Dream Job

We've been in Texas almost three months now, so I knew it would come eventually. The phone call. You all know what I'm talking about, it starts something like, "Hi Krystal this is Bishop So-and-So, I'd like to meet with you..." The first word that popped into my mind was "Primary". For sure, I thought, it's for sure the primary. Now don't get me wrong, Primary is great, and definitely necessary. In fact, Aaron and I substituted in the Primary when we lived in Phoenix. Things went smoothly, that is, until the week we forgot to bring them something to color at the end of the lesson and came up with the brilliant idea to let twelve 5-year-olds play duck-duck-goose in a 6x6 foot room. I heard "Jesus Wants Me For a Sun-BEAM!" ringing in my ears for the entire drive to the church.

Then the Bishop met with me, "Krystal we'd like to extend to you the calling of being...the ward newspaper publisher." The what? Did I hear him right? Does that calling even exist? Now, I shouldn't be surprised that I'd never heard of this calling, I have, after all, lived in BYU wards for the last three years of my life, where such callings exist as "The Relief Society Chair Picker-Upper" and "The Ward Wedding Present Distributor", but this was almost too good to be true. So I am now the official Garland 4th Ward Newspaper Publisher. I even get an assistant. I'm pretty certain that this is the best calling in the whole world. I love to do newspapers. I was the editor of our high school newspaper, and was sad because I thought I'd never have the opportunity to do it again. Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways folks, and I guess you just never know.

Garden!

It's a box, with dirt in it! We call it Box of Dirt. So we've been talking about making a garden for awhile. Our dilemma was that we live in an apartment where no garden plot exists. Then along came this little thing called the "On the Spot Award" that Aaron received at work for being amazing. The prize for winning this award was a $50 gift certificate to Home Depot (Texas' Do-it-Yourself Hardware Store, as the sign says).

Well, Home Depot doesn't sell any descent sized planter boxes, so we decided to make our own! So now we have a six by one foot box full of dirt. In this dirt we very meticulously sowed carrots and green beans and left a space for a tomato plant. The plan is that since we completed the first planter box successfully that we will build a second one, in which we will plant onions and cucumbers.

Neither of us have ever planted anything that grew before (except for maybe something in Biology), so we are hoping this experiment succeeds. We will be keeping a log of garden events (should be as exciting as watching the grass grow). Please check back in 7-14 days to see if any green things have appeared.

Family History

Introduction

This is the most recent picture of our family. On the left is Aaron. He's got three semesters left until he has his bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from BYU. Right now he's taking a break from school to do an internship with HP. When asked what he does at work his reply was, "You really don't want to know what I do." This is probably because the explanation is really long, uses a lot of big words and acronyms, and because only other engineering minded people would have the slightest clue what he was talking about.

In the middle is Lincoln. He's 7 months and three weeks old. He loves people, and being outside, and making a lot of noise during sacrament meeting. People in Texas are certain that he'll be the next Dallas Cowboy, probably a linebacker. He wears 12 month old clothes and size 4 diapers, at this rate he's likely to be a sumo wrestler. He rolls around all over the living room floor and somehow manages to spread all of his toys from one end of the house to the other. He definitely keeps his parents on their toes, but they love every minute of it (almost) because he makes them laugh with all of his craziness. He's a sweet little boy and a joy to have in the family.

On the right is Krystal. Right now she's a stay at home mom and loves it. She spends her extra time (what extra time?) reading and cooking. She recently joined a book club and enjoys the challenge of pulling thought provoking material out of what she reads so it can be discussed with others. She is an English major and plans to return to BYU and finish her degree when the family moves back to Provo in September.

That's our little family! We've really enjoyed being in Texas. Life is a little different when you pick up and move to a place where you have no relatives and you don't know anyone. It's definitely forced us to get outside of our circle and make things happen for our family, which we think has been a good skill to acquire. We definitely do miss our family and friends, especially when things like birthdays, Easter, etc. roll around. But we are choosing to see our time away as a positive learning experience that will bring our little family closer together.