Fourth of July

Happy 4th of July, or thereabouts!

My parents came to town, so we celebrated the holiday weekend by doing the following:
- Scoping out possible "cabins" in Mountain Town
- Our annual visit to the Cherry Creek Arts Festival
- Checking out the Paris Vintage/Antique Street Market in town (where I bought a vanity! I've been lusting after one since I tried out my sister's a few years ago. As soon as I get a mirror for it, I get to put on my makeup like a real lady!)
- Grocery shopping at Whole Foods
- Enjoying the company

Unfortunately, my current cold did not make me the best company - I spent a lot of the weekend trailing after my family, coughing and trying to stay awake. Rachel busted out her awesome purple stethoscope to see if I had pneumonia. My lungs are clear, but she and my mom laughed at the way I couldn't take a deep breath in without yawning on the way out.

See? Just typing the word "yawn" made me yawn. Stupid cold.

I went back to my ward today. It was nice (really nice) to escape the arduous parts of my calling for the last month, but it was also nice to go back and see friends and catch up with people.

I wound up teaching the Relief Society lesson today (surprise!), so I started by telling them about the interruption during Transformers (I opened with the line, "Last week I was in Istanbul," and was interrupted by some of the girls laughing at the statement and commenting on my saying it with such casualness), then talked about the call to prayer (I played a version of it for them to hear), which lead to a discussion (via a small group activity with five different scripture references) about how people worship. It was a good lesson; and to my surprise, it felt really good, natural even, to teach again. I also enjoyed the studying and cross-referencing and research I did in preparing for the lesson - it's been a while since I've felt both compelled and challenged in my thinking about a gospel topic. But that's a topic for a different post.

In general, I'm still bummed about being home, and I still don't feel settled into reality; however, there are a few things I've enjoyed this week:
- Internet!
- Tap water and ice cubes
- Making my own food
- Putting on makeup and doing my hair and in general not looking like a dusty, sweaty traveler,
- Public toilets that are generally clean and not scary (although I still reach for a knob on top to pull rather than for the lever to flush. Odd how quickly that habit formed.)
- Air conditioning
- My bed
- My currently-short-haired kitty-cat

Speaking of which, I'm going to go enjoy those last three items on the list now. Good night!