A letter

Dear Blog,

I like you.  Do you like me?  (Check the box "yes" or "no.")

I still believe in you.  I know we can do great things together.  Please be patient while my brain sorts itself out, and I download some pictures.  That may take a while (for both things).

Love your friend (I hope),
me

Decor

I'm not a decorator.  I'm not a "pinner,"  and I'm not someone with ideas that people would pin, either.  But the walls need things on them, and I generally like what goes up, so I thought I'd share some recent additions.

I saw these as a giveaway on a blog, and liked them so much that I purchased the files and printed them.  They're from Alexis Merrill's etsy shop.  She was great to work with--I wanted specific people, and she created a special order for me.  If you can't read them, the ones I got say, "Obedient like Samuel," "Steadfast like Abish," "Happy like Eve," "Brave like Esther," "True like Hannah," and "Faithful like Alma."

 They hang in the hallway by the kids' bedrooms, so they get a daily reminder of heroes I'd love for them to emulate.

For Halloween I had hung some skeletons from little hooks on our mantle.  After we took them down, I thought we needed some Fall colors, so Tessa and I took a walk and collected some leaves.  Then I laid out a thin rope, got out my glue gun, stuck them on, and hung it up.  It is a rather temporary decoration, but it was so easy, I would happily do it again next year.

After our summer focus on the 13th Article of Faith, I wanted to have it printed out nicely, to hang in the same place where we had hung up the wordstrips.  I tried printing something from someone's website, but it came out all pixelated, so I thought I'd just make one myself.  I took this picture (below) that Scott had taken on our trip to Salt Lake this summer and put it into Photoshop.

 I have absolutely no experience in using Photoshop (as evidenced by all the photos on my blog), so I just blindly played around with it, until I made it do some things I thought I wanted--and then printed it out and stuck in in a $3 frame.  And I really like it.  (The angle is odd because I wanted to avoid the glare of the flash on the words.)

And then there's Charlotte.  She's a spider.  She showed up the day after Halloween, and is still here, to the delight of my children.  She lives OUTSIDE only.  I haven't looked up her scientific name, but she's called a banana spider (because her legs are yellow and brown) and a zipper spider (because she makes a zipper pattern in her web).  Those with delicate insect constitutions should probably avoid looking out of that window for the next little while.

In the clear

Look who's sitting now!  At least for a few seconds...

Before Benson was born, he was diagnosed with hydronephrosis, which is excess fluid in his kidneys.  Two of my girls also had it, and it cleared up on its own for them, so I wasn't worried.  Sure enough, we had his final checkup, and his kidneys are now extra-fluid-less.  Hooray!

A couple funny things from the trip...  The doctor used a little ultrasound wand to check out Benson's kidneys.  Tessa was with me, as always, and, after observing the doctor's actions, asked, "Is Benson going to have a baby?"

As we drove past our local Chili's, we saw that they were getting new signs.  They were the large chili pepper with an apostrophe and a large S.  Tessa's assessment: "Look, a big strawberry...with worms!"  Mmmm.

Things I forget

My mind is muddled.

I have noticed that I regularly forget things that used to be automatic.  My hope is that if I write them here, I'll be able to remember them again!  (I would be depressed about this list if I didn't know that most of these things are just being pushed out in between a much longer list of good things that I do remember to do.) So here's a list of my forgetting:

*I forget to shave my legs.  Hooray for winter and covering them up, and for fewer embarrassing moments when I discover what I've not done.

*I forget to vacuum my stairs.  I do well with the downstairs, OK with the upstairs, but the middle part somehow fails to make it onto my list.

*I forget the names of my children.  Of course, I really know them, but it takes me three tries to get the right one out of my mouth.  The kids in Primary have no idea how lucky they are when I get their names right!  I have to apologize to my own kids, and reassure them that I really know who they are!

*I forget to make dinner.  Well, I forget until about 4:30 pm-ish, and then my recipe options are limited in order to get it made in time.  I then resolve again to start earlier the next day...and forget again.

*I forget to have my kids do their evening chores.  They do not remind me.  I for sure get the one assigned to set the table to do that, but the other assignments are regularly overlooked until small heads are resting on pillows, and I have time to look around the house.

*I forget to clean my windows and mirrors.  I am really surprised how easy it is for me to not see how dirty they are--especially my kitchen door, with its full window--when I look out of them daily.  It's a chore I actually enjoy, but it just doesn't often happen.

*I forget how fast time goes by with a baby.  Each day I find myself wishing for the next milestones (currently: "If he could just sit up in a shopping cart..."), only to look back and wish I had enjoyed the little-bitty baby stages a little more.

*I am forgetting details from my mission.  I am so thankful that I have my journals, pictures, and letters home to help!

*Oh, I forget to write in my current journal.  I am in a perpetual state of catch-up.

That's enough for now.  I'm sure there are more that I forgot...