5/18/21

Setting: I’m living in Provo, taking a class form BYU through the Flex program, working at Charlotte’s preschool, killing the game.

So today is the day before my birthday and I’ve got some vague plans for tomorrow. In the morning I have preschool (I like to call it pweshool because that’s how Charlotte says it), where Rachel (pweshool teacher and owner) so kindly offered to make me breakfast - so nice and so unexpected! She is an angel. We had a brief conversation after pweshool today about how one of the signs of adulthood is when there are no longer people around you who are obligated to celebrate your birthday with you lol. Another milestone reached in the long and detailed path to successful adulthood. So I’m excited for pweshool in the morning, it’s always so fun.

After pweshool I have vague plans to go out to lunch with Lydia Jensen in the early afternoon, I think. She may have forgotten, I’ll have to follow up. Mom sent me two birthday presents in the mail which was also very very nice. I told her I’ve gotten thousands of dollars of birthday presents since coming to Utah and that I didn’t need anything more, but she went rogue. I’m very grateful. So I’ll open those two things.

Then I actually got a gift for myself today literally twenty minutes ago. I am a huge board game lover and don’t have any games with me up here, so I went to DI to check out their game selection. It wasn’t super extensive and was 99% stuff I had no interest in, so there wasn’t much competition for the game I got - Last Word! It’s a game I used to play at Lydia’s house with us two and Johanna and Christina Read and Katharina Stroup. Good memories. The premise of the game is that you all have pawns on the typical board game curvy path and the first person to get to the end wins - duh. To move forward, you have to have the “last word” after each round. Each round, two cards will be flipped over, one with a letter and another with a category. A randomized timer will also be set (meaning it goes off at a different time every round, you can’t predict it). Everyone shouts out things in the category that start with the letter on the card and whoever says the last thing before the buzzer gets to move forward. It’s simple, easy to catch on to/teach to new players, and pretty fun, I think. I might try to get my roommates and maybe some of Lydia’s friends to play with me tomorrow, but I think it probably won’t happen. Oh, I also got a plain deck of cards. Total purchase price for both items was $4. Success!

After lunch with Lydia and any festivities I may or may not want to pull together, I’ll go to class at 5. It’s Writings of Isaiah. So far it has been very interesting! To be honest, it has been hard to get spiritual inspiration very often, but I’m enjoying learning the history and geography and understanding the metaphors and imagery used. The class usually goes to 6:40, but pweshool graduation is happening in Bluffdale at 6:30, so I think I’ll skip out on the last half of class. Attendance is graded, but mostly only for the quiz at the beginning of every class, which won’t be a problem since I’ll only be missing the last half.

Somewhere in there I might buy myself a slice of cake or something. Lydia said she planned on making a cake for me, but I really won’t be disappointed if she doesn’t, she’s very busy and we’re already going to lunch together.

I think that’s about it for my birthday though. It’s sizing up to be a good day!

As for the rest of today, I may or may not do some grocery shopping, but I definitely have a soccer game tonight at 8:05pm. So far, our team has played 3 games and has lost 2 of them by sizable margins and had to forfeit the other because not enough teammates showed up. Ironically, the day we forfeited was the most fun, because we just played a friendly scrimmage against the other team with two of their players and (hilariously) the ref joining our side. It was probably especially fun because both of our other games we played one man down the entire time when the other team had enough for substitutes. My personal attitude about this team is that I don’t have to be the best player, but I’ll be the person who shows up. That apparently is more valuable than anything else, so I’d say I’m doing a good job so far.

In other news, my two Saddleback classes (quick background: I’ve been taking two online winter semester classes at a school in Mission Viejo that has weird schedules, so my winter semester classes are overlapping with my BYU class for about a month’s worth of time) are ending next week, so I have basically one last big test for my business class and a little discussion assignment for my Child Development class and then I’m done and will receive two A grades, barring a massive failure on my last business test, but I’m fairly confident that won’t happen. So that’s exciting and relieving. It was getting to be kind of a lot. Which, I feel the need to say, I understand this would probably not be too overwhelming for the “typical” (we’re not supposed to say normal) person, but this is my reality at the moment and everything is relative anyway.

Other tidbits I just remembered: Lizzie asked me to be a witness for her baptism, which I was very honored to do. I was so happy she asked me. Also at Charlotte’s pweshool, all the kids had to fill out a little paper that asked what their favorite part about the whole year of pweshool was, and Charlotte said, “Playing with my best aunt.” It’s always nice to know you’re doing something right. I love all three of those girls and Tyler very much and I was so happy to be able to spend time with them at Steven and Heather’s house this year.

In a similar vein, I think all the children at pweshool have enjoyed having me there. There are a couple kids who have insisted at various times that “I want Miss Kylie to help me,” and there’s one silly book in particular the kids ask me to read during reading time and usually five or six kids all crowd around to hear it. Last week I had a really gratifying experience where a kid came into pweshool crying because he didn’t want his mom to go and he shut himself in the bathroom. This kid doesn’t usually engage much in the first place, he often puts his head down or semi-lies down during rug time in the morning and is generally kind of sullen. But anyway, Rachel and I just kind of let him be and Rachel went on with the morning jobs. After a couple minutes, I went to investigate. I’ll spare the details, but eventually I got him out of the bathroom and then slowly made progress until he sat back down for rug time with the rest of the kids. That whole day he wanted to sit by me and play with me. Afterward, Rachel said it was amazing that I got him not only to come out and stop crying, but actually be happy. That was a good day.

(Generally I don’t brag about stuff, but I do find that I like to share stories about how “great” I am with kids, lol. It still makes me feel a little like I’m acting a little too pompous and self-important, but I do it anyway haha.)

However, there is one cute little girl, Zoe, who told me a couple weeks ago that, “I want Miss Rachel to help me.” Short pause. “Because I like her better”. I’m not concerned, I just laugh. Sometime last week, she was trying to get someone’s attention to listen to what she had to say, so I turned to her and said something like “That’s so cool!” or “How funny!” or whatever encouraging response was appropriate, I don’t really remember what she said. But Zoe looked at me and said, “I was talking to Miss Rachel.” Lol.

Anyway. That's it for now! Talk soon!

Other random things pictured

- Me and a random guy from class happened to be wearing the same mask and he wanted to take a picture, to which I acquiesced even though I wasn't looking my most fabulous

- Got my second COVID shot, nbd.

- My $3 board game

- I checked in on the Jensens' dog Toffee, whom I love, while they were gone for a weekend

- M/W pweshool class

- T/Th pweshool class

- Cute Charlotte (she made that pose all by herself, no direction from the photographer)

- Dramatic Zoe (the one who prefers Miss Rachel. She was VERY afraid of Rachel's husband, Curtis, who was the photographer)

- Custom pillow case I designed for mom for Mother's Day to go on the new pink couch in her room

Pictures: