What's been keeping me busy

I've already mentioned that I celebrated Michele's birthday with her last week, but because I like her so much and she's so cute, especially here in front of the fabulous pastries at La Madeleine, that's one thing I've been up lately instead of blogging, partying with my sweet friend. One day, I took a tour of Carol's new house, she's a former mission companion who lives here in Austin. Her new house has some very non-traditional features in it, such as a high school sized gymnasium, an elevator, about three kitchens, a movie theater with reclining leather seats, a massive chandelier, pictured here, and a Sistine Chapel style of painting on the entryway ceiling, and hand-made mosaic in the master bath, to name a few.

Click on the photo if you'd like to get a closer look. It's huge and took a long while for the tour, and I was practically out of breath by the end. I would love to watch a football game in her home theater. They hosted a zone conference activity for the LDS missionaries at their house not too long ago.

Speaking of zone conferences, our ward was assigned to feed the missionaries for a zone conference lunch a couple weeks ago and I was in charge of it. There were about 75 of them, including the mission president and his wife, Chuck Cutler, a former BYU football star. His wife and he were just the cutest couple and they loved the food, and she asked me to email the recipe for the pie to her. We served the Pumpkin Chocolate Cheesecake Pie recipe that I discovered on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens magazine last month, and a hearty beef stew, and Buttery Parmesan Rolls. It went really well and we fed them fast. At the end of the event, they sang a cute little thank you song to us, so here's a picture of them as they are singing.

Here's a shot of our tree this year. I finally got it finished last night and it's too tall to get the full view of to show the details, but here's a glimpse of my tree. I love getting the ornaments out.

One other thing that I'm excited about is that I was just called to be the 1st counselor in the stake Relief Society presidency, with Lorraine D. as the new president. Her husband was the stake president for more than nine years until last month. I'm looking forward to that, and feel a bit overwhelmed that I am not quite ready for the job, but I'll keep preparing myself every day to serve in this new job. Sorry I haven't been updating my blog very much. Another distraction has been Facebook. I like the blog so much better, but Facebook has it's advantages. Happy December, everyone!