Guest Blog: [Weight]ing for a Mission Call by Teach

So as all of you likely know I’m preparing to leave on a mission here shortly. It has been quite a hefty process and has been a long time coming. I made this huge decision back in June when I turned 21, and was shortly followed with a huge struggle to lose enough weight to reach the weight limit for the mission. I’ve learned a lot through this process and six months and 2 days later I finally hit my goal.

I met with my stake president and submitted my paperwork on December 18. Now here’s the thing. In the past it would take about 10 days for a call to come after the paperwork had been submitted. If you do quick math, you will realize that my call should have been here quite a while ago. A couple factors have played into this delay in my call coming. First, it was the holidays. I knew that it would be hard for the church headquarters to make the assignment so I wasn’t planning on my call coming until the first Wednesday in January. But Wednesday came and went and the mailbox was empty. 

Taken 7.22.12 

So we looked into the second factor. With the new age change (elders can leave at 18 and sisters can leave at 19) there has been an influx of new missionary applications coming in and it’d be very busy in the downtown offices. So I waited. And hoped. And prayed. I was very anxious that my call would come January 9^th, but once again it wasn’t in the mail.

Taken 1.5.13 36 lbs (ish) later 

Thursday while I was at work I got a call from my bishop.  I couldn’t call him back but I texted my mom and freaked out for a good solid 20 minutes via texts. Finally my wonderful mother called my bishop and discovered the problem. Simple, but necessary to solve. They’d lost my doctor’s note which verified that I’d reached the weight limit. Thank goodness my mom was inspired to make a copy of the note from the doctor before we gave the original to the bishop. She scanned and emailed the note to the Bishop and he hand delivered it to the Brethren who processed it today. My Ward Clerk texted me and said that my status in the system has gone from “In Progress” to “Ready for Assignment.” We are finally almost there!! If the call is made tomorrow, then I will receive it in the mail either next Wednesday or Thursday.  Pray that they make the decision tomorrow, because I may not hold out for another week!

And so…the question of the year is where?? Where will I serve this mission?? 

I’m taking guesses starting now! You’re allowed one state side guess and one foreign guess. We’ll write your name on the map.

Thanks for all of your support

~ Sister Teach 

A Rhetorical Question

I have some things I seem to say over and over in my life... "Who made this mess?" "Go to bed!" and "I really need chocolate!" One of my very favorites is "Why did I even bother to cook?" This is one of those rhetorical questions I don't ever expect anyone to answer.

Tonight was one of those nights.

But first I have to backtrack to about a week before Christmas. My sweetie and I were heading out to Sam's Club. We needed to pick up stuff for the family Christmas Party and I put Teach in charge of the kids. As I was explaining all of the things I needed her to have the kids accomplish while I was gone, I jokingly offered to get her an extra present. Her answer was that it wasn't worth it. To which I replied, "I'll get you two!"

While we were in Sam's, I looked for something she would like that I would probably never buy. The first thing I grabbed was a bag of dried apricots, and on the next row I found a package of Quinoa (a name that I mispronounced for a couple of weeks until today when I actually read the package...it sounds like keen-wa).

On Christmas Eve I wrapped both gifts and put them under the tree. Teach was sure surprised when she opened them until I reminded her of the story. Ever since then she has harassed me to find a recipe that includes quinoa so that we could share it with the family. So that day was today.

We searched the internet until we found something that looked pretty good; like it might compliment Mexican cuisine pretty well. It had corn, black beans, and cilantro also mixed up with the cooked quinoa. I could have served it with quesadillas, but when I want to torture my children, I torture them good! I decided to use a box mix for Chicken Chili. I was ready to go when I realized that the chili only served 6 (not that it mattered, I was pretty sure I couldn't even get six of them to try it...)

So I doctored it up a bit.

By the time I was done it was looking pretty nasty. The kids would never eat it! So I put a handful of mozzarella cheese on top. That seemed to help a little with its apparent lack of appeal. The Quinoa dish came out looking much like the picture on the web, but I was pretty sure my picky eaters would have nothing to do with it.

I also cooked some veggie skewers that I assumed only my sweetie and I would eat. My only kindness was some hard rolls I grabbed at the store when I stopped by for the cilantro.

Dinner went much the way you might have expected. I offered the pickiest one roll unless they tried something new. Each took an extremely tentative bite of the chili. Baby Doll held up her little bowl for seconds and then thirds before I realized that she was only eating the melted cheese on top.

Quite frankly, I didn't love the food either...

My sweetie showed up about an hour after the rest of us had finished eating. He values his marriage, so he is usually pretty good to at least try everything. I was reading to the kids so I didn't go with him into the kitchen. I figured he would take a bite, shake his head, give his standard, "It's not my favorite" response and make himself some toast or a bowl of cereal.


Imagine my surprise when I started cleaning up and he asked me to put the leftovers in his lunch tomorrow! So in answer to my rhetorical question..."Why do I even bother to cook?"

I guess it's obvious. Against all odds, someone might actually LIKE it.

A New Game

After basketball practice tonight, Princess reminded me that she needed an erasable pen. It was 10:38, so Teach, Princess, and I ran to Smith's Marketplace. Teach had something else in mind that she wanted to buy. It was a new game called Bananagrams that she had played over with weekend with some friends. We got home shortly after 11:00 and Teach convinced me that instead of writing a post for all of you, first I had to play.

I like board games, but I hate figuring out instructions and if they get too complicated, count me out. So I grumbled a bit, but eventually I was a good sport and I sat down with her, the Dog Walker, Baby Doll, and Prima Donna (I know, they should have been sleeping...).

As it turned out, the game was fun and relatively easy (at least the rules were easy). It's sort of like Scrabble except that everybody plays at the same time. I don't know why it's called Bananagrams except that all the tiles are kept in this little yellow zippered pouch that looks like a banana.

Teach dumped all the tiles into the middle of the table and started turning them face down so we couldn't see the letters. Baby Doll was tipping them back almost as quickly. Finally she gave her a few of her own to play with and we were able to complete the setup. Yeah, that's it. Put all the tiles in a pile face down. So far, so good, not too complicated.

Then we each chose 30 random tiles without knowing what they were. On her mark, we all turned our tiles as quickly as possible and then tried to make them into a small crossword puzzle. The first person to legitimately use all their tiles wins. That's it!

It would seem relatively easy except that we were playing with the Dog Walker. The first word he objected to was on my side... "sexy.:" Well, what else was I supposed to do with that X? During the next round I used the word "poop." Apparently that was a problem too.

So when the word "sin" showed up on his tiles, of course I had to give him a bad time. Poor guy, he was so confused! After 4 or 5 rounds I slipped out to write my post.

He and Teach are still playing... she just asked me how to spell "feces." I called back, "I'm sure that word is NOT gonna fly." She laughed. "No, it's OK," she answered. "He doesn't know what it means."

Nail Polish

I have a love/hate relationship with nail polish. Like any girl, I want to look nice, but nail polish is just so impractical. If I paint my fingernails (scratch that, if one of the girls paints my fingernails), in less than 24 hours they look like crap! It's all the dishes to wash and clothes to wash and stuff to clean... all of them require water and that destroys polish.

So 98% of the time I do NOT wear fingernail polish. And 98% of the time I DO wear toenail polish. These are my current cute toes. Princess did them for me right after Christmas. They usually last for several months until the holiday changes and then they will redo them for me. Prima Donna will undoubtedly make them pink for Valentine's Day.

And I'm good with that. I've never been able to afford a professional pedicure, but I doubt they could do a much better job than my girls. I train them young. In fact, Baby Doll LOVES having her nails painted! When she notices that the paint is coming off, she pesters her sisters until one of them rectifies the situation.

Tonight it was Teach. Baby Doll showed up carrying a couple of bottles of her favorite color, pink. She flashed those big brown eyes and who could resist?

A few minutes later and she had a fresh coat of polish and a big smile.

Guess whose turn it is next???