After years of highlights, my hair was drastically not my own color. Today, I came home...to my own color. I feel like myself again. Still blondish, but it's MY blonde.

This is the first Saturday in a long time I have not been booked for some workshop. Every night after school I tutor, have conferences, a meeting or workshop, or just grade papers till I drop, etc. and on the last few Saturdays I have been booked solid, too. This Saturday, I had previously offered to teach a class at the math conference, but (thinking I might be at a wedding) backed out. It turned out that the wedding will be in November, so...I ended up with a free Saturday. I slept 12 hours! I caught up on all my grading (while I watched a movie and football). The dishes (including tons of graduated cylindars, pans, etc. from my science labs) are getting done. The laundry is getting done. I went shopping (online...and at the store). I talked with just about all my children on the phone. It is so nice to have a day to catch up. I need more of these days! Great day! 

Bright, shiny, beaming faces. Uniformly dressed, with white tops and black pants/skirts. Girls had Primary-colored ribbon pins and bows in their hair and the boys had homemade ribbon bow ties. Every part was memorized. No need for cuing, they ran a perfect program. I knew the music, so regardless of the language, I  felt the spirit of their testimonies as they sang every verse of every song with gusto.

On a lighter note, we (the stake visitors) declined an interpreter (thinking we didn't need one. You see we had taken Spanish in high school.  We could pronounce the words and recognize a little. Why would we need a translator?). NOT! At one point in the program, the chorister went to the mic and said something in Spanish. We saw the congregation stand and grab their hymnals, so...we did, too. I recognized one word ("tres") so I thought it was page 3. NOT. I glanced at a person behind me and it was page 40. So we started singing. Boy, I was going to show that I could still pronounce those Spanish words (even if I hadn't a clue as to what I was singing). At one point occurred to me that the children were really belting it out, so why was the congregation singing 'over' them? I looked around. THEY WEREN'T. Just us.  Yep. Just the stake visitors. I nudged the person next to me and said I didn't think we were supposed to be singing. She looked around and readily agreed. We shut up and listened. HOWEVER, we knew (from listening to the other Primary programs, that they only had to learn 3 verses, MAX. We (wrongly) assumed that everyone in the congregation was standing to sing the 3rd verse. (After all, I had distinctly heard that word, 'tres'.) So, on the third verse, we started singing with the children,.... who knew that verse, too! (You see, usually the congregation sings only on the verses the children DON'T know, so we were a little surprised that we should be singing...especially since the chorister still was directing the children and not us, but we kept on singing.) We were about to shut our hymnal and take a seat when the chorister turned around and directed the congregation on verses 4, 5, 6, and 7.  The congregation joined in strongly. We glanced at each other. We had been the only ones singing the 3rd verse, too... when we were supposed to be silent!  Guess the 'tres' we heard was explaining the verses the CHILDREN would sing. Guess we'll opt for a translator next time...or brush up on our Spanish.