Holiday Baking

So, I've gotten a bee in my bonnet about holiday baking/candy-making. I just have to make a mess in the kitchen or I'm going to implode with boredom. So, without further ado, I present to you this year's holiday baking list!

• Chewy Gingerbread Bars
• Cookie Dough Truffles
• Creamy Dreamy Fudge
• Chocolate White Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Shortbread Cookies

My mouth is watering already. Now, the worst part - grocery list making and grocery shopping. If I could figure out a way around these two tasks, cooking would be much, MUCH more enjoyable. As it is though, I happen to love cooking, so I guess it's a good thing that there is something to prevent me from cooking (and baking!) myself, and my family into an oblivion. :) I'll post pictures when I'm done! And if you're local and want some, let me know. I'll have more than enough to share!! :)

And if you find yourself with nothing to do over the next three evenings, might I suggest the Apex Nativity Celebration? It's a three night long celebration of Christ at the Mormon chapel in Apex. There's hundreds of nativities from all over the world, beautiful decorations and paintings displayed and wonderful music. And on Saturday night, there's a performance of Handel's Messiah with a full choir and orchestra. It's an amazing event and I highly recommend seeing it!

A time for everything

Today, I attended the funeral service for a friend of mine that I've known since middle school. Jimmy had cystic fibrosis and fought the good fight up to the very end. Jimmy was catholic and we attended the memorial mass for him this morning. One of the readings from the service today came from Ecclesiastes chapter 3. The verses that stuck out to me particularly were the following:

          1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

          2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

What struck me most was the second verse. Not the "time to die" part, but the "time to be born" part. It got me thinking about my baby and her time. Her time to be be born is now. Matt and I had our struggle with getting pregnant, and just when I was about to give up, I found out about our little pinto bean.

For so long, I had been asking God, "Why not now?" I could not see at the time, blinded as I was by baby fever, that it was not the best time. The time for our daughter to be born was not a year ago or even this month. Her time is soon to come and not a moment sooner. Looking back, I can understand that it wasn't yet my season to be a mother. I just couldn't understand that, while my impatient heart was yearning for something I seemingly couldn't have. It just wasn't her time... yet.

And that is the hardest part sometimes. Understanding that we don't live on our time schedule. We live on God's. Just as my daughter's time is soon to come, so too, was it Jimmy's time to lay his mortal life by and return to our Father in Heaven; to breathe easy in the presence of God and Our Savior, Jesus Christ.

I know that God has a plan and a purpose for all of us, but there is a season for everything. And often the periods between seasons are the hardest to get through. But patience and dedication are the only ways we can get from one season to the next. We have to be patient with ourselves, and know that God will provide a way, even if it doesn't seem clear to us at the time. It's been a hard lesson to learn, and I'm not sure I've learned it fully yet. I just pray that I will have the patience to wait for those seasons and be able to rejoice in them, even if it seems hard or near impossible. Like Elder Jeffery R. Holland says in the following video, "Trust God, and believe in good things to come."



I want to bear my testimony of Christ and His love. He gives it freely to all those who seek Him. And if we continually seek after Christ, our lives will be blessed and uplifted to that of the Divine. I know my Savior lives and I say these things, in Jesus' name, amen.

GIRL'S CAMP!!!

The girls putting up their tent!

When we first moved into the ward, the Bishop asked us if we could have any calling in the ward, what would it be. I immediately answered, "Girl's camp." He looked incredibly surprised and said with a smile, "Well, alright then. I'll keep that in mind." A few months later, I was called to be a girl's camp leader and have practically begged them not to release me every year since. The pictures are from last year's camp!

Hangin' out!

Three years later, I still love going and having a chance to see the young women let loose! I also get to see the girls that started in activity days when I was in the Cary 2 ward. Umm, they are practically grown ups now! It is so weird.

My girls at the evening program

As you can probably tell, camp is this week and I'm looking forward to have air conditioned cabins! I think having to sleep in the heat, on the ground while being 14 weeks pregnant would not be an all together pleasant experience.

Grilled cheese sammiches are the best!

I am, however, sad to think this is probably my last year to go to camp for a while. Next year I'll have a 6 month old and won't be able/want to leave him or her for a week. Although, it might be nice to have a break from one of my three callings. I'll definitely miss going to camp next year, though!

The Amazing Deflating Tent!

Amazing find!!

Working part time at the bookstore affords me many luxuries. Of these small blessings is the fact that I can listen all sorts of great LDS music for free twice a week. I don't ever bother buying cd's that I like because I can listen to them while I work. One of my new favorite cds is one by Vocal Point, the BYU men's acapella group. This cd includes two really great songs, one being a Super Mario Bros medley and other being a very different arrangement of Nearer My God to Thee. Nearer My God to Thee is one of my favorite hymns any way, being that is was one of the first (if not the very first) hymn I really learned to play on the piano.

Any way, I was listening to it at work and decided I would see if I could buy the sheet music somewhere. I searched for it and on their website, for free, was the arrangement for Nearer My God to Thee. It's the only one they have on their website and the composer has given anyone the rights to copy it and perform it. !!! Holy crap that never happens!

So, I printed off the music and began to obsess and have decided that I want to rewrite it for a women's choir and/or mixed choir. It's just too pretty to let it be just for boys. :) If and when I finish it, I might just put it up here for you to use and distribute as you see fit. In the meantime, for your aural pleasure, I present Vocal Point singing Nearer My God to Thee:

Girl's Camp: Tuesday and Wednesday

On Tuesday, we (the girls and leaders from our ward) met at Sandy's and drove up to the campsite (which as previously mentioned is more like a resort than a camp, but whatever). It was pouring rain when we were packing the cars and didn't stop all day. Sometimes it would lighten up for a few minutes before continuing to pour. This didn't stop us, though. Since there wasn't any lightning, we continued on with our activities!


The main event on Tuesday for the fourth year girls (to which I was assigned) was a service project for the campsite. We went to a trail adjacent to the camp, killed the poison ivy, poison oak, etc. that was near the trail and marked it. I'm not sure we did a great job at it since they split us into groups and I wasn't really sure what exactly we were supposed to do, but we did our best. In addition to the fourth years doing this, the first years also helped out. It was a lot of fun talking about snipes and snipe hunting. :) I remember my first snipe hunt...

Any way, since we were in the woods, we didn't get too rained on (which was nice because it was kind of cold too) and after we were finished serving, the girl's broke into certification groups, then dinner.

After dinner, we had the evening program. (Let me preface this next part by saying that all of the wards did a great job on their songs and I could tell they put a lot of effort into it.) At the evening program all the wards performed their songs and our song kicked all the other ward's songs trashes!! Heh heh heh... Also, our ward banner was the best and we had a cabin to ourselves which we made awesome. Everyone wanted to be us. :) *sigh* I'm the best camp assistant director ever. :)

On Wednesday, the morning was spent doing certification and then the fourth years split into groups to do high ropes, or archery and firearms. I went with the archery and firearms group the first day. It was raining again, but it was a lot of fun. I even got to shoot a few arrows and got a turn with the bb gun. That night's evening program consisted of us singing a song nobody knew how to sing and the Pyne's (Verne and Nancy) speaking to the girls.

Unfortunately, one of the girls was really homesick and didn't feel well. She ended up going home that evening, which was sad. I wish she could've stayed the whole week. I think she would've had a lot of fun. However, the other Sister Davis showed up that night. I eventually got frustrated when the girl's would say, "Sister Davis," and we both would answer. And since I am a relative newcomer into young women's, most of the time, they weren't talking to me.

As we were talking in our bunks after lights out, I mentioned something about it to Shanon (sister Davis), and one of the girl's overheard. She suggested the names Sister Cherry and Sister Bananas. I became Sister Cherry because I had cherries all over my sleep pants and the other Sister Davis became Sister Banana I think in part because she's a blonde and in part because she's crazy! :) Even at church on Sunday, I was greeted by the girl's as Sister Cherry. It was nice.

Photo courtesy of istockphoto.com

Girl's Camp: Intro

I am the assistant director for the girl's camp in our ward. I have wanted this calling FOREVER!! After serving my 8 month sentence in nursery (which cured me of ever wanting to have children), I think the bishopric decided to throw me a bone and let me be part of girl's camp.

This past week was girls camp at a really nice place in Randleman NC. We were "camping" (I use the term very loosely) at a Woodmen of the World campsite which included cabins with air conditioning (which technically we were only allowed to run at night), a mess hall with air conditioning, large swimming pool with a deep end and diving board, archery range, shooting range, high ropes course with a zip line and a putt-putt course.

I'm still in the process of getting the pictures off my camera and sorting through the good ones and the bad ones, so pictures will have to wait, although there are several on facebook, if you're willing to look for them.

I honestly think that pairing me with Sister Starritt (who was really in charge) was inspired. We balanced each other out really well. I have never gone camping before where I had to pack everything that we would need for the campsite, but Sandy thought of everything. I brought several things that she didn't, though. I brought all the meds (which was very fortunate because we had a couple of girl's get sick over the week). I also brought extra bugspray, sunscreen and other things like that, that Sandy forgot. I think ultimately, though, I supplied the energy and enthusiasm.

I firmly believe that 90% of how wonderful, or how terrible a situation is comes from our attitude towards it. If you believe you're going to have a great time and are always upbeat and positive about a situation, then chances are, you're going to have a great time. But, if you focus on the negatives of a situation, that's all you'll think about and that's all you'll remember. Having this in mind, I made it my job to excited about everything at camp (Even the KP and bathroom cleaning duties). And it made a lot of difference! Even some of the girl's who didn't really want to be there were excited! We all had so much fun (even when it was cold and rainy or hot and humid!) and I can't wait to tell you all about it!

Chocolate

Our ward decided to do a monthly cooking class hosted by different people each month. This past month, I volunteered to host and teach the class for February. In keeping with Valentine's Day, I decided to do a chocolate night. Here's what was on the menu:

• Chocolate dipped strawberries
• Oreo truffles
• Chocolate chocolate chip cookies
• Death by Chocolate

The ladies that came were hilarious! Perhaps it was the extra endorphins from the chocolate or the company, but everybody was laughing and having a great time! I think the hit of the night was the Death by Chocolate. It's my brother's favorite dessert. He always asks for it for his birthday. It's really easy. Just layer chocolate cake with chocolate sauce, chocolate pudding, whipped cream and heath bar bits. Just keep layering until you've run out of something!! The other thing that people loved the most (but told me about afterwards) were the chocolate chocolate chip cookies. I baked them off at the end and most people took them home to their families. I got the recipe from allrecipes.com (one of my favorite recipe sites). I think these were the best chocolate cookies I've ever had. Here's the link : Cookies! Make them. You'll love them!

Photo courtesy of allrecipes.com and foodie.blog.co.uk