Food for Thought

One of my friends, Holly, recently created this post on her blog. I liked it so much, I asked her if I could share it. She agreed, so here it is:

"I don't think they've ever been so clean!"

I used to be an ICU nurse.

Then, I was a cancer nurse.
Those were stress-filled, mind-exercising, sometimes-sad, many-times-rewarding days.

I am now a nurse at an Alzheimer's home and I love it.
One of my main duties is to perform foot care on our residents.
I wash their feet, clip their nails, remove dead skin, remove ingrown toenails, dress foot wounds, etc. It can be quite gross, but it is also fun. I get to chat with the most pleasantly confused people ever while I work. And my work doesn't take a whole lot of brain power which is sometimes nice, but sometimes a downer.

You see, I'm not a talented seamstress, illustrator, painter, designer, crafter, knitter, or home decorator (like I sometimes long to be when I look at the incredible talent of you ladies who's blogs I love to read). Sometimes I wish I had those cool talents so that I could make things for my family or sell & advertise them via my blog.
But I don't.
And that's okay.
Because to me, "my talent" has been to use my brain and skills as a nurse to help save lives and restore health.

Now that I'm not using many of the nursing skills that I did when I worked in the hospital, I sometimes feel like I'm not doing anything great with "my talent" anymore. A lot of my friends from nursing school are delivering babies and stabilizing trauma victims in the ER. I am taking care of feet.
Last Saturday while I was finishing taking care of my favorite little old man's feet, he leaned over to examine his feet and said, "Oh, my! That takes some talent!" And I'm thinking, what talent is there to taking care of feet? Maybe you need to have a strong stomach to do what I do, but certainly it requires no talent beyond what any other person could do. And then my little old man said (over and over and over), "I don't think they've ever been so clean!"
He is so cute.

On Sunday morning, while I was thinking about how I wish I had a cool talent or could be using my nursing skills to a greater degree, my eyes met this painting hanging on the wall in our apartment:


I think I was figuratively struck by a lightning bolt from on high, because I suddenly felt very ashamed for being so proud and selfish as to desire big talents or accomplishments to show off to the world. If anyone has something great to show off, some incredible talent, it would be the Savior.
I think he could have done a lot of "talented" and "cool" things during his last 24 hours of mortality.
Instead, he washed his disciples' feet.
Their dirty, yucky feet (because I bet they were a lot yuckier than what this painting shows. I am, after all, somewhat of a foot expert these days).

And then I thought,
why should I long to do anything greater than serve my sweet little people with dementia?
Their feet may be gross, my job may not take much skill, but if any little talent, skill, or act of love is good enough for the Savior, then it should be good enough for me as well.
And now I think it will be.
It is kind of nice to know that I've made my little old man so happy because his feet have "never been so clean!"

The Second Best News This Whole Year

As I was growing up, we had a family tradition of making cards for holidays and sending them to some of our close relatives and family friends. My cards always ended up being the most elaborate. I particularly enjoyed making pop-up cards.

As I got older, I continued to make pop-up cards for the holidays, and the complexity of my pop-up cards increased. Some people started suggesting I sell them. So, to make a long story short, now I am doing just that.

You can find my cards at peadenscottdesigns.etsy.com. I have spent a long time designing the shop and things to put in it, and Nate has even helped some in my efforts. Right now there are a lot of valentine-themed cards in the shop, since that is the next major holiday. However, there will be much more to come. I haven't had nearly enough time to turn all my ideas into cards yet.

In addition to the cards I have in my shop, I can also do customized cards to meet your specific needs.

In an effort to get some sales and feedback specifically on my etsy shop, I am currently offering a refund for shipping costs after feedback has been left for me. This offer will be good for the first five people who order and leave feedback. If shipping costs don't apply (because you are picking the card(s) up from me), I will give you a refund equal to that of what the shipping costs would have been.

We also started a fan page for the cards on facebook.

Hopefully these pop-up cards will be successful. We are still figuring a lot out, especially on etsy. We would love to hear your feedback, so let us know what you think.

The Best News this Whole Year!

Two minutes after arriving at work this morning, the recruiter called from ATK to let me know they would be sending me an offer letter.  I am so excited.  I have been looking for a new job for quite a while and this one sounds like it is almost exactly what I've been looking for.  The pay and benefits will be almost equal if not slightly better than what I have now and the job is in Clearfield too, so we won't have to relocate (at least not until we find a house to buy).  Thank you to everyone who has been praying for me and generally wishing me well.  It worked!  So now, I just have to wait until the paperwork is done and my two weeks' notice is up.  My first day will probably be February 15th.

Grandpa Scott

On New Years Day, my paternal grandfather passed away peacefully in his sleep. The funeral was on Tuesday the 5th. I worked a half day on Monday, then we drove down to Orem for the viewing that evening.


This is the program from the funeral. My grandfather passed along his love of (and talent for) music to the whole family, so there were a lot of musical numbers including the older grandchildren and their spouses singing "My Other Father" that Grandpa Scott composed himself. It is a beautiful song about the transitioning relationship between both earthly and heavenly sons and fathers.


It was also fun and interesting to hear stories about Grandpa from those that spoke. My sister told about the time just after her infant son had died that Grandpa came up to her and said "Ha ha, I get to see Spencer before you do." He was always joking around like that (bet you never would have guessed, knowing how serious a person I am). One thing we all remember about him was the song he sang that when recorded and played in reverse sounded almost perfectly like London Bridges Falling Down. Here is my amateur version (played forward and backward) which somewhat resembles the right song.

The Interment was at the Utah Veterans Memorial Park at Camp Williams and the ceremony was very nice. The honor guard presented my Grandma with a U.S Flag, and the bugler played taps. There was also a bagpipe player who played O Danny Boy and Amazing Grace.

After the dedication of the grave, we returned to Orem and there was a very generous luncheon provided by the ward. It was good to spend time with all of the family and I am sure my Grandmother was very pleased to see how many people were there to support her and show their love for Grandpa. Almost the entire extended family was able to make it to the funeral. If you know anything about my family, you know that is A LOT of people! My grandparents have 60 grandchildren, and more than 30 great grandchildren plus there are all the spouses too.

UPDATE: Since the huge family picture was posted, I thought I would include it here. Thanks Cliff for making it happen.

Holiday Parties Galore

As usual, our holidays were filled with as many family gatherings as possible. Christmas is broken up into three parts each consisting of eating a meal and opening presents. Round 1 is with Rebecca's immediate family and a breakfast of blueberry muffins and omelets. Round 2 is with her Dad's family in Murray with a lunch of croissants, cold-cuts, cheese, etc. Round three is back at her parents' house in Orem with her Mom's family and a big dinner. We finally finished all the unwrapping just before 9 PM! The picture of their dog Apollo resting on the gifts sums up the day pretty well. Everyone was very generous to us and we hope they enjoy the gifts we gave them as well.

Rebecca especially spent a lot of time putting together a book of our wedding pictures that we got printed for her and my parents.

Rebecca gave me the game Carcassone. It's really fun. We also gave her mom this prank gift we found at D.I. It's a bag of some sort with really random embellishments, some of which are Christmas themed, others of which have nothing to do with it. The inside is made out of a plaid flannel shirt and all of the pockets are closed with velcro. Below is the booty of candy etc. from our stockings. I bought a large bag of Lindor truffles from Costco for our stockings and later found out that Rebecca's parents had also bought us small bags of the same truffles. So anyone who visits us in the near future will be strongly encouraged to help themselves.

My parents and my brother Timothy drove to Utah shortly after Christmas and stayed with my Aunt and Uncle in West Valley. We had my parents over for dinner one night and played Carcasonne. It was also fun to see them at the extended family party on the 30th in Orem. There was a nice Cafe Rio style dinner and a musical talent show of sorts where each family was given 3-5 minutes but took more like 7-10 each. Our family was the exception. We sang Christmas Bells are Ringing from the primary song book and were done in about 2 minutes.

For New Years Eve, we drove up to my sister's house in Logan. My parents and brothers were there too and it was really fun to hang out, play games and eat tons of snacks and junk food. In my family, we rotate the gift giving and this year Rebecca and I gave gifts to Melissa and Seth. She collects nativity sets, so Rebecca made her a pop-up nativity card and we also gave them the game Ticket to Ride.