thankful thursdays 11/5

Nov 7, 2009

Whirlwind week. That is what I should call this week. Whooooh! It is has been busy. I don’t know how we made it through in one piece! Monday morning brought some issues with the gym that I had to go to Idaho Falls to take care of…during school time…during snuggle up and learn with my children time. During my most treasured hours of the week. And I missed them because I had to go to the gym. AAArrrrggghhh! That afternoon, we had Keziah’s Secret Club (the girls’ named it that even though it is not a ”secret” club at all) at our home. It was delightful to listen to the girls’ book discussion and art project conversation. They are such good girls and it brought sunshine to my day to have them in our home. The cloth pad order came in and I spent the afternoon sorting through it and making sure everyone’s stuff came in the proper colors and sizes. I had to go through the order four times before I got it sorted correctly! Then emailing everyone and bagging them up to be delivered took forever. Monday night I got a phone call from some friends in Idaho Falls asking if I knew any youth who would be willing to hold signs for a candidate the next day during the election. I knew my Tuesday was already filled to the brim with things I HAD to do, but when the $10/hour payment was mentioned, we jumped on it. I hurriedly called some friends and we set up 4 youth for all 3 sign-holding sessions. Keziah, the littlest one of the bunch, held signs and danced her little heart out for five hours! She made $50 and is one happy camper. Blythe made $35. She has seminary in the morning and had to miss the first session. They were both able to earn the money they needed to buy their ice skating punch card and now will be able to go ice skating every week till March. Needless to say, I accomplished nothing on Tuesday on “my” list of things to do, but I did spend a fun day with my children and their friends and helped them to earn a lot of money. We got home late that night and went to bed. Wednesday I was up with the sun to work on doing a Passover Seder for Keziah’s Liberty Girls group. I am an expert at doing Passover. We hold a Seder every year in our home and invite 2 families to share it with us. It is a HUGE production. For some reason, I thought that doing it for Liberty Girls would be a piece of cake. I was wrong. So wrong. I knew I needed to shorten our Hagaddah to be under an hour. I knew I needed to make the parts easier for the girls to read. I thought “I am a fast typer, I will just start typing and it will be easy.” Well, it took me over six hours to redo the Hagaddah. I couldn’t believe how long it took to retype to make it work for these little girls to have a Passover experience. Then all the dishes, goblets, silverware, napkins, Passover platter, and salt dishes had to be gathered, the table taken to Liberty Girls, set up, places set, Afikoman present and grape juice purchased, and loads of other details that needed to be taken care of. It turned out wonderful, but it took me far longer than I had anticipated. Wednesday also brought a delivery of Usborne books that needed sorted and delivered and a Young Living Oil order. Such a busy day! Wednesday is also Blythe’s Shakespeare class which means two trips into Rigby, which isn’t a big deal, but it is an interruption. Thursday was the Seder and also my colloquia group meeting at my house. Friday was gymnastics, Daughters of Royalty (which granted takes none of my time because Blythe does it during gymnastics and the other mothers take her there and back, but it is still on my radar screen of things that need to get done), violin lessons/cleaning violin teacher’s house, ice skating, picking up dinner, and then driving quickly (but of course safely!) to pick up our newly repaired sewing machines, which Kat promises me will be a joy to sew on now (how can I sew pencil rolls with cranky sewing machines?). We finally got home last night and after a delicious dinner, I laid down on the snuggler and promptly fell asleep while my family played Quirkle. I woke up to the sounds, smells, and gooey-ness of throw up down my neck and back and Annesley on top of me. I grabbed her and ran her to the kitchen so she could finish throwing up, which she did in abundance. After getting her all cleaned up, the phone rang and we realized we had forgotten to go back and clean up the Passover stuff at Liberty Girls! Richard rushed out the door and I helped Annesley settle down. Then we were able to finish the Quirkle game and head to bed. Today I am cleaning, doing laundry, cutting up felt for the pencil rolls, and then taking a group of girls to the symphony to be enthralled by Beethoven’s 9th (which is going to be absolutely fabulous!). I need to mail out some cloth pads and essential oils today, pay my power bill, call Green Canyon and negotiate for our swim camp next year. This has been such a busy week and somehow we have survived to tell about it.

On to the things I am grateful for this week…

* The meals this week have been soul-satisfying, eye-appealing, and simply scrumptious! We had dinner in a pumpkin on Monday which was so fun for my children to experience for the first time. Wednesday we had the most divine salad ever. Seriously. You have to make this. You will love it. It had slivered almonds, mandarin oranges, strawberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, avocados, romaine, red cabbage, and red leaf lettuce. Topping this blend from heaven was “Brianna’s Homestyle Rich Poppy Seed” dressing. Oh my, I could eat this salad every day. We also had a yummy rice concoction and cornbread. Friday’s dinner was a soothing soup with a fruit salad on the side. All of it was so good and let me tell you I didn’t have any time to cook this week, so it was a huge blessing to be able to eat delicious homemade food. I don’t think we would have made it through without it!
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* My mother found me some beautiful felt and mailed it to me! I can’t wait to sew up 30 pencil rolls with it! She also went and bought some fabric and delivered it to a volunteer who lives about 40 miles from her. How amazing is that!
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* Passover was a success! I think the girls got a flavor of what Passover means and I am hoping they will remember it for their whole lives. I am hoping they feel a love for the Old Testament, the Savior, and the Jewish people.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* Keziah received a lovely letter from our Stake President.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* Stake Conference was full of wonderful reminders of how to be more Christlike, better mothers and fathers, and how to listen to the Spirit.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* The Suburban’s heater worked for most of the week.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* My laundry stayed up mostly caught up during the week.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* We only had 10 overdue books today, last time we had a week like this, we had 50!
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* Blythe was able to learn all about the orchestra and different instruments from two amazing musicians. She was able to see a $50,000+ instrument, the contrabassoon, and has now decided she would like play the trumpet and the flute on top of playing the violin. Anyone have a trumpet or flute lying around they don’t need?
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* Tasha brought over a loaf of bread on Monday, which saved the day by allowing me to make peanut butter sandwiches for Fisher and Annesley all day long while we sat in the suburban watching the girls hold signs on Tuesday.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* All the Usborne books have been delivered…whoooohoo!
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* Keziah and Blythe are cleaning out the filthy suburban right this minute so I can go vacuum it.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* People are sewing pencil rolls! I am up to 213 committed rolls and so we are almost halfway there. If you haven’t let me know how many rolls you are doing, please do so ASAP so I can figure out how close we are getting.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* We have had beautiful fall weather this week. Lots of sunshine and crisp nights.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* Fisher has learned how to paint! He has painted with his little crayola watercolor set that he bought with money from Grandma all week long. He painted me a flower that really looks like a flower and lots of Larry-boys with giant super-suction ears.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* Fisher said the cutest thing on the night of the divine salad. I said “Look at your plate, you have a lot of cucumbers left” and he said “Mom, I really don’t like cucumbers, except for Larry-boy and you know that Larry-boy is not a real cucumber that we eat, don’t you know that, mom?”
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* Blythe loves reading. I never knew if this day would come, but it has and I am so thrilled for her.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* Blythe taught us a great family home evening on Monday about the power of music and the importance of having uplifting music in our homes and most importantly in our minds.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* I giggled my head off at gym yesterday. These kids say the most hilarious things and they DO the most hilarious things. They keep my laughter quotient where it needs to be and give me something to smile about all week long.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* Annesley only threw up once last night. My children throw up often, anywhere, and abundantly. Once they start it is usually an 8-10 throw up deal. Once was such a piece of cake. Only 4 towels to wash and two sets of clothes, hers and mine. (Do other children throw up as often as mine? Is it even remotely possible? What is a normal number of times to throw up during childhood? A recent client of mine said her 7-year-old has thrown up twice in his life! I was flabbergasted because my children all throw up so often, I cannot even count the times. It probably isn’t a weekly occurrence, but certainly monthly.)
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* We were able to have adult conversation with our friends Cami and Ray…what a treat!
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* Yesterday during violin, Blythe and Fisher played together on the trampoline and every time I looked out the window at them they were laughing and smiling together. Since they are 8 years apart, they don’t share a lot of common interests or playtime. It was pure joy to see them so happy together.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
* In spite of WWIII being declared by Blythe and Keziah (and I am certain a real war could not be worse than their recent fighting) and repeatedly hearing how much they hate each other this week, they were found giggling under the covers of Fisher’s bed. Together. With smiles. Simply unbelievable.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
Time to get to work!