Connors Come to Conference

I love Conference weekend! And this one was one of my favorites ever.

My parents flew into town on Thursday morning and came straight to my school to meet their grandstudents. My dad has never come to my class, and my mom hasn't come this year. It was so fun to have them!

True confession: we spent the entire morning on Spring Cleaning. When my parents came, they gave me flowers, handed out ring pops to my kids, and got a special sneak peek performance of one of the songs from our end-of-the-year program.

We were supposed to be at the Salt Lake temple for a 5:00 session, but we didn't make it. Instead, we spent 3:00 - 5:30

- driving to the FrontRunner station to drop off Cassidy Jane
- driving from there to SLC
- driving all around Salt Lake, looking for a quick-food (but not fast-food) place to eat
- driving past the Blue Lemon, then spending 10 minutes trying to turn around and get back to a parking space close to it
- ordering and eating at the Blue Lemon
- running back to our car, finishing the meal as we ran
- choking
- recovering
- finding a new place to park so we could go to the temple
- realizing we were not going to make it to the 5:00 session, so then my dad started
- feeling woeful and insisting that my mom park at a hotel because they apparently have "nice dressing room areas" in hotels
- parking in the hotel parking garage, where my parents took turns changing in the car while I took turns eating lemon squares
- going into the temple, after asking only five people for directions

5:30 is about when we walked through the doors and conveniently ran into my dad's mission president. So, obviously we didn't make it to the 6:00 session either, because then there was too much catching up to do.

Even though things didn't go exactly as planned, it was a nice night.

Friday was Fun Day! We went rock-climbing and played soccer  at UVU, Shimps vs. Connors.

They were acting all nervous about climbing! But they actually conquered their fears and did a good job! I was very proud.

After that, we went to my dad's mission reunion. It was delicious and someone famous came! Not President Obama. Although, he was in town this weekend, because I guess he didn't hear that it was only the biggest weekend of the year for Utah.....but yeah it wasn't him.

This famous person was on the Hispanic version of You've Got Talent and got to the finals. He sang two songs in Spanish and looked deeply into everyone's eyes and I promptly got a crush on him forgot his name. Alejandro or Alex something. Then the pres and his wife gave talks in Spanish and I got an appreciation for how hard it would be to learn another language! I was trying so hard to understand and I couldn't keep up! Stephen translated most of it for me.

The reunion ended whenever everyone wanted it to end and headed home. So naturally, we were just about the last ones to leave.

We had breakfast on Saturday morning with the Shimps! I love having both of my families together.

I don't know why I thought this would be a good picture as half of the food is not even here....but we had waffles, eggs, sausage, and these toppings and orange juice. Use your imaginations :)

We had tickets to the Saturday afternoon session of conference so we left pretty much right after the morning session. I can't get over how beautiful Temple Square is at conference time!

I've done it so many times before, but it was still nice to be in the conference center to sustain our cute leaders. I love them so much and love feeling the love they have for us.

While the boys went back to Lehi for the priesthood session, the girls met up with Aunt Lila (my mom's sister) and her friend Sue. We went to Texas Roadhouse and happened to get the same waiter I just had last week when I came in! So that was a little embarrassing. But fun!

My parents left on Sunday. We watched the morning session at the Shimps and then said goodbyyyye. Thanks for coming padres!! Next step: buy a house and move out here.

Missing Husband Alert

Stephen is taking a super-butt-hard classload this semester.

It is so hard that he had to get special permission to take all these classes together because normally that's not allowed, so some guys had to look over his grades and interview him and be like "Are you sure you hate yourself, and having fun, that much?" before they signed off on it.

Also, sometimes his classes make me cry, and I'm not even the one taking them. Except one. Kind of. 

So anyway. Sometimes, he needs to take tests that he studies for all week and all weekend and all day Monday before the test closes on Monday night. It is exhausting, and rough trying to get on a consistent sleeping schedule, and stressful....and I can only imagine how he feels.

Here's how to survive when this happens to your husband:

1. Leave a little lunch of leftovers and a nice note about how smart he is when you go to school. Congratulate yourself the entire drive on how considerate you are.

2. Then proceed to text him all day long with important questions like "Do you want to take a sailing trip in Hawaii?" and "There's a Groupon sale that's ending today, is there anything you want?" and "Do you think you'll take your test in time to go get a sandwich between 4-5 at the Corner Bakery?" Really the more texts the better. He craves those little distractions.

3. On your way home, think of a list of things you can do while he is taking his test. Get really excited about all the "me" time you're going to get!

4. Once you are home, make dinner halfway. You can go grocery shopping together for the rest of the ingredients when he finishes his test. Because, of course that's what he'll want to do!

5. Talk to your sister on the phone for an hour and 26 minutes.

6. Now it's a little later than you were expecting him to be home. Looks like you won't have time to go work out. Oh well....this has happened before. Learn how to make a YouTube playlist of all the songs that get you pumped up so you can work out at home.

7. Get caught up watching videos and let an hour and a half slip away while doing that.

8. Look up and pin all the at-home workouts that feature girls with 6-packs in the picture demonstrations. Since, that's the goal.

9. Get embarrassed that the husband is probably going to get home before you even start your workout.....and quickly start.

10. Finish one workout. The husband is still not aqui.

11. The playlist is still not over.....so do another workout.

12. Get a teeny bit annoyed that he's not going to see you working out when he gets home, so choose another one. Still no husband??

13. Google the UVU Testing Center hours. What?? They closed at 5? It is almost 9! Enter into full panic mode.

14. Call Mama Shimp and calmly ask if the husband is over there. He is not. Calmly hang up the phone saying you'll keep her posted.

15. Begin imagining all sorts of fun scenarios like your car sitting in a crumpled mess on the side of the road in just the right spot for no one to see it for hours, terrorists blowing up the testing center, you sitting in a pile of memorabilia sobbing and planning your husband's funeral, etc. It just adds some suspense.

16. Go back to texting and calling the husband incessantly.

17. Or twice, if he picks up the second time. And answers like nothing is wrong.......

18. Almost start crying because you're so glad he's not dead.

19. Discover that the testing center hours are wrong on the Google machine, but correct on the testing center website. Actually, it doesn't close until 9.

20. Swear off Google. It's stupid. I'm never relying on it again!

Moral of the story? Actually there are two. Communication is key, and don't go to college.

Spaceshimps

Hello. My name is Heather, and I have a thing for free food. Free anything, really....but especially free food. I am just such a college kid when it comes to free food. Here are some things I have done for "free" food:

-missed a class

-or, like, 4

-liked groups on facebook

-shared things on facebook

-sat through an ILP meeting 

-sat through a Vivint meeting (not my proudest moment)

-sat through a hymn fireside

-gone to a Google Fiber switch-to-us meeting

-every time I went to Ward Prayer in my singles wards was either for the free food or for a boy, okay I admit it

-driven all the way out to my school in West Jordan, while I am off-track, on the day of Parent-Teacher conferences for the other tracks, because I knew they would serve dinner to the teachers right after school and I was not about to miss that

-worked for free as a Disney College Campus Rep for 3 semesters because once every semester my favorite man, John, would come out to Utah and take us all to Goodwood and it is delicious there

-worked for basically free as a teacher. Also I feel fulfilled and I like working with kids, but every time there's a holiday, I get some delicious food on my desk and that is a perk if I ever saw one. 

Anyway, I had a really great experience with free food last night that I would like to tell you about. It was a movie night at UVU. The movie was "Gravity," and the food was popcorn, chips, candy bars, peanut M&M's, and soda. I. Was. In. Heaven. 

They also gave us a free book and let us take home the inflatable star chairs we sat on! So even though I got very stressed out watching that movie and crushed Stephen's plans of us going to space one day (why would I ever do that. Not interested.), it was a fantastic night.