Easter

I'm Alive

Here's proof:



My attempt to spend less time on my computer translates into less posts on my blog. I haven't forgotten about it though. In fact, I have so many small projects to show and the big ones are just around the corner.



The last few weeks have been better around here. I've pulled out of my funk for the most part. I'm productive again. My days are busy, but good.

I feel like making a list.

Here's the list:

-The Cub Scout Blue and Gold Banquet and the Pinewood Derby are now DONE.....and I would consider them a success.

-The time I am on the computer is spent oogling over home project ideas.

-My back and arm hurt me when I sit at said computer due to my desk/chair combination.

-I bought new bookcases for my front room that I'm really liking.

-Adam's room is re-rearranged and working much better.

-The garage is mostly organized!!!

-I have to tackle the basement before I'll let myself start a molding project.

-I'm dying to do more paintings.

-Daniel will be working from home starting in June. (I don't know if I've mentioned this?)

-Isaac and I went jogging twice last week. The snow is holding us up right now.

-I got a one-year membership to Gold's Gym which is not remotely close to me. Some girls from my neighborhood teach/go there though. One plays racquetball.

-This week I'm teaching a Junior Achievement unit in Isaac's class about financial institutions. Did you know why President Andrew Jackson strongly opposed the second bank of the US? I do. :)

-We need to start work on our yard. I'm dragging my feet. Can you say overwhelming??!

-Lynea's (my sister) house is for sale. She should be coming to Utah soon-ish..... :)

-I'm out of ideas for this list and I've got to go shower.


:)

Finding the New Normal?

I knew I hadn't posted in a while, but I didn't realize how long. A comment from Nicole has been rattling around in my head and made me think I should not continue to neglect my blog.

You see, December was more than I could handle gracefully and January was the aftermath. It's February now and I'm trying to get into a sustainable groove. Life has considerably slowed down, for which I am grateful, but now I'm left with trying to figure out what to add back in to my schedule and which items really should be left out.

This winter weather has been hard for me. The darkness of the sky coupled with the darkness of my wood shutters has led to a lot of discouraging days. I am making my best efforts to pick myself up and be my best self. It's hard. Oh my, it's so hard.

I've done a few projects and have good intentions of posting them here. Maybe it will happen yet. Isaac's room is nearly complete. Sarah's is pink, though not a pink I like. I've finally organized my messy kitchen drawers. Things are ever so slowly coming along. I've got big plans in my head. We'll see which of them really happen. Our yard is one huge thing to be tackled...hopefully starting this spring.

So that's how things are here. FYI, I haven't been reading other people's blogs at all. I sort of holed up to recover. We'll see how much of that I add back in...

Consider yourself invited.

I doubt you will be disappointed if you come; we've worked hard.

The performance will be dedicated to Mike and Jill Bearden and family.

December

To say this month has just been busy would be an understatement. At times it has been completely unmanageable.



Much of the craziness has been this:

Voices. The 10 woman choir I've been singing with. (This is us at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.) We've already had 20+ performances and have 2 more. We will be singing at the North Visitor's center on Temple square on Dec. 23rd at 7:00pm and also doing a Friends and Family Performance on Sunday the 26th. I'll post the invite.

But on my mind tonight is heartbreaking news of the loss of a friend's baby. I knew both Mike and Jill in college and sang in the Institute choir with them. Mike is in Voicemale. They have always been wonderful people. Jill was the one that connected me with Voices, but did not sing in it herself this season because of her pregnancy. I just saw them last week as happy as ever and now they are dealing with tragedy. My heart is breaking for them.

Gratitude

I've been forgetting that I even have a blog, but I should pay it some attention today since I mentioned it in my talk. More specifically, I mentioned a list I made on my sidebar two years ago about little things I was grateful for.

Daniel and I both gave talks in church today on Gratitude. I think it went pretty well and I will put it in my talk archive in case we ever get asked to do one on the exact same topic. (I can hope, right?)

Anyhow, one of the things I spoke about was this list of ideas to show gratitude that I found in the Young Women's manual. I thought it was entertaining, so I thought I'd post it here for you reading pleasure. This is from the lesson entitled "Gratitude and Apreciation".

• 1. Write a note—Make it short, and if you like, use a little art work. It needn’t be on fancy stationery; why not a square of colored construction paper cut with pinking shears? Without being mushy or insincere, pen a happy line of thanks. … Use the postman for deliveries, then you’re not around when it’s read.

• “2. Do a favor—This is a subtle way—good to use with your best friend or your parents. It takes an understanding heart to recognize this as a ‘thank you.’ Rise half an hour early and polish your dad’s shoes. … Or make fudge to give the boy who helped haul scenery for the class play.

• “3. A telephone call—Make it on the first impulse, then it’s the most effective. Don’t feel embarrassed, just be sure you let the fella or gal on the other end of the line feel your gratitude. …

• “4. A happy look—How nice to show appreciation in your face—a quick and ready smile, shining eyes, a warm look. To many folks this is the best thanks of all—and can be a secret communication between you and the person you’re thanking. It involves no stammering, no self-consciousness.

• “5. A gift or treat—And it needn’t be expensive! Tuck a candy bar in your kid brother’s sock drawer for his letting you use his ball point. Dangle some candy kisses from your sis’s tennis racket before putting it back in her closet. Stick four pieces of gum in your chum’s science book—when you return it” (Winnifred C. Jardine, “Thanks a Million,” Improvement Era, Sept. 1960, “Era of Youth” section).

• 6. Rock painting—Go rock hunting, and find flat ones, pretty ones, and smooth ones. These are just right to draw a picture on and give thanks to someone for being such a big help.

I've got to go find me a lot of rocks. I've got a lot to be grateful for. :)

Busy, Busy, Busy.

My sister just emailed me and pointed out that I hadn't blogged in a while OR called her. In fact, I haven't spoken to many people at all! My life has been going full tilt and I have very little downtime.

But I do need to say how grateful I am to feel happy. My house is awesome, my neighborhood is super, the kids are doing great in school, we're healthy....we're just busy.

I am anxious about December. The choir I'm singing in has 18 or so scheduled performances. I'm not sure how it's all going to go down.

I do have lots of pictures to post (including Isaac's room), but they're going to have to wait. I'm just too busy...

GNO in Honor of My Birthday!

Over the UEA weekend we went on a trip (which I will hopefully post about soon). While gone, my birthday happened. When you're in the middle of nowhere it's very difficult to conjure up that festive birthday feeling. So....

Tomorrow (Thursday) night I'm going to do something about that and celebrate with a girls' night out. Dinner @ 7:00pm (at either the Olive Garden or Sweet Tomatoes in the Southetowne area) and ???? with the girls. You are welcome and invited to come if any of the following apply to you:

*You like me (actually this a requirement).
*You desperately need to get out of your house and/or away from your children.
*You have been waiting on the edge of your seat for me to post on my blog more.
*You need new friends.
*You have been hoping for an opportunity to shower me with compliments.
*You've been looking for a way to tell me you've been reading my blog but never comment so I don't know you're there. Ha!


Let me know! :)

Little Girls' Hair

A quick post tonight:

I have finally admitted to myself how much I like to do hair. Little girls' hair to be exact. I have found some great blogs that give me lots of ideas. (Like this one http://www.girlydohairstyles.com/)

So here's a few pictures...



The next ones are really just because she's cute. :) Oh, and she covered herself in stickers.

The following one and the one after that are based on the hairstyle called "Got time?". There's a reason for that. It. Takes. Forever. However it lasted for three days. When you have that many elastics in your hair, it's not going anywhere.

I curled the bottom on one of the days.

Isn't this next one so cool? This is Sarah's dear friend. She didn't even complain once while I was doing it.

Be careful sending a little girl to my house. I just might do her hair!

Come to think of it, they don't even have to be little girls.

Life has been busy

I have pictures to post. Lots. But I've been busy.

Isaac's room is coming along, albeit with huge holding periods.

Every night that I've sat down to look at my calendar, I feel anxious. I feel like shutting down, like my calendar is too full. It's not though. It really is doable. I think I'm the weak link here. And that causes me anxiety.

Life is good. Quite good in fact. Yet sometimes I just feel like it's getting away from me.

And I'm starting sentences with 'and' and 'but' and I'm rambling. If this is what I allow to come out, just imagine what it's like inside my head.



P.S. Nea, I haven't forgotten that you want me to post. Sorry. I will. Soon. Hopefully.

Forward Progress?

I should have pictures of this, but I don't.

In the 45 min. Daniel and I were at choir practice this morning the kids built a fort. Not just any fort...a gigantic fort...or as Isaac declared "The biggest fort anyone ever built." They were excited about it so they couldn't fully understand why I wasn't. There was much complaining when I said it would need to be cleaned up by the end of the night.

The evening wore on and one child felt sick and could not help with clean up. Oh, and what a clean up it was! Once the 15 or so blankets came down we realized they had used things from every corner of the house. I was not happy.

Somedays as a mom it seems like I take one step forward and two steps back.

Anxiety and a Busy Week

I was just looking back through pictures and realized how full this week has been.

Visiting friend and projects.

Utah State Fair.

Piano recital for both boys. (Adam's first.)

Grant Elementary Carnival. (Fun, but I'm still feeling phantom stress.)





Marisa's (my niece) birthday party. Always amazing.




Not shown in pictures are many other things that made this one crazy week.


So as I sit here tonight, I've been thinking about what's on my plate for the coming weeks.



For church alone, I have some things for an upcoming Super Saturday to accomplish, a lesson I just got asked to teach that I haven't looked at, choir in the morning, AND something looming yet undefined that I'll mention later.



This next week there is a new playgroup for Sarah, a birthday party, my first time of volunteering in Adam's classroom, a pottery class for Adam, choir (the little one I joined, a big time commitment in my life right now), a mandatory 2-hr church meeting, the CIRCUS (yay), the school jog-a-thon, RS broadcast, a boy's room in desperate need of progress, and more!





Tonight my table looks like this as I scratch my head trying to narrow down the Super Saturday choices:




And my desk looks like this:

Messy. Full calendar. Yuck!

It's times like these that I wonder if I don't deal with stress correctly.

Isaac's room remodel I

I have tried so hard to fix the formatting on this post. I realized my frustrations with blogger are a big part of the reason I don't post much. Anyhow, the captions don't line up with the correct pictures. See if you can figure it out...


The room that was best for Isaac in this house happens to have been previously done in a "cowboy" theme. Fine for a young boy, but not for one about to turn 11. I have decided to focus on Isaac's room since his birthday is fast approaching.

After much deliberating, I decided to take down both the paneling and the molding. It was not paintable and not quite something I could work with.


Here are two pictures from before we moved in:

Clean always looks better than dirty, so here's a few pictures from the first few weeks in the house:

Isaac had his dresser already, so we got him a bedframe to match and used the old guest room mattreses.

Everything coming down. Lots and lots of repair work to follow.

Our New Kitchen Table

So I been thinking about blogging, every day, many times a day. I have SO many things to blog about. However, by the time night rolls around...I'm tired and worn out.

I promised myself I would post something tonight. It's almost midnight.

You see, I have this dream of posting all of my projects on here. I LOVE to see others projects and would like to keep tabs on my own. And boy have I begun projects....

But tonight, you just get a picture of our new table. That yellowish table just had to go (downstairs).


So here's before:



















And after:

The new table is awesome. I'm so happy with the choice.