Five Crowns Domination

So I was playing cards ("Five Crowns" to be exact) with my mom, Melodie, and Jay this Christmas break. To give some background to this story, I had pretty much been the dominant force during any family game that had happened recently. This of course irked everyone else, who had constantly been beaten down game after game.
And thus it was with this game. After 5 straight rounds of me "laying down" first, their anger turned to threats that if I kept winning, they were going to kick me out of the game. The next hand... I layed down first again. That's when they kicked me out of the game.
I consider this a badge of honor. Being kicked out of the game for being too good.
And they wouldn't even let me play Ticket to Ride at all today.

Its the most wonderful time of the year

So I had the awesome opportunity this month to go shopping with the ward for needy families. Our ward raised a bunch of money in a charity auction recently and someone needed to go buy all the stuff for the kids. I'm glad I got invited to come along. Me and another guy were in charge of getting stuff for a 10 year old boy, a 12 year old boy and a 16 year old girl. I felt just fine about the boys, but the girl I was kind of nervous about. How do you try and buy clothes, for example, for a 16 year old girl? What do they like? What do they think about all day? I have to admit this is a demographic that I am very unfamiliar with. By the time it was all done, I was pretty happy with what we got for everyone. So much so that I felt the need to tell everyone about it, and blog about it. We got everyone a movie, 2 awesome books (hello Harry Potter for the girl, Whimpy Kid for the boys, etc), and awesome toys. At least I thought they were awesome, I hope they do too. I got this mini-hoop for the 12 year old, and I loved it so much I got one for myself that is now hanging in my cubicle at work. Thank heavens a girl in my ward volunteered to help us pick out the clothes for the girl. (We received many compliments on our good job with that) ;), and I thought we did good picking out the other stuff we thought she'd like. We got her the book, The Help, so hopefully that goes ok. It turned out pretty great, plus you feel all warm inside when you help out needy families.

Not Cool

I am generally a healthy person, and I am super grateful for that.  I rarely get sick, and when I do it goes away in a few days.  It is a huge blessing, but it sure stands out a lot more when I do get sick.  Such is the case today.

To make a long story short, my roommate Stan and I both ate something (we still have no idea what) that made for a rough night.  I was unable to go to any meetings today, which makes me sad, and now we are both sacked out on the couch like something out of "Night of the Living Dead."  I actually am now feeling pretty good, but I sure wasn't a few hours ago.

It's times like this that I am grateful, not only for good health, but for the miracle of modern medicine.  I know that even if I were to stay in bad shape for a few days, I could always go to the hospital where the doctors would know what to do.  And even if someday I caught something really nasty, the likelihood of major health problems occurring is minimal.  I remember always being scared of getting sick while on my mission because I didn't quite know what would happen if I went to the hospital.  I don't worry about that here.

A little rest and I'll be back to being awesome in no time.