Clean pups

When I heard that a local career college was having their veterinary techs put on a free dog wash, I jumped at the chance to have someone else wash our doggies. Scout and Shadow don't like going in water and bathing them is a battle.

They got their nails clipped and then got washed and dried. Their reward was the little bandana they got to wear afterwards. When we got home, they were pretty tired from all that wiggling and wrestling with the vet techs. They took a nice nap before going back outside to get dirty again.

My new haircut

With all the stress going on in my life, I decided it was time for a new hairdo. I regularly go to Jordan at MasterCuts and she always tries to give me a "sassy" look. I hadn't had my hair cut for a few months in a half-hearted effort to grow my hair longer. Emerson usually says he likes my hair longer, but this time he made the mistake of telling me that he's happy with whatever makes me happy....

While Emerson and the boys went to see a movie, I paid a visit to Jordan and told her to go crazy and "do whatever" as long as I could still look professional for work. I had no idea the kind of joy this brings to a stylist...
The first snip was in the back and it was significant. "No going back now!" say Jordan with an evil grin. I admit I was a little scared about what I'd gotten myself into.

The end result made my face look longer and slimmer and I loved it! Emerson even told me how much he liked it when he saw me (and he never says anything after I get a hair cut). The cut is a disconnected a-line, so it is longer in the front and shorter in the back. The layers allow me to give it a fun messy look when I want to go a little crazy with it.
I've gotten lots of compliments on the new style and I actually feel pretty again...

A Great Friend and the First Ever Female LDS Chaplain

LDS Living

The link above will take you to an article for LDS Living Magazine. My boss asked me to write an article about Heritage Schools' chaplain to submit to the magazine (nice publicity for us if it gets published). The magazine has some pretty strict word limit guidelines for submitting articles and I struggled like crazy to keep it within the limit they had for stories about "making a difference." The first draft I came up with just didn't have enough information about Tami's qualifications and experiences, so I tackled it again and hoped they wouldn't tear it apart. Tami has been our chaplain at Heritage most of the years I have worked there. Her dad was a military chaplain and she wanted to be like him in so many ways. She wanted to be a full time seminary teacher, but they didn't let women do that back when she finished high school (women can do it now if they are done raising their children). A series of very miraculous events lead to her taking over for her dad as chaplain at another treatment center and then coming to work at Heritage even though we never had a full time, let alone paid, chaplain until she came along. The details of the story had me in tears. Tami has become one of my best and dearest friends over the years as well as my chaplain when I am in need. She is the sweetest person you will ever meet - a true angel on this earth. The story pretty much wrote itself.

With the help of a local PR agency, we got the article submitted to LDS Living Magazine, hoping they would be interested in hearing about the first ever (and only) female chaplain who is LDS. It was wonderful to find out today that they published it online. I'm waiting to see if it will be in the magazine as well. The only negative to the whole thing is that they managed to misspell my last name.... My friends are teasing that I should have that as my official pen name.

I won!

A friend of mine showed me this site called GiveAwayToday where they have prizes you can win each day. The businesses who give away the prizes benefit from the extra publicity since lots of people like to try to win free stuff. I actually won something the other day. It wasn't as cool as other prizes I had hoped for, but better than not winning... I won a blog makeover. Once they send me all the details of what I need to do, my blog should be looking extra spiffy in no time.

Don't Freak Out...

Ok....So Dexter spent the past week at Timberline Scout Camp as one of the staff there. It's a leadership training camp for Boy Scouts to develop their leadership skills. Dwayne and Dexter have both attended this camp in past years. They were quite happy to have Dexter join their staff and help teach classes, run things, etc. Emerson went up there on Monday to deliver some supplies and to see the camp. Dexter managed to wear a kilt pretty much the whole week (their Young Men's/Scout leader always wears a kilt and Dexter discovered he likes to wear them too). Although Dexter is quite good at magic, I believe he is juggling the can in the picture, not levitating it...
One of the exercises they did at camp was to have a mock serious injury occur and have the boys figure out how to handle the situation, get help, etc. Dexter was quite proud of the job he did constructing his "wound" and acting out his injury. He came in with a can lid "stuck" in his leg, screaming and dripping "blood." Even those who were in on the exercise had trouble handling the very graphic look of it.

Very proud of his work, Dexter couldn't wait to post the lovely picture on Facebook for all the world to see. His friends reacted and Dexter kept the act going by dancing around their questions and giving true answers that didn't really answer their questions. What he didn't anticipate was reaction of adults who saw the pictures and freaked out. He doesn't feel bad that he fooled his peers, but he does feel bad that he upset some of the grownups in his life as well as some tenderhearted close friends. He's proud of his work in creating the fake injury. Only a few people managed to nice the bottle of fake blood he is holding in his hand in that picture. Don't be too surprised if he pulls something like this again. My advice - don't be afraid to call us directly to find out what's going on. The only damage from this incident was to the shorts Dex was wearing.