Sunday, April 10, 2011

April Happenings-Fool's Day, Performing, and just life.

The morning of April 1st, Bonnie and I got a text from Joe Partridge (our coworker and good friend) exclaiming that his baby came that morning, and no april fools. Honest.
My reply: Do you swear on everything that is holy that this is for real? (because he would totally pull that on us)
Joe Pa: I swear on the love I have for my wife. Room number 1008, visitor key code is...
AAAAHHHHH!!!! Baby Jaden Partridge is here!!
So Bonnie and I went during lunch to meet Baby Jaden and introduce ourselves as his favorite surrogate aunties. :) He is so cute.


He loves us.
Joe Pa, Shauntell, and Baby Jaden (Jay Pa)
Bonnie and I had an April Fool's of our own. I suggested that she wear her old wedding ring to work and announce her engagement to this Adam guy that she has been dating.
She is in the perfect set up, people know she has been dating a guy and it could logically happen.
It was hilarious, we got some people, most people were skeptical, and some saw right through it.
It was General Conference weekend, so lots of gathering at the folks house with all the kiddos. Lucy was loving holding baby Jonathan
And Annabel is growing up so fast. I tried to convince Stu and Lisa to enter her in to a baby modeling contest. Hello, have you seen her face?
She gets so much love from her siblings, they just pick her up and pack her to wherever they are playing and wrestle with her, no big deal. She is a good sport.
And Buddy gets cuter the more I see him. Priceless smile, right here.
My neice Kate, in Washington, is getting baptized in May, actually there are 3 nieces getting baptized in May, July, and August, so my mom pulled out 'the baptism dress'. This dress has been in the family for years, all us sisters, cousins, nieces, etc have worn it, so lots of sentimental value.

My mom has been collecting dolls, well she has been collecting dolls all her life, but she has been seriously working on her collection these last few weeks. We pulled them out and the kids had a ball with them.
oooohhhh, baby Jonathan. He loves me. He looks totally like Sean. And this is me after my final rehearsal for the Body Logic Show-this upcoming week is concert week!
We celebrated Bob's birthday on Saturday night after the priesthood session.
I love my Bobby!
He is the greatest! :)
Sunday morning I went to General Conference with Graden and Bonnie and Adam. The Music and the Spoken Word was fantastic and the session was incredible, of course. The theme of that session was blaringly about welfare and preparing to live the law of consecration so we can take care of each other. It reaffirmed to me the most important thing I am doing right now is getting out of debt and preparing financially to be in a position to give back and consecrate my life to the building of the Kingdom. Perfect, I am on track.
I hung out at Graden's house for the second session of general conference on Sunday and it was SO interesting. Lots of different feelings. It was great to get to know his family, meet his friend Tyrell, and see his brother Jamen again. Jamen, Graden, and I were all in the BYU 56th ward Fall 2010. Graden was my Home Teacher and has remained my home teacher for life. He will call and check in every once in a while. He's great!
Max.
My mom in her 'natural habitat'. :)
She has always said that her place in the kingdom is in the nursery.
She loves children and always has, she has devoted her life to her children and it is inspiring.
Sunday night, my aunt Laneth (mom's sister, can you tell :)) and uncle Jim stopped by for a visit, they were in town for General Conference.
Okay, my aunt Laneth is hilarious and I know that, but this visit was the funnest conversation I have ever had with her. She was telling us about her calling as ward music chair and pianist-she has no real musical talents, but participates in choir as a faithful member of the ward. So she accepts the calling and the musical numbers she arranged went off, but underneath she is just laughing to herself. It is way better when she tells it because she embellishes it just at the right moments to to get us rolling. Holy Cow!
The dolls.

Okay, so this week I took care of my car with the utmost TLC. The check engine light was on and I responded immediately (good job Mere) to find that it desperately needed new spark plugs, but the O2 sensor was okay....who knew there was an O2 sensor. I am learning more about cars every day. But everything else looked good. Hooray, I am not driving a lemon!
So after I got it looked at I scheduled a detailing appointment for the upcoming week.
Side note: my friend Jordan from work drove me to pick up my car after work one day (Bonnie was headed up to hang out with Adam :)) and he showed me his sweatshirt for his quesadilla business, "Paco's". Super great guy with this quesadilla business, it is brilliant, and it cracks me up when I think about it....anyway...
So here is my car, spic and span. One thing I love in this world is fancy car wash places. They shampooed the carpets, washed all the vinyl, waxed the outside, cleaned the tires, the whole works! It was beautiful, I hardly wanted to drive it. And it was raining that day, so I ended up parking it in the parking garage at work for the night so it could totally dry.
Before I got in to drive it out of the garage, I indoctrinated it with the O's... Go One on One!!
It's official.
You can see the vacuum lines and my happy smiling face :).
I love clean cars! The splurge was worth it.
The next day I had the vinyl doctor come and do a couple repairs on the inside vinyl. It looked great when he was done, can't even tell there was a big burn hole on the back door handle and a huge rip on the dashboard. And who knew there was a vinyl doctor-pretty specific niche, he was great!
So my car is as good as new and loves me, a lot!!
This week was my concert!! Body Logic Dance premiered their first show!! We performed up at the Sugar Space in Salt Lake on APril 8th and 9th, 2011. So every night this week I was either polishing up my solo with Laura, shopping for my costume, or teching and lighting our dances, or performing. It was really fun, and very empowering to say "We did it!!" This is what professional dance is all about. It was really good to see that and ask myself "do I really love this? Does this really interest me?" Hmmm... always introspective, some good thinking about my life this week.
Mom, Dad, Jules, Mags, Nate, Bonnie and Adam came to support on Friday night. Nate graciously videoed and took pictures of our show as our official camera man.
Very intimate performing space, Margaret said the audience could easily hear us breathing and see the sweat flying off our faces. Kind of gross, I know.
But it all went really well, it was nostalgic to perform again and like I said, kind of empowering. I also realized that I don't think I would be totally satisfied as a full-time dancer, but I know that I love the field of dance and see myself continually connected to it throughout my life, after all, I am a professional dancer! It feels really good to say that and at the same time, it's really not as glamorous as I dreamed, it's full of hard work. Ha ha, just like every other worthwhile thing. Good job Mere. :)
So after the concert on Friday, I went and hung out with Mag and Nate at Jules' house. I just slept in my clothes I was so tired. Then Saturday, I just hung out at Jules' house with Simon, Joanna, and Tabi. It was different to not have a commitment on Saturday morning-so nice. For the past 6 months, we have been rehearsing for this concert on Saturday mornings from 8-1. So it was a treat. My alarm still went off at 6 am and scared Jules in the middle of the night. I didn't hear it, of course.
We watched 7 Brides for 7 Brothers, ate pizza, took naps, and played-it was a GREAT day!
It was really great to bond with the kiddos, over the past while, I have felt an extra draw to spend time with my family, just hinging out and spending time with them and their kids. I think I am in a place where I am not so consumed in my own life to be able to reach out and give and that feels good. And I am feeling good about continually connecting with my family members and strengthening those relationships. What? I am strengthening Home and Family? Perfect. The bonus is that it is really fun. I really like my family members and I am falling in love with my nieces and nephews more each time we hang out.
And eat graham crackers together, as the case may be with me and Tabi...

1 comment:

Jules said...

Love your life, Mere! But love you even more! :)