Gingerbread Birthday Bonanza!

It was a gingerbread birthday bonanza tonight at the Barrett's house! Miss Sidney turned 1-year-old today, and she had a party to end all parties. Her party guests included her big sisters Camden and Riley, Mommy, Daddy, Grandpa and Grandma Barrett, Grandpa and Grandma Taylor, and Aunt Tiffy. As you can see from the pictures, she loved her dinner which consisted of chicken pot pie and crackers. She also loved the gifts from everybody, and when the gingerbread girl cake was placed in front of her, she couldn't quite believe that she was really allowed to dig into it. She thought that would be too good to be true, but when she figured out that she wasn't dreaming, and she really could have the cake all to herself, she certainly dug in. In fact, the cake had to be removed at one point because she was eating all of the frosting too fast :-) She also got to try ice cream for the first time tonight, and by giving it to her, I think Lindy has created a little ice cream monster--she loved it! Lindy decorated the house to look like the inside of a gingerbread house, and Sidney got all kinds of fun presents. She wished that Cousin Eliza, Auntie Sarah, Uncle Joel, and Uncle Rich could have been there tonight, but she was glad that they at least sent presents. Because I too gave her presents, she decided that she likes me now. She didn't when we first got there this evening--she was very suspicious of the mysterious stranger who had returned for the second night in a row, but we bonded when we ate chicken pot pie together, and she decided that I kind of fit in with the rest of the family.

It's pretty cold outside here, but we haven't had any snow since Thursday--unlike the Midwest which is getting hammered with winter storms again. Poor Greg is snowed-in up in Athens. I think that I made it home during the small window of good weather--because today they cancelled a bunch of flights out of Chicago again. Tomorrow we will be having more birthday celebrations here--this time for Mom. Since I arrived home kind of late on her birthday on Thursday, we decided to wait and have the party on Sunday afternoon when everyone can be here. So the birthday celebrations will continue! It will be fun to go to church here tomorrow and see all of the ward friends. I haven't seen them since last April! Next week all of my social engagements will begin--I have many people that I will be having lunch with, many visits to make, and many errands to run. It should be a busy but very fun pre-Christmas week.

There's No Place Like Home!

It's true--there's no place like home! It is so fun to be back here in Utah with the family. Yesterday was kind of a long day of travel, but it started out and ended well. Yesterday morning Greg drove all the way from Athens to have breakfast with me and take me to the train station, which was very nice of him. We had a nice morning together, but it was sad to say goodbye. Luckily he'll be coming out to Utah in a couple of weeks for a visit! I fell asleep on the train almost immediately and slept pretty much all the way to Chicago. I got out at Union Station and then walked a few blocks to catch the train out to the Midway airport. I walked right past the Sears Tower, and it was so cool because you couldn't even see the top of it--the clouds were covering it! That's when you know you have a tall building. It was super duper cold in Chicago, and the wind was blowing like crazy. I was wearing a pink snow hat, but the wind was blowing so hard that it blew it off. I think it got run over by a car, but I was able to chase it down. It's a little dirty, but it's nothing that a little run through the washing machine can't fix.

I rode the train out to Midway, which is a really cool airport. It's a lot smaller than O'Hare, but it has a lot of cool shops and restaurants. I had quite a bit of time so I ate some spinach ravioli at Harry Caray's Italian Steakhouse and then looked around in the shops for a while. Then I went and got on the airplane and flew home! It was kind of a long flight, and there were lots of unhappy kids on it, but I was just glad to be home. We had to circle around Salt Lake for a while because of the snowstorm, and it was still pretty snowy when we were landing, but everything was okay. It was kind of weird because I'm used to seeing all of the lights from Salt Lake Valley, but because of the clouds, we couldn't see any lights until right before we landed. Mom and Dad were there to pick me up, and it was so fun to see them! Thankfully they braved the snowstorm to come and get me. We swung by to pick Rich up from work, and then we headed home. I've never been quite so excited to sleep in my own bed, and it was wonderful. I think I slept for about 10 or 11 hours!

Today was a fun day too. I slept in for a long time, then I went up to BYU with Mom while she went to Dad's office Christmas party. I hung out at the bookstore and visited with Sister Romney for a while. It was really fun to see her! The funnest part of the day was this evening when Mom, Dad, and I went over to the Barrett's to tend Camden, Riley, and Sidney while Nate and Lindy went to the big Barrett family dinner. The girls were SOOOOOO cute! Camden and Riley were really happy to see me, but Sidney didn't know quite what to think of it all. She was just a little baby when I left for Mississippi last April, and unfortunately I haven't been able to see her since, so she wasn't too sure about this strange person who just showed up out of the blue. We had a lot of fun tonight though--we all played Barbies, watched "Princess Diaries," and ate pizza. It's so fun to be here with the family! Well, I'm off to bed. I love being able to sleep in and not having to go to school!

Utah Eve

In reflecting on the last 24 hours, it all seems like a funny movie, TV show, or book where you feel really bad for the main character :-) BUT, the good news is that THE SEMESTER IS FINISHED, and tomorrow at this time I will be on my way to Utah. Where to begin?

Last night, after posting about 70 blog entries while trying to put-off finishing my Tilford Dudley paper, I finally did finish it. But then Alyson and I studied our Museum Administration stuff for a while, which kind of put me to sleep, so I planned on going to bed. By this time it was almost 1:00 a.m. though, so it's not like I was going to bed particularly early. I was a little worried about today's two finals, so I was a bit restless, but finally fell asleep. Then, I thought I was having a bad dream and could hear someone pounding on my door. I rolled over, looked at the clock, and saw that it was 3:30 a.m. Then I realized that something was terribly wrong--someone really was pounding on my door, and there were flashing lights and a ridiculously loud siren was going off. I was still half asleep, but I opened the door and it looked like a strobe light dance party was going on in the living room. There was a bright flashing light, and then there was Aly shouting expletives. I think she was still partially asleep (and delirious). She was screaming, "Turn it off! Turn it off!" Finally I kind of woke up a little bit and said, "Aly, we should go outside." So we grabbed our shoes and coats and headed outside along with everyone else in the building. Aly kept thinking she saw smoke, but it was just the steam coming out of vents around the building. It was SOOOOOO COLD outside! Even though I had on my warm pj's and my coat, I was shivering uncontrollably. The siren was totally loud, even outside. No one knew what was going on or how to turn the alarms off. Finally after about 15 minutes (goo thing it wasn't a real fire!), a fire truck rolled into the parking lot, and two unhappy looking firemen jumped out. They went all around the building and looked for a fire, but couldn't find one, so they were trying to figure out how to turn the alarm off. By this time it was about 4:00 a.m., and I was pretty much frozen stiff. Finally they let us go back inside, but I guess they were having a hard time getting the alarm to stay off because every few minutes it would go off for a few seconds. Finally all was quiet--except for the ringing in my ears from the loud siren. I was so cold that I had to lay there shivering in bed for a while with blankets piled on top of me before I warmed up. So I tossed and turned for a while, then went to sleep, but all too soon was woken up by my alarm. I'm a little concerned by the fact that my clock radio will wake me up but a fire alarm won't.

Anyway, Aly and I were really tired this morning. I still needed to print off my Tilford Dudley paper, so I turned on the computer, hit "Print," and waited for it to finish. Of course, just as it was printing the last page, I ran out of paper. I didn't have one more sheet of unused white paper in my entire room!! I thought, "You have got to be kidding me." Luckily Aly gave me one so I could print the last page. On that note we loaded up all of our books (except for the large stack of library books I still have--to be returned in the morning) and took off for school. Our first final today was in Mrs. Miller's Museum Administration class. She handed us our tests, I opened it up, and it was one of those moments when your heart sinks and you realize that you don't know any of the answers :-( Luckily after I thought about things for a while, the answers started coming to me. I think my brain just wasn't fully awake right at first. I don't know if I did very well, but honestly at this point, I don't care :-) I'm just glad it's finished! That test kind of fried my brain.

Then this afternoon, we had our final exam for Dr. Reid's Material Culture class. This has been one of my favorite classes, so I was feeling all right about the test . . . until time for the test. The way Dr. Reid does her final is she puts a bunch of material culture-related questions into this glass pumpkin container she has, then everyone draws a question, you spend 20 minutes preparing an answer to that question, and then you present your answer to the class. Once again, when I saw the question, my heart sank. Of all the questions in the whole pumpkin, I drew the one that had a picture of a jug and a cocktail tray and said: "If you worked for a museum and were asked to interpret the history of drinking alcohol, how would you incorporate these objects into your exhibit?" Oh great. Of all the people in the class, why was it I who got the drinking one? I had absolutely no idea what to say, and I think I was a little off on some of the information I presented to the class, but what I have learned is that as long as you can make people (especially the professor) laugh, it's all good. I came up with some kind of crazy stuff, which I think everyone found amusing, so if nothing else, hopefully I'll get an A for effort :-)

It was after this final that the drama began. (Yes, you'd think that I had put in a full day at this point, but it only gets better.) Aly got kind of a hard question, and Dr. Reid kind of grilled her on some things, but I thought Aly did a good job of coming up with some answers. The questions definitely weren't all the same level of difficulty, and Dr. Reid knew that, so I think that more than anything she was just wanting us to have some good class discussions today. But, Aly did not see it this way. As soon as Dr. Reid left the room, Aly burst into tears and ran crying to the bathroom. The rest of us were sitting there like, "Uh oh." I was commissioned to go check on her in the bathroom, and she was a wreck. She was pretty much beyond consoling. I think all of the stress of the semester was kind of coming out and that everything would be okay. But she cried and cried, and we were in there for about 15 minutes. Then we had to go take more of our books back to the textbook place, then I had to run up and grade finals with Dr. Hardeman.

By this point I was too pooped to even find humor in any of his student's answers. I was quite amused, however, with my new technique of, if I am reading an essay and he falls asleep, I just skip over to the last sentence, and then when I stop reading, that wakes him up. It worked wonders, and we made it through many more tests than usual. After taking Dr. Hardeman home, it was off to Dr. Reid's for dinner. She made her famous Chilean soup which was very delicious. Dr. Barnhart, Dr. Small, and Mr. Riccio, along with all of the inmates were there, so we had a great evening. The best part was the white elephant gift exchange. I think everyone liked the gift I took the best. It was a collage of scraps from the Tilford Dudley exhibit that I had stuck in my backpack back in October. I mounted them on a piece of plywood in my own little mock T-Dud exhibit panel. Everyone cracked up, and it was finally decided that it will be put in our graduate lab so that we can all enjoy it. I got the coolest present--it was one that Angie brought, and it was perfect for me. It was a little die cast toy car--but not just any car, it was a National Park Service Ranger patrol car!!! Angie said she was hoping that someone else would have chosen that gift so that I could have fought them for it, but I just so happened to choose that gift the first time :-) We then said our good-byes, and now I am back here at the house. I have not even begun to pack, so it should be a nice long evening :-) I feel like I've been going 1000 miles per hour all day (and all last night), so I think I'm really going to crash when I have some down time. I am so looking forward to a break from school! It will be very fun to fly home tomorrow and see everyone there--especially since it is Mom's birthday tomorrow!! Greg is driving down here in the morning, and we'll go grab some breakfast before he takes me to the train station over in Mattoon. Hopefully the weather will cooperate, and I look forward to seeing many of you very soon! Happy Utah Eve!

Christmas Tag

I keep writing on my blog today because I keep needing little distractions from studying and writing my paper :-) So, since I have been tagged by Lindy and Sarah to take the Christmas survey, here goes:

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? I usually go for gift bags because they're so easy to use, but I also like Dora the Explorer Christmas wrapping paper.

2. Real tree or artificial? My favorite is the duct tape (aka duck tape) tree. :-)

3. When do you put up the tree? Early in December.

4. When do you take the tree down? Usually in January, but I think the duck tape tree might stay up longer than that.

5. Do you like eggnog? YES!!! I love it! It's one of the best things about the Christmas season. I especially like it with some milk mixed into it so it's not quite as strong. I also like eggnog milkshakes.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? My turtle named Leonardo that I got when I was probably 6 or 7.

7. Do you have a nativity scene? Yes, I have the cute one that Grandpa and Grandma F.T. gave me one year, and I also have the awesome nativity that Dad brought back to me from Ecuador. I think I also have one made out of flower pots that Sandra Stephan made for me.

8. Hardest person to buy for? Mom and Dad--what gifts could possible express how much I love them?

9. Easiest person to buy for? The girls: Camden, Riley, Sidney, and Eliza!

11. Mail or email Christmas card? Mail when you have time; e-mail when you don't.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? "While You Were Sleeping" and "Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean"

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Whenever I see something at a store that I think someone would like for Christmas (this can happen as early as January).

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Only white elephant gifts.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Egg nog and hot chocolate with a little bit of peppermint ice cream on top.

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree? Hmmmm, usually clear, but the colored lights kind of match the duck tape tree.

17. Favorite Christmas song? Traditional songs: "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," and "I Saw Three Ships." Pop song: "Mistletoe and Holly" by Leigh Nash.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Both--TRAVEL HOME for Christmas!!

19. Can you name Santa's reindeer? Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, Rudolph, and Dr. Small told me the other day that there is an additional reideer named Olive, but I've never heard of Olive before.

20. Do you have an Angel on top or a star? An angel with Abraham Lincoln's silhouette on it.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Christmas morning . . . at 6:00 a.m.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year? Finals.

23. If you came upon a life-size Gingerbread House, which piece would you pull off first to eat (before the witch comes and puts you in a cage to fatten you up so she can eat you...)? I would dig into the gingerbread itself and then I would use a candy cane to fend off the witch.

I tag Mom! :-)

Vote for Mitt

Sorry that I was being kind of mean earlier today. I was just a little stressed out. I still am, but I'm dealing with it better than I was earlier. Anyway, I was checking the political scene for a minute this evening, and I saw this cool article from the National Review called "Romney for President." I love some of their quotes! They said:



"For some people, Romney’s Mormonism is still a barrier. But we are not electing a pastor. The notion that he will somehow be controlled by Salt Lake City or engaged in evangelism for his church is outlandish. He deserves to be judged on his considerable merits as a potential president. As he argued in his College Station speech, his faith informs his values, which he has demonstrated in both the private and public sectors. In none of these cases have any specific doctrines of his church affected the quality of his leadership. Romney is an exemplary family man and a patriot whose character matches the high office to which he aspires." Right on.

Hooray for Mitt! I hope that everybody votes for Mitt, but I'm afraid that not everybody will. All of the crazy women's lib. people are going to vote for Hillary, and all of the Oprah fans will vote for B-rock Osama (that's what one of the local radio stations here calls him). If Hillary wins, I'm totally going to move to Australia or England or someplace like that. If she does win, I think we'll know that the Second Coming is very near :-)

The End of My Rope

I think I have finally reached the end of my rope :-) Today I had to meet with Mr. Riccio, Dan, and this university technology guys who is going to set up a website for us to use in archiving the Dudley collection next semester. The meeting kind of pushed me over the edge, and now I am really grouchy, agitated, annoyed, irritated, frustrated, etc., etc. I have SOOOOO much to do today, but Mr. Riccio was insistent that we have this meeting today--and then he didn't even know what to talk about at the meeting. Mr. Riccio doesn't know what he wants for the Dudley website, and he and Dan expected me to know, but I have no idea! How am I supposed to know what we'll be doing in our digital archives class next year?? I thought Mr. Riccio wanted the website to go along with next semester's course, but I don't think that even he knows what we'll be doing in the class yet, or how to do it, so it's going to turn into us figuring out what to do--but I don't have time for that today!!!!! Sigh. Then Dr. Barnhart wants a Dudley website up on the EIU History Localities website, which Mr. Riccio also wanted to discuss today. He wondered what Dr. Barnhart was wanting done, and I was thinking to myself, "I don't know!!! WHY DON'T YOU ASK DR. BARNHART? AND WHY CAN'T WE JUST HAVE ONE TILFORD DUDLEY WEBSITE INSTEAD OF 73,000 OF THEM???" Sorry that I'm so upset. It's just a stressful time and my patience is running thin. I could tell that the university website guy was getting a little frustrated too because of Mr. Riccio's vague instructions, so the web guy doesn't really know what we're wanting either. I don't want to think about websites until next semester, but Dr. Barnhart has insisted that we get all of our Dudley presentations online before the break. Why it HAS TO be done before the break, I have no idea, but since it does and since nobody knows anything about what they want, I'm going to do it MY WAY, and they'd better be happy with it. :-)

Anyway, to make things worse, the weather here is terrible. It's not as cold out today, but there is this really dense fog that kind of freezes to your glasses and your windshield when you're walking or driving outside. It's cold, wet, gray, and dreary out there. Over 400 flights got cancelled in Chicago today, and they're supposed to get more freezing rain up there tonight. I am just hoping, hoping, hoping, hoping that it will clear up by Thursday. I want nothing more than to just go home to Utah and be with my family and sleep in my comfy bed there in my room.

I don't know how I'm going to fit everything in during the next two days. This afternoon I have to go work with Dr. Hardeman, then sometime tonight I have to finish my Tilford Dudley paper, but all of the compadres want to study for our two tests tomorrow and finish some house surveys, but I don't think I'll be able to go to the study session because I have to finish the paper and do a whole bunch of other stuff (including the freaking website stuff!!). Then, tomorrow I have two finals--which probably won't end until 3:30, but Dr. Hardeman requested that I come in to work for him at 2:00 tomorrow afternoon because he needs help grading finals. But I can't leave my final early, so he's going to have to wait. But then Aly and I have to take our textbooks back to the book rental place together (we can't take them back until after our last final because we need them for the final) because somehow in the craziness of our moving from Dr. Small's house to our apartment at the very first of the semester, our books all got switched, and we have been driving the textbook rental people crazy. So we need to sort that out tomorrow, but I'm supposed to be working with Dr. Hardeman, and Dr. Reid has invited all of us over for dinner where we planned to do a white elephant gift exchange. THEN, we need to finish the house surveys, and I'll have to pack sometime!!!! Maybe I just won't plan on sleeping at all until Thursday on the train. :-) Sorry to complain and rant and rave about everything, but it is definitely CRUNCH TIME here, and I feel like I'm about to be crunched.

One good thing did happen today--Mom sent me the nicest "Care Package" ever!! It has my favorite hot chocolates and cornbread mix in it--thank you Mom for providing the one thing that made me happy today!

Where is the Global Warming?

Do all of the global warming fanatics not watch the news? Maybe they all live near the Equator or something? The Midwest has become an icebox, and I think that people from Kansas City, to St. Louis, to Springfield would laugh if you brought up the topic of global warming. Fortunately for us here in Charleston, we've been spared from the worst of it, but even just up in Springfield they're getting hit really hard. As you can see from this Weather.com map, the ice storm (indicated by the pink color) is a little too close for comfort. Springfield is right there in the middle of the map, and Charleston is down in the right corner. We didn't really get any freezing rain here today like we were supposed to, but it was really cold outside. Now the storm is on its way up to Chicago--where I'm going on Thursday! But supposedly it will hit the city tomorrow and then leave, so hopefully things will be cleared up by Thursday. Today all of my compadres and I went to lunch at Marty's--a bar just off of campus (the story about our long day is to follow), and they had CNN playing on the big screen there. A news story about Al Gore receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to make the public aware of environmental issues (aka making up the global warming phenomenon), and I totally started laughing. Problem was (my compadres are a very liberal bunch), I was the only one laughing. Everyone else was saying, "Oh, that's so cool." I was thinking to myself, "Ummm, hello, guys? Has there not been a freezing rain advisory for the past week? Have you all not been complaining about the uncharacteristically cold weather? Do you really think our world is about to melt into oblivion?" I didn't say any of those things, but I continued to laugh in mockery as they talked about Al Gore's award. Being out here in liberal world has only made me more conservative in my political views because many of the people I associate with are so freakishly liberal that it increases my desire NOT to be like them.

Anyway, enough about the weather. As you can see from the picture of Angie and me, we're still smiling--even though it is finals week and all is craziness. I went to school this morning at 8:40 a.m. and just got back at 10:45 p.m. We didn't have any classes or tests today, but we had to finish up a truck load of projects. We had to finish compiling a binder containing all of our exhibit plans and materials to use next semester when we actually assemble our corridors exhibit; we had to compile a binder containing all of our Tilford Dudley material; and we had to compile a binder containing all 83 of our house surveys (I thought we only had 70 house surveys, but after having to go through and reformat all of them, I learned that there were actually 83)! As we were compiling the house surveys, we realized that we had forgotten to make a survey form for one house on First Street, so Angie and I were given the assignment to go out and survey the house. As you can see, we had a fun time doing it--even though we kept getting hit by icicles falling out of trees. At lunch time, everyone decided they needed beer to help them through the rest of the day, and I needed food, so we went to Marty's bar, and I got a hamburger while everyone else got a hamburger and beer. We worked and worked all afternoon, and then everyone got a little disgruntled by Alisha.

I don't mean to gossip, but I just have to vent a little bit. Remember how Alisha can't say a sentence without the words "my boyfriend Matt" in it? Well, this has been grating on everyone's nerves a bit lately, and today was kind of the final straw. Catherine, Alisha, and I were supposed to reformat all of the house survey forms, so if there were 83 all together, that turns out to be 27.66666667 survey forms for each of us. Now, this was not an easy process because we had to add research sources, photographs, and standardize all of the wording, etc. Well, after working on it for about 15 minutes, Alisha said, "Well, I've got to go up to Champaign because it's Matt's and my one-and-a-half year anniversary, and we're going to a bar for dinner." We all just looked at her like, "You have GOT to be kidding." (This was at about 3:30 p.m.) She insisted that she must go and then left. We were SOOOO mad because of all the times of the semester when everyone needs to pull their own weight, this is that time!! So she was gone for the rest of the evening, and we all stayed until 10:45, and we were all mad at her--especially since she didn't tell us she was leaving until right before she left. We have a nice long "To Do" list for her to do tomorrow though. It's not like she's the only one who has other places she would like to be rather than at school. Laurie, Sarah, and I all have significant others who live relatively close by, and sure we'd like to hang out with them rather than do our work, but that's not an option. If I hear one more thing about "my boyfriend Matt" tomorrow, I just might lose it and have to smack Alisha with the house survey binder (which weighs about 25 pounds now). Sorry--enough venting, but I feel much better now after letting out all of my frustration :-)

Tonight we ordered pizza for dinner so we could just eat it there in the graduate lab while we were working. My body didn't know what to think during the weekend when it was given all of the REAL food (aka nutritious and delicious food) at Greg's house and the Stowell's house--because it's gotten so used to a steady diet of cereal, pizza, and Diet Coke (that's literally all I've had time for). I am really looking forward to having real food again over Christmas break (and thankfully I have some leftovers from Greg's meal that I can eat tomorrow and Wednesday).

Speaking of Christmas break, I am SOOOOO excited to come home on Thursday and see everybody!! I realize I've been gone from home for about seven-and-a-half months, which is way too long! There are several people here I will miss (Greg, Aly, Lincoln the Cat, the Stowells), but other than that, it will be wonderful to have a break from everyone and everything having to do with Charleston, Illinois. It will be especially fun to arrive home on Mom's birthday!

Well, I'm off to write a paper, dig through my stuff to find the library books I need to return, and find the books I need to study for Wednesday's tests. If I have time, I'll squeeze some sleep in there somewhere, but at this rate, that might not happen until Thursday night ;-)

Ice is Not Nice, nor is Freezing Fog

Today was a very busy but super fun day! First of all, the weather is a little wacky (this seems to be a recurring thing). As you can see from Abe's picture here, it is a little cold. This picture was on a Yahoo news story about the cold Midwest weather--it was taken of an Abe statue in front of the Presidential Museum in Springfield. Poor Abe! He looks very cold. A winter storm warning and a freezing fog advisory have been issued for central Illinois. I've never heard of a freezing fog advisory before--that doesn't sound very good. Supposedly tonight and tomorrow it's supposed to get pretty nasty here with freezing rain, ice, cold temperatures, and, I guess, freezing fog. Maybe it will be so foggy and frozen that all of my teachers will have to cancel finals and give everyone A's? Wishful thinking, I know, but isn't Christmas time the season of wishful thinking?

Today Greg came down here and we went over to church together which was fun. Bishop Stowell was released from his calling today. He's been the bishop for five years, so a new bishop, Bishop Emett, was called to fill that position now. I think that the Stowell family will be glad to have their dad back on Sundays (and every other day of the week). I am really glad that Bishop Stowell was the bishop when I came out here--if it wasn't for his recommendations, I don't think I would have ever come out here to school, and if it wasn't for the kindness of the Stowell family when I first got here and was trying to figure out what was going on, I probably would have packed my bags and headed for home.

After church, Greg and I drove to Sullivan so he could pick some things up at his parents' house, then we picked Catherine up and went over to Dr. Small's and Mr. Riccio's to see the two new horses: Freda and Willa. They are soooooo cute! It's sad that they were in a bad place before, but happy that they're in a good place now. Willa even let me feed her some treats, but I was the only one she would take treats from. Then Dr. Small gave us some treats, and Greg and I took Catherine home before going over to the Stowell's for an early dinner. The kids were soooo cute while we were there. They are such a cute family. Well, I'm super tired, so I actually think I'm going to bed. Good night.