I thought this week would be less busy than last without my BYUI student group meetings, but somehow I ended up get a bunch of extra hours with WebAIM. It’s nice to have extra pay, but wow it was a busy week!!
We did make time to get our flu shots though. We decided to reward ourselves and used a gift cards to cold stone since cold stone is right by Lee’s where we get our shots. I tried the Halloween ice cream- Boo Batter. It tasted like vanilla cake batter but was black. It was super fun and delicious! Mark got chocolate ice cream. We brought them home to eat while watching Halloween movies.
Monday night we cleaned out our garden. It was perfect timing because we woke up to snow Tuesday morning! One family in our ward measured 11 inches in their yard! I made our traditional “first snow soup bowls” for dinner that night.
In the storm, a ton of tree branches broke and USU had a delayed start for classes. Homes and businesses lost power. I’m really grateful our power stayed on so I could teach VIPKID and do my webaim and BYUI work from home.
Speaking of VIPKID… this week we received official word that November 5 is the last day for us to teach. This week was the last time I taught my regular, Elsa. I’ve taught her for four years and just adore her. I’m definitely going to miss her, but we’ll stay in touch on WeChat and her dad says they hope they can come visit me when COVID is better. I do wish I could keep teaching until Mark graduates because it’s been really nice to have the extra income, but I’m happy it lasted as long as it did. It’s going to be really nice to sleep a little more. Four of my students’ parents asked me to teach their child after VIPKID ends, but I think that still goes against the government policies and it would take a lot more effort for me to prepare lessons without VIPKID’s curriculum, so I’ve told them “no.” I did offer to do occasional video calls just for fun if their kids want to stay in touch and practice conversational English. I hope they will call!
Friday was Great British Bake Off day!!! I decided to try the show stopper challenge and made Joconde Imprime- a French decorative cake that is filled with fillings. It had a lot of different steps, but wasn’t terribly difficult. I had a lot of fun piping the chocolate batter to make the leaves. I would like to try that again, but with regular cake batter. The Jaconde sponge was good, but didn’t have a lot of flavor. I found a simple chocolate mousse to fill the cake with and that was really good.
Saturday morning I got to attend an area leadership training with Elder Christofferson. I decided to watch the livestream from home because right after it was done I had to run to the church for our primary program practice. About half of the kids and half of the teachers came, but it was a good practice.
Mark’s fall break was Friday, but his professor planned a field trip that day, so Mark spent most of his break collecting Greebes for research. We wanted to do something fun for his break so on Saturday, after the program practice, we picked up pizza from our favorite pizza restaurant- Firehouse Pizzeria. It was delicious!
Our Story: The Bell Family 