Friday, April 1, 2011

Day 31: New Callings

As many of you probably know, the Atlanta temple is reopening after 22 months of renovations - inside and out. It is absolutely gorgeous!  


The open house begins April 9 and will continue until April 23. The youth from the entire Atlanta, Georgia temple area (that includes 3 states!) will participate in a cultural celebration, which they have been diligently working on (and I will be diligently sewing costumes for) on April 30th. The temple will be rededicated Sunday, May 1, and on Tuesday, May 3, we will be welcoming members from the entire southeast back into the temple. And by we, I literally mean we - Brad and Courtney Andersen. On day 31 - the last day of this blog challenge - we met with the temple president, and he asked us to be ordinance workers. I'm assuming everyone reading this blog knows what I'm talking about, if not - ask me and I will gladly tell you! We're excited and look forward to learning lots more about everything that goes on in those sacred temple walls. I, honestly, have only been through a handful of times myself and am beyond scared. I have no idea what I'll be doing and how I'm going to be able to do it. People are going to ask me questions that I won't know the answers to, and I'll have to learn that that's ok. I've always thought of ordinance workers as old retired mission presidents who are Book of Mormon scholars and know everything there is to know about the church. I'm 22, and my knowledge base of anything scripturally is from the few BYU religions classes I was required to take to graduate. Needless to say, however, this will be a great blessing for us. We won't be able to do this again until our future children are grown and out of the house. I'm looking forward to learning from the wiser members who will also be working with us. And I'm, of course, especially grateful for the opportunity we have to learn the temple ordinances better.



What a great ending to this blog challenge. 31 days. A blog post every day (or a couple days later ...). But I wrote about things that I would have never written about normally. Many days I simply took a picture just to take a picture and write about it. Luckily Killer was around for most of the month. She was my go to picture. But because of this challenge, I will always and forever remember things I once I was deemed unimportant, but may very well be meaningful in years to come. While I won't write a post everyday, I do hope to utilize this blog more (especially since I'll be paying $5 every year for it) to capture memories of every day life.

Love, Brad & Courtney

Day 30: A Day in the Life of a Preschool Teacher

Preschool teachers wear fireman hats ALL day, while their children request them to take hundreds of pictures of it - many of which are crazy blurry because said children can't sit still.



Preschool teachers also buy 5 gallons of soapy water using money out of their own pocket and then spent 45 minutes every morning watching the sheer joy that comes from children learning to finally purse their lips and blow out instead of suck in. The result is wonderfully fantastic - bubbles!



Love, Courtney

Day 29: Another Long Day

I thought Thursday was long, but Tuesday was the longest day in history.
5am: wake up
6am: leave the house
630am: arrive at work
7am: leave work
9am: arrive in Greenville, SC
1pm: leave Greenville, SC
330pm: arrive back home
430pm: leave home
520pm: arrive at school
945pm: leave school
1015pm: arrive back home
11pm: bed

Total mileage: over 330 miles

Ridiculous. I had a work meeting in Greenville, SC, and since I had to leave early to get class I had to drive myself. Which meant I spent hours on end in the car. This is what my passenger seat looked like:
Vanilla wafers, Cadbury eggs, iPod, sunglasses, and GPS. Lifesavers.

Love, Courtney

Day 28: Happy Birthday Sara!

Sorry for the extra long delay in finishing up this blog every day for a month challenge. Turns out I've used up all the free space allotted by Blogger. No worries though. 20 extra gigs is only $5 a year, so we're back on track and ready to keep on blogging.

Monday was my BFF's (sorry Brad, I know you hate that term) birthday. She's in Utah, and I'm in Atlanta. And birthdays are a big deal. And I miss her terribly. Sara has always made me feel special, especially on my birthday, and I'm super lame and didn't even get her present in the mail until her birthday (which means she didn't get on her actual birthday). But who doesn't love it when they keep getting presents even a week after their birthday has come and past.

Her wonderful husband Steve took her snowboarding, and here are some pictures from their awesome trip. I so desperately wish we had been there. Skiing, not snowboarding.


I love you Sara! I know your birthday was everything you wished for!

Love, Courtney