On Priorities

Although I have been sad not to see many new blog posts, or new emails, or voice mail messages-I have been happy knowing the reason for this depletion. I have been happy knowing that everyone has been spending time with friends and family across the country gorging themselves with food. (my fav this year were the sweet potatoes). And so-I just wanted to say "Way to go, everyone!" for having your priorities in line.

According to Ryan, my priorities should be:
1. Melinda (YW counselor)
2. Insurance (you can't live w/o insurance)
3. Ryan

If I'm ever having a bad day, or am feeling badly about myself (so you know, every other day) Ryan will say, "Is Melinda happy with you?"

And somehow, that makes everything okay. So if your first priority is not your church calling-I would say to you-step it up people! :)

However, these days I am told that my priority needs to be on the Christmas letter, so I have been told no more blogging about funny things! That means no picture of the tree yet either (sorry Aaron). It also means that I can't talk about Thanksgiving much, or our one day trip to Disneyland, but I highly doubt Ry will include these highlights in the letter, so here is the best of my Thanksgiving:

• The flights to and from St. Louis (A group, no one in between us, the perfect amount and sleep and books to read)
• Watching Kevin and Eric play ping pong (very similar to Dwight and Mose)
• Cooking with Emma (and knowing that she was filling my spot in the kitchen)
• Eating Jenny's Pumpkin Crisp for breakfast
• Sitting next to Annette during Enchanted and laughing together
• Watching James play the 50 cent piece game, and Simon Says, and Charades
• Tate calling Eric-Ryan and Ryan-Eric. And falling asleep on me.
• Davis dancing and his grinning spells in between falling and crying.
• Mom and Dad watching and admiring us all (cause you know-we're perfect)
• Uncle Ryan keeping all of the kids entertained so the adults could have some sort of a conversation.

And no, we didn't take any pictures of the week (other than the hundreds of family ones we posed for and were tortured with) but as you probably can guess-pictures were not our top priority.

Happy Turkey Day!

On Complaining

My whole family is together in St. Louis and we're not there yet and I had to sit in front of a bunch of obnoxious teenagers at a fireside who text messaged the entire time and didn't listen to me when I told them to put their phones away and my presidency is all out of commission and that was the 6th youth event I've been to/organized this week! I need a break!

Okay, thank you for letting me get that off my chest. On Thursday I will be back to normal again and give thanks like I'm supposed to.

Rats-I can't even complain properly. I have to add that my group of girls sat there very quietly and attentively the entire fireside. I have to admit that I had one of those proud "we're doing something right!" moments.

All 7 Seasons-Ry is out of luck

November 13 has been a significant day for me in the past. It is the date of my first kiss in 1999...don't tell me I'm the only girl who has that good of a memory for things like that.

Now, 8 years later, November 13 brought another special event into my life. That's right. The final season of Gilmore Girls is now a part of my collection. I now own every single episode, every witty conversation, and every fabulous outfit.

I have received these seasons as gifts from my husband throughout the years as they coincided with many significant events- Season 1 is the only thing that saved our 1st Anniversary. This year, however, I couldn't wait for Christmas. I ran to the shelves at Target @9:50pm on Tuesday to complete my goal of buying it on the day of release. And I have to admit I was disgusted with myself for paying $40 per season when directly below me on the shelf were seasons 1-4 all priced at $14.99.

But I tell you my friends-it has been worth every penny. Despite my dirty dishes and lack of clean underwear, I enjoyed every tearful minute of watching the final episode again today. I know those of you who are fans understand completely. However, for those of you who are not-I'm not sure we can be friends.

Sorry if this post is lame-can you tell there has been nothing going on lately?

You Never Know

Last week was our Stake Young Women Leadership Training meeting. The stake yw president read that story of the man who throws the starfish into the ocean. You know the one. It ends with, "It made a difference to that one." She then presented each of us with a starfish pin (shown very poorly above) to wear every Sunday to remind us to treat each girl as an individual and to make a difference in her life. Yesterday was the first "pin Sunday" and I admit it really did serve as a useful reminder to serve in my calling well.

But this post is about something that happened a couple of weeks ago. The day after Halloween in fact. The day that I was planning on sleeping in forever. Until the doorbell rang at 8:30am. Now this is not too early-just on that particular morning. I was all set to ignore it thinking that it was FedEx dropping off a package. But then it rang again. And again. I knew Ry was no use in this situation. He can sleep through anything. But curiosity got the better of me and I went to the door (luckily I was already decent, but I was afraid the person would leave so I didn't even put my glasses on.) I looked through the peephole and was not too blind to determine that it was our neighbor girl from next door.
Now you need to know that we are not good neighbors. We wave as we pull into our driveway and immediately shut the garage door behind us. We talk to them once a year when we decorate our tree and that's it. But we know this neighbor the best because when we moved in we brought them cookies. But that was three years ago and we don't even remember their names. But we continue to wave vigorously whenever we see them (which is not often).
So I admit that I was a little surprised at seeing this girl on my front porch. As I opened the door she said in a tearful voice, "I overslept." So of course I invited her in and gave her a ride to school. I still don't know her name as I didn't want to ask her in case she assumed I knew everything about her. But we spent a very pleasant 15 minute ride on our way to Cram Middle School and the whole time I was shocked that this 8th grader would have known that we were nice enough people that we would have been willing to take her to school. Of course she could be completely crazy to get in the car with a perfect stranger, but you know what I mean.

I don't really know the point of this whole story other than it really is true that you never know what kind of a difference you can make in this world. I guess a little waving really can go a long way.

The Tree Part 2

I can't possibly explain what decorating this tree entails, but hopefully you will get an idea. This post is dedicated to Jill, Floyd, Nate, Merrill, Lee, and Lexi all who spent countless hours making this happen.

# of previous extension cords: at least 26

# of appliances out of commission while old tree was lit: at least most of them

# of amps our house contains: 125

# of amps our tree was last year: 180

# of electric panels we melted: 1

# of grateful prayers that our house is still intact: countless

# of blue replacement bulbs we can't use any more: at least 700

# of light strands removed: 125

# of removal hours: 7-8

Taking down the old lights

#of new LED light strands ordered: 150

# of extension cords used: 2

# of man hours to put them up: at least 36; prob. more. we stopped counting.

# of times we listened to the 12 Days of Christmas: I now hate that song

# of neighbors met: 5

#of drivebys: 10 (drive by in this case meaning any car that drove abnormally slowly down our street. Many were witnessed shooting pictures on their cell phone. No violence involved.)

amt of electricity now needed: less than our kitchen.

# of children whose Christmas will be brighter and better: at least 2 so far. That's why we do it folks.

Friday, 5:40 pm Just getting started.

Saturday, 11:58 pm, No more help after this.

Did you really think you could see the finished product? Not till after Thanksgiving. But this is a pretty good sneak preview huh?

Ry: Just before coming in: Monday, 3:30am

My hero

The Tree

I will be posting about our tree adventures over the weekend, but for right now I will just give you this preview:

Monday morning, 3:23 am- Ryan comes inside after finishing the tree-6 hours after everyone else had given up.

Amy: "I'm sorry. I felt like the disciples falling asleep while Jesus was in the garden."

Ry: "That's funny. I thought of that too, but thought it wasn't too good to come up with an analogy that compares me to Christ."

A few minutes later after a few more moments of Ryan groaning from pain. ***Warning: Harry Potter Spoiler coming up***

Amy: "Maybe you are like Harry Potter. All of your friends left and you had to defeat the enemy all by yourself."

Ry: "Oh, they made him a Christ figure too, huh?"

Okay, so if you didn't think this was as funny as I did--you may want to check the time of said conversation. More non blasphemous posts about the tree to come...

"I Should Have Known Better"

I should have known that after weeks of saying, "oh yeah, we don't want to dress up this year. Let's just go to the trunk or treat for a little while if I feel up to it." Ryan wouldn't let me get away with it.

So of course Ry goes out at 5pm to get last minute overpriced candy. I am enjoying my time on the couch content to sit home and pass out candy to trick or treaters in my sweats. But oh no.

Ry calls at 5:45 and is insisting that I get in the shower and that he has a costume for me. I protested my way through 3 phone conversations of, "I don't want to!" Even if I am at 100%; I still hate dressing up. This conversation happens every year-I just thought I had more leverage this time.

But I guess not. Finally at 5:55 I am in the shower, and am putting this on. We had a great Halloween at the ward trunk or treat after all. Or was it Christmas? One can never be too sure.

Uh oh! What will Mrs. Clause think?

Busted! We were able to judge a lot of ward families based on which on these characters their kids ran to first :)

So what did I learn from all this? Never go against Ryan when holidays are on the line. (Name that movie). Merry Halloween!