Something is missing

Every year since Bri was a one-year-old I have been sewing her Halloween costume. This year she decided she wanted to be a spy and it ended up that there is nothing to sew....so....I feel a little unfulfilled. Here is a look back at all the fun we have had with her costumes.

This is the only costume that we have bought, but she made such a cute pumpkin!

Witches, with her cousins Courtney and Alex

Snow White (Marf had to help me a little with this one)

Cheerleader (must be U of U, we had to be faithful to JT's school!)

Daphne from Scooby Doo (She had a very long Scooby Doo phase)

A beautiful bride (I even did some bead work on the top, but you can't see it in the picture)

Princess Leah (Loved the BUNS!)

Violet Incredible

A 50's girl with a poodle skirt (Okay, Marf had to make the white leotard because my sewing machine wouldn't sew on the fabric...thanks Marf!)

A genie...this is one of my favorites and was a lot of fun to make, check out the lamp...that was her candy bag!

Poor dog...

Yeager is my furry child, so he gets costumes too. But even this year he is going to have to do without a new costume, he will have to wear one of his old ones. Last year JT wanted him to be a cow and I wanted him to be Underdog, so I made him two costumes but I ended up liking the cow better...check out the UDDERS! : ) It may look humiliating for him...but he really likes to wear them. He gets super excited when we get out anything for him to wear, even his costumes!

Fiddler on the Roof

Well, maybe I didn't fiddle, but I was having fun goofing around! We had a leak in the rain gutter right above our front door and during the winter it makes our front stairs a DEATH TRAP for anyone who tries to visit. So today I got up on the roof and hopefully fixed it...

New do's

Bri and I got our hair done. Woo-Hoo! Bri was very excited to get some layers into her hair, and she chose to have some bangs, which she hasn't had since she was about four, but they are VERY cute on her!

"Twas a Sheep Not a Lamb"

I just got back from a Relief Society Leadership meeting and they read this poem. It was inspiring to me.

'Twas a sheep not a lamb that went astray,
In the parable Jesus told.
'Twas a grown sheep that wandered away,
From the ninety and nine in the fold.

And out on the hillside, and out in the cold,
'Twas a sheep that the Good Shepherd sought.
And back to the flock safe into the fold,
'Twas a sheep the Good Shepherd brought.

Now, why for the sheep should we ernestly long,
And as ernestly hope and pray?
Because there is danger if they go wrong,
They will lead the lambs astray.

For the lambs will follow the sheep, you know
Where ever the sheep may stray.
When sheep go wrong, it will not be long
'Til the lambs are as wrong as they.

And so for the sheep we ernestly plead,
For the sake of the lambs today.
If the lambs are lost, what a terrible cost
Some sheep will have to pay.

-Anonymous

Time to unwind

I am now enjoying my favorite benefit of my new job...I don't have to work when Bri is out of school! We are enjoying our fall break and a four day weekend.

Last night JT and I went to the dedication of the new welfare complex in our area. It is a full complex with Family Services, Distribution Center, Bishop Storehouse, Deseret Industries, Employment services, a humanitarian center and a dry pack canning area. We were able to hear from Bishop H. David Burton and hear his beautiful dedication prayer. I love that our church has such an amazing welfare program, and I love to be able to help the bishop be a part of blessing peoples lives in our ward area. We love our ward and have such great friends here.

Today Bri and I had a fun play day. Bri got to play with Courtney and Alex all day and I got to play with Lizzy and Marf! We scrapped all day and I got a lot finished. I am so behind. I used to be caught up and was scrapping things that had just happened, now I am almost four years behind, I just finished scrapping our trip to Disneyland and Southern California in 2005!

Tonight I enjoyed a Stake Relief Society Leadership Meeting. We have such great leadership in our stake, they really inspire me to go out and do my best. The theme was "Feed My Sheep" which was the theme for our ward Visiting Teaching Conference last spring. It was wonderful.

Tomorrow is a good day too...we are having family haircut day! Bri hasn't had her hair cut for about a year and mine hasn't been done since May. We are both very excited! Our other activities for Friday include housecleaning and FLU shots...maybe not the funnest activities for a day off...but necessary nonetheless!

Hot Lava

Bri's 5th grade studied volcanos this past month and they got to have a fun volcano party. They got to fashion a volcano out of anything they wanted and then set them off with vinegar and baking soda. There were a lot of different materials used, candy, paper mache, foam, salt dough, cake, etc. They had a lot of fun erupting their volcanos! Bri's best friend, Brianna, is standing next to her in the video. She is a tiny little thing that barely comes up to Bri's shoulder, but she is a fun friend and they love playing together.

My place in our family

So to preface this post, I have to first off say that mom likes me best. When mom died I ended up with all of the family photos because dad didn't know what to do with them, even a lot that belonged to my grandparents. Mom had some other random things that dad didn't know what to do with and since he likes me best too they were placed in my care.

Last night my sister-in-law Daisy called with a random question that my brother did not know the answer to and he told her to call me and see if I could help. She is from the Philippines and is applying for citizenship and needed to know the dates that my brother married his first two wives because he didn't have any record of them and couldn't remember. I was 11 when he got married the first time and could only figure out the year for her, but I remembered I have a box of mom's genealogy papers and thought that it might be in there. I got it out and started digging. About half way through I actually found a paper with her four generations on it and also the date that she married my brother. I attended the wedding to his second wife when I was 20 and they gave out these little ceramic doo-dads with their names and the date of the wedding, I pulled out another box of goodies and found the date of that wedding for her too.

So, as far as my family is concerned I am the one to go for if you need information, I am the family address book, keeper of photos (which I am trying to share each Christmas by scanning them in and putting them on disks for everyone), and apparently other information as needed. Poor Marf, she just got to take the place of Mom, everyone calls her with problems and puts her in charge of family get-togethers most of the time...that must mean she likes me best too!

DONE!

I got the laundry done, just in case anyone cares... :)

MIA

I feel like I may have forgotten how to blog. This is not a good thing since it is one of my favorite things to do! Life has been hectic and I keep waiting for things to settle down and they don't, so I am going to just have to figure out how to deal with my full schedule.

Work is going great. I have had some frustration for the last few weeks because when I started this job was not told about the training in time and I missed it. because of that, I was not informed that the 1st and 2nd grades don't have students pulled out of class to participate in SEM. I was going off of incorrect information and set up my entire schedule to include the 1st and 2nd grades, I even got lists of students from the teachers. THEN...I had to go back to those teachers and tell them the news. Anyway, long story short...I now have things worked out and started doing pull-outs this past week with the upper grades. It has been a lot of fun and the students really seem interested in the topics that I have chosen for them to study.

I also got to sub for one of the kindergarten teachers last week! Her daughter was ill and she needed to go home and care for her. I had a lot of fun. The kids were super cute and we had a fun time, but I don't think I could do that all day every day...KUDOS TO TEACHERS!

I hope to get my schedule ironed out so that I can accomplish all the things that I NEED to do and also all of the things that I WANT to do...like blogging! :) (Right now there is a room full on laundry that I usually have finished on Monday, some is wrinkled in the dryer, some wet in the washer, and the rest is still dirty...)