With Thanksgiving on its way, I wanted to share a few little blessings in my life right now. In the last couple of months I feel like I've done a lot of learning and growing as a person. I don't like it all the time, some days are good, some are not - others are just exhausting. But I've caught myself counting my blessings more often than I ever have and accounting for each one individually.

Things with State Farm are moving along. According to this chart I think we're doing great! 

While I'd like to believe that we're about half way through the tangle and will be seeing sunlight on the other end at any moment, I know we probably haven't even come to the first bend yet.That's totally okay. While I would probably fast forward if I could, this is really good for us.

Matthew being gone so much as actually been good in some ways. We've never really been phone talkers, and now we talk on the phone all the time! I really love it. Would I rather just have him home with me? YES! of course! But because this is the way it has to be right now, I'm soaking in every minute he is on the line and looking forward to every text and call more than I ever did before. 

The days are going by SO FAST. It's forcing me to savor them. I'm becoming more accountable for my days. With so much to do, in so little time I'm beginning to feel the passing of every day and feel its worth. This is something I'm really grateful for.

Audio books and music. Maybe those seem like things that aren't important enough to make the list, but some days they save me. I can't do ANYTHING else if the television is on, but if I can turn on a good book or music I'm all set to go, it lessens the quietness in my house, and because I'm not glued to the television, I get so much done!

Food. I love food. Probably to much. The first day that Matthew is gone,  I usually spend sulking and eating things that do me more harm than good. Then I usually live on cereal and peanut butter toast. This last time he left I told myself buck up and be responsible. So I've been trying to eat better and make more health. Instead of leaving candy out to snack on (because I don't snack, I gorge) I chopped up a head of roman lettuce and made sure that a bowl of it was out on the counter when ever I've been in the kitchen. I also made a batch of  Tomatillo Cilantro ranch (think Cafe Rio) and made sure that there was a little bowl of that out as well. Its turned out great! Instead of a bowl of cereal late at night, I end up eating salad, because it's right there. I've also been trying to take lunch to work at least every other day.It's been nice to have some kind of control and routine again in my life! This weekend I took time to make home made hot pockets and monkey bread - I forgot how relaxing cooking is.

My amazing neighbors. This is waaay above the books and food on my thankful list right now. I have the most amazing neighbors, Shirley, Jared and their little boys make my life so good. Living next door to them as really made me look forward to having our own family some day. I want to cry every time I think of moving away. When we rent out the house, I'm considering charging an extra fee just for having awesome neighbors.

Tithing and primary - Now I am teaching the 10 year olds and they are way too smart and way too big. Apparently I haven't gotten any taller since I was about 10 because many of them are my size.

You're going to make fun of me but I'm adding How I Met Your Mother to the list tonight- I'm not a big television person so I'm adding this sheepishly. But I can't help it I LOVE this show. When I'm feeling pouty or lonely I jump on hulu and watch an episode (or two or three or....) between statistic chapters. Seriously. Hilarious.

 I'm grateful for my statistics class. :: shutters :: Well, technically I HATE my statistics class. But I'm also really grateful for it. I'm about half way through and while it makes me cry on a pretty regular basis, when I DO understand what we're talking I almost enjoy it. I am taking the course through a private tutoring company called Ology and while it's a little more expensive,  there are only 3 people in my class and I am by passing having to take FOUR other math classes by taking this course. NICE!  

Well, the gratitude month is long and I've used up my allowed break from homework. Now I have to get back to identifying "whether or not the statistical procedure is robust in respects to Normality when alpha is equal to 0.53791 and when the z* of the standard deviations of the population in a randomly selected matched pairs sample test is > 600"...

Mom, Sarah and Paul came to visit Matthew and I this weekend. We met up in West Valley where Matthew had been staying for work. Matthew had to go back to work Saturday morning, so I took the family out to Stansbury to show them around.

We had some trouble with the Jeep, but it proved for a good adventure.

Paul didn't think it was a very fun adventure...

I love them!

Yep, that is Sarah's finger in the picture. :) 

I miss them so much!

Matthew is gone on a two week stint in Arizona for training - and I'm going crazy. I HATE being home alone. Sweety foresaw this and booked me a ticket to fly down and spend the weekend with him!

Getting there was a little rough, after a full day of work and class I arrived for my 9:50 flight. Delta postponed it to 11:15 and then around midnight announced that because of problems that they were canceling the flight altogether. They booked us on a 6:30 flight for the next morning that then carted all 150 of us, luggage-less off to hotels for the night. 

While it broke my heart that my already short weekend with handsome was just made shorter, I have to assume that there really was something unsafe about the condition of the plane, if they were willing to get each person a room and food, rather  than just letting us fly as scheduled. Even so, the next morning people looked ragged - my makeup-less, second day clothes-clad self included. My heart poured out to the children on our flight. This little girl was honestly the saddest/cute thing I saw the whole weekend. She had some serious bed head. She probably got to sleep around 1:30 just to get back up at 4 to go to the airport!

Poor thing!

Things continued in their rough fashion, as it does some days, my luggage had taken a serious beating, and the bottom was broken out. Lucky, all of my things were still inside and in good shape. Then I was missed by the shuttle - twice! lol.... oh... good times. So, a little worse for wear, i arrived at our hotel 12 hours later than expected. By the time I made it to the hotel husband was long gone for the day to his traings. My 2 1/2 day weekend had turned to 1 1/2 - but that was SO much better than being at home alone.


When I finally got to see him that afternoon I nearly cried i was so happy! These training are a regular thing now, and I've turned into a little bit of a baby.


That night we went to dinner at Rokerij with some of Matthew's good friends who have a State Farm office in Phoenix. The rest of the weekend was amazingly uneventful! Matthew took me to see the State Farm Training Center, we picked up groceries for him for this next week, got ice cream, did laundry,

  

had some GREAT sushi

 

walked around the temple and visitor center

and tried to get at one normal picture of ourselves.

 

It was so nice to spend some time with Matthew and to see his second home for the next few months. Now I'm going to buck up and try not to whine about being all alone this next week!

I LOVE our primary class. They are so adorable. This week our lesson was on the temple.We talked about how we all want to prepare to go to the temple and I pulled out Matthew's Ipad and showed them this clip.

I showed it to them with the intention of having the music to sing along to in class. But they were AMAZED at how many children ALSO loved the temple! How cute! To them, it looked like there were "millions" of children singing about the temple. This was a wonderful twist on our lesson. I decided to roll with it. We talked about how there WERE many many many people and children all over the world who loved the temple and who were also trying to be good and keep the commandments so that they could go to the temple too. They were so impressed by this.

Then we made color flip books so that they could teach their families about the temples when they went home. Then I showed them this clip.

Honestly, I showed them this clip just to take up a little more time. :) I worried that they might think it was boring. But they were captivated. I was so surprised. When they started showing pictures of the temples the kids got so excited. I thought that was great - but when they started showing pictures of the INSIDE their eyes got as big as saucers! "WOOOOOOW!" "I wannnna go thereeee..." "Beauuuutiful!" "Is that OUR temple?"

My very favorites were:

"No wonder I feel good when I see the temple, because its beautiful INSIDE to!" and  "I'm going to be so good so I can go there and get married!"

I loved hearing this so much. I could have cried to see them so excited. I love the temple so much and I felt so happy to be able to share this with our primary kids. I'm so grateful for the temple, the church and this teaching opportunity.

When I’m avoiding writing about one thing – I don’t write about anything at all. But that just isn’t going to do because I’m going to look back and have no idea what we were doing with our lives. If you see us on a regular basis, this is going to be old news, but I just keep putting off seeing it in writing. 

So that I stop putting it off, I’ll just get it all out. We’ll see how it looks.

We’re opening a State Farm Insurance Agency, so we’re moving to Stansbury Park! 

Stansbury Park is by Tooele. Yes. Tooele. 

And we’re kind of opening an office. Really, we’re taking over a State Farm office. There is a gentleman in Tooele who is retiring, and his giant office is being divided between us and another agent. We will be opening a new office physically, in Stansbury Park with half of his clientele. 

Yay! I’m excited, apprehensive, scared spitless and can’t wait!

It’s such a long story, which is the real reason why I’ve been avoiding writing about it. In March Matthew’s work Fortune Learning Systems closed their doors. We were really lucky to have a rainy day fund as well as my income from UVU, so there wasn’t a big rush for him to find work. My biggest concern was him finding something that he LOVED. Husband is 100% dedicated to his work, regardless of what it is and if he was going to dedicate that much of himself to something I wanted to know that it was something that he looked forward to every day. Plus, we were leaving for Europe in 6 weeks and felt like it would be hard to start a new job and then leave for the better part of a month.

So we waited. We Europed. We had an amazing time.

When we got home, Matthew got right to work doing research on where he want to work. We both had some ideas that we hoped to find in a job for him. Like everyone, we wanted job stability and long term financial freedom. We were looking for entrepreneurship and employee satisfaction to boot. Something Matthew brought up was finding a family friendly company. While working for Fortune was wonderful, and a blessing – it meant that he was working well over 45 hours a week and that meant little family time. When it’s just the two of us, that’s not a huge deal. But when we are greater than two, we have to be able to spend time together with our family. We also were travel happy from our trip and wanted to find something that would allow us to do more of it in the future.

That's a pretty hefty list and I wasn’t sure that it was possible to find all of that in one place. But we could dream. 

Leave it to Husband. While I was dreaming of it, he went out and found it. 

I came home one day and he announced that he was going to work for State Farm and proceeded to demonstrate how it satisfied every. single. thing. we were looking for. Goodness I love him.

It wasn’t easy, that’s for sure. Then interview process was grueling. Once he was accepted as an agent, we would be put on a list of “approved agents” and would wait our turn for an office opening. We thought it would be at least 9 months to a year before we were considered for anything. But, in true Matthew Yack fashion, the day after his interview corporate called him up and asked in if he wanted to take over/open an office in Stansbury Park. :) He still had to interview for it, but it all fell into place and we accepted. Our office will open March 1^st. 

This has thrown our entire lives into a frenzy, but if you know us well, you probably realize that its usually like that anyways. :)

So now Matthew is passing off his financial certifications, and spending a lot of time in Arizona for training. I’ve finishing up at UVU and trying to wrap my head around the responsibilities that I’ll have with our office and slowly but surely pack up our house. Life is good. Busy. Crraaaazy busy. But oh so good.

It’s been a busy day! This morning we went a primary activity. After a lesson from a bishopric member, we split into groups and went on a treasure hunt around the church. It was fun to have all of the kids together when they didn’t have to worry about talking quietly or folding their arms. The treasure hunt ended in a ice cream party in the gym. WOW. Our primary presidency is amazing.  I love event planning, but I’m not sure I’d ever try to hold an ice cream party for 100 kids. It was so fun though, scooping ice cream, dishing out sprinkles and Oreo crumbles. I had the job of whipped cream and spoons. I seriously had so much fun!

After primary we went down to the Spanish Fork Farmers Market. It’s one of my favorite things about living here! I’ve been waiting impatiently for mooonths for it to start again. We bought honey, peppers, squash, zucchini, peaches, corn, beef jerky, and a big fat loaf of herb bread. I love supporting our city and the locals here, not to mention fresh fruit and veggies. During the winter we usually get our veggies from Bountiful Baskets, but going down to the Farmers Market is just such a treat! I HIGHLY recommend that if you live nearby you check it out. It’s Saturday mornings from 8am to 1pm at Center and Main in SF.

After that we made a trip to Home Depot for paint. A few months ago we were trying to decide what color to paint our basement bathroom and never settled on anything. Finally we got re-motivated and picked a green. It looks very close to this:

 

It's a small bathroom, so we were able to put on both coats today. It's looking wonderful! Now we're just waiting for it to dry so we can pull off the tape and put everything back together.

It's nice to get things done around here. We've been so crazy busy with other things that although today was busy busy, it was almost like a little vacation.

About a month ago a member of our bishopric came over and called us to be primary teachers. I giggled nervously when we accepted. I’d ALWAYS been in Relief Society. ALWAYS. We had avoided being called into primary for nearly three years- so it was definitely our turn!

We are teaching the 5 turning 6 year olds. They are CUTE. We have eleven on our roster, but usually see between six and nine of them. They are so talkative and energetic and curious about everything. They love to answer questions, tell stories. Many of our lessons go like this:

Sister Yack /Miss Tiffany: Why is it important that we remember Jesus?

Child #6: Because he – 

Child # 3 Interrupts – THIS ONE TIME- I FELL OFF MY BED AND I WAS BLEEDING ON MY NOSE! – THERE WAS BLOOD – BLOOD ALL OVER MY NOSE AND MY JAMMAS – they were my best Spiderman jammas…) 

Child #8 WOOOO…. I have spiderman pajamas TOOOO. Heeeeyyy did you bring treats today...??

Children # 2, 5, 3, 4 – Treats?? YOU got treats?? But I didn’t get oooooone! You said that you would bring treeeeeeeats! I got blood out from my nose one time too because I got hit in nose like - BAM!!

Mean while original Child # 6 is looking confused and trying to decide if it’s still her turn to keep speaking or if she is missing out on treats too. 

I love it.

The kids really like object lessons and to help them remember what we talked about we’ve been making them their own “lessons” to teach at home to their families. A couple weeks ago we gave them each a little rock and piece of cloth. All together we practiced putting the rock in our hand without showing anyone and covering it with the cloth. Then we practiced asking our families questions about faith. Then they pulled off the cloth to show that there really was something under there – just like everyone had faith that there was. They return and report to us on their teaching the next week. For the most part, these activities have been a hit! It’s so fun to see them learn, and we have a good time putting lessons together.

We just love our little class. They are so sweet and rowdy of course! So far, so good!