Page Maps Sketch

Had fun making this from the Page Maps blog ... check it out on the far right.
From our trip to Manitou Springs. Its the right side of a double page spread. I'll post the other half next week.

Sweetness

Before I write another post about girl stuff, I had to include this recent pic of LittleBuddy, my middleschooler. Love this boy so much!!! And those eyes, they're going to be melting a few hearts in the near future, I'm sure. He's a great youngest son, easy and engaging and sweet, with just a little bit of attitude every once in a while to remind me he's a normal pre-teen. Five months from now I will have three teenagers again.

Last night was our YW in Excellence for our ward. The theme was "Think Pink." It was the same theme our ward in MD had done a couple of years ago for a New Beginning. I'd shared ideas from that with the committee and they decided to go with the same theme, but of course they made it unique to this ward, and it was wonderful! Loved the tissue paper decorations hanging from the ceiling in bright pink.
The display on the middle of this table is MyGirl's project - her Mission Organization project for Choice and Accountability, which is why we put it on orange paper.
Here is MyGirl with some of the other Laurels. You can't tell in this photo, but almost all of the girls wore pink. The girl in the black shirt has on a pink skirt. There was lots of white and pink and black and it was so cute. My favorite was when they all went up to sing and sounded like angels, really. It was tear-inducing, which my daughter always has to comment on afterwards, but at least she's used to it by now.
Another fun twist, was their food selection. They had a chocolate fountain. The girls loved it. Their siblings loved it. Even the parents loved it. The Deacons especially loved it. There were fun things to dip like Rice Krispie treats, pound cake, bananas, apples, marshmallows and pretzels and a perennial favorite, pink lemonade to drink. . . . sweet!

There was a great spirit there. It was wonderful to be able to celebrate the girls and celebrate being a girl.
The Laurel President who was in charge made a wonderful handout for the girls that I thought was so clever and tied into the theme so perfectly. These are post-it holders, with little post-it notes inside. Although she has already earned her medallion, she said that sometimes some of the things to be accomplished had to be done everyday. You had to remind yourself to keep thinking about it and doing it, and so after starting over a few times she put post-it notes all over the place, in her room, on her phone, on the bathroom mirror, etc. so she wouldn't forget. She told us when we are thinking about making progress then we will. What a great idea and one we will be using at our house to finish off the last few goals MyGirl has left.

This is a picture of Kayli, the Laurel president, and Wendi, her mother. How young does she look too?? She's only a couple of years younger than I am, and looks about ten years younger. I could say I'm jealous, but I'm not. I just adore her. She is a faithful woman and gives, gives, gives. She is sweet even when others aren't sweet to her. I am learning from her and she has become my closest friend since moving here. I love that there are good women wherever I live.

MyGirl

MyGirl has a lot of talents. One of them is to organize. For a YW project one of the requirements was to organize something and maintain it. MyGirl helped me immensely when we moved and she has taken upon herself the chore of maintaining the pantry and the linen closets and under the kids bathroom cupboards. She is amazing I know. I took this picture last week. It looks like this most of the time.
Another one of her talents is to cook. She likes to be in the kitchen and help. When she was younger she'd refer to herself as LittleMissRachelRay, as she'd stand at the stove, and stir a pot of soup or homemade spaghetti sauce. She especially likes to bake and she's good at that too. Her brothers love when she decides to make something.
Last week our neighbor was sick. She has the most adorable kindergardener, so after homeschooling and kindergarden were over, MyGirl would go pick up this little girl to come spend the afternoon with us. She has two older brothers and a sister too, and they were invited to come over too, but the youngest was MyGirl's favorite.
They played dress up with all our old Halloween costumes. They made princess hats. They played legos and marbles and with some of the boy toys too. They fed our guinea pig. They colored.
They dressed up "Kit," the American Girl doll MyGirl has grown out of, and enjoyed all the cute outfits grandma had made. They fixed hair and made crafty flowers and played together for many hours and I heard our neighbor was sad every day it was time to go home. She got a really cute haircut a couple of weeks ago, but she won't let me take pictures of her with her hair all done and her makeup on to let her see how beautiful she is. However, she would let me take pictures of her with the younger girls so she could see how happy they are. That's MyGirl.
MyGirl really is an angel inside. I thought she could count this as another project, but she only has two left to do, and didn't think either of them would fit for this service, but she served anyways, and loved it. Yes, she has some difficult challenges, more difficult than some and not as difficult as others, but what makes her amazing is that she has this heart that is so giving. She just really likes to help people. She likes to mother and nurture and care and create for them so that they can be happy, even when inside she isn't feeling very happy. The days she played with our neighbor were mornings when Algebra was making her short of crazy. Yet, she moved on and didn't feel sorry for herself. I know it sounds like I'm bragging about her here, but I know that she reads my blog, and I hope she knows that you don't have to be great at Algebra to be a wonderful person. You just have to be a really good person, and she is. Someday I'll share Pres. Uchtdorf's wonderful message from last Sat. with her. Maybe when she's in Relief Society. For now, she is creating a good life, using her talents to bless others, and I know the Lord is happy with her. I am too.
She likes to go in the backyard too, and tend to our garden and check out what's going on. We're enjoying our neighbor's sunflowers as well as hoping that little bush will next year turn into a big blueberry bush. That would make my summer! She picks our tomatoes and zucchini and is going to be well prepared to be a mother someday. She also spearheaded card-making yesterday morning as it was her dad's birthday. Her brothers all joined her for making some very sweet cards and their dad was grateful for everyone who remembered him.
Last weekend he and Bigbuddy took the bikes out again for their "best dirt-bike-riding-day Ever!" MyGirl is a lot like her dad. He too is very organized and hard-working and makes time for the children in his life too. They both like to play outside and play all day long when they do. They also like to go to bed pretty early and get a good night's sleep. However, he doesn't like to cook, except on the grill, and that works just fine for me! MyGirl and I will take care of that!

Schedules

No pictures today. Just regular life going on. I need to take a picture of that more too.

We're in the routine of the school year. School's already been in session exactly a month. Every day my alarm goes off at 6:20 a.m., and I get up no later than 6:30. I love it! Its the most I've been able to sleep in during the school year in at least nine years. Surprisingly, its not my seminary student who I need to be up for first, its my youngest. His bus comes at 7:04. For seminary (orange days) we leave at 7:20 to pick up another girl, who then brings MyGirl home afterwards. On school days (black days), we leave at 7:25 and I pick her up at 9:15. Its a good schedule and things are going smoothly.

Homeschooling has its own schedule too. We only have a few classes yet to complete. However, one of them is Algebra. Its not going well. Pray for me to know how to help her. So far, everything I've tried hasn't clicked for her yet. I know it will eventually. I'm just hoping its in a few weeks, not years. Bless her heart, that she just hasn't given up yet, or thrown the book out the window. She's still trying. She's a good girl and she wants so much to succeed. I really want to be able to help her sufficiently soon!

One of the best things about moving here has been the increased time we've gotten to spend with Cowgirl. With cheaper airfare and closer airports, at least for her, she's been able to fit into her schedule lots of days to come visit. She's coming again the weekend after Conference, the 2nd weekend in December, and then another week in January. I feel so blessed that after waiting for five years to spend more time with her, that has finally come to pass. This year we will have seen her eight different times, all for the cost of seeing her just twice in Maryland.

The mission is getting closer, less than three months now. I called the church mission office yesterday, after having too many adults telling me too many conflicting things. I learned that he gets his Malaria shots when he gets to Brazil and that rabies has not been an issue. Feeling grateful for that and praying it holds true when he gets there. I also found out that the reason he doesn't need an FBI recommendation is because our closest Brazilian consulate is Houston, not NYC. Local police good enough for us. One less thing to add to our checklists. Today we get the international driver's license although its only valid for a year and can't be renewed. No one could answer what to do after that, but we will be obedient and get it anyway. Every day there is something to do.

Sat. he got an e-mail that the 2nd half of the Visa experience is underway, after he completed some more forms and mailed them in, so that gives us hope. If the first half only took seven weeks, maybe the Visa will actually get here in time after all. I'm starting to see why its a blessing to have five and a half months between the call and the day he enters. As it was explained to me yesterday, sometimes the consulates process twenty in a day, and sometimes they don't process any for months.

There's always something to cause us to rely on the Lord's timing, isn't there? It doesn't really matter how smoothly we may be able to create our own schedule, we must all learn to walk by faith, live with other people's schedules and wait for certain things in life to be ready, even when we are ready now. And so we do, filling our lives with the regular routines, and praying for the patience to wait it all out, knowing eventually progress Will come.

Balancing Act

Today I finally got to the 25 lb. box of peaches sitting on my dining room table. I canned these 6 qts. then froze another 6 qt. in freezer bags to be used for smoothies, and 8 of them had already been eaten. I'd had these since last weekend. Today was a presidency meeting and homeschooling, but I knew I finally had all afternoon free for a project of my choosing. Even though my life is pretty simple, it still manages to fill up most of my time. And, in homeschooling today, MyGirl was taking her Algebra test, so she wouldn't need my help like she normally does. My neighbor was selling these for a fundraiser. Straight from Paradise, Colorado, they are delicious, or so I'm told. My mouth feels like its on fire when I eat raw peaches, so I eat them cooked or canned, like in cobblers and pies, you know the most fattening way possible. And I'm looking forward to that! Littlebuddy is looking forward to his breakfast smoothie tomorrow morning.
Over the past month I've been working on some scrapbooking pages from earlier this summer. This one I worked on the better part of the whole week Cowgirl was here. It took me a long time to select the colors and accents, and I got sidetracked making some cards too. I used the Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge here and I loved how easy it was to make the sun, the bird, and the branch. These are among my favorite photos I took of my children this summer.

How many pictures do you think are on these two pages?

19, which is how many of us were at the family reunion this summer. Take a look below to see how I did it.
The twill is holding two cut outs from a page protector with 6 (4 x 6) pocket holders. I carefully cut right down the middle so each side would have three pockets vertically, and I cut off the three ring holes normally used in a page protector. Gluing down the bottom of each pocket, I was able to get five pictures in each one, three on one side and two on the other. In my scrapbook I've cut out an opening the size of both of those so it is easy to interact with the page.
Here's another way to get more pages in, using Flip Flaps. They are designed to fit 4 x 6 pictures, but they worked fine for my 3 1/2 x 5 ones too. I make little tabs for them, here using half cut circles so its easier to turn the flaps.
This page uses the negative space from a Cricut cut out. The green swirly along the bottom was sponged in green ink to give a fluid movement to the page, but kept lighter, and low-key. In all my pages I am trying to have your eye focus on the photos, and not all the embellishing. However, I like to make them look beautiful too, so there's a balancing act going on here too.
Last Saturday I went to a crop with the Close To My Heart ladies and the Creative Memories ladies. They all meet together at the Catholic church, but I think only two of them are Catholic. Half of them are school teachers and they all work except for the leader, who sells for two different companies, volunteers for the Starlight Foundation in a big way, and has four children of her own. When I go there, I am reminded how simple my life is, and I truly like it that way!

The two photos below the kraft cardstock, on the right page, actually both open out to reveal two more pictures underneath each of those two photos, giving me six photos where it looks like only two. I'm really liking this methodology. Close To My Heart sells a book called "Magic," which most of these ideas are either inspired or copied from. I made this page when I was with the ladies on Sat.
Then I got to work on another project which I can't show you until Christmas, but here is a sneak peak of half of the holly leaves I had cut with the Cricut before I came, then stamped while I was there. The ladies all thought I was a little crazy for starting a Christmas project in early Sept., but since Christmas will be celebrated early this year at our house, I've got a lot to do in a short amount of time. And, fortunately, my life is pretty simple so I can squeeze this in whenever I have a little time.

However, last night a mother sent me a four page list of all the items you need to send with your son when he goes to Brazil. I'm going to have to put this project on hold for a while and get some more mission shopping done. I hadn't thought of things like a mattress cover, thinking he'd be on hammocks most of the time, but apparently he'll be in both, and the mattresses are shared and aren't changed regularly in the equatorial climate, so I can see how this would be a good thing. I'm hoping I'll have time to finish this project by the end of the month, but if not, it'll be okay. My favorite reason not to procrastinate is not to have the stress that comes from hoping you'll make the deadline. Knowing there's plenty of time, helps me to stay less stressed, and I always need that!

In Balance

When Cowgirl came over a week ago, one of our agenda items for the week was some crafting. I scrapbooked and she made these darling Halloween cards. It was fun to see how fabulously talented she is, and to be able to talk with someone about what makes for a good design. For instance, noticing how your eye reads things visually is important. Color, contrast, placement, proportion, all these things must be balanced for a design to work. One of these cards she was bothered by. That's what led to our discussion. It wasn't working for her, and she didn't know why. By the end of our crafting time she knew what she'd do differently next time to make it work. She is a quick study, for sure, and a delightful crafting buddy as well. She's also speedy. She made all of these in half the time I finished my page. She used the K & Co. line with a little help from my stash and stamps.

Looking Back

Looking back on past September 11ths, and feeling the need to count my blessings.
These are all pictures from past Septembers. So much has changed in ten years. I didn't have a digital camera until 2003, so I don't have any photos from that actual day to share, but I remember it well.

2001 - It was such a beautiful day on the East coast. I came back from the bus stop that morning and turned on the news. The first tower had just been hit, and the commentators were talking about that when I watched the second tower get hit. Immediately I knew this was not an accident. Later, I wrote in my scrapbook that in spite of all the tragedy, our little family was safe and well, gathered at home, for which I was (and am) most grateful. I still ache for all the families who lost their loved ones. It was a day of mourning, and still is. I will never forget the prayer Mike uttered that evening, as he prayed not just for the families of those who had been lost that day, but also for the innocent Muslims and all of the children of God throughout the earth who would be effected by the consequences of this day.

I remember an incredible outpouring of faith expressed publicly at that time. Most everyone remembered their religious roots and felt the need to pray and ask the Lord for mercy upon our country. Within months that national feeling dwindled among many, but not among those who believe. Still today, there are those, like the cowboys, who openly express their gratitude and humility before the Lord. My Christian neighbor, who is a consultant for Shelf Reliance because she has felt inspired to be more prepared. To those who look to the Lord, He will continue to guide them. We have had many challenges in the past decade, but I can clearly see that the Lord has blessed us, and I am so grateful for that.
Sept. 2010 - We all have a greater need to be with family. Our sense of what's most important was heightened after 2001. There is also an increased measure of precaution that has permeated society. Traveling is less fun. MyGirl wouldn't fly home on Sept. 11 last year, so we came home on the 12th.

Sept. 2007 - I see the light that shines in the eyes of my children and I know that in spite of the evil in this world, goodness prevails. The Lord has saved some of His most righteous for the last days because they have the faith and willingness to follow the Lord no matter what. We visited Pearl Harbor this year. We felt the same sense of loss but also the same desires to continue forward, rebuilding, living, loving, and standing for righteousness wherever we are.
Sept. 2006 - The sweetness of children is one thing I most wanted to preserve on Sept. 11, 2001. I remember how important it was for me to keep the youngest ones from seeing the TV images which were so horrific. I was so sad for them to have to grow up in a world that would do such horrible things, but as I see how they have grown up to be wiser and less innocent than I was at their age, but still good, caring, loving, sweet children I am most grateful for the rhythm of life that carries us forward, propels us to grow and carry within our hearts a hope for the future. We have taken our children to Gettysburg, to Arlington, and to Valley Forge. I hope we have instilled within them the sacredness of life, and that the cost of freedom is only guaranteed when people stand up to those who would destroy it. My children are my hope for the future. In spite of the hard things that we experience, the tragedies that have happened and still may occur, I have hope for them that they will have the strength to carry on, trust in the Lord's love for each of them, and be part of the force for good that will continue to stand firm and undaunted for truth and liberty all of their lives.