I know, I know; it's been a long time

I'm not sure why I got out of the habit of posting on my blog. I think life and all its business just got away from me. As it will be too difficult to go back and post each event individually, here's a run down of the past 8 months (what a horrifyingly long time):

October 2010

• Worked on getting a Visa for one an employee of my company to move to Singapore for two years. It was a painful process and took me over a month.
• Had a Halloween party at my house (I dressed as a witch this year to balance the angel I dress as last year.)
  
• Celebrated Ava's birthday.

November 2010

• Saw The Scarlet Pimpernel at the Hale Center Theater. My good friend, Melissa, was a member of the cast. It was awesome.
• Was called to be a co-chair of the Service Committee in my ward.
• Helped organize my company's attendance at SuperComputing 2010. Two of my bosses attended.
• Attended the Sara Bareilles concert in Salt Lake with Matt and Emily Smith. It was amazing. Afterwards we ended up at Marie Callendars and had pie.
  
• Thanksgiving at my parent's new house. We were all able to eat in the same huge room. Grandma Roberts brought down some albums which I looked through and decided to scan photos from over the next few months.
• One of my bosses went on a trip to Angola which causes me a lot of heartburn (knowing that he could have been kidnapped or that he might have stepped on a landmine.)
• Celebrated Emily's birthday as well as my own
• Got a new driver's license (after a two hour ordeal at the DMV.)
  

December 2010

• Attended my ward Christmas, which included a white elephant gift exchange.
• Attended my company Christmas party, which all 3 of my bosses were late to. I ended up throwing my Christmas bonus (cash in $20 bills) in the trash and didn't realize it until I was on my way home. I returned immediately and was let in by one of the cleaning crew. The bonus was no where to be found but he let me search through bags of garbage that hadn't been taken to the dumpster. While searching I said a prayer that I would be able to find it. After a lot of searching it was found (although the envelope had quite a bit of food on it.) I decided to use the money for a good cause and spent it spreading Christmas cheer.
• Organized a Sub for Santa event for my ward where we raised a couple hundred dollars. We went shopping in groups for an FHE activity and then my Service Committee co-chair and I delivered the gifts to our family. Afterwards so many people gave us more money that we asked for another family (more about this later.)
• Christmas with the family. All the kids were so cute and we were all blessed with many presents. Two of note were a wonderful pillow that Alison made to match my quilt from Brooke and an amazing necklace from my parents.
• A New Years Eve party at my house

So there are the updates from 2010. I will soon post a few updates from the first 6 months of 2011. It's nice to be back in the world of blogging.

Cupcakes

In January, we had a cupcake decorating contest for a Family Home Evening activity. I didn't decorate one but was pretty impressed by some of the people. I provided the cupcakes, icing, food coloring, and candy. The winner, decided by my one committee member, was the cookie monster cupcake.

Photo scavenger hunt

Tonight my ward participated in a photo scavenger hunt for FHE. The list was as follows:

1. One member of the group doing a handstand.
2. One member of the group with a boat.
3. Two members of the group on their cell phones.
4. Three members of the group by a Yield sign.
5. Two members going down a slide.
6. Three or more members forming a letter of the alphabet with their bodies.
7. Three members of the team with someone in uniform.
8. One team member next to a California license plate.
9. All four members of the team with blue tongues.
10. Two members of the team on a diving board.
11. All four members of the team with a sign that says "Orem" on it.
12. Three members of the team in a public laundromat.
13. Three members of the team with a member of the FHE committee.
14. Two or more members of the team under a bed.
15. Two or more team members wearing sombreros.
16. Three team members playing with light sabers in the toy aisle of a store.
17. Three team members having a picture taken with a bald man with a goatee.
18. One team member with a live farm animal.
19. One team member checking out a book from the library.
20. One team member ordering something from the Wendy's drive through.

They had one hour to get as many done as they could and the winning team of four people won gift certificates to a local movie theater. One team got all twenty (I know since I checked the pictures to verify.) I actually did not participate, hence the lack of pictures. I kicked the event off by handing out the lists and then I was on my laptop for an hour doing some work. Due to HP's visit to our office today I am really behind in my work. Instead of doing my usual stuff I took 23 typed pages of notes. There are many a meeting invite that I haven't responded to and I haven't even started the agenda for tomorrow's Executive Committee meeting. Despite this I am ready for bed and don't think I will stay up to work anymore.

Box Social

As some of you might know I am co-chair of the Family Home Evening Committee in my ward. This means that I get to plan and carry out activities every Monday evening for anywhere from 15-50 people. When I first received the calling in August, I decided that my co-chair and I should meet and try to plan three months in advance instead of trying to pull together ideas each week. Andrew and I met and planned out activities until Halloween. While we were planning, my roommate mentioned that her ward in Idaho once did a box social. My only experience with a box social is watching Oklahoma, where Laurey’s basket of food is bid on my Curly and Judd, the two rivals for her affections. Curley even sells his saddle and horse in order to win the basket and date with Laurey.

The point of a lunch box social in the past has always been to raise money. Women would make a meal and place it in a decorated basket or box. Men would then bid on the boxes. The top bidder would then share the meal with the maker of the basket of food. In order to simplify the process we decided that it would be a dessert box social instead of a lunch box social. Also, we decided that people would bet with skittles instead of money since we were more interested in the social aspect of the situation.

We had a hard time publicizing it because of Stake and Ward conference but we did the best we could, including sending a Facebook invitation to those ward members that use Facebook and an e-mail to the entire ward. We planned to do it at church but found out the night before that it wouldn’t be available. We planned on having it outside but it rained. Despite these two bumps in the road, it ended up to be a good experience. We ended up with 28 people, which is actually pretty good for an activity that hasn’t been attempted in our ward before. 15 girls and 2 guys brought boxes. 11 other guys showed up so we were almost evenly matched. It was so fun to see how each of the boxes were decorated. Some people just used a simple gift bag but some really went all out. For example, Marne made one that looked like a box right out of a Mario game. One girl did leopard print and another used green duct tape.

My co-chair, Andrew, was the auctioneer and he did a great job. My box, with two pieces of cake from Gloria’s Little Italy, was bought by Tyson, who is friend of mine. All the couples sat down and enjoyed their desserts (although a few had three in their group since girls outnumbered guys.) People who had never really spent much time together got a chance to talk and get to know each other. All in all I think it was a pretty good activity. I totally give props to R, my roommate, for the idea.