You want me to do what???

For those who follow our blog, it's time for the rare, and therefore anticipated post by John. (Okay, maybe it's only anticipated by my mom, and perhaps that's only because there's pics of the grand babies, but hey, that still counts in my book.)

Lately, I have been asking the question "You want me to do what?" a lot. Back to when we I landed a job working for a great University on a career status position and Margaret asked this question when I said we were moving to Iowa. Then we get here, and I find out that one of the first sets I would be building was for a show called "Reefer Madness" the musical.

Then, there was this past week. Last Sunday I had to work in the morning (as I occasionally due because of technical rehearsals being on Saturday and Sundays) Thankfully, at this job I only have to be there for the beginning and the end of the rehearsal, and not for the entire 12 hour rehearsal everyday. So, after I got off of work, I rushed over to make it for church just in time for the last hour and to participate in priesthood. Little did I know that this was the day that the Elder's quorum presidency was doing PPI's. So here I am at church, dressed in jeans and a collared shirt, being asked about my worthiness by my priesthood leader. His first question was whether I decided to dress "mormon light" for the day. I explained to him the work situation, and that it was better to wear jeans to church, than to wear a tie while running a table saw.

I did however joke with someone else that I simply figured that if you occassionaly wear jeans to church you will likely never get asked to speak in church and you will definitely never get called to a leadership position. Well, I'm still not in a leadership position, but ten minutes after I made that joke, one of the counselors in the bishopric asked me if I would speak in church. Oh well, that method has officially failed me.

I did end up having to work most evenings this last week, so I wrote a talk about fasting while sitting through dress rehearsals for "Reefer Madness". Needless to say, I got a little bit of the munchies while working on the talk.

After all was said and done, the talk went well, and other than Andrew crying the whole way through it, and Margaret having to sit with him in the lobby, it all went off without a hitch. The best part is that next week is Margaret's turn to speak in church.

In other notes, I found this hat at work this week, and brought it home and gave it to Timothy. He's worn it everywhere he's gone, evidently, including dreamland during nap time.





Also, yesterday (Saturday) we had a bit of a family outing. We left with the intent of going to the apple orchard and coming home, and we did start by going to the apple orchard where we bought several pounds of fresh apples, some fresh squeezed apple cider, and some hot apple turnovers. However, instead of heading home, we decided to extend our day trip and drove about 20 miles south to the town of Kolona, an old Amish settlement here in Iowa. Our first stop was the Twin County Dairy and cheese factory where Timothy got to watch them make cheese curds through a window, and Margaret spent 20 dollars on cheese. The kicker was that when she went to pay they said they only took cash or check, no debit or credit cards. That put us in a bind, because we almost never carry cash with the modern convenience of debit cards, and we had left the checkbook at home. We were going to leave, sadly, without our cheese, when the lady at the factory store bagged our purchase gave us a receipt and told us to simply send them a check for the amount of the purchase. Margaret and I looked at each other and said "You want us to do what"? Never before have we been so sure that we weren't in DC anymore. It really is a different, much simpler way of life here in Iowa.