Passing & Passing Out

By Trisha
It has been one busy month rolling right into the next.

We spent President's weekend in Prineville, leaving the Wednesday before and coming home on President's Day on Monday. It was a great time! I really enjoyed myself and was relaxed, well, except for the two days Paul and Oriana were there. I'm just tired of the crap and I think all the siblings are for the most part. Jason wasn't there much when they were and Jenna disappeared upstairs after dinner, but we did family photos one night, visited, played games and stayed busy but also just enjoyed a relaxing weekend where we didn't have do anything or go anywhere.

The family pictures are a project I decided to take on and Carla and I talked about different poses that afternoon and everything. The main family photo of all of us will be the centerpiece and the larger photo and then around the edges we will have the five couples' photos and the all girls and all boys photos. I'm going to silkscreen the mats, now I just need to find the frames, touch up and crop the photos.

President's Day also brought some great news! I was able to get my unofficial CBEST score online at 5pm. I PASSED!! I rocked it!!! And I was so worried that I would have to redo the writing section. I did far better than the minimum scores on all three sections. That Saturday, my official score report and transcript arrived in the mail. Now, I just need to get busy taking the next steps to substitute teach.

I ended the month starting a boot camp at the Laguna Creek Racquet Club. It is an 8-week program, with boot camp three days a week for an hour on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Part of the program is also having a personal trainer and working with them once a week, which I do on Tuesday mornings at 9am. Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, we can work out however we want. Sundays will be my day off for church and family. Thursdays and Saturdays, I plan to do some work on the stationary bikes and some weight/strength training. We are in our second week of the eight and I lost 3.5 pounds last week. Last week, I was all kinds of sore. This week, I'm still sore, but not anything like last week. I'm continuing to hurt now, because I'm pushing harder and our workouts are gradually getting harder. This week, on Friday evening, we will have our first group meeting that will help with motivation, and education on eating and fitness. I hate getting up at 5am, but I feel great after each workout and it's helping me reach my goals.

I started doing some indexing work on FamilySearch.org. It has been sponsored and encouraged by our church. I first learned about it last summer, when Uncle Derek and Aunt Michelle talked about it, I was intrigued. I finally looked it up and read up on it. Last Friday was my first day and I did 50 names. I haven't had a chance to do any work since, but I plan on doing some tonight. I have a goal to index 50 names a day and I haven't been doing very well with that goal this week. I am really enjoying it though.

Finally, I have picked where I left off on the Lahr family calendar last year. I have had great success finding my great grandparents that I never knew and I've even found his siblings and his parents and aunts and uncles. The information I have found on FamilySearch has been amazing. After the family calendar is done, next year, I hope to start really doing some major genealogy work on the Lahr side of the family and hopefully create our family tree. The Lahr's (my mom's side) are German but I don't know where the Brady side come from yet. The Mitchell's (dad's side) is Irish and I can't remember where the Lewis/Barker clan is from. It's very exciting! I've always been interested in family history, not just mine but every one's. However, I've never really wanted to do any of the work-there is so much and it seems I'm always overwhelming myself. But, I think as long as I'm not working I can do some work each day and then when I'm teaching and working again, I will try to set a goal to indexed two or three times a week. I find it very fascinating!