The Weekend (and other things)

  So, the weekend was long but peaceful. Friday morning, I headed to Bakersfield by myself to attend Danni Lynn's funeral (for those of you who don't know, Danni was my brother Daniel's 18 month old daughter who lost her little life to Leukemia). The service, although a bit socially awkward  with so much family, was beautiful and well done. Her casket, though tiny, was beautiful, and there was a peace to the entire thing, knowing that our Heavenly Father is now taking perfect care of her.

 After the service, we all met at my parents' ward building where we had a lunch with everyone involved. I also experience my first case of heartburn (if that's what it was) after eating an onion from a salad. I eat onions with things all the time, but this was the first time it had an effect on me. My chest felt all tight and weird and I immediately lost my appetite. Nice, huh?

Anyway, I spent a night apart from husband while I slept at my parents' house (he's been working on a project at work, therefore he couldn't get the day off on such short notice). It really was nice spending so much time with family (even came up with a remedy to help my dad with pain after his surgery). That next morning, I went shopping with mum (mommy, mother, mom, etc). We first went to Target where we picked out the cutest presents for my niece, Kaydance's,  3rd birthday. My mom bought her the Tangled Rapunzel barbie doll who was wearing a cute, purple, lace up front dress, and I bought her the actual size dress so she could wear what her barbie is wearing. We then stopped at the post office where we sent off the presents, then headed to the grocery store where we went grocery shopping. After our shopping trip, we headed back, I cooked up lunch, and went on my way home. Luckily I left when I did because when I hit the Grapevine, it was way rainy and windy and was difficult to drive without slowing down and really paying attention to my surroundings.

So, I got home, hugged and kissed my man, and we headed to N. Hollywood where we went antique browsing and video game shopping. On the way home, we stopped by the Valencia Town Center mall/outdoor mall where we did some more shopping and ate dinner at 5 Guys Burgers. The Patios, the new outdoor extension to our mall, is just beautiful at night (I have some pictures posted from a Christmas/December post with the outdoor fireplaces, etc). It's so beautiful at night with all the fireplaces lit up, ponds lit up (with the HUGE Koi), and the liveliness of all the people and music. It was a wonderful evening and a nice weekend.

On another note, everything surrounding me lately has been regarding emergency preparedness since there seems to be a rumor involving a soon-to-be earthquake next month. So, Gary and I have been doing research, reading information, and ordering kits to prepare since I feel we are not even close to being prepared. Our ward has emergency preparedness nights and I need to start attending. We DO have a ward blog that keeps track of it though:  Valencia Preparedness.

So that's that for now. I've been working mornings this week and I'm glad. It's nice to have the rest of the days to myself. Anyway, time for dinner then D&D. Bye!

PS- On another quick note, I finished the BoM last night after reading it straight through for the past couple of months (not the mention all the studying involved). It felt marvelous to complete and I'm looking forward to doing it again. I always love when I finish the BoM. Such a great feeling of peace. I always learn something new since there's always so much!