Housekeeping Items

First, I just want to say "Happy Birthday!" to my big brother, Dave. I won't say how old he is, but it is 4 years older than me. Just try and crack that code! Now, I didn't want to have to use this picture over there, but when I searched my picture folders, this one came up first and I absolutely could not resist. This photo was created using the webiste yearbookyourself.com. And it always makes me laugh. Just like Dave himself.





Second, I just want to say that also today my little bro, Brian, is leaving the mission office to go back out into the field. He has been an AP (Assistant to the Mission President) for about 9 months in Bilbao, Spain. He is going with his new companion to re-open a part of the mission in a non-Basque part of the country. He is completely excited about it and so I am thinking about him today as he says goodbye to the office and finishes his mission working like a dog. A happy, Spanish-speaking dog that wears tiny, little dress pants.

No more road trips for you, young man!


He won't be phoning it in. This Elder is gonna WORK for the next 3 months! Believe it!


And thirdly, yesterday morning I was in our master bathroom (and let me just say that the only thing 'master' about it is that it is attached to the room that Jacob and I sleep in, nothing else) and I realized that I pretty much hate that bathroom. I have never painted it, I do absolutely anything and everything to avoid cleaning it and over the past month the kids' towels and shampoo bottles have been multiplying like rabbits in a hutch in there. So at 8am, like some possessed robot, I went to the garage, dug out some paint we already had, started mixing it and by 2pm I had completely painted the bathroom. I also had cleaned it, put some different artwork on the wall, put in 3 new towels, a new shower liner and it feels totally different! Amazing. Here it is:



The photo doesn't really do it justice. But here is some trivia for you- I painted that picture you see on the wall. Paint-by-number, YES, but still, I did paint it...
(And I told you there was nothing 'master' about the bathroom...)

I think it looks pretty good considering what it looked like BEFORE:



Now you see the transformation, huh?