A little orphan girl

Jeanne and Frank bought tickets to take the girls to see a high school play - Anne of Green Gables.
Katie and Liz had never heard of it before. "What is it about?" they asked me. I told them it was about a little orphan girl who gets adopted.
I then sent them upstairs to change out of their school clothes and into something dressier. Katie comes downstairs a few minutes later.
She has on a long sleeve turquoise shirt, a cordoroy jumper that has red patches sewn on it (from Ally's Pippi Longstocking costume), pink socks, and brown shoes.
"Um, Thank you for changing Katie, but that really doesn't match," I said as gently as possible.
"But Mom, I was trying to look like an orphan girl. Will you put two braids in my hair?"
I smiled and didn't have the heart to tell her to go change.
Hopefully, Grandma and Grandpa didn't mind taking an orphan girl to the play.

Halloween Costumes

A little late, but here are the kids in costume for those that didn't see the pictures posted on facebook. Liz wanted to be an apple tree - so I sewed a black felt hole on a brown shirt and we put a little squirrel in it, a bird on her shoulder, some fake greenery, and apples pinned all over her. Katie was an apple from Liz's tree, which I made by making a sandwich board out of foam, spray adhesived red fabric to it, and making a little worm she could use like a puppet to pick up candy. Ally designed her wolf costume herself, after she fell in love with the wolf fake fur at the fabric store. We bought a gray sweatshirt at Goodwill and she cut out the pieces and told me how she wanted it sewed on the shirt, tail and all! We looked online and found a u-tube tutorial on how to paint a wolf face. She looked pretty scarry! The girls had a fun halloween trick-or-treating and then selling us back lots of their candy, they made about $15.00 each. They set up a little candy store and we come with our change jar and whatever candy they are willing to sell. Then we gave them a $5.00 bonus at the end.

The Lord's Tender Mercies

The background:
A few years ago Elder Bednar gave a conference talk titled "The Lord's Tender Mercies". This talk really touched my heart. I thought about it a few days ago, and felt prompted to read it again. So I printed it off the internet, read it, and it was fresh in my mind.

More background:
A few days ago, Ally lost a book. It was a book she had only had for a day and only read it once. She really wanted this book, looked EVERYWHERE for it, had us pray for her to find it during family prayer, and I even tried to help her find it. (Mom's magic finding finger rarely fails, but it did in this case.)

October 22nd, 2008:
After the girls left for school in the morning, I went out to take the chickens some kitchen scraps and found one of them dead. It looked it like it had been killed by an animal (racoon or skunk or something) in the night. I don't really know the chickens by name like Mike and Ally do, so I wasn't sure which one it was. It was one of the smaller of our three black and white ones, so I knew it was either Ally's chicken Holly (named after the fairy hero in the Artemis Fowl series) or Liz's chicken. These hens are more like pets than just egg providers. Ally collects the eggs and cares for them every day. Just the day before she and Liz were outside with Holly and Liz's chicken in their laps petting them and holding them. Ally will run and the whole flock will run behind her.

I told the girls when I brought them home from school about the chicken and that I didn't know which one it was. Ally said if it was Liz's chicken she was going to be really sad, but if it was her chicken she was going to be really, really sad. Al ran to the backyard. I followed her. When I got out there she was playing in the coop area. I asked her if she figured out which chicken it was, but she said "no" and ran to the other side of the coop. She picked up the remaining small black and white chicken. She could tell by the color of the legs that it was Liz's chicken. I went to hug her, but she ran away and curled up on the grass in the corner of the yard. I tried to get her to talk to me, but she ran to the other corner of the yard (the chickens all running after her) and curled up in a ball. So I just went inside and left her alone, wishing I could do something to help her, but knowing she would have to go through the pain of loosing a pet and a friend.

She came in with red puffy eyes about half an hour later. She still didn't want to talk to me, but I heard searching around in our book closet (a little closet under the stairs with book shelves and kids books). I was in the kitchen preparing dinner. She held a book around the corner of the wall, so I couldn't see her, just the book. It was the missing book! The one that had been missing for several days, the one we had prayed over, the one that we had both looked for at least five times in that very same bookshelf! I said, "Oh! Where was it??" She peeked around the corner, smiling through her tears, "In the bookshelf!"

I said, "Come here, I want to talk with you." We came into the living room together, I put my arm around her and said, "Ally, Heavenly Father knows you are in pain. He knows you lost a friend. And he knew if you found this book at this time, it would comfort you. It is one of the Lord's tender mercies in your life - a way He helps you and shows He loves you. It won't take away all the hurt, but it will help, and God knew it would help." We both had tears coming down our faces, her for chicken and me for the knowledge of the Lord's tender mercies in my daughter's life at a time when she really needed it. I couldn't help her pain, but He could.

Pumpkin Patch Pics!

The pumpkin patch group!

Michelle and Tabitha on the hay ride. (Spencer in the back ground)

Nana & Lilly

Tabitha & Liz

Ally and her pumpkin

My beautiful girls!

Katie and her pumpkin

Liz and her pumpkin.

Six Weird and Random Things about me

I was tagged! Six weird and random things about me!

The rules are:

* Link to the person who tagged you (adventuresofthedomesticengineer.blogspot.com )
* Post the rules on your blog
* Write six random things/unspectacular quirks about yourself
* Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them
* Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog
* Let the tagger know when your entry is posted

Weird things about myself, in no particular order:

1. I enjoy walking into a room in my house that is particularly clean, just to look at it.  It's not like I need anything from the living room, I just walk into it, look around, take a nice deep breath, smile, and think to myself, "what a nice clean room."  I do that also with a drawer or closet I've recently organized, "ahh, what a nice organized silverware drawer."  Try it!  Or maybe you already do and it's not that weird :)
2.  I'm addicted to sour cream.  Could be worse, right?  My husband calls me the sour cream pusher, always asking my family, "Did you want some sour cream on that?"  Sour cream really makes the potato (or soup or nachos or whatever)!
3.  I am compulsive about making list of things I need to do.  The best thing is to cross things off the list.  Sometimes I write things down I did, that I had not put on my list in the first place, just to cross them off.  Sometimes making my list for the day takes ten or fifteen minutes.  Hmmm, I should put making my list on my list of things to do so I can cross it off too!
4.  I really don't like babies.  I know, I'm a terrible person!  They just don't do anything for me.  I love it when they get about one year old and are starting to say words and toddling around and such.  I'm just not one of those, "ooohhh, can I hold your baby???" kind of girls, and I've never gotten baby hungry a day in my life.  But I do love toddlers and older kids!!
5.  I've always wanted to have a chimpanzee as a pet. 
6. Some mountains just call to me to be climbed. Mt Hood, for example, was like a beacon, its snow capped peak calling me to stand at the very top and celebrate life. And I remember feeling so alive and so complete standing at the top of South Sister, as the wind whipped around me and I could see for miles and miles.

TAG!!! You're IT!

1. Stacey
2. Kim
3. Airen
4. Trish
5. Jodie
6. Dedra

Compassion and Creating

I really enjoyed President Uchtdorf's talk he gave during Women's Conference. Lately I have been feeling especially discouraged and frustrated, the "I can't do it all" type of feeling. So I was sitting listening to the conference, feeling kind of bored with the first couple of speakers, Relief Society is so great, yeah, yeah, blah, blah (sorry! but that's what I was thinking!) I said a prayer that I would hear whatever message God needed me to hear during the Conference, that the spirit would carry it to my heart, and that I would feel uplifted. President Uchtdorf was the next speaker. Wow. It was exactly what I needed.

He said, "To me it appears that our splendid sisters sometimes undervalue their abilities—they focus on what is lacking or imperfect rather than what has been accomplished and who they really are. The good news is that this also points to an admirable quality: the innate desire to please the Lord to the best of your ability. Unfortunately, it can also lead to frustration, exhaustion, and unhappiness."

Exactly what I had been feeling.

"I would like to speak about two principles that may help you find a path to peace, hope, and joy—even during times of trial and distress. I want to speak about God’s happiness and how each one of us can taste of it in spite of the burdens that beset us. "

Those two principles are Compassion and Creating. So the past few days, at the end of the day, I think about all the things I've created and all the ways I've had compassion. Compassion is sitting by Ally for an hour while she does her math homework, not because she doesn't understand it or really needs my help, but just because she needs and enjoys my support. Compassion is spending an hour looking for a cat costume for Katie. And creating... I create lots of clean spaces where there were none before. I created cinnamon dried apples yesterday. I helped the girls create cute jog-a-thon costumes. I created a master temple for all of Cascade's PowerPoints - complete with their own customized color scheme.

President Uchtdorf concluded his talk with, "I believe that as you immerse yourselves in the work of our Father—as you create beauty and as you are compassionate to others—God will encircle you in the arms of His love.¹⁵ Discouragement, inadequacy, and weariness will give way to a life of meaning, grace, and fulfillment."

I know I am a daugther of Heavenly Father, and as such, have infinite worth. And even though it's still easy to get discouraged at the close of the day when the endless list only has a few checkmarks... it does help when I think about the plethera of amazing opportunies I have had to create beauty around me and show compassion for others.

Superheros All Around!

Today is the Jog-a-thon at Arthur Academy. The theme is "Superheros", so the kids got to dress up as a superhero, if they wanted to. Ally wanted to be Violet from The Incredibles. I looked online and the costumes were at least $40. Yikes! So we made an Incredibles logo out of felt, pinned it on a red shirt, and she wore black pants. I got a bandit type mast from the party store for .99 and we cut it out to look like Violet's mask. I also got her a long black wig, which she decided was too itchy. She looked really cute, and Mom was happy too with her .99 costume :)
Katie wore her cat costume from last Halloween to be catwoman (I know, she's kind of a villan, not a hero, but we'll pretend...) Liz made up her own - she was "Baby Liz Liz" (like Baby Jack Jack from Incredibles). Her super power was to "rhyme". She wore a Bat Man shirt and cape that Jeanne had made Mike when he was just 4 yrs. old. On the cape she pinned a "Baby Liz Liz" logo that she made herself out of felt. Oh, I almost forgot, Baby Liz Liz talks with a baby voice too.
Know what I decided? There are not enough female superheros!
I, myself, was also a superhero today - Super Mom! I brought in all our fall and Halloween boxes from the shed yesterday, and Katie's cat costume was nowhere to be found. Katie said a prayer before we opened the last box that it would be in there. It wasn't. She said another prayer this morning that we would find it. I went out to the shed to look a little more. I had to move all the Christmas boxes, and finally I found one last Halloween box of stuff behind it all. Katie was thrilled - and again, Super Mom was happy, this time for a child's answered prayer.
I'll post some pictures from the Jog-a-thon later. Thanks to everyone who sponsered them!
Up, Up, and Away!!!

Card Girls start their own businesses!

1. Card Farm Fresh Eggs - $3.00 a dozen
2. Liz's Amazing Massages - Only $1.00 for both feet and hands (about 15 minutes total). Testimonial from a frequent customer (Mom) "Liz is an absolutely amazing masseuse! She really knows how to knead with her fingers and use her whole hands to really get in deep. It is soooo worth the $1.00!"
   
3. Elizabeth's Homemade Cookies
   
   1. Email my Mom the type and amount of cookies you want.
      
   2. 1 dozen cookies - $3.00
      
4. Lizard's Weed-B-Gone Service
   
   1. Weeding - $1.00 per 15 minutes of weeding (but some big weeds I can't pull out)
      
5. Katie's Window Washing
   
   1. $1.00 per 15 minutes of window washing (I might need a chair to reach the top of some windows)
      
6. Kathteryn & Elizabeth's Pet Walking Service
   
   1. Small to Medium Dogs or animals only
      
   2. $1.00 per 20 min. walk
      
7. Picture Perfect
   
   1. Katie, Liz or Ally will draw you a picture or write you a story or poem.
      
   2. .50 cents per picture or poem, $1.00 for story (with illustrations)
      

Back to School 2008

We are so lucky to have such a great school for the girls to go to - it's a privately run public school (a charter school) called Arthur Academy. (Katie in pink, Liz in blue)

Katie and Liz, then and now

Here are Katie and Liz in 2001, and now back to school in 2008:

Now and Then...

Here was Ally in 1999 and 2001, and now in 2008:

Vitality

Health is not the absence of sickness, but the presence of vitality.

So that's what I'm aiming for. A month or so ago, I applied for some additional life insurance and found out my cholesterol was high. I had some more tests done and found out last week my thyroid isn't working properly - which is why I have been achy and tired and slowly gaining weight, even when trying to eat healthy and exercise. So now I am on a "anti-inflammatory" diet which means no sugar, processed foods, wheat or gluten, dairy, tomatoes, corn, potatoes, and citrus fruits. I have been eating this way for a little over a week now. The most interesting thing to me is that I don't have any food cravings. I eat meats, fruits, veggies, nuts, rice, barley, rice or almond milk and protien shakes. My favorite things to eat are apples with almond butter and avacados with a little salt. I have a bunch of supplements to help my thyroid, which I get to try for three months and if that doesn't get it working (along with the diet) then I'll start on thyroid medication. After four weeks on the anti-inflamitory diet I will start adding things back into my diet one at a time and see how it affects me.

Here's to health!

Score!

Ally scored her first goal today. The smile on her face when she looked over at me afterward was absolutely priceless.

I really love reading Ally's papers that she brings home from school, not necessarily for the school work, but because she adds all sorts of little drawings and writings in the sidelines and on the back of her papers. For example, they are reading "A Wrinkle in Time" and along with that studying astronomy. On the back of one of her worksheet she drew a new constellation with this title:
The Game
Discovered by Allison C. on September 11th, 2008
Looks like two girls playing soccer.

Here is the latest quote, found written in the side column of her spelling test:

The long eternal hours,
The time that work desires,
School.

And her teacher's response written in red ink underneath:

Only 16 more years, Ally :)

Oh the pains...

When I asked Ally if she noticed she was stronger after completing a third week of tough soccer practices, she said, "The only thing I noticed is that my body is so worn out and tired that when I get kicked or hurt or fall down, I don't care anymore." I laughed and so did she.

A conversation a little later:
Mom: I'm really proud of how hard you worked today at soccer. I could see you were really tired, but you kept on going. Remember that book Dad and I got you for your birthday, "The LDS girls guide to true beauty?"
Ally: Yes
Mom: Do you remember in there where it talked about how you may not be the star of the soccer team -
Ally (finishing the sentence verbatim out of the book): but you can be a strong supporting player!
Mom: Yes! You are a superstar at some things -
Ally: Like reading!
Mom: Yes! and remembering things exactly that you read like you just did!
Ally: Well I did read the book, Mom!
Mom (laughing and hugging Al): Yes, but never everyone can remember things so well like you can. You might not always be a superstar at soccer, but it is great for your body and expanding your talents. Do you feel good about being the best supporting player that you can be?
Ally: Yeah, I do.

Just one of those precious experiences with kids when you feel like you were a part of a true inspirational moment - for both of us!

It doesn't have to be specacular

O.K., I admit it, I have been avoiding creating a blog because I wanted it to be absolutely spectacular. So I finally now have come to the conclusion that I am o.k. with average, or even below! I have to start somewhere...

I just want to a spot to talk about our latest adventures and share all the cute, funny, and intelligent things my kids say.