Signs of Spring

It's definitely March. The last few days the weather has been so erratic--every time I look out the window I see something different--sun, wind, rain, snow. It has changed by the minute some days!

Here are some signs that it is finally, officially spring:

1. An almost-spring holiday: St. Patrick's Day!

Minnie is showing off the annual treats from the leprechauns. We had our corned beef, potatoes, and cabbage dinner a day early because of YW. This past Sunday the Cranes had a party at their house so we had more corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes (our favorite--delicious!) and they had green balloons and streamer decorations and we played games with green candy prizes.

2. My flowers are starting to peek out of the ground!! (thanks to Russ and Eileen for the bulbs, and to my neighbor, Jean, for helping me plant them last fall!)

3. The tree in the back yard has buds:

4. Niles built 3 more garden boxes (and is thinking about building 2 more) and planted peas, lettuce, and cabbage (he is my hero!):

5. Easter and Spring Break are coming up next week. Third term ended at school so only one more term of school to go for this year. (Summer could NOT come soon enough, believe me!!)

March has been a busy month for Young Women's. The Mia Maids (i.e. me and my side-kick Meagan) were in charge of the YM/YW joint activity and the YW combined activity this month. We also had a Father/Daughter party at the beginning of the month. And I ended up teaching all of the YW this past Sunday because there was a misunderstanding on the calendar so the Beehive leaders hadn't prepared a lesson. (The Laurels visit Relief Society the 3rd Sunday.) That was fine, and no big deal, thankfully--just kind of funny. As part of the lesson, we wrote thank-you notes to our bishop. And believe me, that man deserves lots of thank you notes! We have a great bishop. This coming Saturday is the YW broadcast and we are meeting to go to dinner first.

For the YM/YW joint activity we had an etiquette dinner. Could they have picked a worse thing for ME to be in charge of? ME whose strong points are definitely NOT cooking and being a gracious hostess! Throwing a dinner party at my house is my idea of a nightmare. I'm an introvert, thank you very much. Thankfully, the other leaders pitched in and helped a tremendous amount so it didn't turn out to be nearly as much work as I thought it would be. And they did the parts I'm not good at, so it turned out really well. We had the dinner last week--on St. Patrick's Day. We borrowed nice dishes, aprons, and linens from my neighbor who is a caterer. All of the leaders wore aprons and we did all the cooking, serving, and cleaning up so, for the youth, it was almost like going to dinner at a fancy restaurant (except our budget meant that the food wasn't so fancy--spaghetti!) The Beehive leaders did appetizers and we had a room where they all mingled and were given conversation starter cards so they could practice starting conversations and things like that. The YM leaders walked around with the appetizers on trays. Then they were instructed on basic etiquette for the dinner--the boys each had to escort a girl to the table and pull out their chair for them, etc. We had fancy name cards at the plates so we could mix the kids up so they were with people they didn't know as well to force them to practice getting to know people. I think they all had a lot of fun and learned a lot. (Maybe if they had done activities like that when I was a youth, I wouldn't be such an introvert.) We (the leaders) learned that it takes a really, really long time for a big stock pot full of water to boil (over 1 1/2 hours!!) Good thing we had appetizers and salad first!

Tonight is the YW combined activity. We are dividing into cars and playing a game to try to get to the temple. We are starting at the church and the temple spire is nearly visible from there, but we will be rolling dice to decide which direction to go so it will be interesting to see if any of the groups manage to get there in the allotted time. We will meet at the temple grounds at an appointed time and then we will talk about setting goals and preparing now to go to the temple--instead of leaving it up to chance. Hopefully the weather will be warm enough that we can sit comfortably outside on the temple grounds. We are so lucky to live so close to a temple!

March has also involved a lot of band activities--solo/ensemble nights, festivals and concerts. I was able to go as a chaperon with the high school bands to a festival at BYU a few weeks ago. The next week they had a concert. They have another festival coming up next week. The jr. high has a festival this Friday. I have also taken Jumble to a band concert at BYU, Niles and I went to BYU Men's Chorus Concert at BYU last weekend with another couple, and last night I took Jumble and Minnie to the UVU wind symphony concert (my side-kick and Minnie's flute teacher, Meagan, was performing.) I love concerts! They have all been very enjoyable. Minnie and Jumble are both going to be playing their respective instruments in sacrament meeting during the month of April.

Marching band will be starting up again in May. (Actually, we've already started paying for it--contracts were due the beginning of this month.) Jumble is really looking forward to that and so are we. She is going to play clarinet this year, rather than bass clarinet. We are seeing signs that she is feeling a little better these days, and hope that it continues to improve from here. We still have quite a ways to go. She has had some really tough things thrown at her these last 5 months and recently I have been really pleased to see the maturity and compassion that she has shown in handling one of the curve balls thrown her way. Please continue to keep her in your prayers. We know it is helping!

Oh, and after over a month, Jet's black eye is ALMOST gone!!

Mission Memories Monday: Roaches!

Montgomery 1st Ward was my first area of service on my mission. It was a middle to upper-class area and our apartment was one of the nicer ones I lived in during my time in the mission. I was only there a month, and it was a fairly hard area to serve in. Middle to upper-class people tend to be at work all day and not inclined to let missionaries in when they are home--which leads to knocking on a lot of doors of empty houses during the day and a lot of rejection knocking on doors in the evenings. But one of the perks of living in a nicer apartment was the lack of roaches. My trainer, who had been out a year, and had lots of experience with Alabama roaches, felt duty-bound to warn me about the roaches that she was sure I would be experiencing in the near future. "You should see the tree roaches, Sister Pew! They are HUGE!" This went on for several days, all the while with me inwardly shuddering as I pictured roaches the size of my hand (or larger!)

I had been terrified by roaches in my younger years when I lived in Houston. I still remember crying when I had to take the garbage out to the cans in the garage because you could be certain to have 3 or 4 roaches dart in your face when you lifted the garbage can lid. And some mornings you would find one wiggling and drowning in the toilet. Sometimes you would see one on the wall and it would FLY IN YOUR FACE! Ugh! So, as a greenie missionary I comforted myself with the thought that I was older now. I had survived encounters with roaches as a child, so I could just buck up and handle it now as a missionary, even if the roaches were even larger (shudder.)

One day a few weeks later, as we were out tracting (as always) we approached a house with a porch and Sister Jones said, "Look, Sister Pew! There is one of the tree roaches I've been telling you about! Look how HUGE it is!" I looked down to see a dead roach lying upside down on the porch. And it was normal roach-size. I was surprised. I turned to Sister Jones and with bewilderment asked, "What size are the normal roaches?" I think she was disappointed at my calm reaction. She showed me with her fingers--about 1/2 inch long! "Oh!" I thought. "That's small! I didn't realize that roaches could be so small!" I realized that all the time Sister Jones was describing HUGE tree roaches, I wasn't realizing that the roaches of my youth in Houston WERE tree roaches. That is the only kind I knew about. The 2-inch long, flying variety was all I had ever known. Duh! My childhood home in Houston was on a lot that had over 100 trees in the back yard and probably at least 50 in the front yard. Of course those roaches were TREE roaches. I should have realized.

I had plenty of opportunities to become acquainted with the smaller varieties of roaches in several of my apartments later in my mission. My third apartment in Montgomery 3rd Ward was so over-run with the little ones that we purchased a bug bomb once and came home that night to the scene of a roach holocaust on our kitchen floor. Gross!

My fifth apartment in Athens, AL, was in the basement of a building that served as an army hospital during the civil war. It was so over-run with roaches that you washed your cereal bowl BEFORE using it in the morning because you weren't sure how many things had been crawling on it in the cupboard since you washed it and put it in there the day before. One day I even washed my bowl, set it on the counter, turned to grab my cereal box, and turned back just in time to see a little roach run across the counter and into and out of my bowl. So my bowl got washed twice that morning before I used it.

Shortly after the cereal bowl experience, I awoke in the middle of the night when a roach ran up my leg! I suspect it was my description of this experience in my weekly letter t0 the mission president that prompted him to call and tell us to look for a better apartment in the area. That was just fine with us--that was the apartment that we also boasted had a "moat" around the entire outside circumference of the living room--an area that always seemed to be damp and smelled like it was growing mold. When we were in the process of moving out of that apartment, we ran into the exterminator who was happy to meet us because, "For some reason, the landlord doesn't have a key to your apartment so I can never get in to spray your apartment when I do all the others." Well, that explained a lot. Every month when he would come spray, all the vermin in the entire building would flee to our apartment--the safe harbor!

I still didn't mind the little guys as much as the big ones, even when they would startle me by crawling down my arm in the middle of teaching a discussion to someone in the projects. One morning in my third apartment we were greeted by a smallish tree roach in the bathtub (see photo above.) I still found the tree roaches to be more troublesome--maybe because they are big enough that you can see every disgusting detail of their slimy bodies and wiggly legs. And they can fly.