Another Day...

It was a good day yeterday... anytime I have an opportunity to hear from our Stake Presidency, it is a good thing. I always walk away feeling loved and appreciated for the time and effort I put into my calling and service I render in the church. I also always experience a great feeling of gratitude towards My Savior, and feel of his love for me. They are amazing Brethren and I am thankful for their faith and commitment in their Priesthood duties.

We set up a table for some treats after our session of the meeting... YES those are Krispy Kreme donuts on the table. It wasn't my idea, but I can't say I wasn't completely supportive of our President and her great taste in treats!

A few more festive decorations in front of the room too... It was fun, and got me in the mood to decorate the house a little better for the season.

This morning before I get any work done... Rudy has to have a bath. Somehow after the lake the other day, he smelled fine, but between then and now he picked up some horrible odor and I had to clean top to bottom to get rid of it.... all the blankets in his kennel, the kennel, and most importantly... HIM. Peeweeew!
But now that everything is in the wash and he has had his bath with some good smelly shampoo, and his nails clipped (which a huge ordeal, another story for another day)... he is now curled up under a clean blanky on the couch.
So I can go get some work done and maybe have some time for myself this afternoon.... after dishes and laundry and raking up leaves, and planting bulbs. A fairly average day, nothing to exciting to journal about.

Don't make a mountain out of a mole-hill...

I would love to say I got my office cleaned up yesterday and have some great after pictures, but that just didn't happen. This is one of those projects, while I am not quite sure how it got so bad, has been put on the back burner.

Things seem to gather in my office, unexpectedly and uninvited. Like, "HEY"... all that stuff on top of the filing cabinet has boys scouts of america all over it.... that's not mine!!

And all the cords and wires and the extra tv and boxes on the floor at are connected to a play station... THAT'S NOT MINE EITHER!

Looks like I might have to do some crowd control thru my office.

Okay, the piles on top of the desk, I will take credit for that stuff. This is definately not helping my anxiety today. This mountain will have to wait for another day! Wish I could twitch my nose and make it all go away... I hate piles!

Do you have a place, or a room that seems to collect things and get out of hand?
How do you tackle the hills that seem to turn into mountains at your house?

Wordless Wednesday...

I can't believe it... but I am totally wordless today!

I guess I will take the time to go catch up on some of those projects that keep getting pushed to the back burner.

I will say... I was very dissappointed with the "Biggest Loser" last night... but I won't rant and rave about it, for those of you who haven't watched it yet.

Be back tomorrow!

Family Night...

Monday Nights we have family night. We make sure we don't make any other plans, we come together and pray, sing songs, take turns teaching something spiritual, or something based on a gospel principle, play games, do family activities, and they almost always include some kind of treat! It has been such a blessing in our family.

When my "Strong Silent Mysterious Man" and I were apart and living in different cities, we both had been taught about holding these Family Nights in our church, and decided we would try and have some simulation of them for our son.

So we would do them long distance, over the internet, over the speaker phone... whatever it took we did something! I remember one night, we had 2J's come up with a short activity, and he pulled out a simple board game that was based on eternal life... he would roll the dice and say "okay Dad, you got a 6... you just moved ahead of Mom"... and we played the entire game over the phone, they were not really ideal, but began to instill into him, the power of being together, and sharing love one to another. While we thought these great effort was to help him, it really helped us the most and I believe was the biggest stepping stone to reuniting our family.

So we still hold Family Night and our testimonies have increased of their value, so nobody at our house wants to ever miss one. We work pretty hard at making them a priority, because they mean so much to us.

For our activity last night, we decided to go for a nature walk out by the Lake. We piled in the car... with the dogs!

Rudy loves to go for a ride, but he has to be looking out the window and his little legs are so short, he always needs a little help.

Morgan always has to have her head out the window... she loves to have the wind in her face!

We had a little mishap yesterday, while we were driving and she is hanging out the window, her big ol' paw was pushing on the automatic window button, and she rolled her head up in the window. I tried to stop it and get it back down to free her, but she was so heavy I couldn't get her foot off the button... I'm yelling... she is stuck... when I pull her foot down it tugs on her head which is caught in the top of the window... it was frightening...

Finally, my Man realized what was happening, and rolled the window down from his side and freed her up. That is why they install those window locks... they are not only for when the kids are playing with the buttons in the back seat, they are to protect your animals from self distruction as well. Who knew... we will be using that button all the time now!!

We do arrive safely at the park, all the fall colors are still so pretty.

Rudy loves walks too, as long as we don't go too far.

Two J's played a few games of "search and rescue" with Morgan, where he goes out in the woods and we hold her and keep her distracted, then send her out to find him.
We think she has a bad nose, she couldn't sniff anything out to save her own life. But she makes up for it with all her other senses... her ears are super fine tuned.
He ended up jumping out and scaring her more then she ended up finding him.

So then we walked down to the lake.

It was really cold, but we couldn't keep her out of the water... Morgan loves to swim!!

The water was pretty green, so everyone who was in the lake, had to bathe when they got home. (Rudy gets the last laugh here... he wasn't getting in that cold water)

And my favorite! "I just got a bath RUN"... I love the happy dance they do, shaking off the water, running around in absolute happiness!

Really fun Family Night Activity!

Olive Garden Zuppa Toscana Soup

This is the recipe for one of my favorite soups I tried Saturday...

It is a super healthy version from the real thing, so it's guilt free!

Just click on it ~ to blow it up big enough to read.

Super Saturday...

We have a big Super Saturday at our church every year, where you can sign up and learn to make new crafts... it was a fun day of crafting and we had potluck soup (like 20 different soups to try) and rolls (the ladies here are so good about doing homemade rolls yummmmm). And they had a few demonstrations like soap making, 7 different popcorn recipes, quilting etc. I nice girl day without the boys...

Here are a few things I learned to make...

The Temple Picture is on a glass block which has been drilled with a hole to put lights inside, so when the lights are on it they shine through the picture (you could use any picture... it's just printed on paper and modge podged onto the glass). Super easy and
quick project.

The 3 leaves are just square blocks painted, sanded a little on the edges for effect, rubbed with a dark wood varnish, the leaves are stamped out of metal and then the whole thing is sprayed with clear varnish.

The red picture frame is a wooden frame (you can buy them unfinished at craft stores in all sizes and shapes) and it is covered with textured wallpaper, painted, sanded, wiped with a dark wood varnish, then painted with a clear varnish... this one was much harder because of all the steps... I think there were 30 more steps I just can't remember them all. It would be really pretty to do a wall in my house like this, but no way would I go through all the steps to get it looking right. But good idea for someone really ambitious.
This was a really easy project with vinyl cement, you can find all kinds of shape frames and then while the cement is wet you stamp whatever word(s) you want in them. I have a bookshelf with Believe in wood, so I wanted another word in cement to go with it... I thought for weeks for a good word and Saturday came and I still didn't have a good one to use.... I was kind of being picky, but because there is mostly boys in my home, it can't be too femanine, and I needed something they could relate to, that might be inspiring to them, and me as well... so I ended up with "Courage".
We have a rock garden in the front yard where I put most of the rocks that the boys bring home... it's a big garden, they bring home lots of rocks. So I made this stepping stone with our family name on it and some jewels.

The cement blocks, were super cute for gifts because you could customize them to any family... you could do house numbers, or anything. But I am thinking my brothers would really give me a hard time if I sent them cement blocks for Christmas... plus the postage would cost me a fortune! Oh, well.

Then the little soaps I learned to make, to put out for the holidays... they were super easy and cute too!

It was a fun day out... neat to learn new things and have a day out with other girls.