Gone With the Wind and Other Good News

I can see clearly now the smog is gone...it was a bright, bright, bright sunshiny day. So yesterday there was a birthday miracle on Cart-man's birthday. The sun came out. It was a glorious sight. It's here again today. My spirits are lifted quite a bit even though it's only like 30 degrees out today. Who cares when the sun is out. For the first time ever, I was happy to hear the wind when I woke up yesterday. I hate the wind, normally. I always have since I was a little girl. Where I grew up the Santa Ana winds always came in the fall and started fires, so as a little girl the wind scared me. But yesterday I was thrilled to hear it because I knew it was blowing away the yuckiness.





We had our neighbors and my sister and her husband over last night for cake after our special 2:30 p.m. church time now. It's seriously the worst time for the baby. Anyway, we put his cake in front of him and he put his hand right in. (We learned with Peanut that the whipped icing cleans up way easy compared to the oil in the buttercream). Then the next hand, but he was trying to shake off the icing. So he was frustrated by that and wouldn't even taste it and the kids (all 6 of them) were screaming in delight at watching him and he absolutely freaks at loud noises, so... he started screaming. And I mean a loud, ear piercing scream. So the like actual 3 pictures I got of him with his cake are of him crying. I've never had a baby do that. I feel so sad for him. This picture is so pathetic. Oh well, at least he liked opening his presents. The neighbors gave him an animal book and a pack of cars that he really liked. We gave him a plastic piggy bank that he can put the giant plastic coins in and it sings and counts them, and some squishy blocks that he really likes. He also learned how to climb up the first step of our stairs yesterday. That's as far as he goes so far, but he doesn't realize that when he sits back, he'll fall. Today while I was lying on my back doing pilates on the floor, he stuck his head between my knees and pulled himself up to a standing position and even let go for half a second.
Bubba has his first research paper due at the end of the week. It had to be 3 paragraphs of at least 3 sentences each and he has to put it on a poster board with pictures and then do an oral report sometime next week I think. So he chose George Washington and did really well with his research by himself during computers at school. He got his paper typed up yesterday (with mom doing the typing) and is going to use a dollar bill as his 3-D element for the poster.
So in other good news, though I'm not losing weight, I am losing inches at least. In 2 weeks, I lost 2 1/2 inches in my waist, 1 inch in my hips, and a half inch in my thighs. My super awesome sister-in-law has offered to send me some extra strength training exercises to help me out. Thanks Janet!
So our ward was split two weeks ago and yesterday was the first day with our new bishopric. Poor bishop called all new presidencies for high priests, young mens, young womens(except for the president who stayed), primary, elders quorum and relief society. We also lost about half our missionaries that are out. We went from a ward with 17 out to only having 8 with our remaing families. They created a new ward from 4 different ones. The stake president said we went from 2000 members in 4 wards of 500 each, to 5 wards of 400 each! We only lost about 3 of our 30 deacons though. There are 2 quorums of deacons! We used to sit almost all the way back to the stage of the 2nd cultural hall before. I've also decided that I don't go to church to make friends, I have enough of those. I'm there to feel the spirit and to learn about the gospel, so I don't really need to sit by anyone or participate in any activites involving the "skinny" women. So all in all, the days are looking better, all because of the sun. I don't know how anyone could ever live in Forks without going insane.