We are just finishing a very busy three weeks!  We moved into a none-bedbug and cockroach infested apartment.  The last day we were moving out of the previous apartment Heather discovered a whole nest of dead bedbugs in a room we had used for storage.  From what the exterminator told us, if the bugs came in after we moved in they should have been living in the bedroom or the living room, places we spent a lot of time.  They should not have been in the extra bedroom, that wasn't close enough to a meal.  Take from that as you will, but we are pretty sure the apartment had bedbugs when we moved into it.

Yesterday Heather passed her Registered Dietician exam so she is now Heather Call R.D.  I am super proud of her and how hard she worked for that.  It is the culmination of almost four years of work for her.  After the test she said she just felt relieved but it slowly became happiness.  Unfortunately we didn't get much time to celebrate.  We were in charge of getting food together for a church activity last night and right as it started we got a call from our good friends the Stewarts.

The Stewarts just moved into the ward about a month ago from Oregon.  He called because mine was the only number they had for someone in the ward and their baby decided to come yesterday even though it was a few weeks early.  They called because their babysitters had another commitment and they needed someone to step in for them.  Heather and I grabbed plates of food from the activity and went to their house to watch the two kids until their Dad could be home.  It took a while but their third child was born early this morning and he and his mom are in very good health.  Busy day, but absolutely worth it!

As for me I just finished a week of TA training and will be starting classes on Tuesday.  It is going to be a crazy busy semester, hopefully I can stay on top of things, though I already feel like I am behind.  Three Sundays ago I was also asked to be the Sunday School President in the ward.  That means I am something like a "teaching specialist" and it is my responsibility to make sure the classes have teachers every week and make sure the teachers are all trained.  I've been doing a lot of reading for that to figure out everything I need to do, I think it will turn out okay.

One last anecdote from the last few weeks.  The week after we moved into our new apartment we were asked by a family at church to house sit for them while they were on vacation.  We agreed to do it and it was great blessing.  That week we cleaned an organized our house but went home every evening to their beautiful home.  They had this dog named  Indy that Heather fell in love with.  It was hard for her to say goodbye to Indy.  Anyways, so the anecdote...

Indy the dog.  She and Heather loved playing together and going on walks.

One evening while we were at this house Heather decided to practice the piano.  I was doing some work in a nearby room but as she played I couldn't resist going in to where she was and sitting down to listen.  She played a number of primary songs from church, they were all beautiful.  As I sat there I remembered my grandparents in Utah.  Sometimes Grandpa asks Grandma to play and he goes and sits in his recliner.  He closes his eyes and gets this smile on his face and the peace in their home becomes so very profound.  Usually Grandma plays church songs and that makes the spirit fill the whole house.  I felt like Grandpa sitting in that chair and Heather felt like Grandma.  I hope that in the future we can be more like them, there isn't a better set of role models anywhere.


    

We are slowly settling back into normal life after our visits to family.  Though at the moment we are facing some changes not so far on the horizon.  Since we moved in we've had a problem with second hand smoke in our apartment (all of our adjacent neighbors smoke quite a bit) and the complex we are in doesn't have another, similar apartment they could move us to.  The solution (just approved on Friday) is that we will be moving to one of their sister complexes at the beginning of August.  We will actually have a little more space at the other apartment and the company isn't going to charge us the extravagant cancellation fee ($1200) for ending our lease early.  All in all we feel pretty blessed with how it is working out.

Lately Heather and I have been getting into some new book series that we are very much enjoying.  Heather is reading the Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan.  We own his Percy Jackson series and really like them so when Heather saw these at the library she decided to give them a try.  (We also have some good friends who like them, shout out to Brigham and Stephanina!)  I've been jumping around to lots of different books but finally decided it was time for me to give the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan a try.  I know a number of people, who have somewhat similar tastes to my own, that have really enjoyed them so I thought they might be good.

The other day I had the chance to go out with the missionaries here in Chapel Hill to visit a family.  They are refugees from Burma, I'm not sure of all the circumstances surrounding that.  It was a really neat experience.  The two teenage kids spoke decent English but the parents really had a hard time understanding us.  In the end we promised to get them a Book of Mormon in their native language so they could read it, the dad was very excited about that.  Also, I guess there is a young man in our ward who is in a similar situation to the family and speaks what they speak (it isn't Burmese, but I can't remember what it's called) so the missionaries will try bringing him next time.  It was a neat experience despite the language barriers, it was nice to go out with the missionaries again.