Being April

I got a new calling. I'm the primary chorister now. I've done ward choir, I've done the nursery music, but I haven't ever had a calling in primary before. Other than occasionally poking my head in to check on my new sunbeam, or helping with a talk, I haven't really been in primary since I had kids. Before I had kids I was called to be the primary secretary, but that calling was brief. I spent most of my time hunting down or chasing an autistic boy that kept running and hiding, and I really don't remember how music time went. Now that primary is so much shorter and there isn't any sharing time, I was also told that I was supposed to add some sort of lesson to singing time as well, so any prior memories of singing time wouldn't have really helped me anyways. Not too long ago, I was asked if I could substitute for the primary music person, and I told them that I couldn't because I wouldn't have a clue what to do. Well, today I was thrown into t...

This week I started a an online class with BYU-I. It's only one class, but it's the first real class I've taken in a while, and I'm a tad nervous. I'm sure everything will be fine, it'll just take some good time management, which is something that I have a history of struggling with in the past. Good thing the past doesn't always predict the future. This class is starting less than three weeks before we get our new house, one month before the kids get out of school for the summer, and just barely after I received a new calling as Primary chorister (which I'm also a little bit nervous about, as well as excited.) Life is changing very rapidly. The class that I'm taking is titled The Eternal Family. Interestingly enough, I've attempted to take this class on two other occasions and ended up dropping it both times because I was overwhelmed by other things going on in life. Hopefully this time I'll be able to stick it out. No, let me rephrase that...

I made a cake! We three Deans My father-in-law, Dean M. Dawes, was born on April 2nd up in the mountains of Montana on the Crow Indian Reservation. His birth was not reported until his mother could make it down the mountain ten days later. His birth certificate says his date of birth is April 12th. Sometimes he says he has two birthdays, but more often he and his family joke that he was just a really long baby, which I find funny, mostly because he's a fairly short man. Grandpa Dean always always wears a cowboy hat. It's something of a trademark for him, so my husband Dean suggested that I make him a cowboy shaped birthday cake.  Grandpa's favorite kind of cake is German Chocolate cake with that Coconut Pecan frosting. I've made it for him before, but I never did anything fun with it, because I couldn't figure out how to be creative with that kind of cake. Or maybe it was just because I hadn't tried very hard to figure something out.  I want to say s...

What does it mean to feel emotion? This is something that I've been thinking a lot about over the last couple of years. When someone asks me, "how do you feel about..." usually my answer is, "I don't know." How are you feeling right now? I don't know. Some emotions I find much easier to identify than others. Anxiety is one that I can identify fairly easily. When I am feeling anxiety my chest tightens up, and my heart races. These are very physical symptoms of anxiety. What if there are physical symptoms of other emotions too? In a podcast called "Better than Happy" by Jody Moore, she says that emotions are just vibrations in our body. All emotions are caused by thoughts that you have about any circumstance. You perceive the circumstance, you think a thought to give meaning to the circumstance, you feel an emotion, and then your brain releases certain chemicals which create a vibration, which creates actual physical symptoms for every emotion. ...

I love being creative! I love to draw. I love decorating cakes. I love writing stories. I love growing plants. I love making movies. I love building things out of snow. Sometimes I even like to cook or bake new things. I love doing things that allow me to create something new that wasn't there before, even if its something that's just going to be eaten. I'm kinda lazy. It takes work to do any of the creative things that I love to do. I love it when I'm in the moment, but the thought of getting the materials ready, and cleaning up afterwards is a pain. I often get caught up with the thought that my house has to be clean before I can do anything fun and creative. I don't want to clean up my house, so I don't do anything creative. Also, just doing anything outside of my normal routine takes planning and thought that I'm just too lazy to put in. And then when I do put the time into something creative, I often feel guilty because of the time used on that instea...