Early Birthday!

About a week and a half ago Chris got really worried because he realized we didn't have any birthday wrapping paper. I told him that two days later I was going to the grocery store and I'd pick some up, but that wasn't good enough for him. We finished eating dinner and then headed to Walmart to pick up some wrapping paper, and hopefully some pumpkin ice cream (which they didn't have) and some bananas. We found some wrapping paper. Then in the car on the way home he asked if I had any birthday cards. I like to make my own cards to send for birthdays/weddings/babies/valentines day and he was hoping I'd have some premade ones. I told him I didn't but that we could go through my stuff and I'd help him make one... but then I remembered that we had made a card for his dads birthday but then Chris got really sick and we never wrote in the card or sent it, so that became my birthday card.

Once we got home Chris told me I couldn't come into our room, and told me he wouldn't be out for at least 20 minutes. I used that time to watch an episode of Boy Meets World (thank you, library for having all of the seasons!) until he told me that I had to go sit in the guest bathroom for a few minutes. After a little while (that felt like a LONG while) he came out and handed me my birthday card (remember, this is 2 weeks before my birthday)

In the card he mentioned that he didn't want to wait 2 weeks to give me my gift, and that I was about to go on my first Clark Scavenger Hunt. He told me that as a kid it was tradition that they had to go on a scavenger hunt to find their gifts, it made it a lot of fun. I was super excited to go on my own scavenger hunt! You get to go on it with me, as I'm going to give you the clues.

Clue # 1: To find me you have to look where there are lots of dresses.

I thought this was a super obvious clue, the only place in our house with ANY dresses is my closet. I searched my closet high and low for the heart shaped sticky note (that's what the clues were written on) and couldn't find it. I went through every piece of clothing in that closet to see if he had hidden it somewhere. It wasn't there. I started getting discouraged so I went out and sat on the rug in our living room where I can look around and see basically everything in our house. After a few minutes of this I had a thought that turned out to be brilliant. One of my favorite movies is 27 Dresses, and I just happen to own it. Sure enough, the clue was on the front cover of the movie. Finally!

Clue #2: If you know who I am you know that I have lots of sockets!

After a quick google search to make sure I knew what a socket was (I know, pathetic) I figured this one out quickly. We have a socket wrench set and I KNEW it had to be in there. The trick was figuring out where in the house the socket wrench set was. It could have been in any of 3 closets, but I was smart and picked the right closet the first time! Inside the kit was my next clue!

Clue #3: To find me you gotta love crispy things!

I instantly knew this one. I started laughing and quoting Brian Regan. If you don't know what I'm talking about, please watch the following video. I promise you it is clean and funny and if you don't laugh there is something wrong with you. Ok, I don't promise there is something wrong with you, but you should probably get checked by a doctor if you don't find this amusing.

Sure enough, in my crisper in my fridge was a bag of potato chips with the next clue on it!

Clue #4: I give you support while you play on me.

Once again I sat on the rug in the living room. I was looking around, what do we play on. I checked the table where we play games. Then I thought "oh, maybe the chairs that we sit on while we play?" But then I figured it out. I sit on a piano bench when I play the piano, and sure enough it was on the bottom of the piano bench.

Clue #5: Be careful when touching me or I might fall.

Seriously? I was like, "what! anything could fall when we touch it!" I was looking at things that were up high, I was looking at things that were fragile... when back to the rug I went. That's when I noticed that something was put away a little wrong. Jenga. Of course! When you touch a Jenga tower you have to be careful or else it will fall! Inside the box was my final clue.

Clue #6: I rest here preparing to be rested on.

This one probably took me the longest. Seriously. After a while Chris was asking me questions-what do we rest on? I told him... our bed, the couches, chairs, I thought of our extra blankets all sorts of stuff and he was pleased with the thought process I had gone through. I had checked our bed... the pillows, the pillow cases, the different layers of the sheets/comforter. Nothing. I looked under the bed, along the side of the bed. I checked all over the couches. After reading the clue AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN I thought I had it figured out. We rest on sheets, right? So maybe it's with the extra sets of sheets we have? We have a drawer under each our washer and dryer, and we have extra sheets and towels in each of those drawers. I opened the first one and was bummed that it wasn't there. Chris said "oh, that's a really good guess though!" so I was disappointed. But then... there it was, inside the second drawer. A box wrapped in our cool new wrapping paper!

I unwrapped it and saw the box. I know not to always trust the boxes, it could just be a box that was laying around that the gift would fit in. But when I saw this box I KNEW it was what was really inside it. We didn't have an empty box like this laying around.

I don't know if you can read it, but the box says kindle paperwhite! I got really excited at this point. We'd been looking at Kindles for a little bit because I thought it might be cool. The Paperwhite is a new model that just came out, Chris had preordered it and had to actually wait for it for a few weeks. It ended up coming a week before he was expecting it, which was why he decided he just HAD to give it to me early. Plus, he knew that with Amazon purchases you have 30 days to return stuff, so he wanted to give me enough time to use it and make sure I liked it before the return period ran out. He also knew that a few days after my birthday I would be going out of town, so he wanted to make sure I had it set up and had time to get some books on it, plus buy any accessories I may need. Today my case is coming, really any minute now. I had hoped when I started writing this post that the UPS man would show up before I finished so I could take a picture of the Kindle in the new case, but George hasn't shown up yet (what, are you not on a first name basis with your UPS man?) so you'll have to deal with this picture instead:

You may remember me blogging a while ago about a book called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. I loved it, thought it was fantastic, and think everyone should read it. She just put out a second (really it's not her second book, but the second on this topic) book called Happier at Home, and that was the first book I actually bought for my Kindle. Something I love is that there are SO many free books in the Kindle store. There are so many old classics that I haven't ever read that I can get for free, so now I decided it's finally time. I've got The Secret Garden, Jane Eyre, Little Women, Les Mis, and a couple others so far. Some of them may end up taking me a while to read, so I like that I can read it on my time, and not have to worry about needing to renew/return things to the library.

Now that I've had it for a week, I can say that I LOVE it! Chris has a Kindle Fire from his work that he has been using for a side project he's been working on, so I got to test it out once but I felt like the lights on it strained my eyes. I was so happy to find that I can read for a while on this Kindle without hurting my eyes. I love it. I can't wait to take it on the airplane with me next week and know that I have several books to choose from and can read whatever I want. Also, it only weighs 7.5 ounces, so that's a lot better than carrying several books in my bag. Oh, and did I mention it's small and super easy to stick in my purse? I wish I had had it this summer when we were going to the Dr a ton for Chris, it would've been fantastic to have especially at the ENT where we regularly had to wait for over an hour.

What is it?

A few weeks ago we were driving somewhere, I don't remember where, but we saw this thing in front of us. We weren't sure what exactly it was... a car or a boat. It seriously was a boat with a wheel, driving on the road. It was going about 70 mph, and I know that because we were going 70. What would you call this thing?

My apologies

This post is for Sandy, who reminded me in my comments section that it was time for a new post. And it's also for my mom, who told me over the phone today that Sandy had commented that I need a new post.

The last month hasn't been too eventful. We've been getting back in the swing of things with Chris's health being a lot more normal. I've been playing catchup with my school work, since I kind of fell oh, 3 months behind. My class is due February 14th and I still have a ways to go! I keep reminding myself how much the course and materials cost, and I won't let that money go to waste!

We've been stalking Apple stores to get Chris the right new iPhone. He started out with a black one, but then realized it had some issues, and then wanted to return it and get a white one. Well, the supplies for this particular phone were somewhat limited so it's been quite the process! We actually ended up taking a day trip up to Austin to pick one up a few weekends ago because he was able to get one on hold for him at a store up there. We almost went to Ikea as well, but then I remembered the General Relief Society Broadcast and we decided we better just go home. Our trip to Ikea will just have to wait, and that's okay. We want to FINALLY get nightstands for our room, although I'm a huge fan of the 18 gallon buckets we've been using for the last 2+ years.

The Young Women are getting ready to have Young Women in Excellence, so I've been working with them on a special musical number. We also were asked to sing at a combined RS/YW Christmas activity, so we're getting ready to start working on a Christmas song. I'm thinking "Were you There on That Christmas Night" but I haven't decided if I really want to teach it to them or not. It's kind of a special song to me and I'm not sure I want to share it with the YW. Then it will be time for New Beginnings. I'll be glad for February to be over so the YW won't have to sing anywhere for a while.

OH! The Sunday before General Conference I went into Nursery to do singing time (they don't have a nursery music person) with each of the two nursery classes, and it was probably one of the best times I've had at church! The older class kind of just stared at me as I sang, until I had them march around the room singing Do as I'm Doing, then we had a good time. The younger class blew my mind! A few of the kids totally sang along (meaning they sang the few words they knew) with several of the songs, and they did actions if there were actions. My little friend Seth was in the younger nursery class and he was really excited to see me, and he sang along so well! A few days later he told his mom "Marci, Popcorn" as in "Marci sang Popcorn Popping" and it was pretty rad. He and his mom came to my house a few days ago to return something and he asked to sing Popcorn with me. It was super awesome. Nursery singing time is the best!

And there you have it, friends. An update from me :)