My Health Tracker

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Letter to Ephraim City

Dear Ephraim City,

I was talking to my bishop the other day and he thought I should write this letter to you and thank you for letting me go. I truly would have never received so many blessings if it hadn't had been so. Since you have let me go, I enrolled into Snow College and decided to go into Engineering. I love my classes! They keep me so entertained and although I am very busy right now, I can see now that this is where I should have been in the first place.

I have been able to get a job, and although the pay is less than half of what you paid me, I am much happier. This new job allows me to go to church every Sunday and participate in ward activities. This job has allowed me to do service to the community and affect the lives of teenage girls who are trying to figure out where to go in life. Most of all, this job does not get me up in the middle of the night after I have been off shift and it doesn't stress my wife out, making her much happier.

Even though my pay is not good here, We have been able to live better than what we did when I was working for you. We are saving money now rather than living paycheck by paycheck. I was able to receive a very generous grant from the government for my studies, and we have been able to pocket all of it because the Army pays for my tuition. My new job also allows me to study 4 out of the 8 hours that I'm working on most days, and they changed their shifts around just so I could keep working there and go to school at the same time.

I must also thank you for bringing me down to Ephraim. Although I am not particularly fond of Ephraim, I love being back in a small town atmosphere. I have been able to do missionary work here, which is my love of life, besides my wife of course. My wife has been called as Relief Society President here in the college married ward. She loves this calling and is very busy and probably wouldn't have been able to have this experience had we not moved down here. The school here is just right and the teachers here are awesome!

Anyways, I will end my letter now. Just know that we are doing very good now and Thanks once again.
Best regards,
Andy Bartholomew

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Summer!

So I guess I should blog and catch up on life. I have been slacking off on my blogging and need to get better at it. Well, school starts tomorrow for me as I go a week early to take a math refresher course. I haven't had math since I took college algebra in High School almost 6 years ago. Hopefully I can remember everything and start right into pre-calculus without any problems. I will go to school till 330 and then work from 330 to 11. It's going to be a busy school year but I'm excited to start school again and learn some cool stuff.

I also went to the eye doctor the other day and he thinks my twitch is a reaction to the bad allergy's i got when I went out to Boston to get married. He gave me some medicine and told me it would take 3 to 4 weeks for it all to stop and get kicked out of my body. Hopefully this is the case and I believe it is, because my twitch hasn't been as bad lately, except tonight.

We had a family reunion the last weekend of July and it was a blast. I got to do plenty of fly fishing and hiking and spend great quality time with my family. We went down to Zion's national park and had a lot of fun there too. While at the reunion, we learned that my grandpa had finally died. It is a good thing because he was suffering from cancer and is now back with his wife, who died in march. It's great to know about the plan of salvation and the concept of an eternal family. Grandpa really looked at peace at his funeral and left a great legacy behind.

Annual Training for the Army was in June. Although it got very boring sometimes, it was a great experience for me. I got to train on driving paladins and also refreshed myself on loading and firing it. It was a lot of good quality time for the six of us who ate drank and slept on the paladin for two weeks. I learned a great deal and even got to see wild horses up close.

While I went to AT, I surprised Kat with a ticket to Boston so she could go visit her parents. For the most part, she had a great time and loved it.

In may, all's I did was work. Work has been very good to me. It has it's challenges at times with girls but for the most part it is very rewarding. I have had some girls leave and graduate the program and now I wish they were back. I always wonder what they take out of YWEC. My work actually changed their schedule just for me so I could go to school. We used to go 6-2, 2-10 and now we will go 7-3 3-11 so i can come to work and still get plenty of hours.

Kat has been extremely busy lately with her new calling as Relief Society President. She is really enjoying the calling, though sometimes when she starts stressing out I have to remind her that she can't run faster than she has the strength. With her new calling and her new job as a preschool teacher at Snow College, She is also going to be kept quite busy these next months to come. All in all though, it should be a lot of fun and a great adventure.

P.S. oh yeah, I don't know if you've checked my health tracker up above, but I am loosing a lot of weight. since March, I started working out and watching my weight a little bit and lost about 15 pounds. Two weeks ago, Gary sent me a diet paper that is similar to the paleo diet. It has done wonders for me! I'm already down another 15 and keep dropping daily. I don't go hungry at all and I work out a little bit. It was really hard because I broke my diet the first weekend at my grandpa's funeral and then again at a friend's house on Sunday when they invited us to dinner. Getting back on and staying on my diet Mon Tues and Wednesday were very difficult. I started really craving sweets, breads, and dairy products and I plateaued on my weight loss . I succeeded the temptations however and stayed strong to my diet. It has paid off as I began to consistently loose weight again. The consistent weight loss is what is keeping me on my diet as I don't dare break it again. This week I get to start eating fruits which should be good to change my diet up a bit.