During Story Time at our library, one of the Children's Librarians takes everyone to the little theater area in the library and reads stories to the kids.  Today the librarian read several books about animals, recited nursery rhymes, played ring-around-the-rosie, went on a bear hunt around the room, performed the story of one of the books, and then lead the children in doing a simple craft project.  Degen especially liked the performance part and the bear hunt when they found a stuffed animal bear and then ran away so the bear wouldn't catch them.  Maggie just wanted to explore the room, but nobody seemed to mind that.  They sang Happy Birthday to the children who'd had birthdays over the summer and to those whose birthdays are this month. 

Since my last entry, we've had a major adventure and moved to Arkansas.  Colin got a job here and, more than that, we felt spiritually prompted to come.  We had a lot of help with the move from people in our ward in Utah and our new ward in Arkansas and we're very grateful to all of you.  We got to Arkansas, moved our 2800 sq ft of furniture and stuff into a 1200 sq ft apartment, and Colin started his job as Director of a hair styling college.  Three weeks later, Colin lost his job.  I can't think of a brief explanation that would be approriate for such a wide audience, so I think I won't give one except to say that Colin's a great guy and wasn't at fault and I think his former bosses who let him go would agree with me.  The experience with the fashion industry was really intriguing and we both learned a lot and have a totally different perspective on art and fashion now.

We still felt like we're supposed to be in Arkansas for an unknown reason, so Colin started looking for a job here.  After getting a priesthood blessing, he did get a job as a middle school Spanish teacher in downtown Little Rock (the first place he interviewed at).  He started teaching on the 20th of August and I think he's enjoying his work despite a little bit of culture shock.  Getting through all the red tape to do the school, district, and state paperwork to go from "you've got the job" to "we'll pay you to do it" has been an irritating and expensive and time consuming process, but we think it's just about done.  You would not believe how much bureaucracy is involved in getting a teaching/government job.  All I can say is that after this I simply can't believe that the government is qualified to be in charge of anything that involves efficiency or effectiveness. 

We moved into the North Little Rock Ward and Colin was quickly called to be the Elder's Quorum Secretary.  He got 100% Home Teaching last month, too.  I just got a calling, but I haven't been sustained yet so I'll tell you about it in a week or two.  People in our ward have been very friendly and supportive as we've been dealing with the stress of moving, living in a new place, and starting a job and losing it and starting another one.  It's been interesting moving to a place that has comparitively so few and so many new members of our church.  But religion is important to nearly everyone here and I think people here in the South are much more public in and expressive about their beliefs than in the West generally and it's been fascinating to meet people who introduce themselves by telling you which church they go to.

We're still working on selling our beautiful house in Orem and hope to be able to move into something a little bigger than our apartment in the next couple of months.  Colin's cousin, Mark, is our very patient realtor and has been very helpful during this process, too.

We drove around looking at neighborhoods here yesterday and there are a lot of old houses.  Everyone we talk to asks us where we're from because we don't have an accent (or does that mean we do have accents?).  When we told them we're here because we're thinking about moving here, they would look at us like we're crazy and say "Why?!"  I asked a couple of them "what do you mean, don't you like it here?" and each of them said "I was born and raised here," as though that answered my question.  Everyone is really friendly, but absolutely shocked that we might want to stay and even slightly displeased.  It's almost like what you'd say if someone told you they wanted to move into your house with you or that they wanted your family to adopt them–an imposition.  I think it'll take some work and time to make friends, but hopefully we'll make some church friends to make up for the slow-adjusting neighbors.

Oh, and Phoebe was right–if you leave your food unwrapped out here it gets stale fast, unlike in dry Arizona or Utah.  Colin left some tortilla chips out last night and this morning they were all stale and yucky.  Now you know. 

Everyone I've talked to who knows anything about Arkansas (I must disclaim that there haven't been many) says it's a beautiful place, but I can't help notice that they all add something like "but it's really…different…"  What in the world could that mean?  My grandmother, who spent a lot of time growing up in Tennessee, said that Southerners can "tell you off and make you think you've just been kissed."  Maybe that's what people mean, but I guess I'd rather be told off pleasantly anyway and could stand to have some of those skills rub off on me.  I like friendly people.