It's my party and I'll cry if I want to...

I am a firm believer in the fact that birthdays are nature's way of telling us to eat more cake. Growing up, birthday cake was a big deal at my house. My mom is an incredible cake decorator! She would spend two or three days before our actual birthday laboring away on another masterpiece. Now, I love to make birthday cakes for my friends and family members. I'm definitely not a pro like my mom though. Mostly I'm crunched for time and I get too impatient to make sure that every shell and star comes out perfectly. But I do enjoy it. Immensely. There's nothing quite as satisfying as the creamy mixture of buttercream frosting and moist cake in your mouth. Am I making your mouth water? Even more than I love birthday cake, I love birthdays. And not just for me. Watching other people celebrate their birthdays makes me proud and grateful to be there to share a special day with them. Every year on my husband's birthday, I am grateful and amazed by the wonderful man that he is. So much can happen in just one year. Time holds us accountable for what we have done with that year, but birthdays let us celebrate it all- the good and the bad- the progress and growth we have experienced over the past year. How important it is to celebrate living; truly living and experiencing everything this life has to offer. Birthdays are simply the icing on the cake.

Settling In...

A blog! Finally a blog of my own! For weeks, possibly months, I have had a serious case of blog envy. At first I just hinted around about how fun it is to read our friends' blog, mention something cute I saw that day. Didn't work. Then I broke down and started in with the begging. Didn't work. So I dropped it. Then saturday I mentioned it again and just out of the blue he agreed to it. I don't know the reason for the sudden change in opinion, but I have decided to run with it. Needless to say, I'm very excited to finally have a blog of my own where I can document the happenings of our life. Our life has changed so much just in the last few months and I'm excited to see what the future brings.
John and I have been in our new apartment for exactly twelve days. The first five days don't really count though, because we were sleeping on an air mattress for three of them and out of town for the other two. So this week has been the true test of how well we like living "the King Henry lifestyle." Also, this week is our first time on-call. Basically, that means we have literally been chained to the apartment! No, it actually hasn't been that bad. There have been a few lockouts, a late night party broken up by the cops, and some scantily clad young women but that's about it. We're getting the hang of locking up the clubhouse every night, and our bodies are starting to adjust to the new sleep schedule. Sunday was our first week in the new ward. They are great! It's still a fairly transient ward, but people seem to be very friendly and there are actually some youth. Secretly, I'm dying to be called to the young women's...unfortunately it doesn't work like that! The biggest challenge with the move has been finding a place for everything. The apartment layout is completely different, so we've been starting from scratch. It's also a little smaller than our last apartment; our dresser actually ended up in the living room, because it won't fit anywhere else! Still, we are thrilled to be RA's and to be saving a little money on rent. A HUGE BLESSING!