Family Pictures

 6 December - 12 December 2021

I started my new job on Monday! And after surviving a whole week of working full-time, I can say I like my job so far! Especially because I have loads of time to do homework. My boss Jill says that things will pick up a lot during tax season, so to enjoy the slowness while it's here. Work is from 9 to 5, but I usually leave around 8:30 in the morning because Jill wants me to work down at the Mesa office to get trained, since the Chandler office is empty right now. I get home after five. It's so weird to have my whole day taken up, but I kind of love it because I am getting paid more money and feel more productive. 

Also, mom and Lu woke up at 5am to go to the gym for an hour before school, and I tagged along Tuesday through Friday. Let me tell you, I felt so much better by the end of the week! More energized, less sore and achy, less groggy and foggy in my brain. The after-effects of eating dairy weren't as bad! (Which, why I ate dairy will be discussed later in the email). 

The first couple of days working at Sun Income Tax, they trained me on some programs they use and on answering phones. They had me work on projects, such as scanning papers into the computer and then shredding them. I must have jammed the shredder at least five times while getting rid of that huge stack of papers and folders! By the end of the week, they didn't have much for me to do, so I got to just sit and work on homework and answer the occasional phone call. 

Monday night after work, we went shopping at Target, since I had a gift card there, to get some shirts for family pictures Tuesday night. I got a new bag for work, a nice professional looking one. Well, Val and Mom decided to get everyone in the entire family new shirts that correspond with each other. So Target made a lot of money that night! Family pictures were cute, but we didn't get digital access to them because my parents didn't want to pay the $100 fee to get access to all of them, but I got some screen shots of the sample photos they sent us.

Thursday night, I went with my parents and Valerie to play racquetball. I am getting better, pretty much as good as my mom. I also got to talk to Whitney on the phone and made the realization that if I hadn't gone to BYU specifically, I probably wouldn't know to go into marriage and family therapy, because back then I thought I wanted to be an individual counsellor, but now that I am learning more about MFT in my classes, I am so grateful that I get to focus on families in a whole and complete way, a newer way than previous methods. I have so many ideas and desires to help parents and children. God is so good.

On Friday, I made homemade gluten-free cinnamon rolls for the first time. I was so excited as I made them because they were actually rising and looking great! But they didn't turn out as good as I hoped. Saturday night, I attended a Christmas party a girl was throwing in the ward, and after an hour, I was bored, so I went into the movie theatre room and watched a movie by myself. It was kind of dumb, but oh well. I also got my last essay of this quarter written up, so school should be a breeze! It ends next week, and then I have three weeks off before the new quarter starts. With my new job, I should be able to make enough money to not need to borrow money from anyone. Sacrament meeting today was full of musical numbers. Sean and I are playing a violin duet next Sunday. I invited a nonmember friend from my old job to come hear.

Much love,

Emily Burnham