Halloween Hustle 5K race

Had a good time this morning at the Halloween Hustle race in Palatine, IL. I ran it with Courtney, Hal, and Tyler. Everybody finished and Hal won for his age group.

We Are Batty 4 Bats

Dan is studying bats in school. So this weekend we had a little fun with bats. Dan was so excited! Stellaluna is a long time family favorite.

3 ways Subway sandwiches are different in Philippines

Sometimes if I'm interested in getting something other than the local food when visiting another country, it is fun to try U.S. fast food in other places. Sometimes it is very different from the U.S., like that you can get grilled skewers of shrimp with a side of rice at Pizza Hut in Asia. I find it more interesting when a concept has more subtle changes to appeal to the people of another country.

In the Philippines, Subway sandwiches are very much the same as in the U.S., but with a few differences.

#1- they deliver, which is more of a Jimmy Johns thing in the U.S.

#2- if you order a foot-long sub to go from the store, they will still slice it in half but instead of wrapping the halves together, they wrap them separately. I think they assume that no one person is really going to eat a whole foot-long sandwich themselves. Leave that to the gluttonous Americans :)

So, since they assume that the foot-long is for two different people, they ask separately about what sauce or toppings I want for each of the two halves of the sandwich. It seems novel to them that I want the same thing on both sides of the foot-long sub.

#3 - All the sauces are the same as the U.S., except that written in on the chart is "ketchup" as one of the sauce options, and sure enough, there is a big bottle of ketchup there if you ask for it as your sauce. I know in the Philippines that ketchup is pretty popular, people put it on their fried chicken and so forth. I found it somewhat gratifying, although I didn't add it to my chicken teriyaki sub, that it was available.

I remember that I put ketchup on most of my sandwiches when I was a little kid and that someone had once questioned why I would put ketchup on a turkey and ham sandwich instead of mustard or mayonnaise. Not sure why ketchup is just for burgers, fries, and hot dogs -- not for a sub sandwich. Apparently, somewhere in the world, it works fine.

A Sunday Walk in Heaven's Garden

Fall Break

I feel very supported and I am so grateful.

Since receiving my new responsibilities in Relief Society, I've felt really overwhelmed with a huge list of Relief Society members that no one knows. I've lost a lot of sleep trying to figure out how to get to know them and their needs. The quantity of them seemed almost suffocating. Tonight we decided to have RS members go visit those members and invite them out. While planning this activity, my biggest concern was that no one would want to come help me. If I was in their shoes, I probably wouldn't want to do it:) Today as I was preparing, I kept thinking... what if no one shows but my presidency? Then this afternoon I started getting emails from sisters. They were apologizing for other commitments but asking for names that they could visit on their own time. They said how much they supported this activity and wanted to help in anyway they could. Then when I got to church tonight I was humbled by the desires of the sisters to take not just one name but multiple names. The stack has dwindled from a dinning room table full of names to a small stack. There is a quote by Marvin J. Ashton that says, "Satan wants us to feel unequal to our worldly tasks." Since accepting these responsibilities in RS, I've very much felt unequal to these tasks. However, tonight I realized that I have many sister willing to help carry the load. I am grateful for their goodness.