It's Been a While (and ten other random facts)

Fact #1: I went through a bit of a writing phase where I had a lot to say, so I was posting almost daily for a few weeks. It's funny how it comes in waves. Sometimes I have a lot of ideas for blog posts, and sometimes I have none. Right now I have none.

Fact #2: Scotty and I are spending as much time as possible working on our garden. Back in 2011, we put in some garden boxes. Then in 2012, we expanded and put in a few more (see the garden of 2012 here). The past two summers, we've let the garden "rest."

Fact #3: By "rest," I mean we let it go to crap. It got overtaken with weeds. We didn't pull out our plants after summer of 2015. Our peach trees dropped fruit, leaves, and branches everywhere, and our chickens dug out all our strawberry plants and flung all the dirt out of the boxes (we built a fence around the garden to keep the chickens out, but there's an area where they can still weasel their way through our honeysuckle plant and get in the garden. Eventually we gave up on trying to keep them out).

Fact #4: Because of our stupidity laziness rest period, our garden is in shambles. Therefore, we are working on digging up all the rocks and sifting the dirt out of them to put back in the boxes. We are also putting down a fresh layer of weed barrier. We pulled out two trees - one was dead, and one was just an inconvenience, and I'd never thought to take it out, but as soon as Scotty mentioned the idea, I was so relieved and wondered why it hadn't ever occurred to me before.

Fact #5: The type of work we are doing in the garden is literally accomplished inches at a time. It's a tedious, labor-intensive task. I hope we don't lose our momentum. We tend to get started on yard things and then weather interferes.

Fact #6: As you might have guessed from this post, I have a new calling (church assignment). I'm now the primary music leader (formerly known as the primary chorister, though I'm not sure the name really makes a difference. Do people feel more empowered by being called "music leaders" instead of "choristers?")

Fact #7: I've felt very strongly for a few years that this would eventually be my calling. When I was the primary president, my friend Jennifer was the music leader, and I would watch her and feel this little nudge saying, "You're next!" Luckily, Jennifer served for a really long time.

Fact #8: I was not okay with the calling at all when it was first extended. I had so many reasons to say no - one being that I still haven't recovered from being the primary president and another being that it took two years to get Zoe to go to primary, so I was worried that being in there would mean I wouldn't be able to do my job without a five-year-old clinging to my leg.

Fact #9: I decided to just have faith that everything would work out, so I accepted the calling.

Fact #10: I've only done it two weeks so far, but everything has gone pretty well. It's actually a really good calling for me. My kids are doing well with it - Eva doesn't cry when I leave the nursery after I sing with them, and Zoe has been good to stay with her class during junior primary. It involves a lot of prep work and planning, but I'm good at those things. There are definitely things I need to work on (like getting better at reading music and singing the right lyrics), but I think I'm where I belong, even though I didn't believe it AT ALL a month ago.