It's All in the Family

About 6 months ago, a set of twin brothers joined my ward.  I have to ask them their names every time I see them since I can't tell them apart.

I had a dream about one of them the other night.  Even in my dream, I didn't know which one I was talking to.  All that I can remember now is that we were at a wedding reception, sitting at a table.  He commented that there must be a red, plastic bird in front of him, bobbing into a cup of water. There was.  It looked like this:

This may not seem like a significant observation to you, but it would if you knew that both he and his brother are blind.

I still remember their first day at church very vividly.  My friend is their cousin, so they sat by us in Sacrament Meeting.  Afterwards, I escorted one of them to Sunday School class.  It just so happened that we were having a lesson from the New Testament on a blind man. Talk about the scriptures having more meaning.

About a week ago, I was sitting next to one of them at a dinner.  I was beyond grateful that I could see my food and the utensils that I needed to bring that food to my mouth.  As we were talking, I asked him if there was anything he would like to invent that would be really helpful to him as a blind person.  I was not expecting the answer I got.  He said, "Honestly, the best thing that a blind person could have in his life is a great family.  I am really lucky to have great parents who support me and who have helped me to be social."  Wow.  I guess that family really is important,  no matter what our situation in life is.

Before & After

Whenever Lydia and I are apart (which is always more than we should be), we send each other "before and after" pictures in the mail.  Over the years, we've seen some pretty good ones. 

 It's amazing how much people can change!

Gotta Love It!

I'm posting this to let you all know that I had a very productive day today.  

When I showed up at work, my desk looked like this:

 Now it looks like this:

  

Since before school started (Aug 10), 

these baskets have been on the floor of my car:

Today, I finally returned the baskets to the dollar store,

and now my car floor looks like this.

Now, I just have to figure out how to get rid of all the oil stains

that mysteriously appeared on my car mats.

Rabbit Reality

Last night, I had a dream that my school was having a fundraiser.  We were selling rabbits to the students for $1 a piece (not so sure this would in actuality raise a lot of funds).  Students could either buy one, two, or three rabbits.  That was pretty much my dream.

The problem was that when I woke up, I was waiting for students to come to my house to pick up their rabbits.  I was supposed to go to the gym, but my twisted logic told me that I couldn't leave the house in case someone stopped by to get a rabbit or two.  So, I missed the gym today.

I wish that I would say that I just made up the rabbit excuse so that I didn't have to work out, but I honestly believed that the events in my dream were real.  Now my roommate is frightened that I am going to hurt someone or do something I'll regret because I can't distinguish reality from dreams.

Take my money

After blogging this morning about how I don't have any stories to tell, I got a story in less than 24 hours.

Today I went to Walmart.  I had 5 things on my list:

1. Q-Tips
2. Swiffer duster
3. Kleenex
4. Milk
5. Salad ingredients

Somehow I ended up spending $100 and I didn't even get any Kleenex. 

Now, I'll just have to get by like this kid:

I guess that I subconsciously decided that I wanted to blow more money after that because I left my purse in the shopping cart and drove home.  Once I was home, I was very confused as to where my purse could have been.  I tried calling my phone to see if I could hear it and some man answered.  He was a Walmart worker.  He might even be part of the "Asset Protection" team. He told me what a doofus I was and where I could pick my purse up.

So basically, I'm very, very, very thankful that some honest person found my purse and I'm going to try to not be such an airhead in the future.

Out of Material

I've got nothing. 

No dreams. 

 No funny stories. 

 I feel like I've been doing a lot,

but I don't know really what to say about it.

  So, I'll just tell you what I've been doing

and then you and come up with some
 funny/interesting/boring thoughts in your head about it.

Last weekend, I went to see The Lamb of God.

I got free tickets at the last moment.  I've heard that Rob Gardner was talented, but I really had no idea how wonderful it was really going to be.  Click here to see a preview of one of the songs.  I can't be certain, but it really looks like the composer has no shoes on, which I find to be very amusing.

One of the people that I went with has OCD.  Which reminds me that I've also been telling everyone about this t-shirt, which I also find to be very amusing:

 

I also went ice skating.

I refrained from busting out these skills 

as I did not want to intimidate the other young single adults.

Mostly, I've been spending WAY too much time at work.

Luckily, there are little things that make 

lesson planning and grading papers more bearable.

Like when a student leaves a note like this at the bottom of his assignment:

 Here's the other side:

Tonight, I will be hanging out with Betsy Ross and John Hancock at the Constitution Fair.

Apparently, most people are excited to see David Archuleta there. I, personally, am most excited about the

parachuters!

2nd Best Birthday Party Game

Does anyone else remember playing this game?  There are several random items on a cookie sheet.  Then your friend's mom covers them with a towel and removes one item.  She takes the towel off and you try to figure out which item it missing.

Well at school, we started a unit on mystery books and let me tell you, it's pretty much the best thing ever.  We had a staged mystery and the kids made detective hats and soon we'll get to eat red herrings (Swedish Fish).  It was suggested that we play the birthday party game I mentioned above to get them to start paying attention to details.  I couldn't very well imagine that I wanted to give 27 sets of eyeballs enough time to stare at little items on a cookie sheet.  So, I made a 21st century version of the game.  Do you want to play? You can if you just click here.  If the slideshow doesn't start right away, click VIEW and then START PRESENTATION (instead of just scrolling through the slides really quickly or it will totally give it away). Have fun!


P.S. Are you still wondering what the number one birthday party game is?  Well, you stand over a Mason jar holding a clothes pin next to your nose.  Then you release the clothes pin and hope it makes it in the jar.  It may sound strange, but it was my favorite.  Maybe I'll play it at my next party.

Anybody Want a Peanut?

One of the perks of visiting Lydia is that she makes REALLY YUMMY food.  Seriously, it's beyond delicious.  I'm sure all my other friends make good food too.  They just haven't made it for me yet.  So, invite me over sometime and I'll rave about it on my blog for you. A small price to pay for yummy food.

Anyway, one of the things Lydia has cooked for me is called Thai Chicken.  It's basically a Thai version of Hawaiian Haystacks.  How can you go wrong with chunky peanut butter AND peanuts as ingredients (unless you're allergic, of course)?

Afterwards, I decided to make it for my brother's birthday party so he'd feel special.  It turned out that there were some communication issues and he didn't even end up coming to his own dinner.  Too bad for him because he really missed out.   My parents got to enjoy it, though, and my mom asked me to email her the recipe.

I kept putting it off, but she emailed me thanking her for the recipe a few weeks later.  I couldn't even remember sending it to her, but I was glad that I didn't need to worry about it anymore.

Soon, Lindsay was requesting good recipes.  I knew just what to send her.  Plus, I already had it in my sent box, so it would be super easy to share the recipe.  I searched and searched through my emails and even with gmail's awesome search tool, I still couldn't find it. :(

After talking with my mother, I discovered the email I got from her was actually in a dream. I never sent it to her.  I've received several text messages in dreams, but this was my first dream email.  It's really kind of hard to distinguish real technology from dream technology.  I'm lucky this hasn't gotten me into any sort of real trouble so far.

In the midst of figuring this all out, I lost my written recipe and Lydia had to email it to me.  In order to avoid losing it, I'll save it in my inbox AND share the google docs link for all to enjoy.

Thai Chicken

I apologize that the colors on my plate don't make it look super appetizing.