Counting Blessings: Wonderful People!

Today's Blessing:  A Wonderful Woman Celebrated, and an Awesome College Adviser!!

Some people make their lives a gift to others just by being here!  That was my dad's cousin Merleen Poulsen Jardine Checketts. (I guess she's my first cousin, once removed or something like that...some family relationships are so hard to figure out!)

Merleen was a sweet, wonderful, Christlike lady!  She passed away last Thursday after being diagnosed seven weeks earlier with cancer, although she had been enduring a lot of health problems for many years. Despite her health problems, she lived an amazing life!  During her life, she was almost a constant caregiver.  She experienced caring for and losing her first husband when she was only 42 years old.  Just about six months ago, she buried her second husband of 24 years.  About 12 years ago she had a stroke and although it created some disability she continued through life positive, productive, and happy.  She was a true disciple of Jesus Christ and everyone knew it through the way she lived her life.  I got to know Merleen best when we both worked at the Weber School District administrative offices.   We weren't in the same office as she worked in the Media Center and I worked in Personnel, but we would frequently get to visit and she was always such a pleasant person to be around.  Growing up, I remember having a crush on her oldest son in high school...and then I discovered we were related, I was so disappointed!

Her funeral was today in Taylor.  It was a beautiful service - a true celebration of a wonderful woman!

THEN...thanks to an awesome college adviser, I was able to get Jessica all registered for the Fall 2014 semester at Utah State University!  Hooray!!  How is it that a college adviser can search and plug in classes within minutes and for me it was like searching for a needle in a haystack?!  I had been able to register Jess for most of her classes last night but ran into a problem when a honors class wasn't authorized and I was short two credits to satisfy Jessica's scholarship requirements.  I called Aly for help and we conference called with Cody but finally gave up after 11:00 pm when nothing was working.  Come to find out from Jess' adviser, there was a glitch in the program last night which was messing things up, but that turned out to be a blessing because when she reviewed Jessica's class schedule, she found a couple of problems with the classes I had selected and we were able to fix them.  Jess told me she had an awesome adviser - she was totally right!

Now I just have to hope Jess is happy with her schedule.  Two of the classes Jess told me to register for were not being offered until Spring 2015 so she'll be getting a few surprises.  But she needs the classes regardless so it's all good, right?!