I miss the SUN!!

Here is our 10 day forecast! I am really craving some WARM UV rays but they are nowhere in sight. Mostly I am tired of running on a t.r.e.a.d.m.i.l.l. and want to go outside without getting wet. Good thing we are headed to Cancun in less than 2 months! (I know that is still pretty far away but something to look forward to, right?)

I don't have too much to report. Brandon is through with busy season. Hurray!! Now he comes home around 6 or 7pm. I am still working per diem at Overlake Hospital on the cardiac unit. Some weeks I work over full time and other weeks I barely work part time. It is nice to have the variety and I definitely like this job better than my old job in the radiology department.

This weekend one of my old roommates from BYU was in town so I got to go out to lunch with her and catch up. We live in her home ward so it is fun to know we will stay in touch whenever she comes back to visit. She and her husband are living in Texas and just bought a house. We are super jealous!!

Brandon also spoke in church on Sunday. He did an amazing job and didn't even write anything down (I could never do that because I would lose my train of thought too easily)! He talked about preparing for General Conference which is coming up in just 2 weeks--I can't wait.

One year ago on March 22 Brandon asked me to marry him. It is crazy to think about all that has happened in one year! I remember the first time he ever mentioned the "M" word. It was a Sunday evening in my apartment. We were sitting on my roommates love sac watching a CES fireside. Of course the fireside was about eternal marriage which I'm sure helped encourage him to start a converstaion we both had been avoiding for some time. Brandon had accepted his job with Ernst and Young and needed to make a decision about when to start---either in August or October. He had told me he needed to make a decision on his start date about a week earlier. He had mentioned it casually like he was telling me what he ate for lunch that day but obviously it was a big deal because it meant we had decide what was going to happen to us at the end of the summer. I knew he was thinking about it and I DEFINTELY was thinking about it but I was NOT going to be the first one to bring it up. So for over a week I skirted around the issue by changing the subject every time he mentioned his job with E&Y. I'm not exactly sure how the converstaion started that night but before I knew it we were talking about our options for when he needed to move up to Seattle. First he started talking about doing the long distance thing...I immediately vetoed that idea. We are both not good phone talkers and there was no way our relationship would last through that...so honestly what would be the point. Then he suggested I move up to Seattle and we could continue dating. Yeah right!!...my life was way too great in Utah (family, friends, job) to move and then have Brandon and I not work out. I guess he realized at that point if he was going to keep me around he would have to make a bigger committment. So then he pulled out the big guns and mentioned the "M" word. As they say...the rest is history. I'll have to post about when he actually proposed to me another time.

Blue and Gold Banquet

So my calling right now is with the Cub Scouts. I am the Wolf den mother so I get to hangout with about a dozen 8-9 year old boys each week. It has been a great calling for me to learn about little boys. I have no brothers and had no clue what they do in scouts so I have had to learn quick. Thankfully I am not totally alone. We combine with the Bear den and their leader, Molly, has been at this for about 2 years now so I would consider her a pro at it and I definitely learn a lot from her.

Little boys are so funny. There have been a few instances I couldn't help but laugh my head off at what they said. One little boy was acting up and his father is in the bishopric. We asked him to settle down and called him "Brother Smith" (names have been changed to protect the innocent). He kept acting up and we finally got him to look at us. We said again, "Brother Smith, can you hear what we are saying?" He said, "What?!? Brother Smith is my dad." He really had no idea we were talking to him. To him Brother Smith was only his dad and not him. It was hilarious...maybe you had to be there to grasp how funny it was. Then around Thanksgiving we were playing a Bingo game I had made up where we put different things we were thankful for in each of the squares: family, friends, house, food, school, games...etc. We were pretty far into the game and it was getting close to someone winning. One of the kids just kept saying over and over again "I need friends! I need friends!!!" I don't know why but it just sounded so funny because he was so excited to announce it to the entire den!

This past week we had the big Blue and Gold Banquet. I was lucky enough to be in charge of the food. It was a little stressful but it turned out to be a big success. We combined with another troop and had all their families come. We ended up serving about 90 people...it was a lot of food. All the boys had a great time. Here are some pictures of the evening. I forgot my camera so these were emailed out to us by our Cub Master.

The theme was ABC Across America but we kind of changed it to Celebrating the State of Washington. The decorations were amazing. They made Mt. Rainier out of butcher paper and had trees all over the gym. It looked great and the boys loved it.

We made these fish the week before for decorations. They are salmon and orca. Do you remeber the art project in elementary school where you get little squares of tissue paper and put them on the end of a pencil. You then dip the end into some glue and put it on you project. The boys did a great job as you can see.