Category Archives: A Little of Everything

Patience anyone?

Barry is in Reno this week doing academic engineery things. (Oh, and skiing. A nearby mountain is giving free lift tickets to active duty military members.) Miracle of all miracles is that I got to 9 o’clock church, with 3 children dressed in clean clothes, on time! Though I tried to get the boys’ hairs into acceptable postition, it was in vain. But– not one of them had dried milk or snot anywhere on their faces!! Logan only ran up the aisle of the chapel once during Sacrament meeting, and though he is not officially 18 months until next Sunday, I got to leave him in the nursery while I sat through all of Sunday school. Ahhh… it was nice to sit and breathe.

Conducting Relief Society was like herding honking geese. The room was packed. The women were chatty. What do I do, shhhhhush them? 99.9% of them are 10 years older than me!! It was nice to feel the fellowship and friendship, but our poor teacher had a hard time keeping everyone’s attention. It was all very nice in the end. Church was good. Testimonies were shared, Sunday school was very inspiring and thought provoking, I left feeling good.

And all was well until bedtime. Barry does bedtime (except on Wednesdays). But he’s fresh and not quite as tired as I am by that time. He’s fun, but authoritative. Me– I just get bugged and mad because I am tired and I want everyone to go away already! In family prayer I even pleaded, “Heavenly Father, please help the kids to be nice and obey and help me to be patient and not cry or yell while we are getting ready for bed.” Well, I didn’t cry or yell. Nothing of note really happened or went wrong. But for some reason bed time just stresses me out with the undressing and the dressing and the teeth brushing and the VERY HYPER BABY and the one-last-drink of water and the going potty and the VERY HYPER BABY and the stories and the picking of stuffed animals to sleep with and making sure we have me-me’s (blankets) and the VERY HYPER BABY climbing on me while I’m reading the next story…

But Logan’s cute. He gets very hyper when he’s tired. Silly hyper, laughing and running and pulling the dog’s tail and climbing on siblings and on Mom’s head and pulling all toys out of their proper places hyper. He makes me tired. But when I put him to bed he tries to sing along as I rock him and “bap up” (wrap up). He lays his head on my left shoulder and sings in my ear.

So, I like that part.

Life is a Balancing Act

I’m tired. I’ve been quite a slacker in posting here–and in lots of other areas. I’ve been really bad about doing school every day, because I’m just not quite sure what to do. We’ve been doing first grade Saxon Math, which has worked pretty well so far because it is so gradual in adding concepts. Brenna is perfectly capable of every bit of it–and a little more. But, now we’ve reached a point where she has a worksheet of facts and the regular worksheet everyday, and it is just out of her 5 year old attention span to be able to enjoy. So, I’ve completely backed off on the math and structure and let her just read. But she has plenty of attention span for books. She’s been reading about 2 novels a week. This week she read Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz and Queen Zixxie of Ix, both by L. Frank Baum. Last week she read Ozma of Oz and one of the American Girl books. I guess I just feel guilty because it doesn’t take any effort on my part to plop her on a chair with a book and let her disappear into Oz for the rest of the the day. She’s got to be learning something, right? I shouldn’t be feeling bad that my 5 year old is reading at an 7th or 8th grade level, but just isn’t interested in 1st grade math.

So, I guess I’m just writing this to try to convince myself I’m doing okay, even though I’m not doing much. I have been spending a lot of time with church responsibilities. There have been lots of sugeries and babies born. There is one sister who has a 3 year old boy, a 2 year old boy, 16 month old twin girls, she’s pregnant due in April, and in the process of a divorce. I have no room to complain about being tired.

But I sure want too :)

Know about NY, NY?

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Guess what I got for Christmas? Barry signed my up for a class with Denyse Schmidt through Make studio! I get to go to Connecticut all by myself, rest, relax, and MEET DENYSE SCHMIDT!! Oh–and spend 5 hours in her studio learning from her. AWESOME! (Did I mention that she commented here on this blog? If you don’t believe, take a look.)

So, I’m going to go a day early and go into New York City to look at art. What museum(s) do you guys suggest I go to? I’ve been to the Met, kind of. I think it would take months to really see it all, but I did love the old Greek stuff. Loved it. But, what about the Gugenhiem? Isn’t there a folk art museum too? Oh–please help any one out there with experience visiting New York. What would be the best use of my one day?

Presenting Sybil

the well behaved Chrsitmas Elephant.

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Barry had a work Christmas party and the spouses were supposed to bring ornaments to exchange. I propably should have just bought one, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. So, I broke out my Japanese craft book and made the elephant I’ve been dying to make.

She’s very festive with the snowflake on her dress, her hairbow, and of course her sign to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. She has a red string on the top of her head so she can hang from a tree.

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The recipient wasn’t quite as excited about her as I had hoped. Just another ornament. She will be missed. Brenna really played with her as much as she could before we wrapped her up. There will definitely be more elephant making around here, (but I might not get to fit it in ’til Christmas Eve, yikes).

So, she’s made with gray upholstery velvet, which is really great for tiny toys because it doesn’t fray. Her dress and bow are from a felted wool skirt, with a hand emboidered snowflake. The sign is just muslin, embroidered with iron on interfacing on back to make it a bit sutrdy and sewn to a little twig snapped off the berry garland on top of my amoire. Glass loop back eyes, jointed head, thread jointed limbs. About 3 inches tall when sitting.