Key~Notes

I thought I’d give a shout out to the new website Handbag Planet.  Their official launch is 15 October, and between 12:00pm Wednesday and 12:00 pm Thursday, they’re giving away 24 gorgeous handbags.  That’s right, one per hour!  I’ve entered to win mine, you should too.

And I’m so NOT telling you which one I want to win . . . that way you won’t sign up for it too and I’ll have more chances to win! *BWAHAHAHA!*

I don’t know how many of you had the opportunity to attend the Relief Society General Broadcast last night, but I did.  In short?  A-MAZ-ING!

I really appreciated Sister Beck’s call to step up our game.  We are doing great, but we can do more.  It goes right back to my favourite of President Hinckley’s messages . . . “stand a little taller”.  We don’t have to be perfect right now, but if we stand a little taller, do a little more each day, line upon line we’ll get to where we need to be!

I loved Sister Allred’s talk about the Temple.  I need to make going as often as possible a priority.  It’s easy to make excuses for why I can’t go, but I think it’s high time to start making excuses why I CAN!

Oh!  How I love Sister Thompson!  I just think about her and I smile.  Her enthusiasm for the Gospel is truly contagious.  I want to live up to her example.

But, by far the highlight of the evening for me . . . the moment I knew was just FOR ME . . . was President Uchtdorf’s talk.  During his talk, it was brought to my remembrance why I have certain characteristics.  As I was sitting there, creating a blanket for the baby of a dear friend, I realised why I have an overwhelming desire to create . . . It’s a God-given heritage!  The traits of creativity and compassion are ones I’ve worked on especially recently in my life, and now I understand why I feel so driven to those areas!  I felt a great big hug from Father through those words!

Now comes the challenge.  To take those wonderful, amazing feelings and translate them back into my everyday life.  It’s not going to be easy, and I know sometimes I’ll falter.  But if I keep my eyes on the Temple, and my inheritance of creativity and compassion forefront in my mind and heart, I know I’ll succeed!

So . . . perhaps my timing was a LITTLE off last week when I said I had started babysitting for Brother and Sister T before Shane moved in next door to them. I remember now that I invited Naomi to my 12th birthday party, but she couldn’t come because that was the weekend they moved in.

Suffice it to say, Naomi and I did indeed become the close friends I’d hoped we’d become. I was over at her place a lot, in addition to hanging out with her older sister, Sister T. At that point, Shane was a minor annoyance. He kept hanging around us when Naomi and I just wanted to gab.

I remember one incident that happened when our Youth Group at Church (boys and girls ages 12-17) did a lip-sync “competition”. There were 6 classes, and they each performed 1 or 2 numbers. My class (girls age 12-13) did some Beach Boys numbers . . . what fun! Shane’s class (boys age 16-17) did Billy Joel’s “It’s All Rock and Roll to Me”. To this day, I remember Shane (who had the main part) dancing around “singing” to that song. After his class finished, I told him “Great acting!”.

I meant it as nothing more than a sincere compliment, but apparently he thought it meant more . . . MUCH more. The next thing I knew, he was telling me I was beautiful and giving Naomi notes to give to me. That’s right . . . NOTES . . . from a then 16-year-old boy. It was heady stuff for my 13-year-old mind.

(Time out . . . as a young teenager, I was still incredibly shy. Add to this a birth mother who told me in no uncertain terms that I was fat and no boy would ever like me . . . well . . . you can see where this might lead a 13 year old girl with low self-esteem who has an “older man” crushing on her . . . Time in!)

I began to actually look forward to those notes. In retrospect of course they were rather soppy and obsessive on his part. I suppose since he was 16, he was already starting to think of the girl he’d marry one day, and for some reason, he’d taken his brother in law seriously when he’d joked with my dad about Shane and I getting married one day.

But of course, being 13 and well . . . ME! . . . I was enjoying the attention. I loved how he signed his notes “Your Tenderheart Lion” and called me his “Sunshine Bear” or some such thing . . . I thought it was endearing.

Since I wasn’t allowed to date until I was 16, I thought having a boyfriend at 13 was rebellious. We’d hold hands in the hallways at Youth Group. Beyond that and the notes, there really wasn’t anything else going on. Shane, for all his forwardness, was a gentleman.

I think the trouble started when I met two girls at Girls’ Camp who’d been going to youth dances (they were already 14 which was the youngest you could be to go). They were talking about this one guy who kept flirting with both of them, and when I found out it was Shane . . . well . . . Suffice it to say, by the time I was 14, my first “boyfriend” was history.

Which is what made it all the more confusing 2 years later when I received jewelry and a marriage proposal . . .