Turkey Banquet

The good news of the week is that my workouts are going a lot better. I played volleyball with a good crew on Monday, then went to the gym for a weightlifting session daily for the rest of the week. I'm changing up the strategy a little, but it's going well so far. I even went on a walk on Saturday in the crazy winds. 

The youth had a combined activity this week, which was indoor kickball. The YM were in charge, which means the YM leaders were in charge, which means they played and tried to dominate all the youth - most of which have never played kickball before in their lives. That's always kind of annoying to me because I feel like we're there to be facilitators and not just crush them because we know the strategy. 

Thursday, Al and I had a good study session for CFM and how it relates back to purposes of the BOM and covenants. Rog and I had a different CFM study earlier in the week. And then I also was at Bree's house for 2 hours helping her prepare for a lesson on for Sunday (that I wouldn't be at and is a point of contention between me and the other leaders, but that's besides the point). The point is that this is her 5th lesson in her YW career and the only one she's every prepared for, so I'm happy with that. 

Roger was sad because he was supposed to be on a 3 day camping trip with his BFF early in the week, but there ended up being a very sudden and huge snowstorm and he said if they hadn't left when they did (day 1), they would've been stuck out there for a few weeks at best. As it was, they had to leave by offroading as the roads were too treacherous to navigate. 

My latest meal prep investment. 

So as a consolation, I got Rog ice cream. It worked out because I had a doctor's appt and they ended up telling me that the tests they had planned for that visit didn't make it into the schedule and so I had to come back a different day and do them and it was a waste of my time to even be there. (But also since I can only see them at 3 or later, they recommended I go to a different office for scheduling and I'm not sure they take my insurance so I haven't decided if I'm going to do them or not yet. Apparently they weren't important enough to put on the schedule.)

I had a real late start on Saturday, but I did some grocery shopping and cleaning and showering (amazing). And Rog went out and looked for antlers for a bit. He's having a harder time keeping track of his location without looking at the GPS. Hopefully it's just the snow messing with him and not early onset dementia.

We had a date at the annual turkey banquet - which is both a good tax write-off and our favorite form of gambling as it goes directly towards wildlife preservation (Rog's passion). We met our friends from last year - Dorothy, Guy, and Rex, and were able to sit at their table. Rog sat next to a stranger who talked his ear off the whole time and I sat next to Guy, a mentally/physically handicapped vet who gave me his slice of cake. 

We were disappointed at food quantities this year - last year we were stuffed. This year we pre-gamed with ice cream and left hungry. But we got to put in for some raffles (which we didn't win) and play some fun games for more raffles. Rog smoked at pong - with the high score for the night. (Higher score = more raffle tickets for 0.22 rifle). He also really liked one were you get as many tickets as your wingspan. 

The turkeys. 

We didn't win anything this time, but we had fun being around good people. And with the ladies' raffle, you went home with a bottle of wine and a turkey call, so we weren't empty handed and I got to pick a bottle that might be useful for cooking rather than drinking. 

The news of Sunday is that I was released from YW. The bishopric made it sound like it was a mercy release since I've been working with the youth for a while, but the girls were upset, some of the parents were upset, and the last YW president called me because she's upset. I'm just interested to see how things play out from here. 

Spring Break

I've been kicking Roger out of the house because he's been antsy. He's hiked a lot of miles and found a couple antlers and went fishing when he wasn't successful hiking. It was harder this week because it's been snowing pretty good and it's spring break. 

He brought no fishies home.

Rog has also been holding down the fort at work with his boss on vacation for spring break all week. He also has Stu as a helper, but who knows what they're really doing all day. Our Ford Escape is finally done at the mechanic's and turns out the problem was a tiny valve, but you have to take half the engine out to get to it, so nobody would touch it except our friend Rich from church. Rog is excited to have it back, so we'll see how it does. 

Couldn't be me out there. (Everyone was ok.)

I finished Brandon Mull's Dragonwatch series (sequels to Fablehaven) and have been working on a few other projects for PT related stuff. Also going through mission journals and writing notes about good stories so I have more to pull from. 

Since all of our events were cancelled this week (including my group CFM study), we went out to eat a few times and did some shopping together. We got some ice cream and mozerella sticks at Sonic and then we got cajun food and mac and cheese and cornbread at Satchmo's (cajun & bbq). 

Rog and a few of his favorite things. 
(As illustrated by me).

 We also went to Carol's after church and watched the women's broadcast and had a potluck - enchiladas, chicken salad, a green cake for St Patty's. I'm gonna be honest that the womens' broadcasts are not my cup of tea. Everyone talks in the same whispery voices and there's not a lot of meat to the messages. And I need to be chastised more, so I'm better in PH. 

New Trailer

 So we ended up getting that trailer with a tent up top for a pretty good deal and Rog already started packing/unpacking and rearranging things. It's definitely opened a lot of space in our storage area and under the bed, but we're still consolidating. 

We also got free eggs from 2 friends - my coworker Jade and my buddy Mike (and Rog's old bishop) who just showed up on our doorstep with a shirtful of them. And the nice thing is that Rog did a bunch of freezer meal prep for breakfasts - so we have a bunch of packets of various meats and hashbrowns - just add eggs and cheese for a nice scramble. We tested them out and they're pretty good. 

Rog's little cousin Payton joined us for VB on Monday and wasn't annihilated, so that was nice. And we're still having a decent group show up mostly. 

For YW, we did a spa night with a foot bath and face masks and nail painting and hot cocoa. I assisted to my best ability with painting some nails, but it wasn't great. 

The missionaries also came over for spaghetti and salad (but I was the only one that ate the salad). The spaghetti was delicious. 

Also, after taking that new needling course, I ordered some bigger needles and caved to buy the big electrotherapy machine (costing me about $1K), but I've already used it 3x this week, so it's worth it for my job and maybe I can get a partial reimbursement. We'll see. Let me know if you need a 9cm needle in your butt. Therapeutic reasons only. 

Phoenix

We missed VB last week due to illness and every single player being out of town. That's ok. I went to the gym instead. 

We had a YW revamp and now I'm only in charge of Sundays and not activities. But still working with the younger group, which is fun because they participate. We went and heart attacked some new girls with the 3 younger kids available this week. That's a fairly typical turnout but it's always different girls. 

Rog and I went out to BW's for dinner and a show. This time it was a college ball game with one post from Michigan absolutely running the game. It was fun to watch. Then we got some Crumbl cookies on our way home. 

I had taken Friday off for part 2 of my dry needling course in Phoenix. The instructor asked us to make groups with only 1 inexperienced person in them to help things run smoother. So we had 1 newbie and 1 person who also took part 1 before. But turns out that was last week and she still didn't know what she was doing. Then randomly like 30 minutes later, this one kid didn't have a group so he joined ours and turns out he was also a newbie with the pokiest fingers known to man and zero attention span. But he didn't tell us he was new and the other lady didn't mention she took part 1 last week until they asked me to be the patient first and then none of them knew what a spinous process was. Yeesh. 

Some of these needles are 9 cm long. 

After that, I took over and we had a better time of it. But rough start. By the end, the other new girl felt confident and the other two were iffy but probably won't kill anyone, so that's good. I also had a classmate from NAU that was in the course with us, so we got to catch up for a bit. 

The other unfortunate part of this course was that the instructor was very strict on obeying the projected timelines. Which meant we didn't get out until 8pm day 1 and I was late meeting Cenita and Colton for dinner. We still ended up with the most delicious burgers, hot tubbing, and having a good chat. I like them. So much so that I didn't go to bed until midnight. 

It was a long 3 day course, but I was back home around 5 and still had some energy left to check out a trailer Rog has been investigating. I liked it. We'll see. 

Feb Notes

Catch me slacking on this because it's been a minute with the updates. We missed VDay - and I was begging Rog to go back to Stinkin' Crawfish (like we did last year) since we didn't get it right the first time and it was still good and we had to order it to go. He agreed and we ate in house with a better idea of the menu and it was delicious. I did eat all the kielbasa out of there, but Rog ate all the shrimps, so we're even. 

Stinking good.

Some friends in town wanted to do a Galentines party - so we did with a conglomeration of people who now think I never want a child, when what I said was I don't want one now and I think the Michelin Man look is a bad one for babies. Anyways, we had some yummy snacks and put together a bouquet of flowers (which is still kickin' 3 weeks later) from individual flower groups each of us brought. 

Galentines.

I reread the entire Fablehaven series and decided on a new project, which Hannah will help out with. In addition to 3 other projects I have going. And my side gig, the PT notes, which is still going, but I should probably work on again. 

Recently I did a lot of labs and took up swimming in the wintertime because I've been having weird hypotensive / low blood sugar or something symptoms and it seems to work. Volleyball is still a hit though and we've been having tons of people come, so it's been a blast. 

Rog triple booked us one night and we ended up feeding the missionaries on the go at Chipotle before we had to get to a few different places. We also decided on buying a small trailer to hold our camping gear - for some extra storage room since we can't ever afford a house. 

Spurred on by some mysterious mosquito bites, we did a deep clean and rearranging of our apartment (which isn't hard when there's 2 options for arranging). And Rog spent some time watching basketball games as part of borrowing, and then returning, a vacuum. 

Templing

We also went to the temple for some initiatories, which was something we haven't done in a minute. And we made use of the distribution center in Snowflake for some updates to our temple garb and underwear. We missed the bishop's storehouse by 2 minutes, but now we know it's there.