October Art

I found this art project Rebekah did with grammy. 

I also found this in my book. Guess I was using it for a book mark. I think it's Olaf from Frozen II saying, "This is Fine...."

One day Rebekah invited me to art class. I find art extremely stressful: I'm just not good at it and I'm too much of a perfectionist to be okay with that. But it's Rebekah, so I say sure. This week we are making a surprise gift. Her teacher has a youtube video you follow step by step. Basically you fold the paper in such a way that you open it and it becomes something different. So, here's my gift:

Here's the surprise inside:

Right after we finished Rebekah reminded me that her birthday is coming up. Very strategically sneaky of her. 

I had her make a video for family:

A few days later she wanted to try kittens. Rebekah's:

Mine:

Video for posterity:

But that wasn't quite enough so a few days later we were doing puppies:

First Box

 So we're looking at a move. But we have approximately 8 months to prepare. Should be plenty of time right? And yet here I am feeling the anxiety. Last move Don's new company gave him a relocation package and the movers did all the work. This time it's all on us. 

The main thing I want to do is downsize, which is ironic because we are going to a larger home. However, I don't want to store all this stuff that we don't use. I also want to transfer long term storage items into clear plastic crates rather than cardboard boxes to make things more stable. 

I have gone up in our attic before but apparently getting up is a lot easier for me than getting down. To that end getting down with boxes in my hands would not be possible. But that's why I have a strong handsome husband. So I went up with him, pointed at a few boxes I wanted, and asked him to bring them down. 

One box was all my old school stuff. So fun and yet hard seeing that. I keep thinking I need to get my teaching license again but every time I start to work on it I get distracted. I need to focus. 

Another box I asked him to pull was my mission and for lack of better terminology, previous life stuff. But one cannot simply change things from one box to another. One has to take a peek. 

And so I give you pictures of pictures:

This is my high school best bud Lori. And that's me and Lori having fun in a photo booth. 

Lori was pretty much Miss Popularity. (Now that I think of it we were pretty much polar opposites. I'm grateful she was such a good friend to me.) Every girl choice dance I doubled with her. And yes, that's my late 80's early 90's hair. Got to love the hairspray. I hope the environment / ozone layer forgives me.

And then I went to college. Lori was going to Weber State so we decided that would be a good thing for me to do as well. Turns out I got in, she didn't. And then I got a full scholarship in music so I decided I would still go. 

Skip a year or so and here's my fun roommates. That's me in the green shirt on the right - first I took the picture, then I tried to get out of the picture, then I joined. 

Pretty soon I was on my mission. I enjoyed looking at my mission photos but the only one I took a picture was this one. It's the entire mission but I closed up on me and Misty - aka Sister Dalton. I only served a month with her but we connected instantly. We still chat every so often. I'm in the read sweater vest, Misty is next to me on the right (red hair). 

Then I headed back to college where eventually I became vice president of Chamber Choir. Still don't quite know how that happened. Looking back at my college experience I did everything I could to not be social or even be seen as social. This was a Chamber Choir mug shot. I vaguely remember not wanting my picture taken so I threw up my folder at the last minute. The result: 

Then I found my younger years. I so do not recognize that girl. Curly hair (think it must of been a perm) and glasses? And that's my brother Joseph - I sent this to him and he went straight to commenting on his bowl cut. I do remember playing in the sand box a lot though. 

I think this was post mission. That's Kipper. If you look closely you will see he's cross-eyed. Poor dog was probably wondering what his human was doing. "Smile for the camera!"

My grandma, aunt Jackie, and cousin Jennifer - from right to left. 

My all time favorite picture of Michael doing yard work with my unsuspecting mother. 

Oh, and in the same box was this of Don. Rebekah requested I put this in here. Can't say I blame her: he was such a cute little guy. 

Daddy's New Job

Don's new audit job includes 25% - 40% travel. It's going to be hard on the Bee. The first trip he ended up not going on because his old job wanted him to train his replacement. This one, however, happened. Rebekah was quite unhappy until I promised her we could get Chinese take out. The girl loves her sweet and sour. 

However, she cried the night before daddy left. The afternoon she handled somewhat better. 

Don not so much. 

I finally asked him to look happy.

Rebekah and I walked out to the garage to give him a good send off. 

The next day I promised we would go get some play dough if Rebekah finished her school and her to-do items on time. With motivation she finished in record time. In case you were wondering she wanted the play dough for something specific. 

That's right, she made daddy a play dough cake. 

Right before Don was to come home she decided to cut it, but she cut it with a play dough knife and it mushed together. One would have thought the world was ending. So, I helped her patch it together and the next day when Don was home we cut it with a very sharp knife. It worked much better.

Hopefully the traveling thing will get better / less traumatic for Rebekah. Recently Don told me his company purchased software that would make a remote audit possible, meaning less travel. He's also wondering if he will ever have to be in the office 5 days a week again. Guess we will see as time goes on.

When Mama Needs A Nap

Sometimes a mama just doesn't feel well. Most of the time the snuggly little girl still wants to play. But sometimes a mama has to say I'm resting right now, feel free to nap with me. But usually the snuggly little girl finds a way of playing. 

Embracing the Move

This week we had a design meeting for the house. We went to mom's to spend the night so the next morning Don could work and Rebekah could do school without having to worry about travel. While they were working and schooling I decided to take a little walk to the local donut shop. First I found the menu so Rebekah could pick her donut.  

She chose strawberry with Fruity Pebbles. Really? You're only young once I suppose.... So I headed out on my mission.

I passed the library and got to see my friend Jennifer (a librarian also over the community garden - she says I'm totally back on the community gardener list by the way - yay me) in the library parking lot and continued down the road to the local park where I made eye contact with a friendly squirrel.

From there I turned left to downtown. This is the main strip. My future home.  

The view from the other direction. 

That's a big community thank you card for when the tornado came through in 2019. Got to love a thankful community. 

Local artwork:

Finally made it to the local-way overpriced-trendy-donut shop. 

$6 dollars later...

And so I made the walk back. A very pretty fall morning. 

This is one of my favorite places. That's the community garden with the library right beside it. 

We love our community garden!

Made it there and back in about 40 minutes. I've decided I'm going to embrace the small town and walk / bike everywhere when possible. 

The donuts didn't make it back totally unscathed; the strawberry fruity pebble moved around in the box a lot. Maybe next time I'll have to get four donuts so they don't move so much - just for the sake of the donuts of course. The other two were chocolate with raspberry and caramel with chocolate sprinkles. I liked the chocolate raspberry best. 

Rebekah was very excited. 

While we were there mom reminded me I never got a picture with her birthday mug so we fixed that little problem. 

Then Don and I headed out to the design center. I knew it would be hard - so many choices and so forth but wow! The anxiety I felt was crazy! Each decision one makes snowballs to other decisions until one feels like they are riding an avalanche down the mountain. An avalanche that will stay with you for the next 10 years or so when you hope someone else will want that avalanche at a much more expensive price than you paid for it. Seriously. All the pressure. 

We first had to decide brick, cement siding, and accent colors. We finally narrowed it down to this brick and these colors, but didn't know whether we should do a blue door or a red door. Let me back up a bit: we have been preparing for this design meeting for quite a while and I had decided I wanted to do a blue house. We get there and don't even go that direction but rather choose "expresso." So, our house will have fancy strong coffee on the outside but obey the word of wisdom on the inside. 

Here's the blue door: 

Here's the red color. I liked the way it brought out the rust in the brick, but when it came down to it I though the blue had a better feel. 

That decision took us way longer than expected. The door however was an easy decision. I like so many thing about it. 

Then we went into the kitchen area. I absolutely love my kitchen I have now. It's kind of a cherry brown and it's beautiful. I picked out the same style but when it came down to it we couldn't match it with flooring etc. At this point I decided not to try to recreate what I had and instead create something new. The cabinets were darker than we thought we would go but it seems to work out. The counter top is next to it and the flooring is underneath. 

Paint color on the right. 

Carpet:

Back splash.

Kitchen faucet. Apparently the long neck ones are $200 more than this shorter one. Crazy. 

We had to pick out other things like lights, handles for the cabinets, and spindles for the staircase, etc. At this point I just hope our design consultant didn't lead us astray. I kept begging her for insights and to rule out options that would just be mistakes. I am so bad at this kind of thing. And to try to make guesses with small little swatches, not seeing the big picture? Ahh! I have no imagination. Guess we'll see what it really looks like when it's built. 

And while we are on that subject, we decided to check out the site one more time before heading back to mom's. They've already got the driveway outlined.

And the orange in back has got to be significant as well, although I have no idea what it actually means. Maybe it's the back of our property line? But whatever it is, it all means the same thing: looks like eventually we'll be moving. 

We finally made it back to mom's and Rebekah wanted to go to the library. I got cleaned up and we went to walk over. Right as we left we saw Miss Samatha and her little girl Tenley walking in the same general direction. They were heading over to the library too. We all threw our masks on and went together. Tenley and Rebekah picked up right where they left off. It was like Rebekah never left. 

Such good friends. 

Through talking with Miss Samantha about the schools I got a whole lot more comfortable with the move. And seeing Rebekah with Tenley made my heart feel better too. She won't be starting over, she'll be coming back. 

So, while I'm not 100% there, it's a start. And I'll get there one step / walk / donut / decision at a time.