Sunday, April 15, 2012

Well, I am sad to say that our vacation is over - well, mine is anyway - school starts again tomorrow.  I was planning on doing some school work during the week, but I didn't get to it until Friday. :-)  It was just so nice to be able to relax that we kept on doing it. :-) 

On Monday, my friend, Robyn and I went visiting teaching together so we had a lovely time chatting with our friends and leaving them a message about Easter.  On Tuesday, Dad and I met up with Robyn and Geoff for lunch at the Kondari Hotel (where my friend, Denise, took me for lunch last week) and  we had a delicious roast pork dinner with orange cake for dessert (including a salad bar and all for $8.90).  It was really nice to go out and spend more time chatting with our friends.  After lunch, we went out back of the hotel to see the turtles in the pond out there.  We spent a while just enjoying being outside near the water and in the lovely warm sun. :-)  After that, Dad and I went down to the beach for a walk along the water - it was a perfect day for doing that.  We went back to the beach on Wednesday morning hoping to enjoy the morning on the beach.  We were there for about half an hour (reading and doing puzzles) when we decided to go for a swim in the ocean.  Just then, it began to rain (rats!), so we had to pack everything up and come home. :-(

On Thursday, Dad and I did Meals on Wheels and things went much more smoothly this week compared to last week.  The people are so appreciative of us bringing them their meals and it's so nice to do this for them.  We spent the afternoon doing home teaching and visiting teaching and in the evening, Dad went to his SES meeting and I worked on my talk which is going to be on Mother's Day.  Friday, Dad went to the Family History Centre and I went and had a spa pedicure and manicure with Robyn.  I had received a gift card from two of my students at the end of the year last year for our grocery store.  I told Dad that I was going to use the money from that to do something for myself and a pedi/mani was my choice (I did have to put in a little bit more money to pay for it :-)  It was so amazing to be spoiled for an hour - I chose a rust coloured nail polish (pics underneath the blog) - and I can't wait to do it again (likely in another year or so :-).  When I got home from that, I worked on school stuff, getting ready for tomorrow (my first day at my new contract in Kindergarten).  I am sure that I have way too much stuff, but since the teacher wasn't really sure about what she wanted me to do, I figured I would get tons of stuff organized and then see what she wants me to do from that and then I will know better next week what to get organized.

On Saturday, it was great to talk with and see all my beautiful grandchildren (oh yeah, and you girls - .  Dad had to go and do recertification with the SES - it was about providing basic emergency life support which includes performing CPR - you have to recertify every year for this.  Dad said that there were about 15 people there and the fellow who taught it is a doctor and a member of the SES, so he volunteers his time to do this refresher training.  Dad said that he found the training an excellent refresher of the emergency skills.  While he was doing that, I worked more on school stuff.  At 5pm, our friends, Geoff and Robyn and Alistair and Haidi came over to our house for dinner.  I didn't time things very well and so we didn't eat until 6:30pm, but that just gave us time to talk while we waited.  We had a roast chicken dinner with mud cake and ice-cream for dessert and had a wonderful time eating and chatting with our friends. 

Today was Conference Day at church - General Conference was actually on March 31st/April 1st, but because of the time difference between here and North America, we usually download the Conference from the internet and watch it the following Saturday/Sunday.  But, this year, Easter was the following weekend and so we watched Conference this weekend.  It was wonderful to listen to all the talks and especially to hear our prophet speak to us - it was a very uplifting Sunday for us. :-)