for us and make us very excited. Free babysitters!

I guess this is a month of family visits cause Aaron's sister, Andrea, is also hoping to visit us this week. Her husband works for an airlines and so they can fly free, but only on standby. Yesterday Andrea tried to get a flight here and even though they expected 20 seats open, they had 75 people waiting to get on through standby. I am thinking it is those who decided to Education Week at the last minute. She is going to try again tomorrow, if there are projected spots, but we'll have to see. We're hoping it works out because we would like to see her and our two adorable nieces. So cute! Here's hoping.

To add to this, Aaron's step-father wants to bring us a dresser of theirs that they don't want any more and we could use and he is planning on coming Labor Day weekend, if he can get off work for it. I hope that works out cause I really want it and I think it would be great. Hopefully that works out.

Church Singing

So again I don't have much to report. On Sunday I again did the Singing Time for Church. I always get really nervous before Singing Time cause I worry about whether the kids will participate and whether they'll have fun. On this day, I decided to play hot and cold with them (they sing loudly when the child searching is near the hidden item and softly when they are far away). The children participated well and they had fun. I think it went well. Afterward, I was in the hallway when one of the girls passed by me with her family and said to me, "I like your singing." I am not sure if she meant my singing in particular or just Singing time, but it was awfully cute and I told her thank you. Later when my hometeacher came to teach us, I asked him if his children had said anything about Singing Time at all (whether they liked it, etc.) and he said that they hadn't, but his niece, who has been visiting them all this month, has been singing the songs around the house. He also said their family doesn't go to church, so this is her first time learning these songs. That made me happy. Yeah.

This I still get nervous before Singing Time though. It is pretty nerve wracking for me. I am just glad that the new Nursery leader is a music person and so she is going to do singing with them so I don't have to. That really helps!

Aaron's family is going to be here soon (I think within the next week!). Yeah.