A Week of Getting Caught Up

For being a somewhat boring week, I managed to squeak out a few projects that made me feel good inside, projects that have been quietly poking me in the ribs for a while now.

I made the girls some additional dress-up clothes for a doll on one of the quiet book pages I made them a couple years ago. Some of the original clothes were lost, and I have a mountain-load of extra felt in my craft room downstairs, so it seemed like a good idea! Together Abby and Gwen and I discussed what the girl needed to have in her ensemble, and then I set out to fulfill their wish list.

On another occasion, Abby accompanied me to Hobby Lobby - specifically to hunt down some small decorative snowflakes, to use as an embellishment on some cupcakes I was working on. 

The problem that I ran into is that apparently January is not the best month to shop for cute little decorative snowflakes. Go figure! We do live in Idaho . . . but I guess I should have done that in December. We did find one little package way up high and just out of my reach. I cheated and stood on the bottom shelf so I could reach them and bring them home.

I've really enjoyed baking cupcakes each month and then decorating them with a monthly theme to deliver to the girls in my young women's class. January's theme was Frozen. With temperatures hovering in the mid-20's almost every day, it seemed appropriate. 

The tiny snowflake on top was the only thing not edible.

When it's time to bless our dinner each night, Gwen is usually bursting on the inside with some level of mischief. So Scott has taken it upon himself to scoop her up and place her up on his shoulders so she can't get into any trouble during the prayer. It's not like the prayers are exorbitantly long, ha ha. She just can't get past the first 2 seconds into the prayer without undoing her folded arms and grabbing for anything within reach to play with or dig into. :)

This cute little 10 second video is on one of those nights that Scott put Gwen up on his shoulders before we said the blessing on the food. This is what she did. 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/qzgveRr4pKW8YwRTA

At the end she said, "Now I want to go dowwwn." Sorry Gwen. But that's a big fat Nope. LOL

I managed to get out shopping for fun on Thursday morning. My goal was to find a cute little sign to go in our new bathroom. 

This little shop that I headed to first, Real Deals (in home decor), had a caption in the front window that was spot on.

"Shopping counts as Cardio"

And here's the sign that I found inside that same shop. It's perfect. :) "Save Water, Shower Together"

Amber delved back into painting again this week, and felt very much inspired and at home - much to her delight. She worked so hard last summer that she's been pretty burned out for several months. But not anymore!! She is feeling her creativity return, and has been giving much thought to what she wants to do in 2021. 

Here she is sketching out an outline for a commission, while the girls do their own art projects nearby. 

Amber also took the girls up to Rigby on Thursday to spend the day with Great Grandma Harmon, Scott's mom, Coy. They had so much fun! Amber regrets that she didn't take very many photos, but I'm just glad they were having so much fun that they forgot to take photos!

They made homemade personal pizzas, did some art, read stories, watched the Wizard of Oz, and played dress-up, among a few things. She is such a wonderful Grandma!! 

At the end of the week, after a day of feeling under the weather (thanks to Scott kissing me on the same evening he started feeling sick himself), I got the gumption to deep clean my storage hall downstairs.

I didn't take any before photos because I knew it wouldn't really show my hard work. I would like to acknowledge that I: 

• filled up 3 giant trash bags with garbage 
• filled up 2 big trash bags of aluminum #10 cans that I took to the recycling bin - I had saved these for years, thinking that I would have some really important use for them some day (Nope!)
• filled up multiple trash bags with items to donate to charity
• rearranged items to have a better flow
• tossed about 15 old shoeboxes that I thought I would use over the years (Didn't!)
• grouped up several holidays' worth of decorations into storage bins instead of all willy-nilly everywhere
• vacuumed the rugs when all the sorting was done

This was the end result:

This upcoming week I will be tackling my food storage room. Now that I have opened up some space in the adjacent storage "hall", I want to reorganize my food storage so that it fits better, flows better, and looks better.

Everything is pretty cramped right now, and some areas don't make a whole lot of sense.

Yesterday, intermingled with my hours of cleaning, I had a fun conversation with Benson over in Italy. His weekend project was detailing a fancy black Corvette, belonging to an Air Force buddy of his. This is something he really enjoys doing in his free time. It doesn't take him long, but it makes everything under the hood all pretty and shiny for his friends, and he makes some really nice money from his labors of love.

He and Kylie have been working on a giant puzzle of the Eiffel Tower together. Even though the number of pieces that all look the same far outnumber the amount of uniquely colored pieces, and it tends to get them a little riled up at times, this is a great way for them to spend time together. 

Kylie had a really busy week with taking in a couple of rescue dogs and then trying to find homes for them. She enjoys wrestling and playing with their permanent resident doggies, too. Here, she has Mocha pinned on the floor. Mocha didn't mind one bit.

And in the middle of playing tug of war with a rope toy, she had the grace of a true queen when she told them all to sit and they INSTANTLY obeyed.

While Scott has been busy at school this week and attending a weekend army drill, I have been keeping the home fires burning. I've been chopping wood almost every day and hauling it downstairs to the wood stove. It is so satisfying when you chop all the wood, build the fire, and then sit back to watch it burn and warm up our home. :)

Scott also got the Pfizer VACCINE on Friday!! As an educator, he is considered important enough to be near the front of the line to get one. All the teachers from Skyline High School drove themselves over to Taylorview Middle School Friday afternoon. His appointment time was 2:00 p.m. They poked his arm and then had him wait around for 15 minutes to make sure he didn't have any adverse reaction. Then he came home. In a few weeks he will go back for the booster shot that is required as a follow up to the first one.

Around the same time that he was driving home from Pocatello yesterday (Saturday), I got a text from my friend Cindy, who is an instructor for a lot of the area emergency preparedness classes. She sent me this photo, with an admonition to make sure my family was ready in case this happened.

It was basically saying that Homeland Security was about to mobilize the National Guard and put a nationwide lockdown into effect for 2 weeks. Yikes!

So while Scott was driving with his army buddy, "Early", I sent this to them both and asked if it was true. Early sent me this screenshot in return from the Idaho National Guard website, on their Facebook page. He said the photo that Cindy sent me was actually something that was being organized about 7 months ago, just in case it was needed during early Coronavirus times. But it was no longer valid. 

Apparently it's been recently circulated like WILDFIRE, and people think it's true right now! Wow. We are so quick to jump to conclusions and not get the necessary and accurate information before we freak out. Let's just all take a huge deep breath and relaxxxxxx. It's good to be prepared and ready just in case, but not in a panicked frenzy sort of way.

On a happier note, I keep forgetting to include these photos of my younger brother, Ryan on a recent hunting trip with his dog, Cooper. Ryan is a police sergeant in Rohnert Park, CA. In his down time, which isn't very often, he loves to go hunting, either for deer, elk, etc. or for birds. He's been training Cooper to gently retrieve the water fowl and bring them back to him. This was their first successful hunting trip together. 

I love seeing and hearing about all the good things my siblings are doing, especially when we don't get to see each other very often. 

My sister Charmaine sent these photos from an early morning walk this week out in Ukiah, CA. 

This morning, Sunday, we had our weekly family Zoom chat (minus Scott, who was at army drill). 

After all the small talk, we hopped on a new website that Amber discovered this past week, called Backyard.co - yes, that's correct with just a ".co" at the end. It's a fun gathering place to play games as a group while online together.

First we played "Secret Hitler". It's sort of like a mafia type game, where you're trying to determine who is Hitler. Well, in ROUND ONE - it was ME!! 

When Jacob and Hannah had to eventually duck out in order to watch their weekly Sunday School class online, the rest of us (Amber, Weston, Benson and me) decided to play Blockus. We played it twice. It was a lot of fun! It actually felt pretty close to playing while sitting around the kitchen table!! We could talk and laugh and be just as competitive. I really cherish family time together, even when we are so far apart.

One last thing.

I saw this poignant thought from one of our church leaders, Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf, on Instagram a couple days ago. It was actually a short video, but I grabbed a couple of screenshots, along with the message below.