New Beginnings Wednesday

Mom called and said that she & Dad would pick up Autumn from “college” since they were driving by anyways.  I have trained Dad well and not only did he take pictures for me, he also took some video.  It was so nice outside that Autumn rode her bike around and then was tired, so she took a break and relaxed on the bricks.  She cracks me up.

She has turned into a little monkey and was climbing up and down trees like that’s what she’s been doing her whole life.  Dad has a HILARIOUS video of her where she got 1/2 way up the tree and he said there was a spider and she was down and out of that tree in 2 seconds flat.  It was so mean but so funny to watch.

Since I didn’t need to go get Autumn from college, I went to the post office and mailed off a package for work that has been sitting on my desk for a few weeks.  It was so good to get that done and off my desk.  I hate having things on my “to do list” for too long.

I went and got a completely free smoothie at Smoothie King b/c I had a coupon for it that came in the mail.  Then I had about 30 minutes to kill so I went to the $1 Jewelry store.  I gave myself a budget of $5 and am proud to say I stayed w/in that budget.  I found some super cute stuff, too.  But I don’t want to post a picture of what I got b/c I’m sending a few things to some friends in the mail and I want them to be surprised.  On my drive over to the church, the sun was setting and this was my view.  Isn’t it gorgeous?

I got to the church early to see if they needed any help setting up for New Beginnings.  They already had it all taken care of.  I liked how they had all the different values represented by flowers that matched the colors.

Here’s a close up of each of the different candies they used for the colors.
Faith ~ White
Divine Nature ~ Blue
Individual Worth ~ Red
Knowledge ~ Green
Choice & Accountability ~ Yellow
Good Works ~ Orange
Integrity ~ Purple
Virtue ~ Gold

As a little gift for each of the girls, they had these mirrors w/ a lighthouse since our theme for the night was “Shine Forth That Thy Light May Be A Standard.”

This was a quote on the back of each mirror.  The evening went really well.  We had some extra time at the end before the Bishop said his closing remarks and he asked me to come up and share my testimony.  It caught me completely off guard, and to keep from crying about how incredible the young women are, I kept it light and bubbly.  But, I really am so honored and blessed to serve in this position and have known my whole life that someday I would serve in Young Women’s.  I just hope that I can make an impact for good in their lives like my Young Women’s leaders did for me.

It was a great night and I definitely felt the Spirit and was glad that so many of the girls were there w/ their parents.  I didn’t stay and clean up like I normally would have, b/c it was 8:30 and I hadn’t seen Autumn all evening and needed to go pick her up from Mom & Dad’s and get her home and into bed.  She gave me this flower and said she had helped Papa plant flowers by the mailbox.  I liked how it looked like the petals were striped.

We came home and I got her in bed and then was so excited to bust open my Project Life stuff that came in the mail.  I had stalked Amazon.com at work and was glad I was able to buy these things b/c they sold out the same day!  I had Nick take a picture of me and don’t know why he decided to include the colander in the frame, but oh well.

This weather forecast is just crazy for the end of February!  82 degrees tomorrow?  I am loving the warm weather but if it’s this hot already it makes me worry about how scorching this summer is going to be.