Welcoming Spring!

Mel and Phil decided to make an impromptu trip this weekend. I was so excited to see them! They came down Friday night and we met them at the Davis Rec Center so we could do some swimming. Cayman and Cooper love the water so much. It was fun to go down the water slide, glide along in the lazy river and watch Cayman jump off the diving board. Swimming is pretty tiring, so after we were done swimming we went back to July and Cory's where we played games and chatted long into the night.

The next day we went to The Festival of Colors in Spanish Fork, Utah. What a crazy experience! It is essentially people walking around throwing ground up colored chalk at each other.

Paul wasn't quite up to the craziness. Anyone who knows him, knows he hates stains......any stains. On our first date, we had an incident where he spilled ice cream on his jeans and he instantly had to pull over, take out an ice cube from his drink and get every last bit of ice cream off his pants. I was a little astonished at his behavior, and the obsession has never gone away. We discuss sometimes what our super power would be if we were super heroes. Mine is constantly changing between traveling to the future, stopping time, flying, etc., but Paul's remains the same. He would be the Super Stain Remover. His life mission would be to get out every stain. So for him, the thought of getting stains all over his clothes (even old clothes), that might possibly never come out, was daunting.



The rest of us were up to the challenge. There was music playing, and people bustling about. I walked in and was instantly attacked by a girl throwing purple chalk in my face. I was upset at first and tried to maintain a slightly cleaner appearance than everyone else. However, that didn't last long. Cory dumped yellow in my hair and Cayman and Cooper loved taking the whole bag and just tossing it at you. It ended up being pretty fun and the kids had a great time. I think July got it the worst, thanks to Cory.




Later that afternoon, we met up with Ryan for dinner. It was fun to be able to spend time with my siblings. I always love being with them and am sad when we have to say good-bye.

I sure hope we really did welcome in spring. I'm so done with winter.

Sabbatical Day 5

I'm losing the battle. The TV is calling my name. My shows want me to watch them. They don't understand why I've left them. How do I explain? Two more days and then I can at least get my one hour a day fix in. I'm like an addict who gets to open a present in just 2 days. 2 looooooooong days. Hope I make it........ :)

Sabbatical

Paul and I had stake conference this past week. It was a wonderful week with Ward Temple Night on Wednesday, the Adult Session on Saturday night, the Youth Session on Sunday morning and then Stake Conference on Sunday afternoon. We have THE best stake presidency. You can feel their love and know they are truly called of the Lord. President Thurgood talked on Sunday and told a story about when he was trying to decide whether to open his own business. He wasn't getting a clear answer so he loaded his tent, scriptures and journal into his truck and went to Francis Peak for 24 hours. He spent all night just studying, reading, meditating and writing in his journal. At the end of 24 hours, he knew he was supposed to start his business. Sometimes I wonder why I'm not receiving answers to my prayers, but I've never taken the time to spend 24 hours at Francis Peak waiting for my answer. While I don't think everyone needs to go to that extreme, Paul and I both had the same feeling after listening to that talk. We are in need of some answers and decided that the best way to get them was to "disconnect" from the world and have more moments of quiet in order to let the Spirit speak to us. So we came to the conclusion that we are wasting too much time watching tv. We decided to take a one week Sabbatical from watching any TV (except the Aggie game on Thursday night.......that is a must watch!).

It started on Monday. Monday at lunch instead of watching Everybody Loves Raymond, we put together a list of all the tv shows we DVR. There were 37 of them!!!! 37 TV shows that we were taking the time to DVR and watch. That adds up to 23.50 hours of TV per week or 3.5 hours per day. And yes, that is just the actual shows, that doesn't include any commercials. And that is just for the TV shows we are recording. That doesn't include the Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens, etc. that we watch "just because" we don't have anything to do. I couldn't believe how much time we were wasting! Then we decided to cut down our TV watching to no more than 1 hour per day. We cut out 17 of the 37 shows and got our total TV watching for the week to 6 hours and 40 mins (less than 1 hr per day). Wow that felt good!!!

That night we were supposed to help a neighbor clean up his yard, but they canceled. We were left with nothing to do and no TV to watch. So we called up our friends to see if they wanted to come over for Pizza and Games and they accepted. We spent the night with friends having a great time instead of wasting it away in front of the tv. That night we were also able to spend over an hour studying the scriptures, reading conference talks and church books, and writing in our journals. Day 1 was a success and I wasn't missing the tv at all.

Day 2 was a little more difficult. I like to watch TV while I put on my makeup. It helps pass the time and there's always something fun to watch. However, this day I just put on my makeup in silence and obeyed our "no tv" rule. That night, Paul and I called his mom and had a delightful conversation with her for an hour! Then we played the best out of 3 games in Yahtzee (Paul won). What a lot of fun that was! I couldn't believe how much fun I was having and I hadn't watched TV once in almost 48 hours. That night we spent another hour studying the scriptures, etc.

The past 2 days have been wonderful. I am enjoying our Sabbatical and am actually loving the silence. Paul and I have spent more quality time together, we've had some really nice conversations, we've spent time with friends, and we've gotten things accomplished. We'll see how the next 5 days go, but I'm excited to see what happens.