Rainbow season and a new addition!

Happy October 8th to you! I'm celebrating this day by wearing a turtleneck sweater and boots. It is a disgusting 47 degrees outside. On my phone, I have an application that tells me what the weather is like at home in Lititz and at Jeff's mom's house in CA. Both of those temperatures are in the seventies today. Lucky ducks!

I'm all for crisp fall weather, in fact, I love it, but I feel like winter is trying to come in and cut fall's time in the spotlight short. Not cool, Winter. I'm not ready for you yet. Come talk to me around Christmas.

Anyway, I am grateful for fall and that the temperature is still above freezing purely because of that fact that it has been raining on and off for the last week. I'm okay with rain. I don't have many issues with rain at all, especially when the rain is accompanied by beautiful rainbows!

It might sound silly that I get so much amusement out of rainbows and maybe even a little bit cliche, but they are just wonderful. They are so pretty. They are one of those tender mercies that the Lord gives to us.

We've had at least two this last week, so I took pictures of them with my phone to send to Jeff.

These little rainbows kind of mean something special to me lately. They seem to metaphorically say, "Take pleasure in the present." This is always a great reminder because I am constanly thinking about the next step and trying to plan our life together. These are the times to cherish. One day, when Jeff and I are working in our respective fields and our children are grown up and have families of their own, we will marvel at how the time has past. We will think back to when we met, dated, got engaged and married, and it will seem like it almost seemed to happen in the blink of an eye. We will remember our small living space and not having enough storage anywhere. We will remember our first few years of marriage in Rexburg and even though it hasn't been easy, we will remember our time here fondly. Maybe we'll even wish to come back.

I know that before we know it, we'll have children, a bigger mortage, numberless responsibilities, school plays, baseball practice, dance recitals, the whole shebang. Right now, that life seems far away, but before we know it, we'll be there wishing we could go back to when things were "simple."

It's funny what a little perspective can do.

And along with that, here is the new addition to the Nelson home.

A kitchen aid mixer! Jeff has been wanting one of these for quite some time what with all the pizza dough he makes. This one was a hand-me-down from a former student of mine. He just recently got married and his wife already had a kitchen aid mixer that she bought last year. This baby is about 30 years old and was given to my student's parents as a wedding gift. BUT, it still works like a champ! I need to buy a dough hook because the original must have gotten lost somewhere between 1980 and now. But I'm HAPPY to buy a $15 replacement hook for a FREE mixer! This is especially nice because our hand mixer is kind of on the fritz.

So many things in life are contingent on "who you know." I have had about 280 students since I've been teaching at BYUI, and this is definitely the best perk I've received. Other perks include a snickers bar, a burned copy of Winning Friends and Influencing People, a brownie on my birthday, a bunch of facebook friends, and a "hot" pepper on Rate My Professors.

Needless to say, I am grateful for who I know.