Last Sunday was the 4th Annual MidSingles Christmas Music Devotional:  "God Loved Us So He Sent His Son."  It was amazing!  I'm so grateful for all those that participated and helped and put it together.  One of my friend's, that was pretty much in charge, mom said that this was the best one she'd been to, and she'd been to them all.  This was my second one to participate in.  The choir was amazing, really.  I was nervous the whole time for how it would come off, but they were great! 

It had been a huge weight on my shoulders, and on Saturday, I finally felt that weight lift, knowing that I'd done all I possibly could, and that had to be enough.  The Saturday before, I let weaknesses of mine show that some had never seen, and didn't know what to do about me.  Thinking about breaking down and crying in front of so many is somewhat embarrassing, but at the same time hilarious!  Nothing was working, and people weren't there, and by the end of the rehearsal I was a disaster.  Thank heavens for my friend, Tiffany, stepping in and taking care of organizing people to help decorate.  Poor Gary and Vaughn looked at me like they'd never seen anything like that, and didn't know what to do.  I had asked for people to bring trees and lights and garlands, if they had any available, and some guy came up to me afterwards and told me that that was not going to work, and asked me if I'd ever done anything like that and actually had it work.   I knew people would come through, and I had done it before, and it worked!  The guy apologized a few days later. 

Here are the decorations!  Now imagine the stage filled with people.  It turned out really well, and people were amazing to be there and we got it done so quickly! (My camera has a short in it, so none of the other pics turned out well)



The program was amazing!  There were many talented soloists, duets, ensembles, both vocalists and instrumentalists.  I was thrilled to be able to accompany one of the choir songs, and not have to accompany more than that.  I loved getting to sing!  I was able to sing in one of the ensembles, and it was accompanied by a strings ensemble and piano.  It was so cool!

I'd been spending so much time, getting the decorations made for these trees, and other things for that, plus a house I'm working on, it took a while for me to get Christmas up in our house.  It's up and I love it, other than the guy cut the bottom of the tree really crooked, so we have the leaning tree of Layton in our house.  When I say leaning, I'm not even kidding.  I turned it so it's leaning more towards the wall now, but it's WAY slanted!  Having the Christmas spirit has been a little more difficult this year than past years with the stress of activities and performances that have been happening, Mom's been way sick for almost 2 months, but last night she seemed much better, and my mood has put a damper on things.  I'm trying to be better, though.

So, you know when you're in an uncomfortable situation, there are those automatic reactions to fight or fly.  Well, flying is my way to cope.  I have to escape.   A couple months ago, I had gone to a fireside/devotional, and saw someone that I care a lot about with someone, and my reaction was, "oh my heck.... I have to get out of here."  I sat there and kept telling myself I'm a grown up, I can handle things and be mature about the whole situation.  Well, that talk lasted about a verse and a half of the opening song, I'm not even kidding, I was out of there!  Well, it's been a couple months, and you'd think I would be fine by now.  So, I was up singing in the ensemble at the devotional when this other someone walked in and went and sat next to the original someone.  It took all I had to stay where I was.  Holy cow!  What's the deal?!  The rest of the devotional went on, and I kept focused on the performers (apparently so focused that it looked like I was checking one of them out, but really I was watching the piano keys not anything else :)), and didn't escape.  I was so proud of myself.  Isn't that ridiculous!?  Thank heavens for family that was there to distract me afterwards, and responsibilities that got me back to being able to be me.  We had the fastest clean up of the Bountiful Regional Center, ever!  I was thrilled so I didn't have to do it by myself yesterday. 

Last night we had our annual Church side Christmas FHE.  It used to be that we'd get together and eat dinner and sing carols.  Now that Grandma isn't with us anymore, and Darlene lives in Mesquite during the winter, it has changed.  It was fun, though!

Last week two of Collin's kids had little programs for their tumbling and dancing.  Ev is an amazing little tumbler!  Ady is amazing on the bar at tumbling, and then quite the little dancer.  She had a mirror off stage, but right by her, that she was totally hamming it up, loving watching herself.  So funny!

I'm soon to be released from serving in the stake young women, which is heart breaking to me!  I've loved young womens.  Two weeks ago, I left an Evening of Excellence, and walked out saying, "This is why I love young womens!"  Wednesday night, Mom got a call asking if she'd be okay with me being released to serve in my ward.  She said no, because of all of my other responsibilities, but here I am the new primary secretary.  Hopefully, I'll be able to feel comfortable in this position being able to serve with kids soon.

Stuff...

It's been an insanely busy few weeks!  I had everything under control and timed correctly to get everything I needed to be done on time, whether it was for young womens or my conference.  I had a couple situations that distracted me from the task at hand.  Then a client of mine needed his stuff done, IMMEDIATELY!  So, I had very little sleep, and didn't feel as into my conference as I wanted to be. 

This is a board with three different kitchen designs.

This is the bathroom design.  It all was a basement.

My mind was wandering over the situations, and over this house that was huge, and I just felt run down.  We had Standards Night in the middle of it, and it came time to pick the hymns, and I just felt like picking "High on a Mountain Top" and "I am a Child of God."  Then we sat there listening to the great talk, and both songs fit perfectly!  I was amazed I could be guided, when I so was not feeling it! 

This conference was longer and bigger then ever before.  It ran Sept. 17-23.  Personally, I think it was too long, but I really enjoyed all of the activities, except for maybe the dance.  I am so grateful for all of the help!  I did a lot of work beforehand, but had those that helped not been there for the things I was over, it never would have happened! 

We had a Photo Scavenger Hunt FHE.  Service projects at the Utah Food Bank and the Bountiful Food Pantry.  Brad Wilcox did a mid-week devotional and was freaking amazing!  We had an ice cream trough for dessert, idea credit goes to Emma.  It was way fun! They did a temple night at the Salt Lake Temple (I was at Standards Night).  Friday night was an EXTREME carnival.  Emma, Jeanine, and Garrett were amazing planning this activity!  We had blow up toys, like jousting, sumo, and an obstacle course.  We had giant checkers, giant jenga, giant twister, Angry Birds, a photo booth, human bowling, popcorn, sno cones, cotton candy, s'mores, and a food truck, that was delicious!  It was so much fun!

Saturday was my day, well the day that most of my things I stressed about was on.  I had Matt Townsend as our keynote speaker.  He did an amazing job!  He was so right on with what the midsingles needed to hear, it was fantastic!  We had awesome workshops, games, food and fun!  The main complaint of the conference was about the dance.  We reserved an indoor soccer place and had a live band.  It should've been awesome!  Fun venue.  Fun band.  Well, the band never really played songs you could dance to, so it was like a concert on a soccer field.  There were big stresses the whole time planning the dance part, and setting it up, and all of that!  Next time I want it to be easier, even though I still want it at a fun venue.  My friend, John, got us a stage for the band, and that was the biggest headache, so I'm so grateful he took care of that for me!  There was a lot of physical labor this time around, because of the stage, transporting tables and chairs from the church to the field and back, plus set up and take down at the church.  It was big! 

I've compiled my list of the things I loved and things that needed work.  I'm sure others have suggestions, too.  Overall, it was a great experience!

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On other notes, I've been getting a kick out of the differences between men and women.  Women for some reason have to give all of these details and feel like it's important to share that, whether it's talking in person, texting, email, etc...  So, I type this big long whatever, and the guy responds with "ok" or "cool."  It drives me insane!  I'm going to work on being less wordy :)  Then, I don't talk that much, when it's one on one, but I say something, that seemed important or maybe was funny in my head, and I just get this look like, "really?"  Then, I'm always like, I should just stop talking!  So dumb!  Or the situation of relationships changing, it's one way one day, and then completely different the next; and, in the cases I've seen recently, the guy is so quick to move to the next opportunity, and the girl is left going, Whoa, was that even real?  Sometimes it is really hard to tell. Especially being one that is especially cautious about getting involved, and then takes a long time to get over it; even when it was my decision.  It's just been interesting!

Oh, and I have been on two dates now where I've seen one of my laurels on a date.  Such a weird feeling!  The first one was funny, and she was way cute.  The latest one, I'm glad I was there, and could inadvertently stop a situation from continuing, at least where we were.  I sure hope she didn't drive somewhere else and continue the activity.  So strange!