Exciting things happening in the Harris household!

1. This week marks the culmination of four long years of hard work for Mitchell. He received his Bachellor's degree Friday! The commencement ceremony for the entire university was Thursday and convocation for the School of Mathematics and Physical Sciences was Friday! I am so glad we went! Thank you to Scott and Tyler for coming out and making us go! We had a fun visit with family while they were here too!

2. Tuesday will mark the first day of Mitchell's official pursuit of advanced degrees! He is saying goodbye to Dr. Olsen, the professor he has worked for for the last 3 years, and moving in to the Ideas Lab that is run by Dr. Warnick. This is a big transition because the focus of the research will be totally different. This is a great opportunity for Mitchell though and he is excited to work on his calculus skills. I am glad he is happy because excitment about calculus is something I hope to never experience myself!

 



3. Yes, it's back to the Singles Ward for us! The BYU 8th ward to be exact. Mitchell was sustained today as Second Counselor in the bishopric. We are excited to serve! We don't yet know all of the duties but our new bishop is putting us right to work! We both spoke briefly in Sacrament Meeting today and Mitchell stayed after for meetings. I have been asked to teach the Temple Preparation class and I am very excited about that!

4. My brother received his mission call this week! It actually appeared in my mailbox on Friday and we had the whole opening ceremony in my apartment with friends and family on cell phones and webcams! It was very fun! Mom's boss Jeanne was the closest guess, she guessed Mexico.....He is called to serve in the Texas San Antonio Mission Spanish speaking! Wahoo! Congratulations James! He reports to the Provo MTC on July 1st!

Really the Harris home is being very blessed and we are very happy! Life is great!

I bet you'd never guess...

I bet you'd never guess that this:

Would turn into this!

Mitchell and I have been trying to focus on emergency preparedness and budgeting recently. One of the lessons I have learned through experience is that planning ahead can really cut costs. This month I am going to make a conscious effort to plan meals ahead of time and make one trip to the grocery store per week. If I do this our grocery bill is considerably less than when I go to the store before preparing every meal. Not to mention that it saves massive amounts of time! Monday I decided to plan the week's meals and make a grocery run. I asked Mitchell for input on the kinds of things he would like to eat this week. He came up with fish and roasted vegetables, clam chowder and sourdough bread. Then he threw me a curve ball. His exact words were "something creative with pork and beans."  Huh? Something creative? Are we talking sculpture? Modern art? How about pork and bean muffins? They were really good! Find the recipe here: 

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pork-n-Beans-Cake/Detail.aspx?prop31=1

Back to budgeting we were introduced to a great website that makes money managing very easy! 

http://www.mint.com/

This website will link all of your accounts into one place. You can create your own budget and allocate all of your projected expenses. The site accesses your transactions through debit or credit card and lets you know how you are doing with your monthly budget. It will email you if you go over budget or if any of the transactions are out of the ordinary. For instance, if your debit card were to be stolen and charged with a lot of money or in another location, they would automatically send you an email. It also keeps trend records from month to month so you can evaluate your spending over time. We are really liking this site. Best of all the service is FREE!!

In other news, the semester is really coming to a close. There is only one week left of instruction, then finals. Wahoo! Mitchell will be graduating in 16 days! It is a little anti-climatic though, because a week later he starts right in on his Master's degree. I am getting excited about going to Peru. I met with a group of students and an instructor who are going to Ecuador today. We worked out details of the health fairs that we will be putting on in the respective countries. I am excited to use the skills I have worked hard to obtain, both in nursing and in the Spanish language, to bless the lives of those who are in need. Life is wonderful!