Life By Lindsey Rae

Jerrod always gets after me for not answering my cell phone. A lot of times I just leave it in another area of the house and I don't hear it. So, since I've started working outside more recently, I thought I better keep my phone out there with me so he wouldn't be upset with me when he tried to call me and I didn't answer it. I was keeping it on top of one of the pillars on the front porch and pretty much forgot it was there unless it rang.
Recently, there was one night before I went to bed when I remembered that I had accidentally left it outside after that day's yard work. When I went out to get it, I realized that I had watered the flowerbed right beside it, and therefore, had also ended up watering my phone. It was sitting there in a little puddle.

I tried to use it and, of course, it began acting strangely. I had to tell Jerrod what I had done and he helped me to prepare it to dry out, telling me to not expect much; I would probably have to get a new one. This was a little upsetting, because I don't really like talking on the phone anyway and as cheap as I am, the last thing I want to do is spend a whole bunch of money on a new phone that I wouldn't have needed if I had a better memory than a gnat.

We dried it out and fortunately, it worked the next day! I was so happy. But, from now on, I keep my phone in a plastic ziplock bag whenever I go outside. It makes it a bit difficult to answer the phone when it rings, but at least if I do happen to forget I have it again, there is a better chance of survival.

Every Sunday when I get home from church I am just so tired. My calling is exhausting. I feel like all I do is chase kids around all morning. (Part of the problem is that it is in the morning....I don't do well with mornings.)
Usually after church you want dinner, but I don't even eat most times. I just have to come home and take a nap.

I just realized that the thing that makes it so hard is not that they are 3...but that they are 3 and that I have to attempt to keep them at least somewhat reverent for such an extended period of time. If we were just playing around it might not be so difficult, but we go to the 3rd hour of classes with the senior primary and I have to admit that if I were 3-years-old, I would probably not have any clue or interest in what is going on in there most of the time either.
And as difficult as it is for the class to sit through it....well, let's just say I guarantee it's at least as hard, if not more so for their teacher who must sit with them in all their difficulty.

I like to say that generally, when you have adult ADD, primary is a good place to be...I enjoy that it keeps my mind active and that I don't have an opportunity to fall asleep like I might if I were in an adult class. (This is especially good for me having excessive daytime sleepiness problems.)
But, hanging out with a bunch of 3-year-olds will wear a person out. (And cause additional excessive daytime sleepiness.)

This Saturday we had a pizza party with the kids from our church class that we teach. We had been telling them since the beginning of the year that we were going to do this; it was a motivation for them to do their scripture reading assignments. Every week I give out a reading assignment, which is really too easy...usually only a verse or two, and then the next week they are supposed to bring back their assignment and show that they did it. Well, let's just say the easy assignment has proven to be difficult for most, as we usually get less than 50% who do it. Each week they do it, they get a sticker on their chart and after 10 stickers they get a prize. And they are good prizes too. Then on top of the great prizes we said that once enough of them got 10 stickers we'd have a party.
Anyway, when we were asked to teach the class, our Bishop had encouraged us to maybe have some kind of activity with the kids outside of church. He actually suggested we have them over to our house for a party, but that wasn't going to happen...our place is definitely not childproof...and it most definitely would not be possible to have that many kids in here. Somebody would have got hurt...either from doing something like bumping their head on my stained glass table or by Jerrod wringing their necks.
So, we planned a pizza party at the church. We had 6 out of 8 kids who were able to come. All the parents told us that they were really excited beforehand.It went pretty well, all things considering. A little crazy, a lot of running around, but overall, not bad. Jerrod's work cell phone did get a glass of pop kicked on it, but fortunately he had it in a case and so it didn't get anything on it...although at first he thought it got wet and was a little upset. (That would have been the second work cell phone to be destroyed by pop that he's had.)
I also made up a treasure hunt and hid treat bags at the end. They liked that and we liked watching them have to walk from one far side of the building to the other far side many times. (I made sure to hide them as far apart as possible as to extend the length of the game, wear them out and it was entertaining for us to watch. haha.)
Then we also played Jenga, basketball and some of us (not me) ran around half the time.
So, that's one thing accomplished for this year. We have only a couple more months in the ward. Even though we are looking forward to moving, I want to stay in Primary though. I like it because primary is a good place to be if you have ADD. It really helps to stay focused because there is so much going on that you have to take care of all the time: I teach, go to singing time and spend the rest of the time telling kids to be quiet and stop poking each other. So I keep busy.
And also, I really like doing this with Jerrod. We get to stay together the entire 3 hours of church and that's really great. I'm so glad that they are doing the team-teacher thing in primary now. And, I also think that it's really fun that this is Jerrod's first time being in Primary EVER, since he didn't join the church until he was almost 19. It's kind of cool that he is going to primary now for the first time and we are going there together. :) Oh, and this picture of us is at our party...I can't believe I actually got a picture. As you can obviously tell Jerrod just loves to have his picture taken. Doesn't he look thrilled?