The End & April Fool's

 28 March - 3 April 2022

What a great week. To kickstart it all, Family Home Evening on Monday was a hit! We had it at Tammy Johnson's house, and she went all out with decorating and food. Yes, there was even a chocolate fountain set up! But the best part of all was that everyone loved the game we played. I'd thought of it the night before while searching for games. It was a mix of Would You Rather and Do You Love Your Neighbor. I asked a question, and everyone would think of their answer. The person in the middle would say their answer out loud, and if you picked the same answer as them, you had to switch seats. The last one without a seat would be the new person in the middle. After a half hour of playing (and I was running out of questions), I asked if they wanted to get some food now. No one really jumped up at the suggestion, so I asked, "Or do you want to keep playing?" And everyone shouted that they wanted to keep playing! We had a big turn out of over 20 people and everyone had a blast, which made me feel super good about my calling! Plus, everyone loved the homemade salsa I made!

Tuesday night, my parents and us girls went to the movies to watch The Lost City. Overall, the plot line was better than I expected, but the content was worse than I expected (meaning, so much more violence and sexual references and blah than I was comfortable with). That really disappointed mom too and ruined the whole movie for her. I'm glad there are more LDS movie and tv writers that are popping up even as the mainstream media grows more and more nasty and inappropriate. But us girls got a cute photo in the theater, so that was nice.

This week, I worked feverishly on finishing the first draft of Pampered Little Princess so I could give it to Lucy for her birthday. And on Friday, I finally got to write the words "The End." That felt SOOO good. Even though I rushed the ending a bit and left out some things that I want to go back and add. I was just amazed by how much writing I could get done, even in less than perfect circumstances (in between answering phone calls at work) and it gives me hope that I can sit down and knock out some books and it won't take so long if I stay diligent!

Friday also happened to be Lucy's birthday (as well as April Fool's Day, obviously). That morning, I'd been scrolling on Facebook and came across a link to a ton of free clean romance books you could sign up and get a PDF copy sent to your email. Some of the books were by authors I knew were LDS. Well, during my morning walk up and down the street, I had over 30 PDF books sent to my email, and I decided to incorporate it into a gift for Lucy, since she's always complaining about "what to read next." I wrote her a "Part 2" birthday card explaining that for the next sixteen weeks, a new book would be emailed to her every Monday and Friday. She was SO surprised and excited and amazed when she read that! Not to mention she was very happy that I'd finished my book for her. I think she had a really good birthday evening. We finished the night by watching the new movie Val got her, Once I Was Engaged, which was really cheesy--and not my kind of cheesy, which is saying something. In my dad's words: "That was the worst movie I've ever seen." So that was kind of a disappointment, but oh well. The funny part was that Val tricked Lucy by putting the disk in another movie case, so Lucy thought she'd gotten this weird old movie called "Watcher in the Woods," but then when she opened it, it was the Engagement movie instead.

I had to work on Saturday, but I was able to watch conference while I was at work. I had to pause it occasionally to answer a call or talk with someone, but then I just played it on 1.25 speed until I caught back up. I definitely noticed a theme of missionary work and took some personal lessons and thoughts with me that I am going to implement in my life. But overall, it was cool to basically be making money while watching conference :).

So, that was my week in a nutshell. 

Much love,

Emily Burnham