Spice up your life!

So, tonight we decided that it would be a good time to rehash "our" award-winning green chili. I say that with the caveat, because it was someone else's award-winning chili first. We just found the recipe on the Food Network. We did get an award for making it, though. I can tell by the way that it is currently burning my lips off that we apparently used a spicier rendition of some of the key ingredients. Yes, I'm eating while I write this. What of it?

Anyway. Since we last left you, a few notable things happened in our lives. I gave a talk in church a few Sundays ago. It was exciting. And by exciting, I mean completely nerve-wracking. It's surprising after how many times you go through this experience, every time it seems like your heart will explode out of your chest. The topic was on service and the great plan of salvation. Often, I've found that I really don't put those two together, but they fit quite well.

Lovetta's sister was also in town for about a week and some days. It was a lot of fun, because we really don't get to see much of her in the year. We played a lot of games and had a few costume parties since Halloween was so close. Lovetta's kinda covered this already, but I just felt the need to pipe in and say that it was nice to have her in town.

On the opposite end of things, we'll be saying goodbye to her brother come this Wednesday. He enters the MTC to begin serving his 2-year mission for our church. He was called to the New York, Utica mission. That kid is gonna do great! And if it was anything like when I went, he's going to come back with a lot of great life experiences under his belt. We wish him the best of luck!

Substituting has been a bit slow for me for the last week. I'm not too worried, because Lovetta convinced me how awesome it will be when I substitute for four days at her elementary school. One word: nervous! All of my educational training is focus around hormonal teenagers. If a kid isn't swearing at me for making them do work when their teacher is gone, then I'm doing my job poorly. (I kid. Kind of.) Anyway, she says it's a piece of cake and it's going to be in her grade level. So, she'll end up having to debrief me on all of the lesson plans. That's in about two weeks, so we'll keep you posted on how it goes down.