Mom Jeans?

The other day I was at D.I.(not D.I.s, not "The D.I.") just D.I. and I was looking for an ugly sweater for my work's ugly sweater day. I, of course, do not own anything ugly, so that's what brought me to this wonderful store. What am I saying? I don't need to make excuses for going to D.I.! I love D.I.! Anyway...There are times when you go to D.I. and find some really cool things. Most times you don't. I was taking my time looking around and trying to decide between the South Western print sweater vest or the 1950's, itchy wool, high school gold colored, button-up cardigan. I then slowly wandered over to the jeans section. Just kinda looking around. It was a good day for 2nd hand jeans! I found a few pair of cute jeans. Don't ask me what brands they were, one of those right in the middle price rang brands like Mossimo something or other. I also found a brand of "Bitten" jeans, you know Sarah Jessica Parker's brand? I feel like I have a kinship with her. She used to have a dark mole under her bottom lip that has now turned colorless. I too have a mole(I call it a beauty mark) in the same spot. Lately I have been noticing that it has been losing color and will someday be totally void of color. Sick. Me and her, we're the same. So I go try these jeans on and they're all too big, too long or too used. I finally get to the "Bitten" jeans and they fit like a freakin glove! A used glove of course, but still. As women don't we all struggle with finding that perfect jean? I know I do. These babies are almost perfect. I have been struggling with the whole "low ride" craze that just won't go away. I just don't love showing my crack to the world every time I bend over. I and HATE doing that weird sideways, one arm reach bend that you have to do just to try NOT to show crackage..you all know what I'm talking about. These jeans are about an inch below the belly button. Pretty high considering where most pants fall. They make my glutes look fab and don't have to worry about that Costco muffin top following me around all day.
$9 dollars later(I chose the itchy, wool cardigan)I get home and put these finds in the washer with scalding water and bleach(color safe) to un-D.I. them. After all that business, I triumphantly put them on to show Ty my sweet buy of the week, this is all he says. "So are those considered Mom Jeans?" I didn't know whether to cry or kill him for being a..well..man. I had to stand up for my girl Sarah! "No these are not Mom Jeans!" "Do I HAVE a Front Butt!?" I looked down just to make sure, phew! No Front Butt.
After that little explosion, I was calm again. I nicely explained to my husband that pants do not have to sit on your pelvic bone or make you look like you have webbed legs just to look good. They can be cute AND still cover those unspoken of places. And I proved that.
Thank you Sarah.
Sincerely your mole twin.

Sister Henson-It's raining and blessings are pouring

Hello family!

It’s another rainy day in Omaha; I wish the weather would make
up its mind. The only thing constant in Nebraska is the change in
the weather. Oh well, at least it’s raining on preparation day and
not a full working day. Again,I’m shocked that it’s time to write
again. I think I say this every week,but I still can’t believe how
the time is flying. Every week gets faster and faster, I’m not a fan.
I am, however, a great fan of what’s going on here. I think one of the
greatest blessings of the mission is how my heart has grown. I’m
amazed by how many people and places I’ve come to love. Every time I get
transferred, I can’t imagine having room to fit one more person, and
yet it happens without fail. I’m in love with the members, the investigators,
the area, everything and everyone. I’m getting a small taste of charity
and it’s delicious. Sweet above all that is sweet. I’ll give you a couple
of highlights from the week. Tuesday night we came out of teaching Al Kirchhoff,
the Messianic Jew, (very interesting lesson) and we ran into our assistant
ward mission leader, Brother Hall. He was out walking his dog and actually
lives right across the street from Al. We started talking and were walking
towards his house and we saw his neighbors outside. He walked us over and
introduced us to Denny and Mike. Denny and Mike and their families attend
the local United Methodist Church and I started asking them questions and we
told them about mission life and how it works. Denny ended up inviting us
to Church and we attended the 10 o’clock semi-contemporary service. It was
really interesting. They had up two bigscreens and a band. At the beginning
of the service they asked if anyone was new and Denny was quick to point us out.
They asked us to stand up and introduce ourselves into the microphone… awkward!
They also gave us a flower,which I thought was really kind. We also were able
to teach Will’s Mom on Wednesday morning. I guess she insisted on seeing us,
and she works in Papillion so she met us at the local McDonald’s for breakfast.
McDonald’s doesn’t know that they are furthering the work of the Lord so well ;) ha.
Anyway, she seems to be at the point where she has recognized the blessings
that have come to Will and now she wants to know why he’s so involved. Will is
planning on moving to Provo to attend BYU, so I think that has increased her curiosity
as well. She wants to understand what he’s gotten himself into. I think that with
Will’s help, she’ll come right along. Will’s Dad has been reading the Book of Mormon,
so that’s exciting. I don’t think it’ll be too long for them to recognize truth.
The Grote family is coming along so great! I am in love with this family! We
taught them more about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Priesthood, and how Brother
Grote would be able to baptize the family. The whole family came to Church
on Sunday! It was so exciting and exhausting at the same time! Sometimes I worry
too much; I forget that I’ve got the most powerful, loving Heavenly Father on my team
to take care of it all. It was a great day at Church though, lots of talk of eternal families.
Our goal is to have the older kids more involved with the lessons so that the
entire family can be baptized together. So far though, the kids love it and the
parents are feeling really good about everything. Brother Hall and his family
invited them over tonight for FHE. I love these members. They are anxiously
engaged, and do many good things of their own free will. He called us last night
and left us a message that went something like this, “Sisters, I made an
appointment with the Grote family to come over tomorrow for FHE, we’re going to
have a lesson, roast marshmallows and have root beer floats. If you’d like to
come, you’re more than welcome. Either way, we’ll talk to you later!” The
ward members arejust doing our work for us, this is great! We also had
another neat experience finding the other day. It was hot, andwe were trying to
follow up with some investigators that had been taught by previous missionaries.
For several hours we hadn’t had any luck and we were getting pretty tired. As we walked down the street, I saw two guys outside of their houses. I knew that we only had time to
talk to one of them before our dinner appointment, so I said a quick prayer to
know which one to talk to. I felt very prompted to talk to the second guy, a Dad
(who we later found out is named Tim) who was outside playing with his two daughters.
The girls looked alot like Courtney and I when we were little, I took it as a sign ;)
Anyway, we went up and introduced ourselves and right away he started talking
about which church they went to and how happy they were there. Classic. We hear
that allthe time. My favorite response to that is asking them what they like
about their church. They usually start off talking about why they like their
church and end up giving us their entire religious background,including things
thatthey don’t like about their church or things that they have concerns about
or issues with. In Preach My Gospel in Chapter 10 under teaching skills, there
isa section on listening. There is a promise by Elder Holland that says if we will
listen, really listen, something in what they say will highlight a truth ofthe Gospel
of which we can then bear testimony and offer them more. That is a true principle;
it works every time, including this one. He started talking about interpretation
and how there are so many different kinds. So we told him about the Prophet
and how the Church of Christ has been restored. Funny how so many concerns
can be resolved with the knowledge of a restored Church, Gospel and a living
Prophet, hmmm. Anyway, he really opened up, accepted a Book of Mormon and a
return appointment. He says his wife will be very interested to talk to us.
He said it almost jokingly,which makes it sound like she will be very anti,
but hey, I’ve almost seen and heard it all at this point. (knock on wood)
Anyway, thanks for your love and prayers.
Please be diligent with them,cause I need the blessings! We’ve got a
family that needs to be eternal,several in fact!I love you!
Love, Sister Henson

Job Interview

Tyler has a job interview today where I work. Slate Canyon Youth Center. It's a detention center for the troubled youth of our state. He is interviewing with a man I know to be one of the funniest men I have ever met in my life. Let's call him, Alan. I told Tyler that he needs to be preparing some good jokes to impress this man. It's also an ongoing joke that I treat Tyler like my child and whenever he has a problem at school, I pretend like I'm going to go down to the school and talk to the teachers myself. Who wears the pants in the relationship?

Today morning 7:50 a.m. Tyler driving me to work...


Ty: I should wear just a little bit of make-up tomorrow for the interview

Me: HA HA HA! Yea, a little lip gloss for that little bit of shine...

Ty: ha ha Some nice eye shadow and a little liner..

Me: A little blush on the apples of your cheeks for that much needed color...

Ty: No. That's too obvious

Me: Oh. Ok.



Later Today 11 a.m. -Me and Ty texting

Ty: I should show up to the interview with a hypodermic needle sticking out of my pocket.

Me: HA HA HA HA!!

Ty: Then I'll just spend the rest of interview apologizing for bringing the needle.

Me: haha Before you go into the interview you need to ask them if I can come in with you cause your really shy.

Ty: HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA and I'll whisper everything I want to say to them into your ear HAHA!

Me: HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!!

Ty: I should ask Alan before the interview if we can say a prayer to comfort me. (Blasphemes??)

Me: HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHA! All of this with your make-up on.

Ty: HAHAHAHAHHAHA I forgot about my make-up! HAHAHHAHAHAHA

Me: You should bring Toben(our Yorkie) with you too.

Ty: And pretend the interview is for him.

Me: Try to convince them that he loves working with troubled youth.

Ty: I can't breathe! I'm laughing out loud! (He's in class)

Me: I know! I'm trying so hard to hold it in!!! HAHAHAHA

Ty: Married Laughing!!

Me: I can't tell anyone else about this conversation cause no one else will get our jokes.

Ty: HAHAHAHHAHA You should put this whole conversation on the blog.

Me: I totally will!

Baby Mama Drama

Alright, so some of you are aware of my insane baby woes, some of you aren't, so here we go. About a year and a half ago in April when me and Tyler got married, I didn't even THINK about having a baby. It wasn't even in my vocab. Not that I was anti, I just didn't even realize that that was an option. Then my dear friend Ana Stein had her baby in August, just 4 months after my wedding. So sitting there in the hospital room with Ana, visitors and baby, it hit me. I NEED A BABY! But I wasn't to the crazy-obsessed stage of getting prego...yet.
So time goes on, and every once in a while I will ask Tyler how he feels about having a mini Jarman. Of course his answers were very vague and very short. Other times I would ask him he he feels about certain baby names. Same vague answers. It wasn't until about Februaryish of this year that I really started going mad with babyitis. I would spend ALL DAY at work looking up baby names(I have a full two pages of boys & girls names), baby clothes, baby food, baby slings, bedrooms sets, I would even pretend I was pregnant and look up how big my baby was at any given week of womb-growth. It was pretty bad. Every baby I saw on the street would make me lose all concentration for everything else. I would point out the babies at church to Ty, like he cared. During this stage of babyitis, things were a bit crazy. Seriously, ask my mom.
Then finally Tyler literally had to sit me down and say enough is enough. I was going way too far. It was true. So I settled down, for a little while. Then my sis-in-law,Cait, around May started talking about how she wanted to start trying for a baby. Then it all came rushing back. We talked about how fun it would be to get prego at the same time and have babies the same age so they could play with each other, blah blah blah blah.
Here we go again.
She then left to go sell with her hub in Chicago and things settled down once more for me and my crazy antics. Around June, somehow, I got Tyler to agree that in August, we would start trying to get preg...That was enough time to wrap our heads around the idea of a little monster running our lives, right? So we started praying about it, and it was like instantly, the next day, all of those feelings just vanised. I was even at the point that I was so mad at myself for even previously thinking about having a baby. It's like, "okay you're pregnant, have the baby, then what?" Take care of it? How fun is that? Thinking about it logically, there was no good reason to have a baby. I was ready to have it be me, Ty and Toben for the next 40 years.
I was really confused for a few days but I also felt so free. My life wasn't consumed by everything baby anymore. I was able to actually enjoy life and what I have instead of thinking about this baby that I didn't have. I even lost a few pounds...go figure.
So it has been a very nice, baby-less summer. Me and Ty have been able to actually enjoy be around each other, Ty has gone back to school, we rearranged and painted our living room and I started a new, cool job. Even with the wonderful news of my sis-in-law getting knocked up, I still had no feelings of jealousy or bitterness.
So it's September now....crap. Those freakin baby lovin' feelings are back!
Now don't worry, those feelings are about a half a percent the size than they were before, but they are definitely there. I have been trying to figure out what triggered these old thoughts and feelings, and I can't for the life of me, pin point what brought it all back. Dilemma.
OK, I get that some people want to wait until their husbands are totally done with school for all that financial stability, and some people thinks it's their personal duty to shoot out a baby 9 months after marriage and every year after that. I still can't figure out what kind of person I am.
I know how much things change once a baby comes. I really do. But I think I'm OK with that. It's not like we are actually social with other couples. So I'm not too worried about losing our social lives.
I don't really know what the point of this post is, all I know is I just needed to get it out somewhere. And where better that on the WWW?
If anyone has any suggestions/opinions or if you think I'm a complete mess and want to plan the rest of my life for me, please, feel free to contact me.

Who knows, Christmas is coming soon..

September?! Seriously?!

Hello family!
Sorry to trick you and make you think that you’d get an
email yesterday,but it was Labor Day and libraries were closed.
So here it is, in all its glory. Papillion continues to astound me.
When I left Winter Quarters I really couldn’t imagine being able
to love another area or another ward. I didn’t think I’d have place
in my heart. But I truly love it here. We have had some incredible
experiences that have let me know that the Lord wants me to be here.
I’ll start off by telling you about a miracle the Lord gave us;
it was kind of a funny experience. Thursday was our temple day
and we were supposed to be there by 3:30pm for the 4 o’clock session.
Papillion is a good, solid, 30 minutes away. We had to take the car
in for an oil change that day so we scheduled it at 2pm which should
have left us plenty of time to get there. Well, the oil change ended
up taking an hour and a half! As we drive away from Jensen auto and
tire at 3:30, my heart sunk. I wanted and needed to go to the temple so
desperately, I didn’t know how we’d make it. I knew I couldn’t pray for
the Lord to help me speed there, I was pretty sure that wasn’t allowed.
So I tried to worm my way around it by praying that the Lord would clear
the roads so that traffic wouldn’t be bad. I don’t know how the Lord
did it, because I really wasn’t speeding that bad, but we
made it in 15 minutes! Just in time to run in, change, and be in our seats.
Really, I didn’t speed that bad! And don’t worry, I repented and told
President Newman about it, he just laughed at me. I was very grateful!
Oh yeah, we found that McDonald’s family! I know can you believe it!
We told our district about it after our meeting on Tuesday so we all
headed over there for lunch, excited to find this new family. Right as
we got out of the car, a man started walking towards us and recognized us
right away as missionaries. We started talking to him and he accepted a
Book of Mormon and a return appointment! Only one problem, he didn’t
live in our area! He lives in Gretna! The Gretna Sisters were there so
they set up the appointment. I haven’t given up hope though, that we’ll
find a family for us there too! I’ll keep you posted.
As for the work in MY area, it’s great. The Grote family is doing awesome!
We took Bishop Lyman over there on Friday and we taught more about the
Restoration, they again had great questions. We also taught them about
eternal families which was a surprise for them. Shallaine, the Mom,
said that she had always been taught that after we die we don’t remember
anything about this life. So we don’t remember each other. How sad is that?
She said that she never really believed that anyway. They loved that doctrine
(probably because it’s true) and the Spirit was so strong as we taught it.
Angel is doing great. We taught her the Restoration and she caught on so quickly.
She is probably the smartest 13 year old I’ve ever met. Teaching her has
been a lot of fun. We are also teaching Vicki Baldwin. She has been taught
for a while now and it’s time for her to be baptized. We were also able
to visit a couple of families on Sunday who aren’t active. It was
interesting how that night, all of our appointments cancelled, and our
backups failed, and so we had to go to our plan C. It turned out that its
right where the Lord wanted us to be. One of the families, the Rodgers, was so
welcoming and was excited to have us there. They hadn’t seen the
missionaries for a while. For the last couple transfers, not much work has
been done here because one of the Sisters was sick. Anyway, as we were about
to leave, Ron, the Dad, said “Sisters, I’m so glad you came, not 10 minutes
before you knocked on the door, I was packing up my things to go to the hospital,
but now I’m feeling so much better. In fact, I don’t even have any pain.”
He is suffering from several medical conditions and has been in and out of the
hospital the last couple years.
Okay, one last story for you. Last night, we were out trying to visit some members.
This ward is huge and the Elders Quorum President gave us a list of people that
no one knew and asked us to find them. The Spellmans were one family on the list.
We went out to visit them, but alas, they were not home. I saw their neighbors
outside so we started walking over towards them. The Mom,Cheryl, was out on the porch,
talking to her friend. As we walked up the drive and said hello, we got one of
those dreaded looks. She asked, quite shortly,“Can we help you with something?”
“Yes,” I said, returning her look with a smile, “we’re the new missionaries for our
Church in the area and we were trying to meet your neighbors who belong to our Church.
Do you know a good time for us to try and catch them?” Long story short, we just
started to chit chat about them, then Papillion, then the military where her
husband works,and kind of random things. Each time, I would try to make mention of the
Church, or missionaries, or something like that. After a while, I asked her if she
was familiar with the Church. She then informed me that her husband was a member and she
sent her son inside to go get him! They are Steve and Cheryl Empey, and their names
were no where to be found on the ward records! He seemed quite surprised to see us,
and at first it didn’t seem like a good surprise! Anyway, we started talking about
the Church and she claimed to be agnostic but had a Roman Catholic background.
I asked her if she had ever read from the Book of Mormon and she confessed that she didn’t
really know what it was and had kind of tuned out every time Steve tried to tell her.
Well, I took that opportunity to teach her briefly about it and as soon as the Spirit
came, the phone rang. Satan is such a jerk. She had to run in and grab it so we
talked to Steve for a couple more minutes and asked if we could come back and teach
them more. He readily agreed and even seemed excited. I think he’s been inactive
for some time because he has never read the Book of Mormon all the way through.
They have four children and are so great. I love seeing the Lord use us to find and
teach those who are prepared. It’s really an incredible feeling. We don’t really do much,
we just obey.
Well, I’ve got to run. Thanks for your prayers and support. Keep it up!
The Church is not only true, it’s the means for peace in this life, and in the life to come.
Love, Sister Henson