Dear little sister Amy,
I remember many, many fights and arguments, screaming and sulking about which side of the room was yours and mine, or who hit who first, or whose fault it really was. You were my funnest sparring partner, closest friend and you, my dear, were the real peacemaker in the family. Now that we’re older and I see how accomplished and strong you are, I can’t believe how lucky I am to have such a wonderful woman to rub shoulders with. After a very long wait and saint-like patience you are finally the proud mommy of baby Nathan T. - middle name as yet undecided :). I can’t wait to come home and kiss the both of you. You are going to be the best mom ever dearest. Hope you are resting and loving every moment of this new experience.
Today is my birthday… not sure what Asher and I will do to have fun today, but we’ll find something cool. Some thoughts on this particular birthday:
- it is a nice, even, lucky-sounding number
- it is twice as long as I wished to live when I was a pre-teen
- I’ve now been driving longer than I have not
- I had pneumonia last year (and ODEs… *shudder*) so I actually feel younger this time around
- I don’t expect that trend to continue unfortunately :)
- when trying to explain how old we were to Asher, he said, “That freaks my heart out.” Mine too babe… mine too.
My birthday wish for the day is simply to talk to or hear from YOU if possible. I know you’re all very, very busy, but if you read this and have a moment, please leave a comment or give me a call. I promise not to keep you on the line forever. I’d really love that - it would be the best present ever! Thanks!
Hugs and kisses,
Sara
Melodie, my dear mom-in-law, has always been a devoted mom and teacher as long as I’ve known her. Now she is actually employed as a teacher and works incredibly hard to enrich the lives of her many students and colleagues. This year she made a tremendous effort to integrate the blogging concept into her classroom to help keep her students engaged and their parents informed. I’m told it was a huge success with the parents, who could read about the concepts covered in class and the homework assignments handed out, as well as see fun videos and slideshows of the classroom. Never one to rest on her laurels, Melodie was so brave and turned in a great video to the Tech My Classroom competition, letting them know exactly what their classroom needed and how they would use it to best advantage. AND OF COURSE SHE WON!!! HA! BRILLIANT! Now Melodie’s classroom will be re-invented with new carpet, desks, computer workstations, smart-boards, networking, and new resources to get the job done. Now all they need to do is give her administrative privileges on the network… :). Congratulations Melo!
Yesterday was our esteemed Summer Party where I work (mix one part Mormon with one part engineer and two parts water and you’ve got the bulk of my office). We always get together at one of the parks nearby and review the golf tourny, give out service awards and have a nice lunch and a great time. Then we get to play whatever games people have brought along for the rest of the day. Someone set up a volleyball net and a few of the taller engineers and interns decided to start a game. They looked like they were having so much fun! So I joined them. I didn’t realize it at the time because of course after the first slap your forearms go numb, but I was hitting the ball with the wrong part of my arm. It was LOADS of fun - then I noticed a big swollen bump on my wrist that didn’t feel so nice. I ended up in the ER with a popped blood vessel and internal bleeding…. eeeewwww! Today I am so sore and my arms look sort of like hamburger. This is going to make packing for the upcoming New York trip a pain in the rear.
It’s finally warming up here in Utah - yesterday’s high was in the mid-nineties and very, very dry. But at night the temperature drops to about sixty-five, which is rather nice if you can get the outside air into your house. Bryan and I are living in this very old house in the middle of urban Salt Lake and most of its windows are painted shut. In fact there is only one window that is easily (hah!) opened into the bedroom and it is held in place by a large screw that you have to insert through the window frame itself and into the frame of the window up above if you want the thing to stay open. Typically I would open this window and have a fan set just so to circulate between the interior of the house and outside. The only problem with this approach is that it acts much like a hairdryer blowing around this very dry and warm air and that in turn will give you nosebleeds by morning. So last night I put Asher to bed and thought to myself, “New York is hot AND humid. Maybe I should try to tough this out because it’s not so bad right now - only eighty degrees or so. I’ll leave the fan off because I’m sick of waking up with the Mohave Desert up my nose.” Anyway, to make a long story short, Asher woke at 2am and was covered in sweat and I was unbearably hot by then too. I totally caved and turned on the air conditioning, brought Asher into my room where it cools off much faster, and tried to close the sticky, thirty-pound window. And tried… and tried… and pulled… and wiggled… and tugged… and finally gave it one really, really mighty pull. Bamm!! It came loose and my fist went right into the bridge of my nose…
So much for not having bloody noses by morning… ugh.