First impressions

Okay, so we went to our potential new ward this past Sunday and got our first glimpse of our new circle of church acquaintances. They start at 9 this year; which I enjoyed.

I love how all the church building have somewhat of a similar layout and design, so that no matter where you are, there is at least a smidgen of similarity you can cling on to! This building is new and serves our little city and the one next to it also. Anyway, everything went pretty well. No psycho testimonies of seeing angels (that's what we saw when we went to a fast and testimony meeting with Scott's sister in Cali!), nobody that seemed too weird, nothing too scary. A guy that looked like Weird Al with a beard greeted us at the door, but he was nice enough that the scary, long, wavy hair and facial hair didn't throw me off too much. The ward started out looking like a branch with how few people were there, but after about 15 minutes, there were enough people to open the overflow and fill a couple of those rows. So I think, in total, the ward is about the same size as our old ward in Sunset. It was also a nice mix of old and young people, too.


The bishop and the 1st councilor smiled through most of the meeting; which gave me hope that it is a friendly ward. And Emmy made friends with a little girl across the pew whose mommy had made her an origami crane just like the one Teagan had made for Emmy to play with. We later found out that she belonged to the 2nd councilor's family. Her mom adored Emmett because she always wanted an "Emmett" but she had one boy and 5 girls. So the little crane girl was supposed to be Ryan Emmett, but instead she was Janelle something.

Um, so sacrament went well. It was nice that it was fast and testimony, that way we got to see a lot of different people up there and sort of feel them out a bit. No kids got up to bear their testimonies, which I missed a little, but the people who got up gave nice testimonies all the same.

Then afterward sacrament, the kids went straight to their classes - the new primary room numbers were printed in the ward bulletin, so they already knew where to go without having to ask anyone. They all did great and went without fear. Emmy even went right into nursery and stayed when I took him, even though one little girl was in there screaming her lungs out. The nursery leader seems like she has nursery down to a science - here is a wall with a hanging shoe holder on it where each child has a pocket that holds their drawings from that day and the sippy cup you bring for them for snack time. That way you just check their pocket and get all their things. She also has a snazzy schedule made up and laminated pictures of each of the kids...very Utah-ish :-) All Cricut made and such. But he went, he stayed, and he even asked them to go to the bathroom when he needed, so all was well with him!

Gospel Doctrine was pretty dry. Nothing to report there. In RS it was the Sunday that the YW join for opening, so I got to see Tig and that was nice...I was needing some familiarity right about then. She knew something was up when I linked arms with her and told her to come share a chair with me.Then after they left back to YW, the RS lesson wasn't anything super either. I apparently had sat in the right corner because there were also four other moms there with little baby boys who rolled and crawled around the corner where we were. So I got to see Duncan's future playmates :-)

After church the kids all came back thrilled with their classes, and excited for the upcoming weekday activities that are scheduled. So it looks like we will be trekking back over there this Wednesday evening for Teagan to go to Standards Night with John Bytheway and for Garrett to do his scout things.

I tried to keep an open mind about all the people around me; that someone might be a good friend if I make sure I don't let appearance, or fear , or whatever inhibit me...but, yeah, I'm still me so there wasn't much headway made. I'm still thinking that my kids are good enough friends for me...who needs more, right?! I have a history for taking 5 years of staying in one place before I open up and relax a bit and start making friends and I was thinking of trying to change that, but now I'm rethinking that thought!

 As I looked around the chapel, it was funny, I kept seeing people from our Sunset ward - this lady reminded me of so and so, or this man sounds like Bro. blah blah. Even Scott was doing it, so I didn't feel too badly about comparing them to people in our circle of normality! It only got scary when I was looking at the boys passing sacrament and thought to myself, "You know, some of these boys might be kids who ask Teagan out on a date in 4 or 5 years." All of a sudden, they didn't look so innocent and outstanding; I immediately got really judgemental on all of them! It was a funny little epiphany moment I had all by myself!

After church, we all went out to a lake near our new house and went hiking. It was a fun hike and the weather was great for it - no rain and in the low 50's. At the trail head there was a sign warning to be on the lookout for black bears, cougars, and Sasquatches and then gave rules of what to do if you come across any of them. Just as an FYI, you are not to feed a Sasquatch if you ever did find one!