Father's Day, A new Job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love father's day because it helps me reflect on all the wonderful fathers out there. Although I only got to talk on the phone with my dad, it was still great to chat. I know that although Matt is not technically a father yet, he will be an outstanding one. After church Matt made a batch of his amazing vegetarian baked beans and we headed over to his mom's. For dinner with the family. Luckily enough, even Grandpa White and Ginny ( long time his fiance) were there too! It was a larger group than usual and it added a lot of fun.

My NEW JOB!
Yes, I was offered a position as a 1st grade teacher at a charter school, and OF Course I accepted! I am so excited to get to teach 1st grade and to try something new. I get to have a new challenge and add to my skills as a teacher. This school is very urban, so it will be very demanding and difficult in ways I can't even imagine. I couldn't be happier about it and I will enjoy a new challenge!

So I'm not good at keeping in contact with friends. I'm sort of an introverted home-body who would rather hang out with my husband. But I want to be better at keeping in touch with people in my life so I'm trying to reach out better. Matt and I had lunch with the Pangallo's a friend of mine that I taught with at my last job. It was fun to see their new baby and to catch up. Hearing all the stories of my old school and job, reinforce to me that although it was hard, it was also a huge blessing getting away from many of the poisonous people and situations at that job. It has become a high-school like environment with petty teachers, rumor mills, and gossip. I am so glad to be away from that.

Today I went to the thrift store and bought about 50 children's books for about 7 cents each. I need more 1st grade level books and thought this was a great way to stock up! I plan to go often and try to find good deals so that I have tons of books to enrich the students lives with.

The garden
Yes, its my baby, so I take lots of pictures of it. This green pepper was the first thing we picked. We also ate a delicious cucumber yesterday!!! We expanded our little fenced in area to twice the size since many of our plants are spreading out of control, its much easier to walk around and water things now. It also gives these plants more room!!! We have a watermellon the size of a ping pong ball!! I know I'm pathetic, but if I'm this excited about my garden, can you imagine how great of a mom I'll be!!!!!!!

lov

Thank you, Apostle, Garden

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the prayers and thoughts on my behalf. I am doing better after a very productive and progressing week. I had one job interview that would be at a very urban charter school teaching 1st grade. But as I've thought about it, I'm more and more interested in this position, so I find out Friday if I get it!! I also met a lady while dropping by another charter school who was very kind and interested in me. So perhaps there will be something there too! This progress will hopefully lead somewhere, if not at least in helped my depression big time this week.

Today Elder Christofferson, 12 apostle (sp?), visited our stake and spoke. His message on faith really struck me. For so long I've been struggling with faith, wanting more, and being mad at myself for lacking in faith. But he said that faith is a spiritual gift from Heavenly Father that comes through the spirit, its not something that we conger up inside of ourselves (which was my misconception). There are ways we can seek after and increase that gift through feasting on the words of God, reading the scriptures to hear the voice of the Lord. He said when Alma was talking to Helaman he told him to preach repentance and faith, but we usually find the order of those words reversed in the scriptures, faith leads to repentance. So repentance apparently also leads to more faith too. Greater obedience to the Lord, entering into covenants, and sacrificing lead to increase measures of faith in our lives. I guess I never realized that faith is increased in doing the right things, not in creating it or just believing harder. So this was a huge revelation to me and just what I needed to hear. How and why the Lord decided to talk just to me I don't know but this is what I was needing to hear! And it was really neat to see Elder Christofferson in person.

Garden. I just LOVE our garden. I even go out there sometimes just to look and talk even to take pictures of the plants. I pray for it too. It is so amazing to see God's handy work and to know that all of this vegetation came from a tiny little seed. God is in nature! I am so funny that I have even found myself talking about it to friends and stuff and then realize that they probably don't care. At least here in my journal blog, I can talk all I want about these amazing plants. Check out the great pictures I took this week. I just love the watermellons that are a size of a pea! Cucumbers the size of an AAA battery. I just love it!

Thanks again.
Lov

The Garden

Matt and I planted our very first garden. We are so excited and anxiously awaiting the fruits of our labors. We bought organic plants: tomatoes, green peppers, broccoli, cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe, cabbage, mint, dill. YUMMY! It sounds like alot typing it all out like this, but its just a little bit really. We hope to grow it a little bigger each year. We didn't exactly know what we were doing, so this is a learning process. We think the spot we chose is a little to shady, but things still seem to be growing quite well.

The NEWEST Camera
Ok, so the new 12mp camera was not working. We returned it to Costco and while we were there, bought a new one. They suddenly had tons more to choose from at better prices than before, so for just about $30-40 more, we now have a 14 mega pixel camera, this one comes with a case and 2G sd card- two items the other did not. So these pictures from the garden are freshly taken today with the newest camera!!! It was last week when I was trying to post garden pictures the first time that the 12mp camera stopped working. Now the pictures are here and looking good!