October is Coming to a Close

We have had a lot of praying mantises this fall. This big guy was hanging out on Myles's bike. We gave him a stick to climb on and then tried to get him onto the rose tree. He did not want to leave my hand for the rose tree. He got a bit skiddish and made a mad dash around my hand and started to go up my arm. I finally managed to coax him onto a little limb of the tree, and he has been there for a whole day now. Meg really liked touching him and getting a close look.

 

 

 

 Meg scraped her knee this week. Myles was such a good big brother. He got her all cleaned up and put a bandage on her boo-boo.

 

 Molly finally got a wash and haircut. It's been a looooong time! It is so nice to have her not looking so shaggy. They gave her a little Halloween bandana. Then we played dress up with her and turned her into an old lady.

 

 At Activity Days Elsa made a Halloween candy popper. She was so excited to try it out. It didn't really work. I think she tried it a couple of times and decided she'd had enough. It was a cute mummy though.

 Aeva bought some face paint for her Halloween Costume, but she decided to try it out on Meg first and made her a kitty cat.

 I finished two quilt tops this week. I'm taking them into get put together this week, and then I am going to take a break for a while. I went with a gray and pink theme.

 Aeva has to do a power point presentation for her Japanese class. She has to explain how to make a recipe all in Japanese. She made a German potato dish. It tasted pretty good. I thought it was funny that she was wearing goggles to cut the onions.

 

 

Today Aeva played the piano for sacrament meeting. I wasn't sure if it would feel overwhelming to her, but before she left this morning she said "It's okay Mom, I've got this!!" She did wonderfully :)


Rhaevyn is reminding me of myself at her age.........collecting various items for when she is on her own. I remember purchasing things here and there for when I had a home of my own someday and carefully storing them in my hope chest. Friday, at the thrift store, she found a really nice Revere ware frying pan, a Pyrex pie plate with awesome handles (I'm jealous), and a practically brand new spring form pan. She also found a Where's Waldo book that reminded her of all the fun times she had looked at that book at my mom and dad's house. She bought it for Myles, and he has been glued to it.

Myles said something the other day that struck me.....he and I were listening to music while we were working together on his room. We listen to a variety of music here from Christian to Kpop to oldies. This particular day we happened to be listening to oldies. There was a Simon and Garfunkle song on and Myles asks "Boy why don't they make songs like this anymore?" It is fun to listen to the kids sing along to songs I remember growing up listening to. I giggled the other day listening to Elsa and Meg sing along to  a Credence Clearwater Revival song.

I'm sure there is a lot more that has taken place this past week, but that is the shortened version. Halloween is Tuesday, which the kids are excited for, and then November will be knocking at our door.

A Jumble

The past two weeks have been interesting  and filled with emotions. My heart was not in to posting last week, so I've got a few items from last week and from this week for the blog. 

Rhaevyn has been working on her Halloween costume. She is going to be Sophie (the younger version) from Howl's Moving Castle. She finished her dress just in time for the Young Single Adult Halloween Dance last night. The only thing she couldn't find was a hat. Rhaevyn said that another girl at the dance was dressed up as the Sophie which comes at the end of the movie. They took the opportunity to get a picture with each other.

 Yesterday was our ward's Souper Saturday. Aeva and I made some crafts and Rhaevyn made soup and a pie for the luncheon.

Tree of Life Christmas Ornament

 Meg now has her very own ornament to add to our Christmas Tree.

 Our "thankful" board:

 Aeva took time out to do some waltzing with Meg and have a tea party with her.

 

 I've started working on another quilt. It will be a star quilt done in pink and grey. I'm not sure if I will keep this exact layout.

 And I finsihed this quilt. This one just did not want to come together. I'm not really sure how I feel about it.

 At Activity Days Elsa made bread. She made two mini loaves, and they turned out delicious!

 I had to laugh the other morning. I turned around to see Meg finishing up her cereal and realized that she had decided to use a small ladle for her spoon.

 Molly and Aeva:

  I love this time of year when the trees are turning such beautiful colors. Our back patio has a carpet of such pretty colored leaves.

 This is one of my favorite times of each day, dinner time. Time stops for at least half an hour to 45 minutes, and we can just breathe, relax, eat, and visit with each other. Chris and Aeva were trying to be funny and take pictures of each other at the dinner table.

Time is ever marching forward. I feel like October is quickly slipping away, and November is fast approaching.

October, Here We Are!

I think fall weather may finally have arrived for good. While we are having sunny weather the air is definitely crisp and cold. 

We have had a really good and blessed week this week.

Sunday night I finally finished this:

I think this quilt  has only been a year in the making. Now that I've done this star quilt I'd like to do one with prettier colors. I've started another quilt, which was supposed to be a disappearing nine patch, but I find that it really does not want to be that. I'm not sure if anyone else runs into this problem, but I think quilts sometimes don't want to come together the way I think they should. Sometimes they seem to have a mind of their own. So, I am now reworking the one I've started and hope it doesn't look too horrible once it is all put together.


Thursday night Myles had his crossover from cub scouts to scouts. He got his arrow of light and Webelo badge. It was so neat to have Myles pin the arrow of light and Webelo pins on me. It was very special.
 
 

 

 

 

 

 
Myles got to pick out the cake. Here he is enjoying his piece from it:

Aeva, Myles, and Elsa were so sweet to sweep up all the leaves out back this week on their own. On Monday I was going to ask them if they would mind doing it when they beat me to it by making the suggestion themselves. They didn't wind up with a huge pile of leaves, but they had to jump in the small pile they did have. I was going to record Myles jumping in the pile and Meg beat him to it.

Meg was so proud of this picture she drew of all her Sunbeam friends.............Spencer, Dawson, and KK. She is the only girl in her sunbeam class. I hear they all love to sit by her. She does, however, have a favorite, and that is KK. She sits and blows kisses to him sometimes during singing time. What a character!!

Yesterday my dear friend and I got to spend half the day together. Although we  live about a mile away from each other, we don't get to see or talk to  one another very often because of the busyness of our lives. We try and get together at least once a month so that we can talk uninterrupted, catch up on the goings-on with our families, get some walking in, and laugh a lot. We always come back to our families rejuvenated! We don't often get half a day together, but I'm glad we did yesterday. We got to chat while we: walked, ate, window shopped, and drove in the car. We start talking the minute we are in the car together and it doesn't stop until we get home. One might think we would run out of things to talk about, but half the time we don't get to everything we want to tell one another or else we forget what we had wanted to say. We joke that we need to keep a list of things that happen or come up that we want to tell each other or talk about. Yesterday we were like two teenagers just having fun trying on  a bunch of clothes and giggling all the while!!
 Here we are in matching outfits. We were laughing because we were thinking "how do people take these selfies one handed?" She held the phone and I pushed the button! 

 

 

 Best friends: I feel extremely blessed to have her in my life, and we are both blessed to have sweethearts that make sure we get to spend time together 💓

Every time we are at the mall there is this one shop we always want to go into, but we never seem to have time for. It is a shop that sells vintage style dresses. Since we had ample time yesterday we decided to play dress up. It was soooo much fun!!! We both commented how the styles of by gone eras make one feel very feminine. It was fun to wear a poofy petticoat and twirl around. My little girls would have been impressed with the twirl factor :) We even tried on some 1920's style dresses. There was definite glam factor with those.

 

My miracle for the week:

 I had a bit of a close call on Tuesday. I took Myles to his cello lesson that afternoon. The seating area gets a bit crowded on Tuesday afternoons. I decided to walk across the street where there are some antique and used clothing shops. Although some people just try to cross from the music place, I am a firm believer in using the crosswalk and not jay walking. I am not sure if I had somewhat of a premonition/warning before I got to the crosswalk, but I just had this question of what if I got hit while crossing the street?? I felt that I needed to be extra careful because Myles would worry and wonder what happened if I wasn't there when his lesson ended. I walked up half a block to the cross walk and waited to cross to the south side of Main Street. No one stopped, so I patiently waited until there were no cars and crossed. I made it over just fine and spent 25 minutes perusing the south side of  Main Street. I walked back up the street to use the cross walk to get back to Myles. I waited  patiently again. A nice gentleman in a full size truck stopped for me. I looked to make sure the car in the opposite lane was going to stop as well. I waved to them both and started to cross. I usually try not to dawdle because I figure it's nice enough that people who have places to go actually stop; I don't want to be too slow in crossing. I remember looking at my feet and thinking "I'm walking fast, I'm walking fast." I know, it sounds so silly. All of a sudden there was this loud noise. I just cleared the truck bumper. I looked back over my shoulder from where the sound was coming from. Life at that moment seemed to go in slow motion. I kind of arched my back forward and tried to move faster as the truck that had stopped for me was pushed through the crosswalk from the impact of another full size truck. I got to the other side and stepped onto the sidewalk. It was then that I realized what had happened and what very well could have happened. I was a bit shaken. I had several people ask if I was okay, and the man in the big truck who had caused the accident pulled forward and rolled down his window to make sure I was okay. I wasn't so much worried about myself. I just kept worrying about Myles and how he would have wondered where I was if I had been injured. I think it will be some time before I can cross that street again. I'm so very, very thankful that I was being watched over. Chris was in awe of what had transpired. He keeps saying how thankful he that I was not hit because I'm the cornerstone of our home. We are both grateful that I was protected from harm. 

Now we move onward and upward to a new week!

#Tuesday Was Not Fail...............Find The Silver Lining

 Monday started off great! with Rhaevyn's Theory class and pretty good with her Volleyball class. Tuesday seemed to be a bit of disaster. Aeva couldn't sleep Monday night because she was so excited for Japanese. She made sweet notes for her current and former Japanese teachers, and they were thrilled and touched to recieve them. I arrived at school to pick up Aeva at noon, on Tuesday, and hand Rhaevyn her lunch. Rhaevyn was at the designated spot, but Aeva was no where to be found (for a whole hour). Rhaevyn was in tears because the book we had gotten online, which was about $50 cheaper, was the instructor's manual. Poor girl felt a bit humiliated in class. Oh well, we both learned a valuable lesson there. You wouldn't know it was the instructor's manual unless you turned to the third page. It doesn't say it on the outside and was not advertised as such. We ran up to the bookstore at the college and paid $123.00 to rent it for the quarter. The line was extremely long. I had Rhaevyn run to the places we could think of that Aeva might be while I waited with the other three littles. She had no luck, and I made it to the cashier and couldn't end up renting the book because I didn't have Rhaevyn's school number. Oh nuts!!! I ran back out to the parking meter to deposit more money just in time because my time had run out. I came across Rhaevyn  as we were coming back into the building and informed her of what had happened. The nice cashier saw us enter the bookstore to get back in line and motioned for us to head over to him. I told him he was a lifesaver and how much I appreciated that we didn't have to wait in line again. We headed over to the Japanese department to see if Aeva was there and to the cafeteria. Still no Aeva. Yes, I was freaking out at this point!!! Rhaevyn was wishing she'd given Aeva the phone for the day. We finally found her at the building that Rhaevyn has her math class in. Poor Aeva thought I had said to meet at a different place just down from where I was expecting to meet her. So, she thought I had abandoned her. We found the silver lining, however; while waiting for me she was able to help three people. Two needed help finding a classroom, and one needed help with Japanese homework. So I suppose it worked out how it should have. I am happy to say that the rest of the week, fortunately, was less stressful.

Aeva on her first day of college classes for 2017-2018

 

 Meg drew a  picture on the wall in back of the door in the bedroom. She was happily chatting away to herself when I peaked in and saw her drawing. She is pointing out the eyes and nose here:

 Elsa has been learning about the water cycle. She made a water cycle in a bag and hung it outside. You are supposed to tape it to a window that gets a lot of sun, but since it has blue food coloring in it I felt it was safer to hang it outside on the fence.

 Thursday we made sugar cookies. I originally made heart shaped ones for visiting teaching to drop off with this months' message:   Being of "One Heart."

Meg was sad that her unicorn lost its legs.

 Aeva made one that looked like a little donut.

 We were all excited that it was General Conference weekend!!! This happens twice a year where we get to hear from the General Authorities of our church. Saturday night was Priesthood session for males 12 and up. Myles really wanted to go last time in April, but we told him he needed to wait. He asked again about two months ago, and we decided that if he really wanted to go then we shouldn't hinder his enthusiasm. He was so excited!! I had to get him a new white shirt since he'd outgrown his. He and Chris went with a couple of other guys to Indian food afterwards. This was fun for Myles since two of them were from our old ward and had been a part of his baptism day/confirmation.

Meg cracked me up the other day. We were getting ready for dinner and she kept saying "I  take no tea." then she turned her cup upside down and placed her fork over the top. It was so cute. She learned it from the American Girl movie Felicity.

 

I'm hoping to finish one quilt top this week that I started a year or so ago, and perhaps even start a new quilt top. Happy October to you all!! Didn't September just start???