A Fisher out of Water

A bee

I really love honey bees. They're cute, striped, and fuzzy, and they make nice humming noises. They make HONEY, which is just amazing. And they go from flower to flower, pollinating and collecting nectar, and they're just so industrious and lovely.
But tonight we went out to the park to look at fireflies. And I might have to make room on my "favorites" shelf for these little guys. They're so cool! I mean, how many animals fly around at night and light up? Not many. They twinkle across the fields and in the forests like little stars lighting up the night. I pretty much love them.

Fireflies

I told Penny she would have to take a nap so we could go out tonight to look for fireflies. She hasn't taken daily naps since last November. But today she got her toy ponies and horse, lined them up on her pillow beside her, and lay down for a nap. I told her she just needed to stay in there until the timer rang. It was quiet for the whole 20 minutes, so I was sure she had nodded off. But when I peeked in, she was still lying in bed, ponies still lying beside her on the pillow, looking at me with her dark brown eyes. "I just can't go to sleep." She gave it her best shot, though. So we went anyway. She was nervous about it all afternoon, though. She kept telling me she didn't want to go, because the fireflies are scary.
If I keep the girls up past their bedtime at home, they just get cranky and awful. But they were really good on our walk. Our destination was the park, but along the way we started seeing the fireflies. I saw a blinking light that I swore was a firefly, but it didn't move, and the light kept turning on and off pretty regularly. I decided it must have been a lawn ornament of some sort, but when I leaned over to investigate, it was actually a firefly stuck in a spiderweb being eaten by a spider. Wow, that was more nature than I thought we'd be seeing on our innocuous firefly walk!
I tried to be impartial. After all, we read books about the Very Busy Spider making her web to catch flies. I explained that the spider was going to eat the fly for his dinner, and it was sad for the firefly but it was probably a good thing for the spider. Penny brought up the Mickey Mouse cartoon where he sprays the fly with some pink juice and the fly grows extra strong to beat up the spider. Sadly, I didn't have any magical pink juice.
We walked through the park, and I caught a couple fireflies to show the girls. Penny was interested but kept her distance. Naomi shrieked a little and told me she was scared. I think next time we go, we'll bring a jar to look at them in.
Can you tell I grew up in the western US? I'm honestly just glad I have little girls to take out on a firefly search, because I would look a little silly getting that excited over a bug if people didn't think it was only for the sake of my children.

When we lived in China I would write about some of the strange happenings and strange people I'd run into. As it turns out, there are strange happenings and strange people here in America, too.
For example, tonight we went to play at the park. There was a guy in the parking lot blaring his music from his shiny black convertible. I knew I'd seen him before, and it took me a while to place him. He kind of reminded me of a man from church, though this guy was much scruffier and weather-beaten. I'm sure I stared a little too much for politeness, but I was sure I'd seen him somewhere.
Oh yeah! He's one of the guys who panhandles on the street corner where we live!
I always feel kind of awkward around panhandlers, because you never know what people are going to spend your money on. And it turns out that-- in this instant-- I was right for being suspicious! I really don't feel bad giving someone money when they need it to survive another day in their hand-to-mouth existence. But I think people like this are a bit too common. I walked by another of the regular panhandlers on our block, and he turned around to see me, and I noticed he was talking on his cell phone.
Now, I don't have to make any guesses to know that these people aren't living an easy life. But I also know that my money could be better donated to other useful causes.
And I also know I won't be going up to that guy from church and saying, "Oh, I saw someone the other day who reminded me of you! Yeah, it's this beggar guy outside our building who actually owns and drives a sports car!"

In China, we had a lot of restrictions on our religion. For our everyday worship (Sunday meetings and any other church activities), we foreigners met together with other foreigners. Chinese members of our church can meet with other Chinese members, but the two groups can't mix. That's the framework that the Chinese government allows us to work in right now. It works. But it does feel restrictive.
Also, we're not allowed to actively or passively share the Gospel. That means that we can't teach people about our church, and if people ask about it, we really can't give more than a brief, vague answer and change the subject. This is a restriction, but as a friend pointed out, it's really not much different than how we usually are.
I know Mormons kind of have a stereotype of being cheery, hand-shaking people who want to invite you to church. Or to read the Book of Mormon. Or to learn more about the church by meeting with the missionaries. But honestly, I've never done any of those things. The only time I invited a friend to church with me was in 4th grade when my friend stayed the night at our house and then went to church with us in the morning. Pretty lame. ;) I once planned to give a friend a copy of the Book of Mormon to read, but every time I thought about it, I got so nervous I eventually gave up the idea. After like two years. Yeah, that's super cool.
But after living in China for two years where I COULDN'T share the Gospel, I'm really trying to enjoy that freedom now that I'm back in America. Nothing like saying I CAN'T do something to make me want to go and do it.
So I'm starting small, not doing anything scary like putting myself on the line with my friends. But I'm doing things. We have the missionaries over to dinner sometimes. We've become friends with the sister missionaries, and I've had the chance to bring some new members and newly-active members to a new member fireside. (And there is nothing like hearing someone newly fired up about the Gospel sharing their conversion experiences! Very inspiring.) And it's easy to share the Gospel with people who have already decided they're interested in learning about it!
Yesterday I got to give a talk at a friend's baptism. It was really fun for me to prepare a talk about baptism, trying to make room in my allotted time for all the cool information I found once I started studying about it. (There's an excellent article in the Bible Dictionary about baptism: thorough, insightful, very informative.) And it was fun having a captive audience to teach. Some people were missionaries and many others were lifelong Gospel experts, I'm sure. But I like to think that some people were learning new things about baptism.
I'm not brave enough to bring up the topic of religion with people. Yet. But at church, I try to make it a welcoming environment by talking to people who are sitting alone. I don't really know anyone yet, and my comfort zone involves sitting by myself and just talking to the people I already know-- even if that means I talk to no one. But the new-and-improved-Chelsea is outgoing, remember? So I talk to people. I love being at church, especially after 2 years of a small group meeting at someone's home. I wish I knew more people, and if I keep up this facade of being outgoing, it's bound to come true soon. And to be fair, it is working already.
So that's what's new. I'm back here in America, breathing the clean air and enjoying my newly restored freedoms.
Anyone want to read the Book of Mormon?

We celebrated Father's Day this morning by waking Kevin up at 6:30 to give him gifts. He was thrilled. I think he really enjoyed the presents, but it was hard to tell, since he was kind of groggy and bleary. Naomi got him an apron that says "Real men wear aprons" on the front. Penny got him a $7 tool set from Ikea, and I got him (and me) football tickets to the UVA vs BYU game here in Virginia this August. I know which present I'm more excited about! I haven't watched a football game in at least two years, and I haven't been to one in almost four. Go Cougars!!
At church, the Primary kids sang, "I'm so glad when Daddy comes home." They called the Primary children to the front of the chapel, and Penny was excited to go up with the other kids. She'd been practicing the song at home with me, so she knew all the words. She's a tiny Sunbeam, so she made her way to the front of the group of kids. We saw her beaming face and waved from the congregation. Naomi saw her sister and then wriggled off the seat, shouting, "I go sing with Jiejie!" Before we knew what was happening, she was running up the aisle with the last of the Primary kids to go sing the Father's Day song. She wiggled her way to the front of the kids and poked her little head up where we could see her. She scanned the crowd for our faces but didn't look like she ever found us. The kids sang the song. Penny sang all the words with a big smile on her face; Naomi stared into the crowd while everyone else sang.
In her Sunday School class, Penny filled in the words to a paragraph about her dad. It had a giant mustache at the top of the page, of which I wholly disapprove. But the paragraph was infinitely better:
MY DADDY
My dad's name is Kevin. He is 30 years old. He is as big as a car. He has black hair and yellow eyes. His favorite food is chicken. His favorite color is white. He likes to go to play hide and seek for fun. My favorite thing to do with my dad is play. I love my dad because I share with my sister.
I love my daddy!
Kevin is a wonderful dad, and we had a great time celebrating Father's Day this morning. He's continuing the celebration by taking a nap. I wish I had a second round of presents to wake him up with!

We lived here for a few weeks before we got around to buying a car. And really, during those two weeks, the only thing we NEEDED a car for was going to church on Sunday. Otherwise our little neighborhood has everything within walking distance, which is awesome.
We ended up getting a 2010 Toyota Rav4. It looks basically like this beauty I found on the internet:

Exciting, huh!

Originally, the plan was to buy a blue Subaru Forester. They have a BEAUTIFUL color of blue right now, which is obviously the first thing I look at when looking at cars. (My brother, Erik, is a mechanic. If he reads this, I'm not sure he'll make it this far without his eyes rolling practically out of his head. I like the pretty blue cars! Ha ha ha!)

Today we signed and notarized a bunch of documents, mailed them off, and so we're pretty much owners of our first property! I'm really excited about that, but I'm just more excited about being done.
We started our application process April 9th, which makes this just under two months from start to finish. I don't know how long it usually takes, but this was too long. Because of problems with our bank failing to take initiative and actually DO something with our account, we had to push back our  financing and closing deadlines a total of five times. To make a long and rather boring story short, I'll just say that when we applied for the mortgage, we were under the impression that they would then start working on our file and start the appropriate paperwork. After several weeks of radio silence (no answered calls or emails), our first financing acceptance deadline was approaching and we found they hadn't even started the initial paperwork on what turned out to be the section that took the absolute longest to finish. Ugh!
Moral of the story: I strongly recommend AGAINST using Chase Bank, especially in the Utah Valley area.
But despite our banker's ineptitude, and thanks mostly to our real estate agent's tireless efforts, we finally closed on our property today! We're now officially landlords! (Yay?)
We decided to buy a rental property close to BYU. Kevin and I both went to school there, we know the neighborhoods and areas pretty well, and we feel like it's a reasonably stable market. We found a condo that, among its other endearing features, has a small fenced-in grass area-- a yard! If I were going to school over again, I would definitely want to live there. Plus, it's close to campus, has good lighting, and I'm sure anyone advertising their "contract for sell" would say they had cute roommates and a super fun ward!
The next step will be to iron out the details of renters, contracts, management, and all that joyous stuff. But we're just happy to be done dealing with our bank!