End of the day

MMy FAVORITE time of day.  It was a stressful day.  It usually is in some way or another for each of us, but I think it's the worse for Melissa (crazy things happen to Melissa). We drink tea. We LAUGH.  We talk. Somehow life doesn't seem so hard when I end the day this way.  THANK HEAVEN for Emily and Melissa.

My Favorite Christmas Song

Chrissy the Christmas Mouse

What I learned in Kindergarten

I like this-I think mostly because now, more than ever, I want to be back in kindergarten.

Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandbox.
These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some, and draw and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap in the afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up, and nobody really knows why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup--they all die. So do we.
And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: look. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The golden rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and sane living.
Think of what a better world it would be if we all had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations always to put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together. [Robert Fulghum, "We Learned It All in Kindergarten," Reader's Digest, October 1987, p. 115]

Misfortune Cookies

Last weekend my roommates threw a Chinese party.  I don't remember where we got the idea from but we did it and it was a lot of fun.  I think the point of it was to show that three conservative returned sister missionaries who work at the MTC know how to have a good time and a good time we had.

We ate fried rice and pot stickers, played chopstick games, and made MISfortune cookies.  Yes, from scratch.  Not only were the fortune cookies the most delicious we have ever eaten, but the misfortunes were hilarious.  These were some of my favorites:

"Surprise!  You're pregnant!"

"Unfortunately your liposuction surgery went array and all your fat will now relocate in your left thigh."

"It will be a party every day when Miley Cyrus moves in next door."

That's all I can remember right now and I'm thinking that maybe you had to be there.  In any case, it was a fun activity and I recommend it if you need a good make-you-laugh-so-hard-you-cry laugh.

Here is a picture of the fortune cookies.  Apparently they are quite difficult to make but we did it!  Here is the recipe if you want to try it.

And then there was light!

The light/ceiling fan above our kitchen table has been broken ever since we moved in. But not anymore! One night last week we were feeling ambitious and decided to install a new one (this is just after finishing painting our apartment). Our land lady brought over a new one about a month ago and told us that someone would come by to install it. They never came and we were tired of it being dark. So we did it! All by ourselves. Not a single boy helped us.

It took a lot longer than we had anticipated and, as you can see in the picture, it took quite a few of us to do it-there were a lot of screws and it's hard to work with your hands when all the blood has settled in your shoulders. Well, after a couple of hours of us reading the directions which kept warning us about getting electrocuted we turned on the breaker. Luckily I waited until after Melissa wasn't touching it anymore because when I flipped the switch there was a minor explosion. At that point I understood why there were so many warnings. :) My roommates thought it was hilarious and I tried to laugh, but deep down inside I was devastated. So much time and we ruined our ceiling.

I was so devasted that I couldn't sleep. While I was going in and out of consciousness I realized we had forgotten to pull the switches on the fan and it turns out that we didn't ruin anything! The light and fan both worked and we haven't any explosions since.

The moral of this story: Don't let the fear of being electrocuted stop you from doing anything.