Happy Early Birthday!

A while ago I realized how unfair it is that I have to grow up. For instance, I had to register to vote and renew my license before I'm even 18 since I'm leaving Midland before my birthday.

But, shame of all shames, I realized the other day the biggest downfall of turning 18 after I leave home: No birthday presents!! All of my siblings got 18 years of "parties," including a nice dinner, presents, and a cake. I, however, was stuck with the knowledge of the 'lucky' fortune of just getting money mailed to me for my birthday. Whoopie. (Realize as you read this that I'm really not as greedy as this is making me out to be.)

However, you know that lady I like to call Marm? You know, Mommie, Mother, Mom..... that one. She's a pretty awesome lady. You know what she pulled on me? An early birthday celebration!

Today after church, I offered to help Mom make dinner (I usually do, me being the great daughter that I am :D). She said, "Why don't you go do something that you need to do before you leave and let me worry about dinner?" I knew we were having pork chops and mashed potatoes for dinner, but I didn't realize the secretive purpose Mom had for making them. I thought she just loved me and knew I be missing that amazing meal while at college. However, after she said the blessing on the food, she broke out in singing "Happy Birthday" to me. She proudly announced that this was my birthday dinner (hence why I couldn't help prepare it). Tricky McTrickster, she is.

For my "cake" (neither of us really love actual cake) she had made a chocolate cheesecake. I had printed off the recipe for her to make a long time ago, and when I asked why she was finally making it Saturday night, she pulled the "I figured I should make it before you leave" line. It was Delicious (notice the capital "D," 'cause it deserves one it was so good)! I even got to put 18 candles in my slice (not an easy feat).

Later Mom came up to me and said, "So where do you want to open your presents?" I didn't realize presents were involved!! What a nice mother. Turns our she had been planning this for a few days, and had some fun shopping for me at Office Depot. She bought me office supplies that I can use in my dorm. But, clever as she is, she bought smaller items so I can easily take them to Utah with me. I got a 3-hole punch, a little tape dispenser (it's so cute!), colored Sharpies, Sharpie pens (new, non-bleeding Sharpies), glue sticks, one of those expanding files so I can put my papers in it, some magnets, paper clips, and push pins, a miniature stapler (with colored staples! :D), and a funny card. She did a great job making me have a great "birthday!"

Thanks, Mom!

Dots and Giggles

This past weekend I went with most of the young women to Lubbock for a fun activity. We had previously planned to attend Schlitterbahn, but that didn't work out. Our leaders, realizing that a temple trip was coming up, decided to have us go up to Lubbock a day early and stay the night in a hotel. The invitation to the event encouraged us to come learn what D.O.T.S. meant.

On the 15th we drove up in the morning, and our first stop was to eat a picnic lunch at the church building right next to the temple. Our bread was bagels and dessert was cookies, so as to fit with the theme. Sis. Ashbaker gave a fun devotional-type thing based on the story You Are Special, by Max Lucado.
She tied it in to the fact that some of the 'dots' that we have are our standards and the various young women values; others may make fun of them, but our maker is really pleased with us.

Next stop: The mall! We went shopping for a few hours, and I had a lot of fun. I'm not normally a shopper, but it was fun to be with friends. Also, they gave each of us $10 and challenged us to find and buy something with dots. Because of this challenge and me being on the look-out for dots, I saw them (what felt like) everywhere! Our leaders even wore polka dots one or both of the days we were there. I ended up buying a cheap little box with polka dots on it, and I helped my two 'group buddies' (we cleverly named ourselves the Hottie Dotties!) buy their respective dotted things. I also found a couple of shirts, one of which I plan on wearing for my going away to college picture.

After the mall we went to our hotel where we had two suites. They were very nice, and I was lucky enough to be in the same suite as the leaders (and not with some of the other very hyper girls! :D). Our dinner was pizza (notice the continued dot theme). I got my swimsuit on, but due to the fact that the hot tub wasn't working and not many of the girls stayed in the pool for a long time, I never got in. Instead I went back up and watched Michael Phelps win his 7th gold medal of the games with an amazing .01 of a lead. (I love the Olympics!!) Sis. Russell gave a devotional about the yw values and had us pick a skittle and tell something about the corresponding value color. We also showed our newly acquired dotted purchases and got little prizes for each one. (I tried putting pictures of the group on this post, but I couldn't figure out what I was doing. :D) My room (Lauren Ashton and Diana Perez) had fun staying up late talking and laughing.

The next morning Sis. Dyer gave the final devotional and we learned that D.O.T.S. stood for "Daily Open The Scriptures." After our continental breakfast, we went to the temple and did baptisms for the dead. I really enjoyed that, as I've had to miss many temple trips because of band. We went to Rosa's before going home. Overall, I had a great trip!!

Picture Day

Ever since Mom got her digital camera, she's hated dealing with pictures. After all, learning a whole new way to get a print is not always fun or simple.

After struggling to teach Mom how to take a picture and delete a picture (I'm not even sure if she remembers how to do that), she took her memory card to Wal-Mart to print some pictures. Various circumstances made it impossible for me to help her fix the problem when many of her pictures came back from Wal-Mart looking terrible.

For instance:

• I didn't know what was wrong in the first place
• She wanted to remove red eye and I didn't know how
• I'm not nearly patient enough to deal with someone who (no offense, Mom) just isn't the quickest on a computer
• etc.

So, Mom kept taking more pictures, but never printing them. Until....

Sweet little Jennifer decides to spend the whole day yesterday helping Mom figure out the computer. I don't just say the whole day as a joke, either. Literally every free minute Jen had, she and Mom were at the computer. I couldn't even check my email for the whole day since they were being such computer hogs! ;-) (It wasn't too big of a deal...)

Good news is, I think Mom might be able to finally get something done that has been hanging over her head. She came to me today and said, "I'm so excited to get my pictures back, Heidi! I've been wanting to label them for months, and I'll finally be able to!" She looked like a little kid on Christmas morning.

So, in conclusion, thanks to Jennifer for doing the job that I didn't have the knowledge or patience to do. And here's to hoping Mom remembers what to do now that she's by herself! Love you, Mom!

p.s. Michelle, here's a picture Mom had on her camera that I didn't know about. Here's a view of the "Daughter of God" board I got that I promised you a picture of.

Fun at the Children's Museum

We had fun taking Natalie and Evelyn to the Museum of the Southwest Children's Museum on Tuesday. Here are some pictures of the fun we had!

This was in the News Room. The museum had many themed rooms (Burger King, bank, home, magic room, store, etc.). This one actually had a camera set up so that we could be on a TV in the corner! Natalie and I are definitely the star anchors for "News West" news.

Natalie had fun crawling through this tunnel to the other side of the museum. Grandma loves her cute granddaughter!

Evelyn spent most of her time here building a mobile. The mobile had cable cords and pieces of wood to hang and make a personalized mobile. I love how she couldn't even reach the what she wanted even standing on a chair.

This was a neat musical part of the museum. To make the sounds, you just had to put your hand on a color of the wood. Natalie didn't have enough pressure on the wood with just one hand, so here Tanya is helping her get the noise to sound.

Evelyn decided to be the store cashier. I would love to buy grocieries from this cutie!

We spent most of the morning at the museum, and it was really fun even for us adults. If you haven't gone to the Museum of the Southwest, I'd recommend it!! There was an art section and outside there was a "dinosaur dig" in a sandbox. Very fun!

Girl Scouts

As I've been cleaning through some of the things in my room, I've been taking a few trips down memory lane. Last night I had this experience as I found my Girl Scout things from when I was in 1st and 2nd grade.

One of the things was a book I made about me. After the blank of who I was named after, I had put "Heidi Widmin." How funny! Mom and I also found it interesting that my pet's name was the same as my favorite food at the time (Popcorn). My favorite song was apparently "Drink swer stil and lie" ("Drink, Swear, Steal, and Lie"... I think by George Strait). Oh, the mind of a 7-year old!

I also found an old cookie order sheet from the year that Rebecca and I were both Brownies. We sold a lot of cookies! I miss having girls come to our house to sell, even if the boxes are expensive. The space where we had ordered cookies only said 3 boxes. All of us were surprised, but we discussed the possibility of that being the year everyone was on Weight Watcher's. I found another form (maybe the next year?) that said 11 boxes next to the "Blake" name. That's more like it!

Young Womanhood Recognition

So this post is a little belated, but that's because I've been at Youth Conference, and I just never got to it before I left. On the 27 of July, I finally had my recognition and earned the long-desired necklace. Dionna Bushman and I received our awards together.

This is the table that I had set out with my projects. It's not a great close-up, but I did explain all of the projects during the recognition.










Mom made the famous torch cake again. Idn't she good? She was glad to not have to do any more.











This was when I was explaining my projects. Not the greatest picture, but you get the picture (no pun intended... except Jen just told me to write that, so the pun was kind of intended).











Woo. Dionna. Me. Go us.














This is the Young Women Presidency. Me, Sister Michelle Russell, Dionna Bushman, Sis. Beverly Dyer, and Sister Allison Ashbaker. Hooray.

I'm glad that I finally achieved this goal. Now I have a new, shiny silver necklace to show for all of my hard work. Today when I got back from Youth Conference, I found out that I had gotten a letter from the stake presidency while I was gone. They congratulated me on a job well done, etc. I liked it a lot. :-) Also at the recognition, I received some temple slippers and a wall hanging of my name with "daughter of God" across it (one of those vinyl lettering things). I'm excited to hang it up in my room (that is, when I get a semi-permanent room in a little less than a month).