Wow, what a weekend! I can't believe that it was only a week ago today that I left my Loving Liesl in Idaho! It was! She is doing great, we are missing her, but she is following her dreams, flying, soaring and pursuing greatness, how can I even think to complain? I can't! I Adore Her and I hope she knows I always will! I think she is magnificent and marvelous! I am so grateful I have the priviledge of being her Mom! I dreamed of having my family, and wanted a perfect oldest brother to set the example for and protect the younger ones (got it!) and then I wanted a smart, beautiful fun loving daughter who would be there to double date with her older or younger brother :) and together we would share girl fun! I am so grateful for 17 years with a beautiful daughter and I'm not regretting anything!
I left our camera at our place in SLC so I don't have pictures to post here of dropping her off, (we really didn't do pictures we were too busy hugging, hustling to the next place, and treasuring the time together!) or of our time with extended family over New Years! I will get the camera back next week while we are up there, and post those later.
In the meantime, we had a fun, full weekend! I talked to someone yesterday asking how their Sunday was, and they said "they didn't have to do anything" and so "it was Perfect!" I totally disagree! I love being fully engaged and love having family and projects happening, creating, sharing, treasuring time and talents together!
Friday night we hosted a "Girl Party" for my B & S! They are so darling! They made a list of friends, and what started as a party for 2-3 other girls grew quickly to 6 making a total of 8! They made calls to all the girls on Thursday evening inviting them to a "Pizza party" on Friday 6-8:30. By 5:40 girls were showing up, and my own girls were still hustling with last minute preps to be ready! I am grateful to have girls who know something of what it takes to host a party, and they don't wait to be told! They worked hard to clean up the house, help with pizza preparations, and we had a special craft project we wanted to do they helped get ready for! They are soooo darling! I love B&S sooo much!
Simultaneously, the boys weren't interested in a girl party! They planned their own Basketball Jam Session at the Stake Center that night at 7:30 - 11! They of course were willing to help with preparations, and were at the girl party to help make pizzas with the girls! Amazing how some kids get it, and others... just don't! The boys set great examples, and made the girls mind some manners because there were boys around! We made individual pizzas, and had a even younger sibling show up with one of the girls.... always has to be a little twist to the plan!
I believe the girls loved making their pizzas and enjoyed sitting around the table giggling and talking! I am grateful for that every so often, and yet grateful my girls are here in my home, not engaging in unsupervised gatherings like that daily in public school!
They moved to play Dance Dance (a treat they normally only get to play when it is raining and they have all their jobs done is the rule for video games in my home!). Then we gathered all the girls together again, and carefully with precautions in place, had them stencil with bleach on cute pink shirts we had purchased! We cut vinyl CTR shields out and they determined where they wanted them placed on their shirts! Initially it didn't look like the bleach was going to absorb in at all, I was worried because I had wanted to pick up the shirts earlier and wash them once before the party, but we simply ran out of time! I was grateful B. was still here, he took the boys to the church, but then came back for the last little bit of the girl party because it was... a bit overwhelming and he could see I could use his help - bless him! He told me not to worry, and to leave the clorox on trusting it would just take a bit of time! Sure enough it didn't eventually bleach through the hot pink shirts, turning them white, unfortunately it took so much bleach to do that, the vinyl didn't hold it out in those places! So in the end, there was only one shirt that actually worked that way, and the rest we ended up painting on the stencil again with fabric paint the next couple of days! Saturday in a panic that we had told the girls they were going to get these shirts, I ran to Target and picked up new shirts to start over, washing them immediately this time so they would work! Then late that night I worked on them, and decided we could use the fabric paint and add a third color, making them EVEN cuter!!! Well, today we are just finishing the last of them because then I had double the shirts, and I had washed them, so I can't return them! Ugh! So now we have fun treats to leave for some additional girls! I am sure these other girls won't mind having a matching CTR shirt! They turned out cute, and the girls had a fun time doing them! They are excited to deliver them to their friends!
On top of those projects, I had volunteered months ago to prepare vinyl CTR stickers for the Birthdays for Primary. I had them cut out, but decided it wasn't really fun to just get a flat sticker! Not that they kids won't love them, but they aren't really exciting, decorated, etc.! So I goggled and found pillowcases for not too much, and decided my family was going to stencil the outline of CTR shields on them and have the kids color them with markers we will check out to them! I knew that I needed two for Sunday, but then decided we should do something for the leaders too! That meant we needed four for Sunday. Not a big deal, except I was still playing with the shield I wanted to do! I have worked on it for a few weeks with Liesl but we were still tweaking it a bit on Saturday, which meant I wasn't done with that part yet!
Add that to learning mid week that no one had done new CD's for the kids with the new songs for the year! We only needed 35 of those! That meant scouring through the Primary Program Guide for the new year, pulling the songs called for with each theme, picking songs for the months they leave up to us, getting permission to use a couple, not to mention burning the actual CD's! If it takes 5 minutes each and I needed 35... that is three hours of just sitting by the computer babysitting it, sliding the new CD in, and hoping ITunes doesn't crash yet again (prayers answered it only crashed half a dozen times)! Needless to say, that project also consumed some time this weekend! Honestly I am not sure how we got them all wrapped up in time, but somehow we weren't even late for church! :) Of course it helped that we have the late schedule this year so we had until 1:00 to finish a few loose ends Sunday morning. I suppose that was a blessing this week, but we really dread the late schedule - in fact considering moving just to get out of it! JK but it has happened in the past!
Anyway, I wanted to share the logos we finally completed and used on the CD's and pillowcases. Now I need to cute some new stickers because I think they turned out so cute! They all say CTR so it is not that big of a deal, but these are really cute!
This is a link to the PDF of the list of songs with front cover and the CD labels we printed to insert in the CD cases. I ended up burning lots of CD's! The Primary Pres called Saturday morning and asked to change a song - I had 17 burned at that point :) and so I started OVER!) Anyway, she is in charge and I still managed to get them all done in time! The CD covers are larger than the actual sticker, I didn't love the darker spots in the paint blobs, but managed to just have them print off the edge of the sticker edge so they didn't show on the CD label after it is in place on the CD. They were really fun and colorful...
I didn't take time to snap pictures of the pillowcases we gave away yesterday, in the final rush to get them wrapped up and ready to present! They turned out better than I expected. I will post pictures of some later this week. Now I am debating over if I should invite the presidency to come help stencil all those, or if it is just easier to do them myself. Humm... The girls have asked if I would invite their friends over to paint them. No, not really interested in trying to have all those girls here to take on that project! And it has nearly doubled, I thought I was doing those for the kids who actually come to church - now we have added all the kids, and all the leaders - we need to actually do about 65 now! One at a time :) that's all we have to do! :)
I left our camera at our place in SLC so I don't have pictures to post here of dropping her off, (we really didn't do pictures we were too busy hugging, hustling to the next place, and treasuring the time together!) or of our time with extended family over New Years! I will get the camera back next week while we are up there, and post those later.
In the meantime, we had a fun, full weekend! I talked to someone yesterday asking how their Sunday was, and they said "they didn't have to do anything" and so "it was Perfect!" I totally disagree! I love being fully engaged and love having family and projects happening, creating, sharing, treasuring time and talents together!
Friday night we hosted a "Girl Party" for my B & S! They are so darling! They made a list of friends, and what started as a party for 2-3 other girls grew quickly to 6 making a total of 8! They made calls to all the girls on Thursday evening inviting them to a "Pizza party" on Friday 6-8:30. By 5:40 girls were showing up, and my own girls were still hustling with last minute preps to be ready! I am grateful to have girls who know something of what it takes to host a party, and they don't wait to be told! They worked hard to clean up the house, help with pizza preparations, and we had a special craft project we wanted to do they helped get ready for! They are soooo darling! I love B&S sooo much!
Simultaneously, the boys weren't interested in a girl party! They planned their own Basketball Jam Session at the Stake Center that night at 7:30 - 11! They of course were willing to help with preparations, and were at the girl party to help make pizzas with the girls! Amazing how some kids get it, and others... just don't! The boys set great examples, and made the girls mind some manners because there were boys around! We made individual pizzas, and had a even younger sibling show up with one of the girls.... always has to be a little twist to the plan!
I believe the girls loved making their pizzas and enjoyed sitting around the table giggling and talking! I am grateful for that every so often, and yet grateful my girls are here in my home, not engaging in unsupervised gatherings like that daily in public school!
They moved to play Dance Dance (a treat they normally only get to play when it is raining and they have all their jobs done is the rule for video games in my home!). Then we gathered all the girls together again, and carefully with precautions in place, had them stencil with bleach on cute pink shirts we had purchased! We cut vinyl CTR shields out and they determined where they wanted them placed on their shirts! Initially it didn't look like the bleach was going to absorb in at all, I was worried because I had wanted to pick up the shirts earlier and wash them once before the party, but we simply ran out of time! I was grateful B. was still here, he took the boys to the church, but then came back for the last little bit of the girl party because it was... a bit overwhelming and he could see I could use his help - bless him! He told me not to worry, and to leave the clorox on trusting it would just take a bit of time! Sure enough it didn't eventually bleach through the hot pink shirts, turning them white, unfortunately it took so much bleach to do that, the vinyl didn't hold it out in those places! So in the end, there was only one shirt that actually worked that way, and the rest we ended up painting on the stencil again with fabric paint the next couple of days! Saturday in a panic that we had told the girls they were going to get these shirts, I ran to Target and picked up new shirts to start over, washing them immediately this time so they would work! Then late that night I worked on them, and decided we could use the fabric paint and add a third color, making them EVEN cuter!!! Well, today we are just finishing the last of them because then I had double the shirts, and I had washed them, so I can't return them! Ugh! So now we have fun treats to leave for some additional girls! I am sure these other girls won't mind having a matching CTR shirt! They turned out cute, and the girls had a fun time doing them! They are excited to deliver them to their friends!
On top of those projects, I had volunteered months ago to prepare vinyl CTR stickers for the Birthdays for Primary. I had them cut out, but decided it wasn't really fun to just get a flat sticker! Not that they kids won't love them, but they aren't really exciting, decorated, etc.! So I goggled and found pillowcases for not too much, and decided my family was going to stencil the outline of CTR shields on them and have the kids color them with markers we will check out to them! I knew that I needed two for Sunday, but then decided we should do something for the leaders too! That meant we needed four for Sunday. Not a big deal, except I was still playing with the shield I wanted to do! I have worked on it for a few weeks with Liesl but we were still tweaking it a bit on Saturday, which meant I wasn't done with that part yet!
Add that to learning mid week that no one had done new CD's for the kids with the new songs for the year! We only needed 35 of those! That meant scouring through the Primary Program Guide for the new year, pulling the songs called for with each theme, picking songs for the months they leave up to us, getting permission to use a couple, not to mention burning the actual CD's! If it takes 5 minutes each and I needed 35... that is three hours of just sitting by the computer babysitting it, sliding the new CD in, and hoping ITunes doesn't crash yet again (prayers answered it only crashed half a dozen times)! Needless to say, that project also consumed some time this weekend! Honestly I am not sure how we got them all wrapped up in time, but somehow we weren't even late for church! :) Of course it helped that we have the late schedule this year so we had until 1:00 to finish a few loose ends Sunday morning. I suppose that was a blessing this week, but we really dread the late schedule - in fact considering moving just to get out of it! JK but it has happened in the past!
Anyway, I wanted to share the logos we finally completed and used on the CD's and pillowcases. Now I need to cute some new stickers because I think they turned out so cute! They all say CTR so it is not that big of a deal, but these are really cute!
This is a link to the PDF of the list of songs with front cover and the CD labels we printed to insert in the CD cases. I ended up burning lots of CD's! The Primary Pres called Saturday morning and asked to change a song - I had 17 burned at that point :) and so I started OVER!) Anyway, she is in charge and I still managed to get them all done in time! The CD covers are larger than the actual sticker, I didn't love the darker spots in the paint blobs, but managed to just have them print off the edge of the sticker edge so they didn't show on the CD label after it is in place on the CD. They were really fun and colorful...
I didn't take time to snap pictures of the pillowcases we gave away yesterday, in the final rush to get them wrapped up and ready to present! They turned out better than I expected. I will post pictures of some later this week. Now I am debating over if I should invite the presidency to come help stencil all those, or if it is just easier to do them myself. Humm... The girls have asked if I would invite their friends over to paint them. No, not really interested in trying to have all those girls here to take on that project! And it has nearly doubled, I thought I was doing those for the kids who actually come to church - now we have added all the kids, and all the leaders - we need to actually do about 65 now! One at a time :) that's all we have to do! :)