Quite an eventful year so far

All right, we are on the 10th day of the new year, yet it feels like much more by all that has been going on. The kids went back to school, which I am divided about my feeling towards. On one hand they are not home bored watching too much TV, on the other hand it means the return of homework and that is definitely not my favorite time spent with my children. Along with the kids return to school came the return of my students from Winter Break. This whole online teaching experience has turned out quite differently than I had anticipated. I was scared and worried that I went through so much training to end up doing something that I didn't like, but to tell you honestly, aside from grading the big assignments, which are only due once every other week, I really am enjoying it. I like getting to know my students and seeing them progress. But hands down the biggest improvement between this and teaching high school is that I don't have to deal with anyone's attitude and I love that.
Another thing that I have been working on lately is getting some of Don's geneology done. In October I finally made it to the Family History Center and they helped me enter what I had and fill in some of the blanks. It was very cool, I felt like I was actually finding people who have been waiting for the gospel, like I was a family missionary. The story gets better....Yesterday we took those names to the Los Angeles Temple. My sister, Tina and I have been talking about doing this for a while and we finally planned it all out. Don and I baptized 26 of his ancestors. We (with the help of some of Tina's friends) performed about 18 initiatories, 5 endowments and 3 sealings, all of Don's family members who I know have been waiting for us. The whole day was amazing, but my favorite part of the day was when I was able to stand as proxy for Don's grandma Amelia as we sealed her to her parents. I have never met Amelia, in fact Don has not even met her, yet I completely felt her surround me as I knelt at that alter. It was amazing. After our long day at the Temple we all went out to dinner for Tina's 40th birthday (which is actually this coming Monday the 11th). We went to a fish place, my food was not that great, but the appetizers were delicious and since I was so full with them before the food came I guess it didn't matter much what the main food tasted like.

Here we all are (my brother in law Dirk, my sister Tina, Dean & Billy Lang, Lisa and Reed LaFeaver, and of course Don and I).  We were sitting right next to a huge window with a beach view, this place was right on the ocean.

 

So I am not the biggest fish lover and therefore, I ordered a chicken sandwich, which came on a weird chabata bun.  I really wasn't that into it, but I was really full anyway.  They turned my left overs into a foil sculpture of a whale, complete with water spout.  Don thought that since we live in Corona, it would be funny to include the Corona bucket. As we were leaving the restaurant a homeless looking man walked by, so I gave him my strange tin foil whale filled with odd chicken sandwich and homemade potato chips.  He seemed to appreciate it, which made me feel better since I probably would have thrown it away anyways.

 

Great picture of Tina blowing out her candle. Check out the giant chocolate cake wedge they brought out to her!

And conveniently I had my camera handy when Dean dropped a large blob of whipped cream on his tie.  Ahhh, too bad! At least it was at the end of the night.

After we got back to Tina's I had to finished grading some papers that were due back by 11pm and then we drove home to finish our talks that we gave this morning in sacrament meeting.  Silly us for waiting until the last minute, but we have been overly busy lately.  We gave our talks on Tithing bright and early this morning at 9am after having stayed up until almost 3am.  Now I can relax a little and maybe take a little Sunday afternoon nap.