HR, Dress, Kids, and TX!!!

Well, This is the first time since I started weekly emails that I've missed a Sun, but I couldn't get a hold of a computer (there is only one with working internet that belongs to my uncle, so I had to wait till this morning to borrow it).... anyway, enough excuses...

Monday I was assigned to work in the Human Resources department of Taylor hospital. Once I had figured out the phone system w/ the eight lines I had to keep an eye on and the transfer function, it was pretty easy. I did a lot of employee evaluation filing, the phones were always busy... the day went by very quickly.

Tuesday I finally bought the fabric for my dress that I'm making as a summer project. It's a bright turquoise blue, stretchy and a little shiny... that makes it pretty hard to work with, but it hangs beautifully. I was offered a long term job with office team during the summer, but had to turn it down because it conflicted with TX and Cumorah. In the evening I babysat for my former Laurel's advisor for the last time. Her husband works for the state department and they're moving to China for the second time. I really enjoyed watching her children... we went to the library for some books and movies, then played till bed time. I'm going to miss them a lot!

On Wed. I babysat Easton all day long... he is the cutest one year old you could ever imagine w/ big blue eyes, preposterously long eye lashes and the most adorable smile. To add to his virtues he was just very agreeable in general and pretty happy to play with any toy I offered him. During nap time I cut out and sewed a dummy bodice for my dress from an old blanket. The size was right, but the upper pieces didn't fit together quite the way I wanted, so it was good I had done the dummy bodice first.

Thursday I cut out my whole dress... that took a lot of time and patience because I simply couldn't get the material to lie flat enough to pin. There was a lot of it too, so half the time the fabric would slip off the table and I'd have to start all over again *sigh*. Sis. Janes picked me up later and I got to play with her three kids. They're very fun... we spent quite some time going through the year book with Daniel giving me detailed information on almost every picture. I got to know the class clowns, the bullies, everybody really...

Finally it was Friday, the day to get ready to go to Grandma's house... excitement/stress was in the air as Mom rushed to run errands, and make sure everything got packed in due time. Finally, Mom and Dad went to drop Laura off at Uncle Eric's... she was going to be flying a couple of hours later than we were because she had to take the ACT before she left (poor dear!!). While they were gone I attempted to teach John some of the cha cha... he learned the basic (I think), but a lot of it was his own made up steps :-). It was actually pretty late when we all got to bed even though we were getting up at 3:30 am to leave and catch our flight....

3:30 am came really fast... we loaded our bags, and I squeezed into the back seat between my brothers... my feet were on the seat since there were suitcases right underneath me. My uncle's comment when we picked him up was that we all sounded "pretty chipper" for the early hour. It was true... we had a lively conversation going on. No one would have guessed we had only gotten a few hours of sleep. Check-in went really fast since I had already printed our boarding passes, and before we knew it we were on our way. The most painful part was waiting in the St. Louis airport for 2 hrs for our Austin flight... John and I played every single clapping game we knew and invented a new one as well...

Finally we arrived, and we all noticed again that everything was bigger in TX... the airport just had a very big feeling with tall ceilings and wide hallways. Grandma and Uncle Robert were waiting for us. We grabbed our bags, loaded them into the cars, and went to find some food. It didn't take us long... we found a Mexican restaurant and enjoyed some food, then the boys set off for Port Aransas (that's where the beach house was) while the girls went back to Grandma's house to finish getting ready. I did some last minute errands with Grandma... grocery shopping, copying etc, then made a double batch of chocolate chip cookies. Uncle Michael was in the kitchen making roast for dinner. He's an outstanding professional chef and I got to hear some pretty amazing stories about some of his jobs. Dinner was scrumptious, needless to say. The apple sage sauce uncle Mike had concocted perfectly enhanced the roast... mmmm!!! I was sound asleep when Laura came in later that night...

Well, this is all I have time for... I love and miss you all!!
Margaret