Spring's Around the Corner!

View of our backyard. It's foggy today, but look...no snow!

It's official. All of the snow has melted from our yard (and street) yea! The first day of Spring is officially Saturday, March 20, but Mother Nature is sure getting ready for it. We've had some nice, warmish (56-60 degree) sunny days this week. The trees are starting to grow little buds, the grass is turning green in places and the birds have emerged and are starting to sing. There were two beautiful red cardinals in the backyard this morning. (The other day we saw a small hawk in the big tree). I even discovered some flowers starting to sprout up in one of the flower gardens in the back. I'm excited to see what they are. If you know what they are, do tell...


We've had a good week, not too eventful, but good. Kurtis has been working at the ortho clinic learning some new things there. One day this week he left work around 2 p.m. and came home early, what a treat! We did some birthday shopping (for all those March birthdays in our families) and made the trek to our favorite ice cream/diner place... Ivanhoes in Upland, Indiana. We shared our usual Turtle II Sundae, complete with hot fudge, caramel, hand-dipped french vanilla ice cream and pralines, yum yum! And big news for Kurtis....drumroll please... He's been called to Jury Duty. How exciting is that? We just both laughed about it. There is no way that he could fit Jury Duty into his resident's life schedule. Especially next month when he's sleeping at the hospital every 4th/5th night and working upwards of 70-80 hours a week.

I had a small seminary class all week (4 kids) because half of my students are on Spring Break. But I did have two neat things happen this week. First, the other night I was laying in bed and I had this idea come to me about how I could get one of my students to do his make-up work so he can graduate with the other kids (this is the guy that freaked out in class a few weeks ago.) I came up with a plan, full of checkpoints, baby steps, lots of options, and of course rewards... lots and lots of rewards in the form of treats. Of course, why didn't I think of this earlier. He's a 19-year old kid who LOVES treats. So I presented the plan to him yesterday, and he loved it and is excited about it. He even told me this morning that yesterday he finished his first make-up day. Yea! This is monumental!

The second cool thing that happend is that my student Tawny brought her friend Danielle to class yesterday. Danielle has been a few times, but hasn't come for months. She wants to get baptized, but her mom doesn't approve and hasn't been letting her come to Seminary. So we were studing 3 Nephi 11 yesterday - what a perfect day for her to come. She is a sweet girl and she "gets" the gospel. At the end of class (since I've been short on kids, and the prayer rotation has been small) I had the feeling that I should ask her to say the closing prayer. She said that she would. She bowed her head then looked up at me and asked, "How do you close the prayer?" I explained how. Then she went to start again and looked up at me again and said, "How do you address God?" I agained explained how. Then she said the sweetest little prayer. I tell ya, there's nothing like hearing someone new to the church pray, especially for the first time. It was a really neat moment, and I was happy that the other students in class were there to experience that.