Young Women In Excellence: Arise and Shine Forth!

On November 11 we held our annual evening of Young Women in Excellence.  It was a really wonderful night that celebrated the amazing young women in our ward.  Our theme centered on the 2012 world-wide theme for the youth:  Arise and Shine Forth.  We used yellow, sunshine and morning for our set up and design. 

The giant sun was my favorite part. 

Our little take-away gift for the girls.  IKEA $1 alarm clocks to help them arise early!

Breakfast for dinner:  french bread french toast, whipped cream, strawberries, buttermilk syrup, egg casserole, sausage, fresh fruit, juice and milk.  Since church gets out at 5 pm and our event started at 6 pm, we wanted to be sure to make it worth the wait as many families wouldn't have time to go home and come back in time.  We served appetizers in the yw room to curb everyone's hunger while we set up in the cultural hall. 

Enjoying a slideshow of pictures from the year 2012.

 Sunshine cupcake favors/dessert

Program for the evening

The main part of the program featured the young women. We didn't have them do any displays this year, we just had them stand in front and share what personal progress project they completed and how that had increased their testimonies.  They all shared sweet words and impressed everyone in the audience with their thoughtfulness, poise and spirit.  Such great girls.  They also did a great job with their musical number.

It was the helpful combined effort,  hard work and talents of all of these wonderful ladies that helped pull this evening off so successfully.  It's such a blessing to learn from and serve with them. 

Dino Baby

Halloween was an emotional day for this little dinosaur.  We'd already done a little Halloween celebrating at the ward trunk-or-treat the week before, but I felt obliged to put him in his costume on the official day.  However, there really is no point in putting on a costume to not go out and let people see, right?  Clark had to work, but I took this grumpy guy to do a little trick-or-treating a couple of our nearby friends' apartments.  He wasn't thrilled with anything but running around wherever he wanted.  Not even the chocolate could cheer him up when he was contained.  Such a stinker.   

But at least he's a cute stinker.  We prepped him for weeks teaching what a dinosaur says.  He mastered the roar pretty well, but getting him to do it on command for a crowd or a camera is always another story. 

 The young women were in the charge of the ward trunk-or-treat this year.  I was busy helping with the donut game, so I was glad Clark was around to chase Emmett who in turn was usually chasing the basketball. 

 I wish I could have caught the true expression of pleasure that Emmett had after he finally tasted the sucker Mark gave him.  He was leery at first but soon decided it was the best thing ever.

 Always on the go.

 Our dollar store decorated car.

Halloween craftiness.

A little dino roar and a really cute tail wiggle.

While the folks are away, the baby will play!

 Emmett certainly would not have had a good time (nor would we) on our Chicago/South Bend trip, so we left him in Durham.  He got to play with the Hansens for a day and then Uncle Vaughn and Aunt Mags were good enough to come up watch him for the rest of the weekend.  Emmett loves playing with the Hansen kids--they treat him like a rock star!  He especially loved going to soccer practice.  How soon can we sign him up for that??  The only problems he caused at the Hansens was that little Eliza did not want to go school.  :)

Chicago & Southbend

In October, Clark and I had the opportunity to travel to Chicago.  The real purpose of the trip was to go to the BYU vs Notre Dame game, but we jumped on the chance to spend a couple of days in the city.  We wisely left the babe in North Carolina, knowing that the weather and the activities of this trip would not entertain a one year old.  No baby meant that for the first time in 14 months I got to read and take a nap on the airplane.  It's really all about the simple pleasures.

My southern-weather-accustomed husband didn't take his wise wife's advice not to wear shorts to Chicago this time of year.  Needless to say, within the first hour of walking the Windy City, we found ourselves in Nordstrom Rack buying him some jeans.  Of course there are two sides to every story.  I like shorts.  I wear them as often as possible.  Amy dared me to find another person in Chicago wearing shorts as well and within a couple of moments, I saw a crazy old man and a group of 11 year old boys wearing shorts as well, so my point was really well proven.

It's got to be NC

 

We had another successful excursion to the NC State Fair in October.  We took Jake along, who happens to be a sucker for unhealthy food.  We knew he'd love the wide array of fried fare.  We did our best to eat most of our favorites and try a new thing or two.  This year we were able to find the pineapple whip and increased our devotion to fried cookie dough and fried snickers.  Mmmm.

Little Emmett was much more mobile this go around.  On the occasions that we let him out of his stroller, it was pretty impressive how he could zip around the crowds in his fancy air jordans.  My favorite parts always include the livestock and the produce.  And I'm always pretty impressed by the lego models. :)

This year we watched the Kenyan Acrobats and visited the petting zoo.  The acrobats were...well, they gave quite the performance.  Balancing on towers of chairs, doing the limbo under bars of fire just 8 inches off the ground.  It was definitely a show!

Emmett was more interested in the giant red gummi bear balloon than the acrobats...

 E was both intrigued and a bit terrified of the animals.  He didn't like it when I fed them the carrots; and I'll admit, there were a few animals that made me a little anxious to feed by hand!

Family Pictures & Fall Updates

 Nearly an entire season has passed since I last posted.  It seems that time spent blogging and doing other projects has been replaced with lesson planning.  This semester I'm back to teaching a few classes in the ESL department at Durham Tech.  They are actually pretty interesting classes.  On Monday evenings I teach an intermediate ESL Civics class.  The course is held in a computer lab and focuses on civics, community, history and technology topics all while learning English.  On Friday afternoons I teach an advanced focused listening course on American media.  I help them better understand American television, radio and cinema.  To do that we study a lot of idioms and slang and watch a lot of movie/tv clips.  It's a pretty cool class that requires a lot of prep time to be taught well.  It will be nice to already have the basic curriculum developed when I teach it next semester.  I've also been teaching a short 6-week course called Parent Academy where I go into a local elementary school and help parents understand more about the American education system, how to be more involved in their child's education and how to prepare for college.  I actually teach most of the class in Spanish--and boy has my Spanish needed some refreshing!  While being back to work has been a bit stressful at times, it's mostly gone really smoothly and I've enjoyed it a lot.
Besides teaching, fall has been filled with lots of other activities.  Autumn in North Carolina is when people can actually start going outdoors again!  Since Emmett has become a full-fledged walker (more like runner) this fall, we've been venturing our regularly to parks and playgrounds where he can get out some of his energy.  He LOVES being outside, climbing, swinging and going down the slide.  My favorite playground has become the one at Dan & Hilary's apartment complex because it is enclosed by a fence and gate, so I don't have to worry about him escaping.
Our sweet Emmett continues to be social and outgoing and happy--as long as he is around people.  When it's just him and mommy at home, he occasionally (rather frequently) lets his growing molars get the best of him.  Fortunately, much of the time when he throws fits and collapses to the floor in mostly fake tears, it's pretty entertaining.  More about the growing Memmett in his soon-to-come 15-month post.
Clark is thrilled that the NBA is back in season.  He manages to stay busy between reading about sports, blogging about sports and podcasting about sports.  I should mention that he works really hard, too.  
We've managed to do a little traveling and stay plenty busy with our church callings also this fall.  More details to come in future posts.

 In the meantime, here are some shots from our August 2012 photo shoot with Big Star Studios.  It started out as a pretty good groupon deal ($70) but when it came to choosing just ten images on the spot, we caved and forked out a decent sum to get all the images on disc.  We certainly don't need more than ten images--they definitely won't all get framed.  But oh well, maybe we'll be able to stand our ground next time.

Love the look on Emmett's face.

 So his father's child...

In other fall news, Clark and I hit our 5-year mark on November 3rd.  Happy Anniversary to us!

I liked a lot of the photos, but I wish they would have noticed a few little awkward placement things during the shoot, like how my leg is coving all of Emmett's body and how Clark's fingers are strangely peaking through my legs.  Also, you don't notice it at first glance, but how awkward is my hand position on the shot below?!  I guess you get what you pay for, right?  :)