Kashann and Clan

We have been doing a bit of ward shopping lately. This is what Mormon people do before they accept a job somewhere. Church is a big part of our lives so we want to find a good fit. It's the same church and true everywhere. But we have 4 daughters and having a couple nice friends in the ward that have the same Mormon rules - no mini-skirts, no boyfriends, no east coast cussing -will go a long way. There are zero of these nice friends (no kids their age AT ALL) in our ward here and it's tough. Kennon thinks that it's just her parents who are weird. I need to introduce her to the big mormon world in Utah and blow her mind.

We have already shopped three times. Once in Tennessee, another time in N. Hampshire, and earlier this month in Pennsylvania. Only one of the three so far struck out, and we left town without even interviewing.

We may be striking out ourselves with this venture, though. I always regretted looking up the Buffalo bishop the first time we came here house hunting. He cleared his schedule, gave us a personal driving tour all morning and made sure he asked lots of questions along the way. By the time he got out of our car he had finished his full interview and by the time we moved in he already had my calling picked out for me. Relief Society President. It was a good opportunity to grow, but can you blame me for wanting to lie low this time around?

We've tried hard to remain inconspicuous each of these times since while visiting a ward but Come on, You can't miss this handsome family of 7. We never leave the building without getting the third degree as to our future plans, testimonials that this is the best place on earth, and dinner invitations for the evening. Darn Nosy, Mormons. You can't lie low among Mormons. Caroline made sure that we didn't make too good of an impression, though. We only spent one day with the members in PA and Caroline managed to offend two of them. The Sunday school teacher and the stake president's wife. I was talking to the Sunday school teacher after class when Caroline ran up, took one look at my companion and interrupted the bright eyed lady.

"Wow, Your eyes are Sooo surprising!"

She was confused and didn't take it as a compliment. She pressed her if that was a bad thing. Caroline just repeated how surprising they were and then popped her own eyes open as wide as she could to demonstrate what surprising eyes looked like.

Later that night after dinner at the stake president's beautiful home Caroline decided she was bored with the play room and went exploring in the basement. These older homes in the East don't have typical basements. They are the laundry room/ storage room and are so cold that you usually just run down and run back up as fast as you can. Things get dumped with the plans to take care of it later. . .when you have your coat and gloves on. Apparently she had the same aversion to her basement as I did, from the look of the piles of stuff just down the stairs. Her piles must've been more significant than mine have grown though. Caroline went down, came up wearing a princess dress and tiara she found down there and walked right up to the cook and asked

"Excuse me, Why don't you ever clean your basement?"

Whenever I see Caroline corner an adult, I really need to get over there a little quicker.

She did save our bacon during Brent's interview at the dental office though. The Dr. invited the entire family in for pizza with his full staff. They were all sitting down to lunch when he led us in. They immediately cleared the table and had us sit down and eat while they all stood around. It was super awkward since the idea was that Brent would be replacing his current associate and he hadn't offered that info to anyone. They were all doing 20 questions on us trying to guess what was going on in the office that day. We got lots of questions like, "So are you guys moving here?" and "What are you doing in the area?" Usually I can think of plenty to say but this time I was at a loss and just concentrated on my pizza.

So we let Caroline do the jabbering. First she surveyed the room and realized that she didn't see the Root Beer on the table to go with her pizza. So she asked where it was. Then she told Brent that this is where he needed to work so he could eat pizza everyday. Before long she decided that she would go ahead and sing them her original song she wrote on her guitar.

"Nobody's being nice to me. Nobody on my rock star team"

She included all the verses which are different each time . She always comes back to the "Nobody's being nice to me" line because it seems to be the crowd pleaser. She has several songs she is preparing for her big rock star debut someday but we all agree this one is the catchiest, plus it rhymes.

She told us that her stage name is "Star Rock" but Savannah complained, "Caroline you need something original."

She thought for a second then smiled and announced her new name.

"Star Original Rock"