Happenings

We've made some great friends in the ward out here. My visiting teaching companion, Cari, is a photographer and took pictures of Mark for us for free. She's working on her portfolio and photography blog for advertising so she was happy to take some pictures. We appreciated her help to get some professional pictures of Mark. Of course, despite being tired he would have nothing to do with sleeping so he's awake in all of them. Within 5 minutes of Cari leaving, he fell asleep in his swing. Is this a sign of a strong-willed child? I hope not.

I love this one. It's like he's trying to prove how much of a tough guy he is.

Bryce is hoping he turns out to be tall and left-handed so he can be a pitcher...we'll see.

Mark likes to hang out with us on the couch and watch T.V. or just watch us while we're doing things. He's finally able to track us with his eyes and seems to know that we are his parents. He's trying to start smiling and every once in a while gets it right. Once he gets a bit more consistent, we'll take a picture.

Last week some of us girls met at the park to have a picnic and play (for the kids that can walk, that is). Heather Parkinson told us about a "Kid's Nearly New Sale" at the Howard County Fairgrounds. Families can rent booths and then sell their clothes, toys, books, etc. to other people. I figured it was worth a shot to go down and see what I could find. That county is one of the nicer ones to live in around here so I figured the clothes would probably be good as well. Meagan and I left the babies at home with our husbands and got there within 10 minutes of it opening. There were tons of people there, but I was able to get about 35 things for $50. I would say at least 10 things were completely new and nothing was stained or too worn.

Now Mark has more 'real' clothes (other than sleepers and onesies) for the next little while. I'm glad we went early though; by the time we left (about an hour after we got there), there were so many people it was getting difficult to get around. Meagan was even getting boxed out by a lady looking at the same rack as her. They do this sale twice a year so I'll definitely go back this September (12th) and get whatever else we discover we need (especially for toys). Thanks for the tip Heather! It was well worth the trip.

On a final note, our complex has been having some repairs done to the siding. This week, they spent two days banging relentlessly from 8am-5pm. Needless to say, it took it toll on little Mark's naps. By last night, he was exhausted. We had gone to have dinner at the park with friends and by 7:00 he was done for. It's the first time that we took him out of the car and he actually stayed asleep in the car seat when we set him down. He had blown out his diaper so Bryce set him on the changing table and he still didn't wake up. As we were taking off his clothes he finally did and boy was he mad. He just screamed and screamed. He needed a bath so we got that done as quickly as we could, got him dressed, rocked him for maybe two minutes and then put him into his crib. He was still awake, but fading. That was probably at about 7:50pm. Around 4:30am I woke up and was amazed that he hadn't woken up yet to eat since he hadn't had anything since 6:30pm. I went and checked on him and he looked like he was searching for food in his sleep, but he wasn't awake so I left him, but figured he'd be up soon. He finally woke up at 5:50am --10 hours after we'd put him down. And, he's already taken two decent naps since and it's only 11:30! I'm just glad he can finally sleep. I should probably stop blogging and finish working while I can.

Free Food

This post is for everyone that's interested, but really those from Baltimore. I belong to this thing called BzzAgent. It's a company that uses word of mouth to help other businesses (restaurants, personal and home care products, etc) showcase themselves or create some 'buzz' about their new offerings. Right now I'm doing a got2b smooth operator smoothing lotion BzzCampaign. So, I have pretty big samples of their smoothing lustre lotion. It's already for sale at drugstores (Walgreens, CVS, Rite-Aid), and will be hitting grocery stores soon. It's meant to de-frizz, tame, and silken thicker hair. I've got 3- 30z bottles that I can give away as well as substantial coupons for them if anyone's interested. Send me an email or leave a comment if you want to try it. I've been using it a bit and it's not bad.

More importantly, they are starting a new campaign here in Baltimore with TGIFridays. Last time I did a Chili's campaign and we got 4 free complete meals for their smokehouse bacon burger line (which are really good if you're not worried about how unhealthy they are). Come and join. There's lots of other things you can do (review websites, take surveys, etc), but I don't do a lot and they're not annoying me about it. So, if you're interested, go here. For those of you not in Baltimore, it may be worth your while still since they have campaigns all over the country.

Happy Sampling!

Nostalgia

Conference always brings back memories of the mission. Sometime during high school I actually started really paying attention to what was said, but still, those talks I listened to on the mission are still some of the ones I remember the best. It's probably because we would use them for the next six months to teach members and investigators some of the principles of the Gospel and just in general, being a missionary you are so much more engrossed in spiritual things that the messages really sink in.

I loved all of my companions, but one of them in particular comes to mind when I think of General Conference-- Sister Whitney Sheahan. Ironically, we never actually served together in April or October. While we were companions in Sassari, a city in northern Sardegna (also known as the island of Sardinia of the west coast of Italy), we bought little notebooks and started coming up with things we wanted to do with our future families. One of the ideas as to make Conference an 'event'. Now this is really for when we have kids and are trying to get them excited to sit down and listen to 8-10 hours of church on a weekend. So, once Mark and hopefully a few other siblings get older, there will be a very special biannual event for them involving special meals, games, and whatever else I come up with in the next few years. In the meantime, I'm open to suggestions of things you all did growing up.

For kicks, here are some pictures of Sister Sheahan and me throughout the mission.

Sassari in the summer is HOT! We had to wear closed-toe shoes so the instant we got into our apartment we would drop our bags, pray, and then shed our hot, sweaty shoes for flip-flops. Yes, barefoot would work generally, but since we had no air conditioning, dust and sand would cover the floor faster than our weekly cleaning could keep up with it.

Randomly, we were assigned to be companions a second time in Rome. We were taking pictures with some of the members and investigators before Sister Sheahan got transferred and a member wanted to take some of us. I think she's laughing at my ridiculous expression.

We weren't companions in Florence, but a bunch of missionaries got together to visit Boboli Gardens and play some sports (hence the casual outfit) so Sister Leavitt and I came down from Prato. Sister Sheahan was going home the next week and had just stopped by to say goodbye between some appointments and other errands.

This one is just for kicks for all the Baltimore folk. We're pretty small, but if you look in the right back, you can see me and Tara (Gibbons) Judd. Who knew that 5 years later our husbands would be in the same med school class together. (I could have put the boat picture on here, Tara, but spared both of us from the embarrassment.)