On to the next project

I've pretty much given up on the hope I can blog daily. LOL, I sometimes feel like I'm going down the big hill of a rollercoaster- going too fast and gonna crash. Luckily I've stayed on track so far :).
Last week Jared took a few days off- Tuesday I spent in my craft room while he took care of the homeschooling. I made a reversible garland for the holidays.
this is the Halloween side:

and here's the Thanksgiving side:

The frame has 2 places for pictures on the left side, and a blank calendar painted on the glass behind the garland. Eventually this will be hung up, but not in my entryway. The door slamming would probably knock it off the wall and onto the tile floor, and I like this too much to want to break it.
So that was Tuesday. Thursday we all went up to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, up near Ogden. I wish there were more/longer trails- we got to drive around a pretty big area, but the walking trail was only a 1/2 mile long. We need more space to run around in, LOL. We did see a blue heron, and several ducks and geese, some coots, and maybe a loon. All in all, a pretty good field trip.

Jared and I went on a date Saturday. When we first started dating, we'd go on long walks and talk- sometimes for 3 or 4 hours. We did that again Saturday, and I really enjoyed it. We also picked out a bunch of little trinkets as possible travel bug charms- each of the kids got one, and I made one too. Hyrum chose a yellow hot-wheels car, Morgen chose a little green ball-cap [ornament] with John Deer written on it, Walker chose a globe compass, and I chose a socket. :) They're all on their way around the country, and we can track them to see how far they travel.

Tuesday of this past week I took the kids up to Heber. The cemetery where Myles is buried is very well-kept, but 3 times a year they do a thorough cleaning, and throw everything but the headstones away. So, we go up the week before and remove anything we want to keep. We bring it all back the next week :). The rest of the year, the cemetery staff clean around these things, even mowing around flower arrangements. Anyway, we pulled everything off his grave and stored it in the trunk, then grabbed some sandwiches and headed over to the North Field. It is beautiful right now, and I let the kids run and play while I read a book.
The rest of this past week I have been sewing. I sewed a witch costume for Morgen, a warlock costume for Walker, and I would have sewn a jaguar [no yellow sweat suits for a cheetah, so we changed it] costume for Hyrum except he fiddled with every single button or switch on my sewing machine. By the time I had ruined the collar of Walker's costume, cut out a new one, and fixed all the settings on my machine so I wouldn't ruin another collar, I was too fed up to sew anything else LOL. He had the black sweat suit, though, and since Walker helped him find a tail, and I did his make-up, he wasn't too upset about it.
Our next project is me helping the kids make doll blankets out of scraps of donated fabric. We picked up the fabric at the LDS Humanitarian Aid Center, and promised we'd return it, sewn into blankets, by the end of November. I'm alternating between excitement [because we're making something together] and dread [this involves scissors, after all].

Then it's Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and New Year's, and I don't know where this year has disappeared to!


Gratitude List:

* 2 quotes I found on other blogs today:
"Please don't nag yourself with thoughts of failure. Do not set goals far beyond your capacity to achieve. Simply do what you can do, in the best way you know, and the Lord will accept of your effort." --Gordon B. Hinckley, November 1989 Ensign, p 94.

"No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God ... and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we came here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and mother in heaven." --Orson F. Whitney

* Neighbors who invited my kids over to help make a treehouse, effectively entertaining them for 4 hours now.
* Music on my ipod, and silence in my home.
* That my parents are only an hour away, and that a lot of my family [and many of my friends] are only an email away.
* That I can sew [thank you mom!] and that my kids love home-made costumes.
* My husband.
* Fall weather, changing leaves, crisp apples, and daylight savings time.
* My faith in God.