WHOA! BOY, HOWDY! EXCITEMENT IN MY CORNER....

Well... today's post is a hodgepodge of the last couple of weeks... but I'm going to start with this mornings excitement:

Every weekday morning I teach seminary at the church.  I usually arrive at the church at 6:00 AM.  I was running late this morning and it was 6:08 AM when I got to the church.  My routine is to let myself into the building and then unlocking the doors for the kids before heading to the seminary room.  Today as I began to unlock the doors from the inside, I heard a strange sound come from the closet next to the primary room that is full of all sorts of technical stuff and mechanical stuff to run the building.  I was a bit nervous by the sound, but continued to unlock the door when all of a sudden the fire alarm went off.  I'm glad there is no video of what happened next: I screamed and jumped out of my skin.  I ran to my car and called my husband.  I didn't know what to do.  Scott suggested I call the bishops.  I tried.  Then I waited for the fire department to show up.  When my heroes showed up, I unlocked the rest of the building for them and told them where the sound came from.  They immediately entered the building and came back out to explain to me that a fire sprinkler broke in the RS/seminary room.  I went in to assess the damage.  In only 8 minutes worth of time, there was over 2 inches of water in the room and over an inch of water soaking out into the hallway.  I made an executive decision to cancel seminary.  It was definitely an exhilarating experience!  (I asked if I could take a picture of the heroes that "rescued" me.)

They turned off the lights just as I took the picture.

Fire Fighters are Heroes!

In other news:
A month ago I won the area Toastmasters International Speech Contest.  It was exciting and fun!  I also got to compete at the division contest on Saturday.  I didn't win then... but I felt good about my performance and enjoyed the event.

My speech was called "Cultivating Courage."

Steve, my friend and president of our club, also won in the humor competition.

Scott painted these two AMAZING pictures:

He's never painted birds before.

He really is talented!

Kiara Lea is becoming quite the crochet queen:

And then there is my grandson:

Making homemade playdough is so much fun!

He'd never played with playdough before.

He loved it!

On St. Paddy's Day!

My little red headed leprechaun!

He's a "Rad Little Lad!"

I love this cute grandson of mine.  Apparently yesterday he began singing Jingle Bells and changed the words to "Jesus all the way."  What a cutie!