Home again home again, jiggity jig

WELCOME HOME SMITH!!

My friend Amanda Smith got home from her mission today!
Hazza!!
She served a full time mission (18months) for the LDS Church in the Moscow Russia West mission. She also spent some time in Kazakhstan.
I'm sure it was hard for her to leave. After spending a year and a half in one place doing service for the people I'm sure you start to love it as much as home!
In her weekly emails home she would give a "this week's reason I love Russia (and Kazakhstan)", here are some of my favorites:

• their grocery carts. I know, you think that's not a reason to love Russia - but oh it is. They APPEAR to be just like ours, only smaller. But they're amazing. They glide just like mayonnaise. None of this our-carts-back-wheel-is-shorter-than-all-the-rest, theres-a-hair-wad-stuck-in-the-wheel-so-i-cant-drive, our-cart-is-so-noisey-everyone-knows-we're-leaving-the-bread-aisle-and-heading-towards-the-cantaloupe business. They -glide front to back, and SIDE TO SIDE! Oh, so amazing. You have to come drive one. I think it's because their aisles are so tiny, and everyone is always so hurried.... having good carts probably prevents a lot of problems. :)
  
• Russian for ladybug is "god's cow." Russian for chin is translated literally as "under beard." AND, they have a specific verb that JUST means "to have difficulty the sounds 'R' and 'L.'" No joke. Fun huh?
• They play paper-rock-scissors with FOUR elements. I know. Crazy. Paper, rock, scissors, and -- WELL. (As in, I need some water, lets go to the ____) apparently rock and scissors both sink in the well, and paper covers the well so it's the only thing that wins. Insane huh?

Welcome home Amanda!
-not that she'll ever read this, but I just want everyone to know I'm proud :)

Not homesick, futuresick

Future-Sick Part 1
In October the doctors in St. Louis did a few tests and decided that the nerves in my arm weren't coming back on their own so I'd need surgery.
The surgery was scheduled for Nov 18th. They also scheduled a repeat of the tests for Nov 16th so we could make 100% sure the nerves weren't coming back on their own.
After the test Nov 16th my doctor said, "The tests show that it isn't coming back on it's own so we'll go ahead with the surgery".
This surprised me a little because I felt like I could move it more than I could before.
I said to the doctor "Darn, I was pretty sure it was coming back on it's own!" So he said, "Well let's do a few manual tests to see."
So we did a few tests and he decided that the EMG Nerve study test that was done only an hour previously was incorrect and he agreed with me that my arm WAS coming back on it's own!
WOO-Hoo!! I was so excited.
That was until he said, "Come back in December for surgery, that way we'll give it one more month to see if it'll come back on it's own."
I WASN'T excited for that. Sure I should have been, but I had made myself ready for a "Yes, you're having surgery," or a, "No, it's coming back on it's own." Not a, "hmmm....come back in another month and we'll see what happens."

I'm ready for the future! When my arm is finally better. I don't care if I do or don't have to have surgery, as long as the doctors appts. are over and we know my arm is coming back and I can get on with my life!

Future-Sick Part 2
I've never been one of those girls who flocks to a baby so they can hold it. I like kids, and I love teaching the 6 year olds in primary, but I've never really been the kind of girl who pines to be a mother.
This past week I babysat for a family in our ward. I've babysat for people for extended periods of time before (like spent the night at the house because the parents were gone for a week or so) and left thinking, "Ok, that was that." But this time babysitting THSES kids had a weird affect on me.
One of the kids asked me, "Did we make you not want to have kids?" And embarrassingly enough I almost started crying. Ok, I'll confess... I DID cry. I went to my moms house and started crying because I was feeling some void in my life because I didn't have a family.
I left the kids Monday morning so I could go to St. Louis for my tests/surgery (grrr) and one of the kids said, "Wait!!" and he ran down the hall and gave me a hug before I left. I got in my moms van and cried again because I was sad to be leaving.
I don't know how their parents left and didn't emotionally break down, because they AREN'T EVEN MY KIDS and I got all emotional when I left.
That story probably made me seem like a freak and I'm sure their parents will NEVER let me babysit again because I'm such a weirdo. But their kids really were great. They weren't perfect all the time and I got frustrated a few times, but they really were wonderful.

I'm ready to be a mom...I think. I'm ready for the future when I have a family and I can feel justified in crying when I leave them because they are MY kids. I don't think I could have a small family either. I want lots of kids.
I've always wanted my mom to adopt, and think in order to make up for her never adopting I want to adopt.

Ok... I need to stop blogging because this is ENTIRELY too long and I'm starting to look weird.

OH MY GOSH!! Just real quickly I went searching for a picture to put at the top of this blog and I typed "future" in to an image search and it came up with this:
hello! Family is HUGE on that!!!

There's a Turtle in my Soup

I've been meaning to post this post for a long time.
Everyone knows I rolled my car and I'm fine, and that my passenger Sophie is fine.
BUT I forgot to tell everyone about my other passenger.

His name is Soup and he is a turtle.

He was a gift to me from my friend Katie who happened to find him in bowl in Beaver Dick Park, just outside Rexburg, ID. She had no way of getting him home (she was sure she couldn't smuggle him on the plane home) so he became mine. He sat in a small rubbermade in-between Sophie and I on the ride home.
While Sophie and I were waiting for the ambulance to arrive a man who stopped to help (who just happened to be an off-duty EMT) asked me if there was anyone else in the car. For some reason (probably the shock) I kept asking for my turtle, Soup. I bet everyone was expecting something wonderful, an exotic tortise with spurs on it's shell perhaps, ...not a rubbermade with a smelly half-dollar sized turtle in it.
The ambulance came and as they were checking everything vital the man, along with some other people, kept looking for Soup.
I was sure he was dead, there was stuff from my car thrown all over the road, there was no way Soup made it.
Just as they were putting the stretcher in the ambulance the man said "I found it! And it's still alive!" He brought Soup to me and we both rode in the ambulance to the hospital.

Soup has been great. He's got a fun personality and It's neat to watch him sometimes. When I turn the lights off in his tank (he needs at least 12 hours of light a day) he starts pushing his rocks around and his home is rearranged when I turn the lights back on in the morning.
As much as I love Soup I know his current tank isn't a good enough home for him.
He needs a filtration system (which I don't have). Because I don't have a filtration system I (well...actually Jessie) has to clean his tank out every week, and sometimes it doesn't get done. And sometimes the day after it is cleaned it is already dirty again.
It really isn't healthy for him to swim around in filth.
So I decided it was time to find soup a better home.
A lady I work with said her daughter had a tank with a filtration system and everything and she already had one turtle and she'd love to have Soup.
He was adopted today.
I'm sad that he's gone but I'm also happy he has a good clean home with someone who'll love him as much as I did.

Plus....as much as I loved Soup I really want a tortise (a tortise is a 'turtle' that lives on land, a 'turtle' lives in the water).