Oh, what shall I make?

I have been a good girl and haven't bought fabric without knowing what I was going to do with it for well over a year. The last time I did such a thing I blogged about it here and here. I am so addicted to buying fabric from fabric.com, so to combat my buying tendencies, I stopped going over to this site to just see what there was. Inevitably when I just go to look...I always find something that I have to have. Earlier this month, I decided to go back to my beloved site and see what they had for fabric that I could make the girls Easter dresses out of. I had recently received an email telling me that all their discounted fabrics were an additional 30% off, so really I HAD to go see what there was. I really wanted to make yellow dresses for my girls this year(this didn't ever happen because I just got my fabric today) and I just happened to find some gorgeous yellow organza and polyester so I bought 5 yards of each for a total of $18. Then I just had to check out what they had in their clearance cotton section....this may have been a mistake. This is what I found and bought(at $6.11/yard).

See, I couldn't leave any of them behind. Now what shall I make with them? Some of these prints are coordinating prints.

Mariposa by Laura Berringer for Marcus Fabrics

Swoon by Melissa Averinos for Andover Fabrics inc.

I kinda thought that I might make a skirt for me out of a few of them. But other than that I might just sit them on my sewing desk and admire them for awhile.

New jeans

OK, so the scale may not be my friend, but there is no denying that I have had some success when I see this.

 So take that scale!! Even if your numbers wont budge, I'm still making progress. Na na na na na!

Rainbows

Ever since I made pink pancakes for valentines day a few years back, my children have frequently asked to have pancakes in a variety of colours. So when I saw these rainbow pancakes, I knew that I would have to try it out someday when I had plenty of time to spend just making pancakes. Today was that day.

Here is what we had for breakfast this morning.

And they were really delicious!

The folly of shopping alone.

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of going to Lethbridge to do the grocery shopping....ALONE. Because I went alone I didn't feel the need to take my gigantic purse, so I just took my fancy shmancy shiny wallet. I drove for awhile in complete silence, and then I turned on the radio and listen to whatever I wanted at the sound level that I wanted. It was truly heavenly. I roamed the superstore at my own pace finding everything that was on my list...in silence. I unloaded the groceries into the empty van with out anybody begging for something to eat. I replaced the shopping cart in the shopping cart garage thingy and then I climbed in the van and took the opportunity to check over my grocery receipt. I noticed that I hadn't received the $2 discount on the two jars of peanut butter that I had purchased. So I headed back inside to customer service for a price adjustment. After all I had all the time in the world, and no tired kids to deter me. And honestly, I would have probably only bought one jar of peanut butter with out the $2 discount. I got my $4 back and headed out to the van. Once in the van I reached down to grab my wallet to put the change in and it wasn't where it should have been. I couldn't remember  taking it into the store with me when I went to customer service. I looked in the back of the van with the groceries, but it wasn't there. I started to panic. I only had about $40 cash, my drivers license, no credit cards, Alberta health cards for me and the kids and various other semi important items. All of which were replaceable, it would have been a hassle, but it could be done. However, there were two other fairly expensive pieces of paper in my wallet, that would not have been replaceable. Last fall a friend of mine rounded up a large group of people to purchase group tickets(at a wonderful discount) to the Broadway play "Wicked" that will be playing in Spokane in May. I had purchased two of these tickets for myself and Kathryn and we have been really looking forward to our little girly getaway. But if my wallet was lost...that would all go down the drain, and I would have to cry. I immediately said a prayer asking Heavenly Father to help me find my wallet, and please let some honest person have found it and turned it in to Customer Service. On my way back into the store I stopped and looked to see if I had left it in the shopping cart, but it wasn't there. I wondered if I had taken it in with me and left it on the counter at customer service. I just kept praying that it would be there. What would I do if it wasn't? How would I tell Kathryn that we would no longer be going to go see Wicked? I tried to put it out of my head and just kept praying that it would be there. And do you know what? It was. I had left it in the cart and some lady had found it and turned it in. The lady at customer service said "There is still hope for humanity." Yes, yes, there is! And thank God for it! As I look at the series of events, I am grateful that I listened to those little promptings, that started with taking the time to look over my receipt. If I hadn't done that, and then taken the time to go in to get it corrected and had change to put in my wallet, I would have driven away with out noticing that I had misplaced my wallet. And who knows when I would have noticed that it was missing....and would it have been too late? See sometimes it pays to have kids with you, and carry a gigantic purse...it's next to impossible to misplace a purse that size.

Here is another feel good story, be sure to have some tissues near by, you'll need them.

Flat Stanley

We recently had a visit from Flat Stanley. He had come all the way from Ft Thomas, Kentucky. I'm not sure how long Flat Stanley has been traveling for, but he is nearly ready to return home. Before he came to see us he was in North Bay, Ontario and I have now sent him off to Lazo, British Columbia. Unfortunately for Stanley, the weather was not very nice during his visit. It was cold and windy, not very fun for exploring. We tried to make the best of it.

 First we took Stanley to see T-Rex at the Milk River Visitor's Center. Stanley felt pretty tiny standing underneath that gigantic dinosaur.

After climbing on T-Rex, Stanley climbed around on the fake Hoodoos at the Visitor's Center. We would have liked to take Stanley down to Writing On Stone Provincial Park, but as it has already been said, it was too cold and windy. If only Stanley had come for a visit in the summer, what fun we would have had hoping around from Hoodoo to Hoodoo. We would have taken him to see the ancient First Nations petroglyphs (carvings) & pictographs (paintings).

When we were done playing here we decided that we would show Stanley how our town got its name. Did you know that the Milk River flows all the way to the Gulf of Mexico? And if you didn't already know, the Milk River gets its name because it always looks muddy or "milky" because of the sandy sediment.

Stanley on the nice clean white van.

After all this fun was had, it seemed like a good time to go wash our very muddy van at the local car wash. Everything is mostly dried up...for now, and the van was so dirty that it was completely the colour of dried mud. Stanley was such a great help, cheering me on along with the girls in the safety of the van. (we would hate for Stanley to get wet and fall to pieces).

We even tried to put Stanley to work delivering flyers with us...but the paper bag was a bit too big for him to carry, so he had to just ride along instead.

All in all, even though the weather was a bit chilly, I think that Stanley had a great time and he will return to Ft Thomas with stories of distant places to share with the children of the second grade class that sent him out on his adventures.

Work and play

A few weeks ago I saw an add on the school bulletin board that read "Earn $$$ delivering flyers". I thought to myself "Hey, that would be a great way to get some exercise. The kids love to help grandma deliver flyers. Maybe I could talk them into doing this." So I came home and talked to them and Daniel about it. Daniel thought I was crazy.  The girls thought it was a great idea, especially when I told them that some of the money would be theirs and that we could do fun things with it. I called my mom and asked her some questions about her route and asked her if she thought I was crazy. She told me that she didn't think I was crazy and this could be a good experience for the girls. She suggested some other questions that I might want to ask the "Flyer boss". She also suggested that I have the girls think of something they wanted to work towards, since this was going to be fun money. I knew immediately what they were going to want, a trampoline. I called the number that was on the poster and asked some more questions. Here's the deal. The flyers would be delivered early in the morning of Wednesday and are to be delivered by Friday. There are 400 flyers(for all of Milk River). If for some reason we aren't able to do it one week, all we would have to do is give the Flyer boss a weeks notice and it would be taken care of. Payment is a whopping $272/month. After I had all my answers. I talked with the girls again. I told them all the details and then I told them that I thought we should think of something that we all wanted to work towards. And I was right, they wanted a trampoline. So we called the Flyer boss back and said we would do it.

At General Conference, President Henry B. Eyring inspired me to do more with our fun money.

After all this is money that we don't really need. We have been blessed with so much, certainly we could use some of our fun money to do some good in the world. So I sat down with the girls and suggested that we think of some projects that we could do to some good in our community and around the world. We decided that we could give some money to the Church's Humanitarian Aid fund. But that we also wanted to think of things that we could do hands on. Kathryn suggested that we could buy some of our favorite foods and take them to the Food Bank, like my parents had us kids do one Christmas. That will be our first project. We'll think of more and do what we can to make a difference.

This week was our first week. Flyers were delivered late because of some crazy snow. We worked for an hour and a half last night and then two and a half hours today. In all we walked about 5 miles. I think we can cut that down a little for next week. And hopefully we will be a little quicker. But I can't complain. The girls did great...with a few reminders what we were working for. And thank goodness I have a chariot trailer to push the two littlest youngest ones in and to fill the basket full of flyers. All in all, it's been a good two days. And we'll do it all again next week, and again and again until the weather gets cold again and the days get shorter.

lopsided

Kymberly has always had a some what lopsided head. One eye sits a little higher than the other. She was born that way. I suppose she was just so big, the poor girl was squished, and the irregularly shaped head was a result. When she was a baby, almost everyone took it upon themselves to inform me that my baby's eyes were uneven, or that her head was a funny shape. Some people were down right rude and assumed that there was something wrong with her, most were just curious. She will always be a girl that wears bangs. Nearly 4 years later, and every once in awhile I still have somebody say something. I hardly notice it anymore, and at times I wonder if it isn't as misshapen as it once was, or if I am just accustom to it.

Well it turns out that not only are her eyes lopsided on the outside, but they are also lopsided on the inside. Apparently the nerve in one eye is longer than in the other eye, making it so her eyes do not work together. She has adapted and basically uses one eye at a time, the result is a loss of depth perception. Try it, close one eye and have some one toss you a ball, see how easy(or difficult) it is to catch the ball. Now add to that another eye that is doing the same thing but not in cooperation with the first eye. Suddenly so many things make sense. She's afraid of heights. She won't play on the playground. She often is paralyzed in fear when she has to walk down stairs and there isn't a railing or somebodies hand for her to hold onto. She generally ends up sitting down and scooting down the stairs on her bum.

So now we know there is a problem. Our optometrist has referred us to a specialist in Calgary to discuss our options and what can be done for her. We already have an appointment lined up for May. I'm anxious to get this going. Not worried anxious, I just want to do what ever needs to be done so this little girl can see the world as it should be. I suspect she may be a different little girl once we get this all fixed.