Don't I look smart?

Here's Brandon modeling his new specs. He only uses them for reading and working on the computer...which I have calculated to be 62.3% of his day. (See... I'm good with numbers too!) I think he looks great and super smart!

Ames Lake Fire Station

We took the Cub Scouts to the Ames Lake Firestation last Friday. We had a great time!

This is Firefighter Brian dressed up in all his gear.

Talking about fire saftey!

All the kids got to go inside the fire truck!

Thanks to all the moms and dads that stayed and helped!

Easter

Here are some pictures from Easter. Growing up my dad would always hide our Easter basket and send us on a search through the house. So I decided Brandon needed to work for his Easter candy and search for his basket too. It took a little while (and some hints) but he finally found it...in the bath tub!Instead of dying Easter eggs we decided to frost sugar cookies. My sister Janae gave us a killer recipe that makes the softest cookies ever. And my mom had mailed us a package with cute Easter cookie cutters. Here are the results. It's just few days later and almost all of these cookies are gone. I think we only have 7 or 8 left.

He is not here: for He is risen!

I love Spring time. It is a time of new life and new beginnings. I love the warming weather and the new buds on the blossoming trees. I also love that it is again time for General Conference. This months General Conference was amazing. I particularly enjoyed Elder Holland's talk about the final week of the Savior's mortal ministry. His talk lead me to study and ponder about my Savior and the event leading up to the crucifiction and the resurrection.

I don't talk a lot about my work on my blog but I want to share an experience I had the other day. For those of you who don't know I am a Registered Nurse. I work on a Cardiac Step-down Unit in Bellevue Washington. Last Friday (Good Friday), I was working a short 'princess shift' from 3pm-7pm. The day was going routinely and I only had a couple hours left until my shift was over. I had an empty bed after discharging a patient and as all you nurses out there know an empty bed never stays empty for long. My charge nurse informed me I would be getting a patient from the Emergency Room and minutes later the ER nurse called up to give me report. This patient was very very sick. He was battling brain and liver cancer along with multiple other conditions secondary to his cancer. He was unresponsive and had many critical clinical and lab findings. I will spare you all the details but before too long the patient was being wheeled down the hall on a stretcher heading for my one empty bed. By the time I arrived in the room the tech and transporter were already moving the patient from stretcher to bed. As soon as we had him in bed I noticed he was not breathing. I could not feel a pulse or hear a heart beat. He was a DNR/DNI or no code. This meant he did not want any life saving measures to prolong his life. His journey in mortality had ended. The family had followed the patient up from the ER and were in our waiting room. I called the doctor and he came up to break the news to his wife of more than 60 years. The family wept together. I felt terrible for the family's loss. It hit me at that moment how devastating death would be without a testimony of the Savior and the resurrection. My patient's journey in this life had ended, but I knew that this was not the end for him. I knew that Christ had broken the bands of death and had overcome the grave so that we might live with Him again and with our families forever. I wanted nothing more than to give the family the peace that I had felt during times of death in my family that comes with a knowledge of the resurrection.

"We solemly testify that His life, which is central to all human history, neither began in Bethlehem nor concluded on Calvary. He was the Firstborn of the Father, the Only Begotten Son in the flesh, the Redeemer of the world.

"He rose from the grave to 'become the firstfruits of them that slept' (1 Corinthians 15:20). As Risen Lord, He visited among those He had loved in life. He also ministered among His 'other sheep' (John 10:16) in ancient America. In the modern world, He and His Father appeared to the boy Joseph Smith, ushering in the long-promised 'dispensation of the fullness of times' (Ephesians 1:10)." --The Living Christ

I am so grateful for the Restoration of the gospel through Joseph Smith. I know Christ leads His church today through modern day revelation given to our living prophet, President Thomas S. Monson. I am grateful for the blessings the restored gospel brings into my life. On Saturday morning Brandon and I attended the baptism of one of our friends. Hanna and her husband had moved into our ward from California. Her husband had been brought up in the church but had become inactive. They moved into our ward and came across the missionaries. Hanna is every missionary's dream...a real 'golden contact.' She was so excited about learning the gospel from the beginning and still continues to have that excitement to learn more everyday. Together her and her husband have taken the missionary discussions and have become active in the church. Just today I went with the missionaries to teach a young mother living in our building. She has many questions and really wants to find the truth about God and religion. I love how the spirit fills the room when we talk about the Savior and the Restoration of the gospel. I love the light that the gospel brings into the world and into my life. I love my Savior and I know the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is His church on the earth today!

"He lives! All glory to His name! He lives, my Savior still the same. Oh, sweet the joy this sentence gives: I know that my Redeemer lives!"

Happy Easter!

I'm getting old!

So I hit the BIG 2-5 on April 3rd and am now a quarter century old!!! It sure sounds a lot older than it feels. I had a great day! Here it is...

TOP TEN THINGS THAT MADE MY DAY

10. I didn't have to work!

9. I got to sleep in...well at least until Brandon had to get up to go to work.

8. I went for a good run...about 5 miles. Even though it was on a treadmill it still felt great despite my aging body.

7. I got an unusually high volume of phone calls, emails, voice messages, cards, and facebook posts from friends and family! THANKS everybody!!!

6. My parents sent me a surprise package with a Wii Fit. I think Brandon likes it more than me!

5. I got to spend some time downtown at the Market. Surprisingly I don't make it across the lake very much.

4. We went to Mc Cormick's and had delicious fish. Mmmmmm!!

3. My amazing husband gave a me a Canon Rebel camera that I've wanted for YEARS!!! Now I just have to figure out how to use all the gadgets and buttons.

2. We stayed up late watching Marley & Me and eating freshly baked brownies from a box...two of my favorite things!

1. THE SUN CAME OUT!!! Just like I was hoping! I think Brandon pulled some strings with Mother Nature. It had been weeks since we'd seen the sun and I couldn't have asked for a better birthday gift.

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.