just me checking in

I am sitting here on my comfy couch, listening to Christmas music while Elsie takes her nap, getting some laundry done, and thought I would write a little post since it's been a while. I don't even have any new pictures or anything, but I guess that means I can still write something...you know how much I hate that! (Warning: this is not very exciting stuff, but there is a little video of Elsie toward the end if you want to just skip to that.)

I made it through my first mutual activity last week. It was just an activity planning for the upcoming year. I only have 3 miamaids and one turns 16 in January, so she didn't really care. One of the other girls is such a sweetheart. She's just a good girl, very involved in school and activities, so nice to everyone. The other one is a bit of a challenge. Her attitude is not the best. I'll leave it at that. (I'm being way too nice.) Anyway, the girls were able to come up with some good ideas. Thankfully the nice girl was willing to do whatever the other one wanted. Fun times dealing with teenagers! I also had to teach the lesson on Sunday for all the young women. I think it went pretty well, but I was SO nervous. I have no problem teaching kids. In fact, I love it! But teenagers and the adult leaders make it so much harder for me. I only cried (very mild cry) once, so I consider that an accomplishment.

While Aaron was doing some work last night on the computer, I watched this Hallmark movie on TV called Front of the Class. It was about this guy who has Tourette Syndrome and wanted to be a teacher. (He was on Oprah a while back.) It was a SUPER cheesy movie, but I still secretly liked it. Whenever I watch movies about teachers, it makes me want to be in the classroom again. I really enjoyed teaching. I miss it. I wish I would've done more of it...but it just didn't work out that way. If only I had known it would take six years to have a baby and stop working!! I hope someday to be able to do it again. I substitute taught here for a couple months a couple years ago. The school district has this really lame, boring reading/writing program that they are using that takes all the fun out of learning. It made me really sad to see that. They don't even teach science, art, social studies to anyone before fourth grade. Well, unless it happens to be a story about dinosaurs or something. It's all focused on reading, writing, and math. I want to teach, but only if it's fun for me and the kids. There's no challenge in what they were doing in the classrooms I was in.

Friday night was our ward's adult christmas party. My neighbor, Stephanie, watched Elsie for us while we went. It was nice to get away...although Aaron said he still would've rather been at home with Elsie instead of at the party. Stephanie took some cute pictures of Elsie and her boys while she over there. I need to have her email them to me. There's one of Elsie holding the guitar while they were playing Guitar Hero. That's my favorite.

I've been really good about going to the gym and am even getting to the point that I look forward to it. Elsie does really well in the day care there. Half the time she doesn't want to leave when I come to pick her up. My aerobics instructor is in love with Elsie because she's spunky and reminds her of her daughter. She talks about Elsie all the time. I think it's funny. I had to skip out on aerobics for a few days last week because I think I had shin splints or something. I'm feeling better now, but it really hurt for a while. The last time I had shin splints was in high school when I attempted to become a runner and tried out for track. I was never very successful, but the shin splints went away.

Elsie and I went to the library again last week. For some reason Elsie wasn't really into the songs as much. I think it's because the lady didn't have as much music to accompany the singing. Elsie likes to hear the music. I did get this video of Elsie dancing and shaking her instrument (can't think of what it's called). This was her favorite part of the whole day.